“M&Ms”: Meditating Mormons
M&M stands for “Meditating Mormons.” A fellow conference attendee dubbed me with the witty honor at an educational retreat at Smith College in northern Massachusetts. We were participating in a session to analyze all the different facets of our identity and...
Response to “Joseph Smith’s Teachings about Priesthood, Temple, and Women”
Any conversation that opens up space for honest discussion of women within Mormonism is good, and the church’s newest essay “Joseph Smith’s Teachings about Priesthood, Temple, and Women” brings the topic of women and priesthood authority into that space. The gospel...
80: Top Ten Books on Mormon History – The Angel and The Beehive
Mormon History has many tools that can be used to gain insight to the past. On particularly useful tool in understanding people and institutions is the discipline of sociology. Armand Mauss used poll information, survey data, and his own notes taken while in...
Review: Highway to Dhamphus
My husband and I were recently able to see Highway to Dhampus, written and directed by Rick McFarland. The basic storyline is that a socialite, Elizabeth, is trying to repair her image by visiting an orphanage in...
79: Sunstone Kirtland Recap, Yo!
Sunstone Kirtland 2015 Overview: Last weekend a team from the Rational Faiths blog made the pilgrimage to present at the 2015 Sunstone Kirtland Symposium. Benjamin Knoll, Thomas Hatton, and Brian Dillman came up from the south while Brian Kissell met us there coming...
Should Prophets Prophesy?
"Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion. Knowledge of the future...
A Review of: Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism
Religious and theological history has gaps when it comes to women. Edited by Gordon Shepherd, Lavina Fielding Anderson and Gary Shepherd, Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism helps to close that gap. Voices for Equality is a compilation of...
78: The Intertestamental Period
The space between the end of the Hebrew Bible (traditional dating to about 400 BCE) and the beginning of the story of Jesus in the New Testament (4 BCE) is sometimes referred to as "400 silent years." Was God really silent during that time? Was there no religious...
I’ll Never Tell You to Choose to Believe
In college I lived down the hall from a very serious Christian. He worked hard to encourage others to be more active and outspoken about their Christianity. He was antagonistic to my Mormonism, considering it as non-Christian and me as having been led astray. We still...
Evolving Faith: Wanderings of an Mormon Biologist – A Review
Steve Peck is one eclectic dude. The same guy that uses complex computer models to study evolutionary biology and researches tsetse flies for a living also writes fictional stories featuring characters like the Oxford failed conjoined twins (with a third conscious...
Columbus: An Essential Part of My Faith No Matter How Many People He Murdered
FYI: As a Mormon I am *required* to venerate Columbus. Maybe you didn’t know that, and not that that would have stopped you from denigrating a man who is essential to my faith. Well, Columbus veneration is a deeply held and authoritative tenet of my faith—I mean, it’s...
Looking At The Men In The Mirror
Junot Diaz is one of my favorite writers- he just has a way of guiding you through unfamiliar terrain as though you are an insider, turning Dominican geek boys into a normal, comfortable thing, like the sun rising, or waking up. And that’s the thing- maybe it is like...
77: Ask a Mormon Sex Therapist Part 11
In this episode of “Ask a Mormon Sex Therapist” Brian and Laurel talk with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife about the effect of pornography and previous sexual experiences on the other partner's desire for sex in a relationship, and in the second question we discuss the...
My Experience Reading the Holy Qur’an
I recently had the opportunity to visit the East London Mosque with a group of study abroad students. We were given a tour of the mosque and learned some of the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith tradition. At one point our tour guide made the following comment:...
Ponderize THIS!!!
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written: 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you...
76: General Conference Compressed – Rational Faiths Reviews Fall 2015 Conference
You know what sounds like a great plan for a good time? Sitting in front of the TV/computer for nearly 12 hours watching men in suits and women in colorful dress talk about Mormon stuff. Okay it doesn't really sound exciting but it is a huge Mormon ritual we do every...
LGBTQ Mormon Crisis
Two Printable handout for bishops and stake presidents that talks empirically about LGBTQ suicides:
The LGBTQ Mormon Crisis: Responding to the Empirical Research on Suicide
Youth Suicide Rates and Mormon Religious Context: An Additional Empirical Analysis
The Barker Brothers’ Projects
These videos were created for Latter-day Saint parents and allies to voice their love for their LGBT brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. They want to give a message of comfort and support to other parents who are navigating the difficult conflicts that can arise in families around this issue.
“Cogito!” (“I think!”) follows the intellectual adventures of a recovering academic outside the walls of academia.
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