Search for "airline tickets to utah cheap phone number 1-800-299-7264"

What’s Ahead in the World of Mormonism for 2011

By Joanna Brooks

…entering the Republican primaries, as sources report this week that former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (currently the Obama-appointed amabassador to China) may be exploring a 2012 run. While some—like Mormon sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card—are already rattling sabers over the prospect of another round of anti-Romney, Huckabee-led Mormon baiting, I’m betting that Mormonism wouldn’t be nearly as much of a political liability for Huntsman (who Obama fe…

Romney Faces Sticky Questions about LDS “Doctrines” on Race

By Joanna Brooks

…l church don’t necessarily know or care about folk doctrines cultivated in Utah, and some points of belief once held literally are being quietly deemphasized even among observant multi-generational Mormons. I grew up Mormon in Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s hearing that Cain and Ham were the progenitors of African and African-descended peoples. I also heard plenty of nuclear-tinged talk about the last days and the incipient millennium….

Mormons Take Even More Activist Message to DC Pride March

By Joanna Brooks

…ddressing feelings of pain, division, and estrangement over LGBT issues in Utah families, congregations, and communities. Members of the LDS Church will march with a more activist message and behind a different banner in Washington, D.C.: that of Mormons for Marriage Equality, a grassroots Mormon organization that seeks to promote not only love and understanding, but also full equality under the law for LGBT people. The contingent is expected to b…

LDS Apostle Says Same-Sex Attraction Can be Overcome

By Joanna Brooks

…londe-haired, pink-stiletto wearing 21st century daughters of the original Utah pioneers. I wanted to write about Mormons in their beauty, their humanness, their contemporaneity, their diversity. I even wanted to share how an unorthodox Mormon like me is deeply moved by the love and devotion this religion—so widely misunderstood, so often caricatured—inspires among those who claim it. I wanted to write about the tears (a classic Mormon response) t…

Romney Steers Hard Right on Immigration; Huntsman Out After New Hampshire?

By Joanna Brooks

…with Perry. But doing so puts him to the right of the LDS Church-sponsored Utah Compact on Immigration Reform, underscoring a long-standing perception of Romney as an conservative opportunist and destroying the notion that Romney is actually a moderate at heart. It’s also being reported today that Jon Huntsman has once again reorganized his campaign, with the biggest news being his moving headquarters north to New Hampshire, where he’s currently…

8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

By Joanna Brooks

…have dismissed the film as blatantly false. But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [See also Holly Welker’s review here. – Eds] Some take exception to editing choices that sequence events out of context for dramatic effect; others wish that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notori…

Polygamist Warren Jeffs Convicted of Sexual Assault

By Anthea Butler

…the statute of limitations for the crime his uncle perpetrated had run in Utah. The only thing he could do was to take the stand in the Texas trial. For groups like the FLDS, the Catholic Church, and other religious groups that have had repeated cases of pedophilia and sexual assaults against children, the statute of limitations should be lifted so that cases can be tried, and a jury can adjudicate the sexual, mental, emotional, and physical abus…

Ordain Women Transforms Mormon Feminism

By Holly Welker

…d pleased with the extremely thoughtful work Laurie Goodstein and Jodi Kantor are doing on Mormon women. I recommend a conversation on “The Evolving Role of Mormon Women” they had last week with Doug Fabrizio of KUER, the NPR affiliate at the University of Utah—it explains some of the thinking behind their recent NY Times piece. But I was surprised when they downplayed the importance of efforts by Ordain Women and other feminist organizations. (Ev…

A New Mormon Religion Has Taken QAnon Conspiracies and Canonized Them as Doctrine

By Cristina Rosetti

…s There an Original” to a standing-room-only audience at the University of Utah. He was charismatic and spoke of an authentic Mormonism that was lost after the death of Joseph Smith. This loss only escalated and amounted to the current state of apostasy in the LDS Church. The goal of his movement, the Remnant, is to recapture an “authentic” Mormonism marked by spiritual experience and individual encounter with God that doesn’t necessitate a tempor…

Mike Lee’s Father: Constitution Not Scripture

By Joanna Brooks

…k-of-Mormon belt Arizona recently wrote in to respond to my recent post on Utah Senator Mike Lee, his father the former US Solicitor General Rex Lee, and the impact of Cleon Skousen on contemporary LDS conservative thought. He included an excerpt from a 1991 address delivered by Rex Lee when he was president of Brigham Young University: “From the general label ‘divinely inspired,’ some assume that the Constitution is tantamount to scripture, and t…