Is Evil Necessary?: Good, Evil, Sin, And The Nature Of Reality with additional paper on Eternal Spirits And The Necessity Of Contingency The prophet Lehi asserted that “it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” The opposition between good and evil is often regarded as the fundamental opposition. But if evil …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2000
Calculated Risk: The quest for Freedom and Diversity in Utah Higher Education
Calculated Risk: The quest for Freedom and Diversity in Utah Higher Education The freedom society provides us to teach and study unpopular ideas is a calculated risk. Society taxes and contributes to make possible our expensive higher educational system because it accepts that academic freedom, despite the discomfort, even anger, it often creates, serves the …
A Former Ambassador as Pastor: J. Reuben Clark’s Personal Ministry Among the Mormons
A Former Ambassador as Pastor: J. Reuben Clark’s Personal Ministry Among the Mormons J. Reuben Clark Jr. was U.S. ambassador to Mexico when he became a counselor to the LDS president. Having never presided at the Church’s local levels, he gained pastoral experience while in the First Presidency. Although he emphasized high-level administration and public …
Laboring in the Field: Looking for God in My Profession
Laboring in the Field: Looking for God in My Profession When LDS historians are told to point out God’s hand when they write history, many respond that, writing as professional historians, the tools of the discipline do not enable those kinds of conclusions. Privately, however, when speaking as Saints, many historians wax confessional about their …
The Walls Left Standing: Notes from My East German Journal
The Walls Left Standing: Notes from My East German Journal The Chandlers are enjoying a Fulbright year in the northeastern-most corner of Germany. This presentation shares their experiences with a culture rebuilding itself after 40 years of communism as well as the happy encounter with the LDS church in Eastern Europe. Rebecca Chandler
Mormon America: How Is The Reporting In The New Nationally Published Tome On Mormonism?
Mormon America: How Is The Reporting In The New Nationally Published Tome On Mormonism? Last fall, nationally respected HarperSanFrancisco published Mormon America: The Power and the Promise by veteran Time religion writer Richard Ostling and journalist/editor Joan Ostling. After sketching Mormon history, with the balance and judgment of long-time Mormon watchers, the authors chronicle the …
Spirituality and the Arts: Music, Books, and Movies That Have Enlarged My Soul and Religious World View
Spirituality and the Arts: Music, Books, and Movies That Have Enlarged My Soul and Religious World View The arts have been a source of inspiration and enlightenment from the beginnings of humankind’s spiritual awakenings. As people find meaning in the messages of poetry and biography, cult films and classics, and the varied genres of music, …
Wendy and the Lost Girls
Wendy and the Lost Girls This essay is an examination, with commentary, on the text of a suit filed by the “Citizens of Nebo School District for Moral and Legal Values” against a high school psychology teacher and volleyball coach, Wendy Weaver, who “came out” publicly as a lesbian in 1997. Matthew Hilton, a local …
Sub-ordination: Mormon Women’s Historical Relationship with Spiritual Gifts and Priesthood Authority
Sub-ordination: Mormon Women’s Historical Relationship with Spiritual Gifts and Priesthood Authority In spite of the work that has been done to chronicle Mormon women’s use of spiritual gifts in early church history, some questions regarding the rise and demise of these gifts remain unanswered. I argue that spiritual gifts were initially available to lay members …
Joseph Smith as Public Speaker
Joseph Smith as Public Speaker This essay presents a historical context and critique of Joseph Smith as public speaker and rhetorician. Smith’s “King Follett Discourse” is used as a case in point. It was discovered that Joseph Smith did not fit the generally accepted mold for effective orators of his day but was still able …