Movie/Book Reviews
Father Forgive them…Not in Original Bible?
My wife gathered the family together to go over the 1st lesson of the new Home Study program earlier this week. (Note my previous post expressing mixed feelings about the 2 hours block cutting out half the lessons.) Anyway, for Christmas this year I got a copy of Thomas Wayment’s New Testament Study Bible for […]
Losing a Lost Tribe
The 2nd post ever on this blog was Why are the 12 Tribes of Israel important? I’ve seen some interesting documentaries, one from a Jewish-atheist journalist, Simcha Jacobovich asking Have the Lost 10 Tribes been found? (He thinks the answer is yes.) On the other hand, I just finished Simon Southerton’s book, Losing a Lost Tribe, and he […]
Rich Brown: Speak to the Bones
Richard Brown was kind enough to send me a copy of his book Speak to the Bones. Rich is a member of the Community of Christ (aka RLDS Church) and worked there as a publisher for several years. He has published this book himself, and the book discusses some of the less well-known stories from […]
Drunk Driving in Utah
The National Highway Transportation Board (NTSB) is encouraging all states in the U.S. to change the threshold of drunk driving from .08 to .05. Back in 1983, Utah was the first state to drop the limit from .10 to .08, which became a nationwide federal mandate in 2000. The NTSB wants Utah to be first […]
100 Most Important Events in Church History
I was pleased to receive a review copy of What You Didn’t Know About the 100 Most Important Events in Church History by Casey Paul Griffiths, Susan Easton Black, and Mary Jane Woodger. It’s the perfect coffee table book, describing 100 events in LDS church history in about 3 page chunks. It’s easy to read, […]
Gays & the 2nd Article of Faith
There was an interview released last week where Paul Reeve admitted being the source behind the Race & Priesthood essay at LDS.org. While I think that was a nice scoop, there was another part of that interview that I think is very important and may have gotten lost in the headline. I have been very vocal […]
Awesome Interviews for #BlackHistoryMonth
As many of you know, one of my favorite topics has been the priesthood and temple ban on black church members. There’s a new podcast called Gospel Tangents I want to HIGHLY recommend. Here are some of my favorite quotes so far in interviews with Dr. Paul Reeve, a history professor at the University of […]
The LDS Church in Ghana
Many of you are familiar with the story documented by Greg Prince in his biography of David O. McKay where blacks in Nigeria discovered the Book of Mormon and asked for missionaries in the 1960s. Nigeria wasn’t the only place; Dr. Emmanuel Abu Kissi has documented a similar history in Ghana in his book Walking […]
When “Forever Families” Weren’t
I’ve heard about the Law of Adoption as an LDS theological point of the past, but never really understood it very well. I enjoyed reading Brian Hales discussion of the concept in his book, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Volume 3. (This is a follow up post on the book; I previously discussed Hales position that there is no […]
Joseph Freeman: In the Lord’s Due Time
A friend asked that a read a book about the first black man ordained to the LDS Priesthood after the 1978 revelation: Joseph Freeman. (I’ve documented about 6 black men who were ordained in the 1830s and 1840s, as well as a few others who avoided the restriction despite the ban.) The book was […]
Mormon Heretic 