Awards
Lists of Brodie award winners:
X-Mormon of the Year 2012: David Twede
X-Mormon of the Year 2011: Joanna Brooks
X-Mormon of the Year 2010: Monica Bielanko
X-Mormon of the Year 2009: Walter Kirn
A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
The Contradiction of God: Brett Cottrell’s “The Valley of Fire”
Theology can be confusing and contradictory. If God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence can be reconciled with the existence of evil, it kinds makes you wonder what’s going on in God’s head. Even if it doesn’t make sense, it makes a great premise for a fantasy-adventure novel!! In The Valley of Fire the different aspects of the mind of God (God’s wrath, God’s genius, etc.) travel through space and time to recapture God’s Insanity — who escaped while helping Jesus and Contradiction help people Read more [...]
Posted in Book Review, Theology
Mormonism 101: FAQ
The LDS Newsroom’s new FAQ has a somewhat defensive tone. This is probably due to scandals as of late for the Church, an annoyance that certain issues won’t go away. The Newsroom has created paragraphs of text perhaps in hopes to roundly cut off future scandals at the pass, but I don’t think it’ll help that much. There are a number of answers that are worth responding to, but I’ll just respond to three here: Do Mormon women lead in the Church? Yes. All women are daughters of a loving Heavenly Read more [...]
Posted in Theology
Sunday in Outer Blogness: What do Mormons believe? edition!
First and foremost — Outer Blogness has gotten a major technical upgrade!!! This is such a huge and vibrant community that it deserves its own page where you can get a clear view of what’s up. It also means faster loading of our main page and more space in our sidebars for additional content. Thanks Kari for your technical wizardry! 
And now for this week’s trends! It seems that (almost) everybody loves the new Book of Mormon musical! And one highlight is the song I Believe — an emotionally-charged Read more [...]
Posted in Sunday in Outer Blogness, Theology
Johnny Townsend’s Mormons in life and imagination!
Have you ever wondered what spirit prison would be like? Mormons believe that when people die, their spirits go to either “spirit paradise” or “spirit prison” to await Judgment Day. They also believe that missionaries from spirit prison can teach the gospel to spirits in spirit prison (who can be baptized for dead — perhaps allowing them access to the nicer accommodations in spirit paradise). But this doctrine opens up more questions than answers. For example “Why wouldn’t someone accept the Read more [...]
Posted in Book Review, Literature, Theology
What happens when journalists don theology hats?
You get arguments like Lane Williams’s in the MormonTimes this morning. Williams begins by lamenting the fact that atheists occasionally receive media attention: Reporters have provided a great deal of attention to these atheists, stoking the controversy over the existence of God. Even if reporters had no purpose to question religious faith, doubts have become more mainstream, or so it seems to me. Of course, he then has to claim that the media coverage is actually biased in favor of atheism and Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism, mormontimes.com, Theology
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Theology and Doctrine Edition!
What do Mormons believe? Seems like nobody really knows. I could swear they were once the church of modern-prophets-filling-in-the-Bible-gaps-with-concrete-answers. Then “correlation” came along and stamped out all of those (controversial!) specifics, and replaced them with a short list of vague warm-fuzzies like “faith” and “tithing”. But that hasn’t stopped the folks of Outer Blogness and beyond from tackling a whole bunch of theological and doctrinal issues this past week! Do certain utterances Read more [...]
Posted in Sunday in Outer Blogness, Theology
“These beautifully flawed vessels”: The Conclusion of ExMormon!
I love to joke around. I’ve got the perfect joke for just this occasion. It’s an oldie, so stop Me if you’ve heard it: Way back when Jesus and I were creating the world, I turned to Him and said “Hey Jesus, let’s create a really gorgeous mountainous region, with lakes and rivers full of fish, beautiful canyons, waterfalls, valleys, and peaks…” Then Jesus said “But Dad, that’ll never fly! Everyone will want to live there, and it will get so crowded, it will suck!” Then I said “I’m one Read more [...]
Posted in Elohim, Humor, Literature
Dallin Oaks tries to remain relevant
For some reason someone thought it would be a good idea to invite Dallin Oaks to Harvard to talk to students. First mistake. Dallin Oaks went. Second mistake. Dallin Oaks said something. Third mistake. Quick summary of what Oaks said: People in the US, generally, are ignorant about religion. He says that’s bad. Oaks then blames higher education for this, claiming that higher education has lost its focus now that it actually spends its time teaching students things like science, medicine, Read more [...]
Posted in Apologetics, Law, Science, Theology, Truth
Oldies but Goodies: Testimony of a Dissident
A while back another blogger asked me to submit an essay about my Mormon experience. Probably, for good reasons he changed his mind and never published it. Since it is already written and might shed some light on my argument at Times and Seasons, I might as well publish it myself. It might help some people to understand where I am coming from. Testimony of a DissidentWhen I grew up in the seventies and eighties, Church was a liberating experience. My mother converted when I was six. My Read more [...]
Posted in Abuse, Appearances, Bloggernacle, Book of Mormon, Boyd Packer, BYU, Callings, Christianity, Depression, Divorce, Epistemology, Ethics, Europe, excommunication, Family, Freedom, Germany, LDS History, Moving On, Nostalgia, Obedience, Philosophy, Power, Prophets, Science, Sunstone, Theology
The Boiled Seed and Honesty
A while back, I heard a rather innocuous story about honesty at stake conference (ok, so it’s not as prestigious as general conference…). I didn’t care much about the choice of story he used, since it seemed trite (it was some Chinese feel-good fable), but as I read a passage in the scriptures today (and realized I had been misinterpreting it for a while now), I realized a whole new realm of meaning. One that may interest you. The story, to summarize (the story I heard is slightly different Read more [...]
Posted in Book of Mormon, DAMU, ex-Mormon, Obedience, Theology, Truth, Uncategorized
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