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Flunking Sainthood

Happy New Year! And, perhaps more importantly, Happy Epiphany. In the Christian tradition, Epiphany is a time of “showing” (epiphany means “appearance”); it celebrates the arrival of the Magi, who traveled from afar to bring Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In this last of the six weekly devotions we’re taking from God Is…

Mormons spend a great deal of time and energy thinking about the ins and outs of tithing: Gross or net? Cash or appreciated stock? Weekly, monthly, or annually? For example, check out Kevin Barney’s excellent blog post at By Common Consent and the many comments it generated, as people discussed whether to tithe on inheritances,…

Friends, as many of you know, I am going to be teaching part-time during the spring semester at Miami University of Ohio. I’m excited about this opportunity, but since this is in addition to my regular job as an acquisitions editor it means I’ll have less time over the next few months to devote to…

For Christmas this year, my daughter received a two-episode DVD of Little House on the Prairie Christmas shows. We watched one yesterday, and I was all a-blubber. Thanks to guest blogger Tania Lyon for reminding me of why I loved this series as a kid, even though, as she points out, the behind-the-scenes realities of…

Merry Christmas! Our devotions from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas have passed through the waiting and mystery of Advent to the joy of Christmas. Much of that joy, at least for me, comes in being with family and friends at Christmas. But for Bonhoeffer in the last few…

Fun Facts About Esther: • Esther is the only book in the whole Bible not to speak of God. • Esther is the only book in the Old Testament that’s not also in the Dead Sea Scrolls, because lots of folks back in the day recognized that the story was meant to be fiction. •…

Every year I have a little white box for that year’s Christmas cards. When we decorate the house for the holidays, I label a new box for that year, and as the cards arrive throughout December I read them and lovingly store them away in that year’s box. Except that this year, the cards just…

When I was a graduate student in American religious history, I had the privilege of taking a couple of classes with Leigh Schmidt at Princeton University. Now at Harvard Divinity School, Leigh has continued his stellar career with several more interesting books, including one published this month about a 19th-century doyenne I’d never even heard…

God becomes human. How weird is that? We are so accustomed to the sweet baby in the manger, the innocent and non-threatening infant. But according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, there’s more going on here. Frederick Buechner once wrote that until we have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by…

By Grant Hardy Here’s your chance to be a sociologist. The next time you meet an LDS male over the age of 18, ask him this: “Do you think Mormon women should hold the priesthood and share equally in the administrative leadership of wards and stakes”? According to American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites…
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