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The Church Will Not Lose Its Tax-Exempt Status
Do I seriously have to say this? Again? Look, Obergefell does not mark the end of churches’ tax-exempt status. It’s just not going to happen. I thought I’d put this bit of end-of-days hand-wringing to...
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Mormons in a Post-Obergefell World
A few thoughts I’ve had about living in a post-Obergefell world: The first thing: the decision, on a practical level, doesn’t change anything for most of us. It certainly doesn’t for me. And I don’t...
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Second-Best Solutions
Last week, Bruce Young, a professor of English at BYU, wrote a response to Richard Bushman’s recent AMA (or, more accurately, a response to Bushman as filtered through hawkgrrrl). I’m not interested...
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Gospel Topics Essays Lessons: Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham
For the last several months, my ward has had monthly priesthood lessons on the Gospel Topics essays that the church has released over the last year or so. I teach in Primary, so I haven’t been to most...
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On Internet Rumors
These last couple days, there’s been a thing going around on Facebook. Maybe you’ve seen it. Some anonymous poster’s friend’s relative is high-up in the Boy Scouts and has the inside scoop on why the...
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Finding God in the City
Last month, my mom was in Chicago, visiting us. On the last day of her visit, we took her on the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Historic Treasure of Culture and Commerce tour. Over the course of...
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Survey: Defending the Family and Parental Leave
[Note: there’s a link to a survey at the end. But if you don’t want to wade through the post first, you can access the survey here.] I’d been practicing law for about a year when my first daughter was...
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Did You Watch Saturday Session? #ldsconf
I realized the other day that, until I went to BYU, I had probably never watched a Saturday session of Conference (other than Priesthood session). The thing is, my parents were (and are) tremendously...
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“Through a Parent’s Eyes” (Elder Renlund) #ldsconf
Unlike Elder Renlund, my career has not put me in contact with death. And yet, I understand, on a more modest scale, the need and impulse to develop emotional distance from people and problems. Being...
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How Offended Should I Be? Humanitarian Edition
The Church just released its UK financial statements.[fn1] And with the release has come a fair amount of internet hand-wringing about some of the details.[fn2] Two details, in particular, seem to be...
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Book Review: How the Other Half Banks
By Common Consent may seem like an odd place to review Mehrsa Baradaran‘s excellent How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2015)...
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Once I Was a Beehive in Chicago
God’s Army came out my senior year at BYU. And it was a revelation. Fifteen years later, I can still remember the impact of seeing a movie, an actual real live movie, about my people, about my...
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All the More Jarring
On a friend’s Facebook this morning, and in light of yesterday’s policy change forbidding the minor children of gay couples from being blessed or baptized, a friend of a friend asked why anyone would...
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Financial Planning for Children With Disabilities
We’re honored to have a guest post from Stephanie Hoffer. Stephanie is a professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She is an educator, a scholar, and an advocate, and arguably the...
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The Rise of Zuism
For the last day or so, English-language media has been awash in news of a new-old Icelandic religion: Zuism. Okay, maybe “awash” is the wrong word; still, Zuism has captured the media’s imagination....
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Christmas Music Discoveries
Let’s take as a given that the essentials of any Christmas music collection are Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald, maybe Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Vince Guaraldi. You add in some Mariah Carey and...
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Should the Church Excommunicate Ammon Bundy?
No. I mean, I get why people think otherwise. Recently, people have been excommunicated, among other reasons, for advocating women’s ordination to the priesthood and for marrying the person they...
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Happy Intergalactic Bowie Day!
Today is David Bowie’s 69th birthday. Today David Bowie released ★ (“Blackstar”), his 26th studio album in his five decade-ish career. And Seattle’s KEXP has declared today Intergalactic Bowie Day.[fn]...
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Celebrating Dr. King
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Two years ago, as part of the Mormon Lectionary Project, John offered us a remembrance...
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Ted Cruz and Tithing
Okay, so this post isn’t actually about Ted Cruz; it’s more inspired by an article McKay Coppins posted today on recent Evangelical criticisms of Ted Cruz. In short, Cruz, a Baptist, is courting the...
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