There’s something special about Christmastime, but I’ve had a harder time feeling that Christmas spirit this year than in the past. Perhaps because it’s the first Christmas (aside from my mission) when I won’t be with my parents and siblings. Perhaps because there’s still no snow in Provo. Or perhaps because for the first time […]
Read more "What Christmas Means to Me"Thanksgiving is this week, which is a time of gratitude and joy and family and connection and also, perhaps, a time of stress and anxiety. Perhaps your family is, like mine, diverse in its political and religious beliefs and conversations may often arise when you all get together that seem to spark division and frustration. […]
Read more "Making Peace: Family, Conversations, and Love"God is often described as being omnipotent, omniscient, & omnipresent (sometimes also omnibenevolent). I’ve noted elsewhere my agnosticism about some of those labels for God, but I’ve somewhat come around on God’s omnipotence. That is I’ve thought of a way of imagining and understanding what it means to be omnipotent that fits into how I […]
Read more "Reimagining Omnipotence"I wonder how prophecy shapes our world and how believing in prophecy can contribute to its fulfillment. Is something more likely to happen because I believe it was foretold to? Does believing in something influence my choices in a way that consciously or subconsciously contributes to the actualization of that thing? How often do we […]
Read more "Interpreting Prophecy"I’ve been thinking about why I still go to church when many of my thoughts and hopes about and for Mormonism seem unlikely to materialize or at odds with aspects of the institution. I’ve especially wondered what that will mean for Cec and my kid(s). So, today, I thought I’d present those thoughts as a […]
Read more "Why I Stay: An Open Letter to My Unborn Child"A significant factor in Mormon theology and cosmology is the War in Heaven, which we only have a smattering of verses about. I selected the first three verses from the Fourth chapter of Moses because they seemed most useful for our purposes today in discussing Satan’s Proposal in this War that resulted in a third […]
Read more "Satan’s Plan: Two Interpretations"Enshrined in Mormon scripture is an idea that seems to not be fully believed in practice. In D&C 121:39 we read: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise […]
Read more "On Unrighteous Dominion"There’s recently been a conversation about excommunication in light of Sam Young being called to a disciplinary council. I’m not aware enough of the intricacies of the situation to really comment on it specifically, but I am interested in talking about excommunication more generally. A conversation about excommunication, I think, must be broken into at […]
Read more "Dilemma of Excommunication"I finally finished Greg Prince and Wm. Robert Wright’s biography David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (I bought it over two years ago and it’s been sitting on my ‘to read’ shelf ever since constantly bumped back by newer releases). I would place the book in the essential reading category. It’s lengthy, […]
Read more "Lessons from Modern Mormonism"On Thursday, 23 August 2018, members of The Church in Utah received an email “urg[ing]” them to vote no on Proposition 2, a Medical Marijuana Initiative (you can read information about the proposition and the full text of it here). There has been an ensuing conversation on twitter and throughout the internet that has been…um…frustrating. […]
Read more "On Political Neutrality"
Conor Hilton 