In the early days of the American eugenics movement, trying to improve the prospects of future generations was addressed in terms of eliminating the negative (“undesirable” heritable traits) and accentuating the positive (encouraging superior families). Mormonism attracted the interest of turn-of-the-previous-century theorists, for reasons of both theory and practice, with intriguing results. Now theorists are …
Event: Southwest Symposium 2003
IS THERE A CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE?
Science and religion are often said to be irreconcilable. Are they? Can believers be intellectually responsible? Do they need to be? How strong, really, is the demand that religious faith submit to the authority of the empirical? Does that demand make science just another “god of power” for us to worship? Are there other ways …
THE JOURNAL OF CAROLINE BARNES CROSBY
Caroline Barnes Crosby’s journal ranks as one of the most descriptive and fascinating accounts of everyday Mormon life from Kirtland and Nauvoo to Salt Lake City in the 1830s and ‘40s. And it is by far the most detailed coverage of the Church in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1850s, including her interactions …
Finding Faith in Christ: The Ministry and the Miracles of Jesus Christ
As Easter weekend is upon us, please join us for a screening and discussion of excerpts from Janet Brigham Rands
READERS THEATRE PERFORMANCE: EASTER IN THE EYES OF THE WOMEN
The Easter story is most often viewed through the eyes of the apostles and various Roman leaders. This presentation relates this miracle through the words of the women who experienced it. Laura Hansen, Mary Ellen Robertson, Todd Compton, Janet Brigham Rands, Joan Petersen
THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN: Orthodoxy, Priesthood, Temple
Like intricately cut diamonds, Jesus’s parables offer multiple refractions on many intersecting issues. In the case of the parable of the Good Samaritan, I find many implications for issues such as race, finances, taxes, health insurance, temple, priesthood, orthodoxy, and love. Besides encouraging us to practice opportunistic and down- to-earth compassion, this parable subtly undercuts …
GOD AT THE KITCHEN TABLE: TEACHING YOUR RELIGIOUS AND MORAL BELIEFS TO YOUR CHILDREN
Even if we’re not fully comfortable with the doctrines and structures of organized religion, we have an obligation to teach our own children about religion and morality. And feeling that such things are culturally “unhip” is not a good reason for ignoring this essential task. How can we instill the values we cherish and even …
JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUNBEAM, To Shine a Light on A Needed Sunday School Class
Imagine asking your bishop to form a Sunday School class for inactive members. If he says the Church provides a Gospel Essentials class, tell him the people you have in mind are returned missionaries, and former members of Relief Society and priesthood quorum presidencies who would not be well-suited for an investigator’s forum: a re-investigator’s …
TWO ROADS TO THE TRUTH: APPROACHING HISTORY THROUGH RESEARCH AND IMAGINATION
Judith Freeman and Will Bagley have written a prizewinning novel and prize-winning history of the darkest event in Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In Freeman’s Redwater, three wives of John D. Lee describe life on the ragged edge of the Mormon frontier. Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets carries forward Juanita Brooks’s work through its …
THE COMPLETE CONCORDANCE OF THE BOOK OF MORMON BY GEORGE REYNOLDS–The Man, the Book and it’s Uses
I have recently become very impressed by a little-known but important work, the Complete Concordance of The Book of Mormon, by George Reynolds (1842– 1909), a former secretary to the First Presidency, who began work on the concordance while imprisoned for polygamy. This session focuses on the story of this book, it’s author, publishing history, …