Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Some Visitors Welcome

No, that's not what the new signs at the Main Street Plaza actually say. I'm sure you could come up with your own suggestions for what the signs might say. Here is the actual text of the new sign wording dislayed at the entrances to the Main Street Plaza, per the Salt Lake Tribune and an accompanying photo.

                                     • Private Property •
The Church reserves the right to refuse access to any person for any reason.

What Happened in Nauvoo, Part 1: Founding

A lot happened in Nauvoo that doesn't get covered in Sunday School or the one-volume treatments of LDS history. But Glen Leonard's Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise tells the story in detail from start to finish.

White-Collar Sin

From an AP story reporting the results of a recent poll.

A politician taking bribes is considered by far the greater sin (chosen by 37 percent of the respondents) when stacked against extramarital affairs (just 2 percent).

Apparently sexual sin doesn't carry much weight with most people anymore.

One of the Newer Churches

The Jedi Church, discussed in a recent post at Get Religion, which recounted the founder's difficulties at a British supermarket when he would not remove his Jedi hood. They have a website, but it doesn't appear there are any brick-and-mortar facilities where you could attend ... Jedi worship.

What Kind of Mormon Are You?

The most frequently encountered terms used in internal discourse to categorize Mormons are "active" and "less active" (the updated form of "inactive"). However, these terms aren't generally recognized or understood by non-LDS and so aren't very useful for journalists. So what terms do journalists use to convey to readers the level of participation of a Mormon subject? And are there other or better terms we might use inside the Church?

Young Mormon Scholars, Bloggers, and Readers

On Saturday night I attended a Miller-Eccles presentation by Kristine Haglund, the managing editor at Dialogue. In the first half of her presentation, she talked about the present state of Mormon Studies and what younger Mormon scholars are doing. Kristine herself may have been the youngest in attendance, a hopeful sign for Dialogue, which needs to find a way to turn potential younger readers into paying subscribers. She apparently became interested in Mormon Studies through blogging and was an early T&S permablogger.

He Is Not in the Desert

"So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; ... do not believe it" (NIV Matt. 24:26).

Hi Gang

Yes, I'm back here at DMI (the Typepad site) after a year blogging at Beliefnet. I've been fixing up the place in my spare time, so this site now sports:

• A new template and new banner image.
• A horizontal link bar just below the banner image. I always wanted one of those.

Posts from T&S and selected posts from Beliefnet have been imported for archiving purposes — without the comments and with links back to the original posts at those sites.

Populism and the Early Church

I finally got my hands on a copy of The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan O. Hatch's look at how the egalitarian democratic spirit that pervaded post-Revolutionary America influenced five early American religious movements: the Christians (such as the Disciples of Christ), the Methodists, the Baptists, black churches, and Mormonism.