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Bites of the Best Books: March 2021

This month, passages about the most potent moral figure in Western culture, the influences on Augustine, and the enduring wisdom of the prophet Jeremiah.

Zero Population Growth Isn’t the Answer, My Friend

Gale Boyd

Zero population growth was the rave in the 1960s and 1970s. I almost got caught up in it myself. As I look at my family today, I thank God I didn’t. Surprisingly, it’s still a thing today.

The Witness of Women

Amanda Freebairn and Hanna Seariac

The Jewish holiday of Purim which is celebrated today, honors Queen Esther, who risked the wrath of her Persian husband-king to save her people. This essay is a tribute to women who have risked much to witness both anciently and in our day.

Religious Resonances in The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

Corey Landon Wozniak

A Plea to Gun Owners: Have Compassion and Support Common-Sense Regulations

Lisa Bolin Hawkins

A Latter-day Saint Defense of the Unborn

Mormon Isn’t Our Name. Why Are Some Still Using It?

A Book of Mormon Missive for the 2020 Election

Prophets on Pandemic: Ten Messages to a Weary, Wary World

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And Not One Soul Shall Feel Excluded

Dan Ellsworth

#NeverTrump; #AlwaysLiberalism

Nathaniel Givens

Do You ‘Believe in Science’…or Not?

Jacob Z. Hess

FOUR CORNERS

The Dispatch

How To Be Pro-Life in Joe Biden’s America

David French

The Wall Street Journal

Joe Biden’s Choice on Religious Freedom

Mary Vought

Association Mormon Letters

Mormon Literature: A Decade in Review

JAMES GOLDBERG

RECENT

Bites of the Best Books: March 2021

by Samuel B. Hislop

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The Witness of Women

by Amanda Freebairn

...

Religious Resonances in The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

by Corey Landon Wozniak

...

A Plea to Gun Owners: Have Compassion and Support Common-Sense Regulations

by Lisa Bolin Hawkins

...

Zero Population Growth Isn’t the Answer, My Friend

by Gale Boyd

...

Building Israel: The First Few Millennia Are Always Hardest

by Tom Nysetvold

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A Message to Parents Overwhelmed about Screen Time

by Sarah M Coyne

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What A Latter-day Saint Learned about Mr. Joe Biden Through Decades of Working on Capitol Hill

by Richard L Brown

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COVERING THE COVERAGE

That Big Religious Freedom Case Is Not What You Think

by Christopher D. Cunningham

Last fall, I sat down with Steven T. Collis, a research fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, to speak about his book on religious freedom cases, Deep Conviction. We spoke about Espinoza v. Montana scheduled for oral arguments this week. In...

We Look to Headlines for Direction. Let’s Make Them True

by Daryl Austin

On Monday, The Washington Post published an article with a headline that misrepresented leaders of my faith. The headline read "Mormon Church misled members on 100 billion fund.” That's not the argument the article makes, however. The article itself contains a...

Making Peeping Toms of Us All

by Christopher D. Cunningham

Painful and terrible things happen every day in our communities and nation. And when we check out the news, we’ve all become accustomed to exploring their circumstances in often lurid detail. Compared to the appropriate sorrow we might feel when another instance of...

The Well-Being of Youth Shouldn’t Become a Zero-Sum Battle

by Jacob Z. Hess

The well-being of youth and children is — and should be — common ground on which everyone can stand. We all want children to thrive and find joy. That’s easy to forget in an environment of “us-versus-them” rhetoric where so much important nuance is lost. This is...

EDITORIALS

Bites of the Best Books: March 2021

by Samuel B. Hislop

Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt Alec Ryrie In the winding-up pages of this important study of doubt, Ryrie makes this claim: “Once the most potent moral figure in Western culture was Jesus Christ. Believer or unbeliever, you took your ethical bearings from...

The Witness of Women

by Amanda Freebairn

Women’s role as witnesses in sharing the message of Jesus Christ begins anciently and continues into our day. Latter-day Saints believe truth is established by God through the Law of Witnesses, “in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word shall be...

Religious Resonances in The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

by Corey Landon Wozniak

In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Religion and Politics, Jonathan Haidt argues, “A college football game is a superb analogy for religion.” Haidt, who once taught at the University of Virginia, describes the elaborate pre-game rituals of Wahoos in...