The most controversial statement Pres. Oaks made in his Be One talk was the following.   I studied the reasons then being given and could not feel confirmation of the truth of any of them. As part of my prayerful study, I learned that, in general, the Lord rarely gives reasons for the commandments […]

  President Dallin H. Oaks spoke at the ‘Be One’ celebration of the 40th anniversary of ending the priesthood and temple ban for black LDS. In his pre-general-authority life, Pres. Oaks graduated from University of Chicago law school in 1957, clerked for the US Supreme Court for two years, and worked in corporate litigation and […]

  I finally got a copy of Adam Miller’s An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die. Advanced copies are available at Writ & Vision bookstore in Provo.   I’m really getting inspired by Miller’s way of mixing Mormon Christianity with what I’ve been learning from Buddhism. Following Christ by living with him in the present […]

A new podcast I’ve been listening to from time to time is the Naked Bible Podcast hosted by Bible Scholar Mike Heiser. I don’t quite yet understand Heiser’s views exactly, but I guess he is conservative relative to Bible scholars and liberal relative to Evangelicals, which he self identifies as.   http://www.nakedbiblepodcast.com/naked-bible-217-authorship-and-date-of-the-book-of-isaiah/   This episode […]

  Adam Miller was at BYU previewing his book coming out this summer An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die. They were selling advanced copies afterwards and they ran out right when I was next in line. Grrrr. Writ & Vision the book store on Center Street in Provo said they should have […]

  I criticized an LDS Living blog post on my facebook wall the other day, saying. LDS Living has had some surprisingly progressive articles recently, but this is another awful one. Bob Millet is best known for being one of the early leaders in the LDS grace movement of the 1990’s along with Bruce Hafen, […]

  Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my new favorite spiritual voices. In one of his Q & A youtube videos, he’s asked by a young person if he needs to keep forgiving his father who emotionally abuses him. Thay tells him that he may think that by cutting off his father, he can remove […]

    Recently in a BYU New Testament class, a somewhat progressive religion teacher was introducing the students to modern Bible historical criticism. The kind of research that leads scholars to believe that the gospels were written decades after Jesus was crucified, and that they were not written by who we assume, ie Mark didn’t […]

  President Russell M. Nelson gave as his first talk addressing the body of the Church, a talk titled Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives. Church members are talking about the changes made in conference as revelations. The changes to how priesthood quorums are managed and the change from home and visiting teaching […]