Abide: Judges 2-4; 6-8; 13-16
There’s a difficulty in reading the scriptures. I’m not referring to words on the page. I’m also not referring to the habit of scripture reading, though that could certainly apply, too. No, I’m...
View ArticleAbide: Ruth; 1 Samuel 1-3
The Old Testament names more women, and has more books named for women, than any of the other texts in the Latter-day Saint canon. They fulfill their roles as disciples, family members, and in...
View ArticleAbide: 1 Samuel 8-10; 13; 15-18
In Mosiah 29, Mosiah says that “if it were possible that you could have bjust men to be your kings, who would establish the claws of God, and judge this people according to his commandments, yea, if...
View ArticleMaxwell Podcast Episode #144: A Spiritual Life in Literature, with Matthew...
Spiritual experiences are famously transformative. They sometimes inspire dramatic effects of conversion and healing, of vision and new life direction. But even in their more quotidian forms they...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Samuel 5-7; 11-12; 1 Kings 3; 8; 11
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View ArticleAbide: 1 Kings 17-19
Solomon’s reign was glorious, but what he gained in wealth, wives and infrastructure he lost in spiritual standing. He had not been faithful to the God of Israel. Instead, he adopted a cosmopolitanism...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Kings 2-7
Elijah and Elisha are well-known to Latter-day Saints. The prophecy that Elijah would return was foretold in each of the four books of the Latter-day Saint canon. Indeed, Elijah visited the Prophet...
View ArticleAbide: 2 Kings 17-25
How do we learn from failure? Especially the end of an organization as large as a kingdom? What if two kingdoms fall? Today, as we look at the end of both Kingdoms of Israel, I hope that we can...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #145: The Idea of the “Heathen” with Kathryn Gin Lum
If an eighteenth-century cleric told you that the difference between “civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far,” the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by...
View ArticleAbide: Esther
Can one be directed by God when one doesn’t know that one is being directed? The answer, of course, is yes. We learn about how God directed Esther in ways that may not have been recognizable to her,...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #146: God’s Original Grace, with Adam Miller
In Original Grace, Adam S. Miller proposes an experiment in Restoration thinking: What if instead of implicitly affirming the traditional logic of original sin, we, as members of The Church of Jesus...
View ArticleAbide: Job
Job, as a literary and biblical figure, gives us a lot to think about. He goes from riches to rags to riches again. He loses his family but begins another. He’s at the center of a contest between god...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part One
Psalms! There’s over 150 of them marked in the book by the same name in the Old Testament. How can we read them? Are they more useful as a narrative thread, or as a spice to season our spiritual diet?...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part Two
One of the first things I tell my students, and that I repeat throughout a semester, is that texts do not interpret themselves. Every time a person reads scripture they see it with new eyes and with...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #147: Slavery, Sacred Texts, and Historical...
In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation’s sacred religious and legal texts – the Bible and the Constitution – to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates...
View Article(Reuploaded) Maxwell Institute Podcast #147: Slavery, Sacred Texts, and...
In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation’s sacred religious and legal texts – the Bible and the Constitution – to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates...
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#14- Standing Apart, or Reconsidering the “Great Apostasy,” featuring Miranda...
Miranda Wilcox and John Young recently published one of the most arresting books in Mormon studies ever compiled. It’s called Standing Apart. In the book, a group of Latter-day Saint scholars examine...
View ArticleAbide: Psalms Part Three
A book has many lives. It’s thought, it’s edited, it’s printed, it’s reprinted, it’s commentated on, and this repeats, if the book merits it, ad infinitum. This is certainly true for the Bible as a...
View ArticleMaxwell Institute Podcast #148: The Weight of Legacy, with Kate Holbrook
Kate Holbrook, PhD (1972–2022) was a leading voice in the study of Latter-day Saintwomen and Latter-day Saint foodways. As managing historian of women’s history atthe Church of Jesus Christ of...
View ArticleAbide: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs can fall by the wayside when we study them in Sunday School. They don’t always fit into the narratives that we understand about dispensations of authority...
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