Some time ago I visited a web site for Mormon misfits (www.misfitmormon.com). As I read through the posts there, I wondered to myself, “What kind of eldritch creatures might these ‘Morms Out of the Norm’ be?”

In a recent series of interviews with John Dehlin at Mormon Stories, Richard Bushman made some comments about Sunstone and the Sunstone Symposium that strike at a number of challenges those of us in this community face. I don’t want this post to overshadow the significance of the content of these interviews, as the comments [...]

Just a quick note to celebrate a neat development in Mormon studies and to help spread the word for potential job seekers. UVSC is a terrific school that is steadily growing a religious studies program that includes courses on Mormon topics.

When I encountered D. Jeff Burton’s inoculation metaphor in the September 2006 issue of Sunstone (“Coping With A Deadly Pandemic,” pg. 60), I admit to getting a little hot under the collar.
Burton tells the story of a man who has been a faithful member his whole life, serving in high positions. Then one day [...]

In any religious community, two forces pushing in opposite directions, one liberal and one conservative, form a kind of fundamental tension and equilibrium as Man wrestles to define God’s law. This tension—not static, but shifting—no doubt dates back to the dawn of Religious Man, whether He originated in Jackson County, Missouri or Ethiopia, Africa. [...]

My mom once told me I was cursed with a “Hamlet Complex.” She said this in response to a long since forgotten decision I was struggling with, and she meant, I think, that I had a tendency to overanalyze things, sometimes to the point of inaction. While I’ve never contemplated anything as weighty as “to [...]

“Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but, I feel that I should be heard loud and clear…”
–XTC
More than any other time in recent history, Americans seem to be elbowing and clamoring to be heard loud and clear by God. Currently, a new documentary called Jesus Camp is freaking out Secularists, and, as it turns [...]

A few years ago I embarked on a year’s worth of rage over an incident that would seem trivial to most people,
My sister went to London for six weeks. When she came home she was full of plays and books and people and places that she had seen, and, of course, she wanted to [...]

In the last few months, I’ve become aware of a half-dozen young people who live at least part of their lives in fear of the power of Satan. Although it would be easy to blame the proliferation of horror novels and movies etc. extant in their world, these young people are not necessarily exposed to such things. [...]

In my last article “Bad Stories,” I commented on the relative value of dark as opposed to lighter themes or subjects in Mormon narrative art forms. Reader comments generated a tangential and tantalizingly brief discussion of the problem of didacticism: making a story’s central theme explicit rather than implicit. I’d like to reopen [...]