By Tumblr Consent

On May 26, 1926, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, IL. The son of a dentist and a music teacher, he grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in East St. Louis. By the time he was in high school, Miles was gigging locally with other jazz musicians. At some point, he heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, early progenitors of bebop, and knew that was what he had to do. To do bebop,…

Belle Spafford had been president of the recently renamed Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for just 18 months when the reports began to come in. Despite clear instructions in the Welfare Handbook, bishops were not calling on Relief Society presidents to do in home needs assessments for struggling families. 1946 records showed that in forty-two stakes, there were…

Fifty-six years before Joseph Smith* gathered a small band of followers in Fayette, New York to establish his own Church of Christ, Ann Lee and eight other “Shakers” — the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing — arrived in New York City from England. Within two years, the first Shaker community in the colonies was established in Albany County, thus making true Mother Ann’s…

We’ve been discussing the Church’s lesson plan for America’s 250th in the backchannel at BCC. We believe the material is such that it would take a skilled teacher to navigate potential problems we anticipate teachers may experience while presenting the lesson. To that end, we’re sharing ideas to help you think about the lesson in ways you may not have yet.  Before I begin writing a lesson plan,…

Both Michael and Sam have shared some thoughts about how to approach the material provided by the Church as a guide to the upcoming “special 5th Sunday lesson” planned for May 31st. Those materials insist that the aim of the Church in instituting this special event isn’t to provide “a history lesson or a political discussion,” but rather to invite members to rejoice in the blessings of religious…

We’re happy to have this guest post from Ben Crosby and Isaac Richards, the editors of a new collection of LDS Sermons. The book is magnificently wide-ranging (as you can see from the preview here, including the voices of church leaders like Eliza R. Snow, Emmeline Wells, and James E. Talmage; politicians like Jeff Flake and Mitt Romney, as well as Romney’s mother Lenore; scholars like Kate…

On Sunday, May 31, the Church has asked congregations across the United States to use the second hour to “discuss the importance of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how these documents support religious freedom and our God-given agency.” MDH has already offered some thoughts on the video that the Church has provided; a handful of the rest of us also want to chime in and…

The Church recently released a video/discussion guide that is to be used in Wards and Branches across the United States on May 31st. It is connected to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I watched the video. Here are some quick reactions: 1. President Christofferson and Elder Cook frame their entire conversation within the context of “moral agency.” For me, this framing is…

A Letter to be Read During Sacrament Meeting to Saints living in the Utah Area1 of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Fellow labourers,  It is with deepest sorrow that we must announce that we will build a new temple outside of Utah. Though it pained us deeply not to place yet a third temple in Provo, an angel appeared with a drawn sword, demanding that a temple finally be built…

Maybe you’ve seen it—a couple days ago, a pseudonymous account over on former-Twitter posted about the LDS Church’s humanitarian1 efforts throughout the world. So impressive is the Church’s work in this regard that, according to this account, the Church’s humanitarian efforts “led all faith-based donors and provided more in total expenditures than the EU and the United States.” Per the…

Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash In his October 1932 General Conference address, Apostle Richard R. Lyman prefaced his main remarks by reminding the assembled Saints that he was a staunch Prohibitionist and favored the 18th Amendment (which would be repealed a year later, with Utah providing the deciding vote). In the course of his talk, he emphasized the dangerous and narcotic qualities of…

As we Mormons all know, there is no rest after death. There is no cool glass of lemonade sitting at the end of the mortal marathon. Rather, upon the shedding of this tabernacle of clay, we will continue in the ongoing work in close collaboration with the living. There’s not even a weekend; we die on Tuesday and clock in Wednesday morning. We don’t even cash out our PTO. Put simply, in the words…

Question: How does one avoid using religion or religious language as merely a tool to justify policies privilege one group over another? *** In the United States, many used Christianity to justify the enslavement of others and as the basis for laws that enshrined racial segregation. The Ku Klux Klan used the language of Christianity to justify all sorts of abhorrent behavior and statements. And…

As part of a project I’m working on, I’ve been looking at the Church’s use of The Family: A Proclamation to the World in litigation. For the most part, that means where the Church’s attorneys have referenced the Proclamation in amicus briefs. The Proclamation has largely not shown up in litigation where the Church is party to the litigation and is also largely absent from judicial opinions. But…

I’m still harping on Joseph Smith’s remarks at the Nauvoo Lyceum, January 5, 1841. (See my previous post published on US Tax Day 2026). One of Joseph Smith’s occasional references in sermons was the NBNE. The acronym means, No Beginning, No End. More precisely, “Anything that has a beginning, has an end.” There is a fun mathematical proof of the idea that I will mention later. And it has some…

From, MS 155, Box 4, fd 4, Church History Library, a manuscript’s opening salvo. This excerpt was taken from a William Clayton text, from a Joseph Smith teaching apparently delivered at a community school (Lyceum), January 5, 1841. Clayton’s original is not extant. The content is clearly Joseph Smith’s teaching, though the archetype is unknown. I only bring it up because it’s so closely related…