Speaker: Jinelle Monk

REFLECTIONS ON WAR: Competing Loyalties, Commands, and Impulses

War, perhaps more than any other circumstance, forces us as thoughtful persons to confront important philosophical, ethical, and religious questions. It demands that we recognize our moral outrage over unthinkable crimes and squarely face that part of ourselves that wants to lash out and punish evildoers. For others, the call of Christianity——that we love our …

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DIGITAL RITUAL: The Emergent Digital Identity of the Mormon Church

The biographer Fawn Brodie emphasized Joseph Smith’’s audacity in utilizing a communications technology–—the printing press–—to disseminate a new religious identity: “[He] dared to found a new religion in the age of printing.” After Smith’’s martyrdom in 1844, the Mormon Church continued his technological audacity, progressively adopting the telecommunications technologies of the late nineteenth and early …

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