Another stoning has occurred in this week’s excommunication of Bill Reel, the creator of the Mormon Discussions podcast. The violence of his excommunication has me in mourning, not half so much because he’s lost something as because the Church I love has forfeited something—someone—of value. Brother Reel is a modern-day Mormon enigma, a human symbol of a Church in turmoil, and the action of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which will soon have the approval of the First Presidency) is evidence of its dysfunction. Continue reading “On the Excommunication of Bill Reel, the Heterodox Testimony, and the Lessons of Alma”
Category: Knowledge
To the BYU-I Student Body, on Feelings and the Quest for Truth
Across the forty years since my conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I’ve learned a lot of things; one of the most important of those things is that there are many ways to be Mormon. I’ve written, tongue-in-cheek, about the categories of Mormons, but I’m in a more somber mood today, having just consumed the recent address given by Henry J. Eyring, the BYU-I university president, to the student body. In it, he elevates feeling over intellect, claiming emotion provides testimony that the LDS Church is true. That’s one way to live an LDS life, but there is another—an opposite—way that can also lead to testimony. Continue reading “To the BYU-I Student Body, on Feelings and the Quest for Truth”
Life Outside The Book of Mormon Belt 