On earth as it is in heaven: more on social construction
I wanted to add a postscript to yesterday’s post. I suggested yesterday that the plan of salvation as it is currently taught, that is as a comprehensive three-act progress of the soul, is a good...
View Article“Austenland” is much better than the critics are saying
It is a truth universally acknowledged — or nearly so — that “Austenland,” the film-child of writer Shannon Hale, director Jerusha Hess, and producer Stephenie Meyer, is a dud. Male reviewers in...
View ArticleStay-at-home mothers are not moochers
It’s gender week on Salt & Seed! As a gimmick to motivate myself and to build readership, I’m going to put up a short post on a gender-related topic every day this week. Check back each day to see...
View ArticleModesty and the Imaginary Me
I’ve written on this topic before, taking different approaches but generally coming down in favor of “modesty” — by which I mean the collection of social norms and teachings that regulate LDS dress and...
View ArticleAll such good works to walk in: motherhood and female achievement
Yet another article on the crowded intersection of motherhood and career is making the rounds this month. Elizabeth Corey, a professor at Baylor University, has written a reflective and erudite piece...
View ArticleWhat we can’t know about social conservatism
Elder Oaks’s General Conference address last week has predictably prompted a lot of discussion, much of it circling gay marriage. I want to pay attention to a different passage from the address, one...
View ArticleSinging in ten-thousand part harmony
This is one of those posts where the reader has to zag through a preliminary feint and counter-feint before arriving at the beginning. Last week a writer named Joni Hilton wrote an article for Meridian...
View ArticleI, Rosencrantz
Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead famously re-narrates the action of Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters on the edge of the story. I sit down today to write...
View ArticleA short, cranky list of highly curated links from all over
Presented without comment, at first: Tinder While I Taper Women without men The elective spinster: making a life of one’s own The decline of marriage isn’t a problem It’s not the economic inequality,...
View ArticleFamily in the Future Tense: Accommodation and Critique in Mormonism’s Past...
Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on the Future of Faith in America: Mormonism. Read other perspectives here. In the present moment, I think it’s fair to say, Mormonism...
View ArticleWhither Mormonism? Look to Quorums and Councils
Mormonism’s Pope Francis moment didn’t happen this weekend. Its pre-Francis moment, that is, in which an ecclesiastical leader from the global south ascends to the highest ranks of an historically...
View ArticleMy Kids Hate Trump, and That Worries Me
To begin with, you have to know that I’m not a Donald Trump supporter. I’m not even a Trump sympathizer. I’m unimpressed with his character and his background, and I think he’s poorly suited for the...
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