A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
I had a young man email me with a couple of questions. Â After writing up my response to him, I thought my response might make a good post on MSP. Here’s the question: Is it possible, do you think, for a fundamentalist religion like Mormonism to evolve to become a “liberal” religion (if only it […]
Continue ReadingWhile the rest of us watch in horror. Or am I the only one frightened to discover that Mormons find this kind of thing amusing? As far as I can tell, this is another example of the Mormon surveillance culture that empowers anonymous snitches, got Brandon Davies kicked off a BYU team, and Brian Devine […]
Continue ReadingWe recently had some visitors to our university from Eboo Patel’s InterFaith Youth Core. They are trying to encourage interfaith dialogue, of course, since that is what their movement is about. One of the handouts they gave us was this guest post from The Washington Post’s “On Faith” site called:Why evangelicals should reach out to […]
Continue ReadingThe Salt Lake Tribune reports: Deseret Book wont carry Utah authors latest novel This latest book from James Dashner contains language some of our customers would find offensive, said Gail Halladay, managing director of marketing at Deseret Book … The Scorch Trials, the story of teenagers trekking across a dystopian landscape … includes words such […]
Continue ReadingFrederick Mark Gedicks Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Vol. 18, pp. 901-914, 2010 God of Our Fathers, Gods for Ourselves: Fundamentalism and Postmodern Belief: ” … there is also an ethical reason for wariness. One should pause at imposing absolute truth on those to […]
Continue ReadingI play soccer on occasion during the lunch hour at my university. One of the other players (probably the best player) is an Iranian-American, “H”, who is also Muslim (he’s in IT). He asked me what I teach and when I told him Sociology of Religion, he became very interested. He said his favorite topic […]
Continue ReadingWherever people talk about Mormonism, you always hear about the fundamentalist Mormons: the polygamists. On the LDS-interest Internet there’s tons of discussion of modern-day polygamy usually in a hand-wringing what should be done about them kind of way. Naturally, I was glad when I finally got the opportunity to meet some real-life fundamentalist Mormons, and […]
Continue ReadingMy book club recently read Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. Despite my interest in all things mormon, I did not recommend this book to my group. I had read it before, and found it frightening. The Lafferty murders were especially heinous (to my mind) and disturbing on many levels. Other book club […]
Continue ReadingSalon.com is running a pretty fascinating article on the Cleon Skousen/Glenn Beck connection. It’s a pretty fascinating look into Mormon-laced, right-wing, ultra-nationalistic, paranoid, pro-theocracy, conspiracy theory, which also goes by the name “The Glenn Beck Program” on Fox News.
Continue ReadingOne of the staunchest defenders of abortion rights was killed Sunday, May 31st, as he walked into his Lutheran Church. George Tiller, long villified by anti-abortionists for performing late term abortions (one of very few doctors who would do so in the US), was shot and killed. This was the second time someone shot him. […]
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