Reviews

The History Channel just produced one of the most successful series dealing with the Bible in a few decades.  I heard so much good about it that I decided to purchase the entire series on iTunes, having never seen the series at all.  I’ve had occasion to watch the first 2 episodes and wanted to [...]

I just watched a documentary called Jefferson’s Secret Bible.  (You can download it for free on iTunes or watch it at the Smithsonian website.)  The documentary discusses the restoration and some of the theology behind Thomas Jefferson’s rewriting on the Bible.  In his day, Jefferson was called an atheist by his detractors; he wasn’t really [...]

I wanted to start a new series on the book Mormon Doctrine, by Bruce R. McConkie.  Some have referred to this book (no longer being published) as “Bruce’s Doctrine.”  In Greg Prince’s biography of David O. McKay,  Prince cited a study by some general authorities that the book had over 1000 errors.  The first edition of [...]

Voting for the 2012 Tarefic/Wheaties Awards has begun. You may click the selections to view the links as many times as you wish.

Quite some time ago I read Kevin Barney’s excellent article he wrote for Dialogue:  “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven Without Getting Excommunicated.”  One of his references was a book by archaeologist, William Dever, called “Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel” which I just finished reading.  The gist of the [...]

While the Sundance Film Festival gets all the press, Utah County is also home to the LDS Film Festival.  I reviewed the schedule, and thought I would point out a few films that sound interesting at the Scera Theater in Orem, Utah. Wednesday – Opening night 7 pm – The Playbook It’s the story of [...]

We wanted to give you an update on the Wheaties and Tarefic Awards!  This way, you can tell us what we forgot and we can wrangle over the issues before the voting starts next week.  Feel free to continue nominations for one more week!  Here are the nominations so far, and you can check out [...]

While I think the virtual reality of public political discourse is probably beyond salvaging, we needn’t bring the bad behaviors we see there home to our families, friendships, or workplace, creating an us vs. them dynamic there. Crucial Conversations may provide a positive way to engage in healthy dialogue that creates a shared pool of meaning rather than alienating, baiting, and categorizing – the political tools of turning friends into enemies. (There is a poll embedded in the post)

Ah, the BYU Testing Center.  Like Milgram’s famed experiment, the Testing Center is a perfect microcosm illustrating just how quickly people can convince themselves that the pain they inflict on their fellow students is well deserved. This is what happens when unrighteous dominion is given free rein and an orange vest. As Jim on The [...]

Today’s Guest post is by Childe Jake. His first post can be found here, and his personal blog is at:http://thejakefoyer.blogspot.com/ Certain places have a distinct hold on me. When I visit them, I feel a force begin to work in me. It isn’t some rapturous pull beyond explanation, but it is visceral and profound. After [...]

There has been a book of personal testimony making waves in Evangelical Christian circles for the past few months. Indeed, it isn’t just limited to Protestant Evangelicals; the person who recommended it to our family is a devout Catholic liberal. The book, entitled Heaven is for Real, is the real life story of Todd Burpo, [...]

“Bring a miracle and request a table. Those you heal must accept you into their homes….The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal,  miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality,  was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations,…but at civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations…. [...]

There are some nutritious and delicious meals that you would never eat if you knew what was in them before you sat down at the table. I would never have had scrambled eggs, for example, if they’d first been described to me as ground-up unfertilized bird embryos. I had heard bad things about the Jesus [...]

If you know your way around the Bloggernacle, you’ve probably encountered J. Stapley’s comments about the research he and Kristine Wright were conducting on the subject of early Mormon women’s healing blessings. This culminated in two articles, The Forms and the Power: The Development of Mormon Ritual Healing to 1847 (reviewed earlier today by MH, [...]