I’m blogging on the Book of Mormon this year with Gospel Doctrine study.  This one is for the Abinadi story, Lesson 18: God himself shall redeem his people.  Critics look at Abinadi and see a clumsy quoting of Isaiah combined with a ripped off 19th century sermon.  A boring old man more worried about his […]

  In preparing for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 19 None Could Deliver Them but the Lord, I noticed a story that I hadn’t really noticed before that moved me about Alma’s people escaping from the Lamanites. This lesson also covers the beautiful verses that Alma describes as the covenant of baptism, which might be my favorite […]

  I like most everything from Terryl Givens, but I really liked his latest blog post titled Mormons at the Forefront published at firstthings.com. He is responding to the idea that for the most part, LDS beliefs on Jesus Christ puts them within mainstream Christianity, if only they could get rid of some of Joseph’s […]

As a heterosexual, married, Republican-leaning white male living in Utah County, I’m not a natural to speak on a political subject like the potential for the LDS church to allow gay marriage. This is going to be kind of a brain storming, thinking out loud kind of blog article, where I’m sure I’ll be educated […]

  I’m haunted by the new video and song, Trash a solo venture for Neon Trees leader singer Tyler Glenn.   Tyler Glenn was raised LDS, served a mission, and had previously brought positive publicity to the LDS church.  In 2014, he came out as being gay, but still expressed belief in the church and […]

  King Benjamin’s address found in Mosiah 2-5 is one of the most treasured passages in LDS scripture.  I have enjoyed diving into this and studying it in depth in preparation for Gospel Doctrine lessons 15 “Eternally Indebted to Your Heavenly Father” and 16  “Ye Shall Be Called the Children of Christ”. One of my […]

  Michael Otterson, LDS Spokesman, presented a speech at UVU titled “Mormonism and the Art of Boundary Maintenance,” (full transcript) on Tuesday, April 12, 2016.  This is relevant to New Mormonism / Sacramental Paradigm Mormonism as it relates to how big the tent is for LDS, and whether views as expressed on this blog can […]

  This is an analysis of a general conference talk given by Elder Oaks titled Opposition in All Things, where he warned against taking opposition against the church.   I left last weekend’s LDS General Conference inspired and uplifted.  Overall, I felt it was very strong in the kind of ‘practical religion’ that I love. […]

  In the Book of Mormon Jacob 5, we find the Allegory of the Olive Tree.  I was moved by a different perspective of this allegory, as I studied for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 13.  Typically, we understand this as an historical allegory of the House of Israel.  But, I read it this time looking for […]

Here are some data, charts, and analysis for the new LDS membership statistics for 2015, announced April 2, 2016 in general conference.  Raw data can be found on the church’s site and this wikipedia site.  NOTE: a new update is ready.  Click for the 2017 Membership statistics, reported 4/1/2017.   Total members of 15,634,199, raw growth […]