It seems that there is always more to discover and discuss about Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage into the church. Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, edited by Cheryl L. Bruno is going to be a landmark in those discussions moving forward.  Secret Covenants is a collection of essays about the practice of Latter Day Saint plural marriage during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. My understanding is that the book began with the idea that it would be a collection of articles about plural marriage that already existed (one of my own essays was even considered at one p ..read more

A part of the graph, the link below has the whole thing.  Of the big AI players, Anthropic’s Claude is quite good at making diagrams, so I used it to generate an infographic I’ve always wanted to see, something that conveys in one visual how far away from Christ a book in the NT was written, the size of the work, and whether it’s considered “authentic” by scholars, either in the sense that it was written by whoever it claims to be written by (the undisputed Pauline epistles), or whether it has authentic first-hand reports from the time of Christ not found elsewhere (The Synoptic Gospels a ..read more

Latter-day Saint missionaries helped bring basketball to Scotland, who’d have thought? (Actually, there’s probably a paper waiting to be written on all the ways that missionaries helped disseminate basketball, including famously helping coach the German basketball team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics). Also, the latest (maybe last? He’s getting old) publication by Richard Bushman. And James Faulconer, despite being retired, is still producing scholarship. Finally, Mormon diet books! Walker, Ross. “Basketball Returns Home: The Diffusion and Translocation of Basketball to Scotland.” The Internationa ..read more

When I was a priest, the adult advisor was excited to teach us a lesson about the premortal existence. He bounded up, grinning from ear to ear as usual, and said “I’ve been doing lots of reading, and I have some great stuff to share,” and he did. For the most part, it was an excellent lesson. Then, suddenly, he pulled out a quote from some obscure seventy back in the 1950s that said that we were blessed according to how we had lived in the premortal existence, and we must have been pretty awesome to have been born into the One True Church, as opposed to the Blacks who were denied the priesthoo ..read more

Monument in Warsaw to Janusz Korczak’s “Last Walk” as he accompanied his orphans to the Treblinka trains. Janusz Korczak is a remarkable figure that is surprisingly almost unknown in the United States despite being quite famous in Europe. A children’s author and pedagogue, his books, particularly King Matt the First about a child who becomes a king and rules like a child was as well known among Poles and Germans as Peter Pan was among British children. (while a lot of classic works of children’s literature don’t hold up anymore, this charming work still does, and is highly recommended). Raised ..read more

In modern Latter-day Saint terminology, the Endowment is a specific ordinance performed in temples around the world. In the first temple to be constructed by church members (the House of the Lord in Kirtland), however, the term has a somewhat different meaning. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Scott Woodward discussed what the Kirtland endowment was thought to be. What follows here is a copost to the full interview. At the outset, Scott Woodward reminded people that the endowment in Kirtland was not an ordinance: The Kirtland Endowment was unique and di ..read more

1. …and all I got was a finisher’s medal Saying that God told me to run a marathon is a provocative formulation, but not inaccurate. What I mean is that the same source of good ideas that has at various times told me You should keep seeing that girl and you shouldn’t give up on your dissertation and you should turn down that job offer and now that you’ve accepted the job anyway and moved to another state, you should leave as soon as possible told me one day: You should run a marathon. That’s not quite as surprising as it may sound. I had made a successful return to running as an adult (a few y ..read more

  A few days ago Latter-day Saint apologist Jacob Hansen of A Thoughtful Faith had a debate with noted Catholic apologist of Pints with Aquinas fame Trent Horn that has been garnering some attention.  At the outset, I love these sorts of things. A respectful but straightforward debate about contrasting religious views can help both sides articulate their beliefs and responses better. When a faith does not face explicit doubts and pressures their scalpels become dull. Another example of this in our tradition is Stephen Robinson’s excellent back and forth How Wide the Divide? With Crai ..read more

Bruce R. McConkie: Apostle and Polemicist, 1915–1985 by Devery S. Anderson is the latest entry in Signature Books’ Brief Mormon Lives project. As has been the case with other books in the series, this one is a short biography of an individual of note in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is very well done.  The book covers the breadth of McConkie’s life, highlighting both events that are well known in Latter-day Saint history and some other, more personal, moments that are indicative of who he was. I appreciated more illumination on his early life and heritage (including ..read more

In the AI world there is a debate swirling about how much AI providers should censor their image generation. Of course there are plenty of things to mock in past attempts to censor or otherwise put a thumb on the scale of AI to be more socially appropriate. Exhibit A of course were the racially diverse, Black SS stormtroopers created by Google Gemini, but anybody who’s spent a decent amount of time using AI has run into these guardrails, and sometimes they can be annoying. I had a tragicomical experience myself in the early days of Midjourney when they didn’t have the fingers right, and when I ..read more