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Archive for the ‘Joseph Smith’ Category

Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration (review)

03.19.2012 · Posted in Joseph Smith, Media

For kicks, I decided to pass the time during my lazy, uneventful day off by watching Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration, a church-sponsored film about the life of Joseph Smith.  I found it on YouTube, split into five pieces, each with a description of the video containing a claim that it was a ...

My place in Mormon history

03.29.2011 · Posted in Book Review, History, Joseph Smith, Polygamy

A lot of people — upon leaving the CoJCoL-dS — are amazed to discover how fascinating LDS church history really is. It’s not just that the whitewashed history in Sunday School is incomplete and inaccurate. It’s that you’re force-fed this watery-porridge version of church history that inoculates many people from even wanting to study more ...

Mormon Times says religion can be bad, but not theirs

12.25.2010 · Posted in Abuse, Health, Hypocrisy, Joseph Smith, mormontimes.com

I couldn’t help but stop by MormonTimes.com for this headline, “Elizabeth Smart case shows best and worst of religion’s influence“.  I thought since Brian David Mitchell is a splinter from Mormonism the writers at MormonTimes might suggest something really “out there,” like, maybe, Mormonism can, in fact, be bad for humanity if certain ideas and ...

hand shake based reality

11.05.2010 · Posted in Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith

Another fun tidbit from my conference conversations is worth noting here as well.  I don’t remember how this one came up, but some how we got on the topic of things Mormon prophets had taught.  The ever-mos in the group, in an effort to outdo one another, started dropping some of the more esoteric teachings ...

Studying the Original

07.06.2010 · Posted in Arts, Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Science, Testimony

I recently saw the documentary “Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock” about Teri Horton, a woman who may have purchased a Jackson Pollock painting at a thrift store for $5. It was a fascinating documentary, with a clear perspective. The crux of the film is that Teri cannot prove that the painting is in fact, ...

The Day I Sang about the “Latter-Day Glory” with the C of C and with the Polygamists

Wherever 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, ...

So much for dualism, try googlism…

04.15.2009 · Posted in Joseph Smith, Mormon Doctrine, Science

In reading through my morning dose of tech news, I caught this story about the medical and health ramifications of humans having over 1 trillion bacteria inside us (more bacteria than there are human cells). The health ramifications are fascinating, but because I relate everything back to religion I immediately had to ask, “What are ...

Your Sunday School Lesson: The First Vision

According to the philosopher Mircea Eliade, of whose work I learned at BYU, every community, tribe, or nation requires an origin myth. The account of a community’s or practice’s origin has far reaching consequences because it implies how they relate to the cosmos, which is necessary for human beings to imbue their world with shared ...

Thoughts of Nancy

09.03.2008 · Posted in Genealogy, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Polygamy, Women

It’s kind of a strange family history claim to fame: My great-great-great-great aunt, Nancy Winchester, was one of Joseph Smith’s youngest teen brides. She was fourteen or fifteen years old in 1842(3?) when she married the prophet; he was in his late thirties and was killed a year or so later. I’ve wanted to write ...