This time of year is, for many, a season of hopefulness—of anticipation and celebration of joyous things to come. Yet, as the cards and letters fill my family mailbox this year, there is one Christmas letter I cannot look forward to receiving, tingeing the season with sadness. Jean Bethke Elshtain, the eminent political philosopher and
Americans have always found polygamy fascinating, even entertaining. In the nineteenth century, Mormons were stock villains in a plethora of now mercifully forgotten Victorian novels. Today, the Mormon Church has long since abandoned polygamy, but its fundamentalist offshoots have captured audiences in HBO’s fictionalized Big Love and TLC’s Sister Wives, a reality TV show centered
Last Friday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) made history by confronting its own history. For the first time, the LDS Church recognized and repudiated its racist past. And it did so, fittingly enough, in the form of a detailed history lesson. For more than a century, Mormons barred black members from
Last month, Molly Worthen traveled to the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics to take part in a symposium for the inaugural Danforth Distinguished Lecture series at Washington University in St. Louis. During her stay, she sat down with Managing Editor Tiffany Stanley to discuss her latest book, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis