First (?) openly gay man to serve in LDS bishopric

Excerpts of An Open Letter from Mitch Mayne (See also this from the Salt Lake Tribune)
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I am Mitch Mayne, and I am an openly gay Latter-Day Saint.
On August 14, 2011, I was sustained as a member of the Bishopric in the Bay Ward of the San Francisco Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons).
I accepted this calling because of the opportunity it presents me to serve my Savior and my community. And, I accepted this calling as my authentic self: A gay man who loves his Savior, loves his Mormon family, loves his counterparts within the LGBTQ community, and recognizes himself to be completely whole as I am—just as my Father made me.
Continue reading here

Oldest known life-form discovered

Excerpts of Team Claims It Has Found Oldest Fossils By NICHOLAS WADE, New York Times
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A team of Australian and British geologists have discovered fossilized, single-cell organisms that are 3.4 billion years old and that the scientists say are the oldest known fossils on earth.

Their assertion, if sustained, confirms the view that life evolved on earth surprisingly soon after the Late Heavy Bombardment,

Huntsman on Blacks and the Priesthood

THIS WEEK Web Extra: Huntsman on a Mormon Controversy
Video

TAPPER: Do you think it's fair for reporters or members of the public to ask candidates about their faith?

HUNTSMAN:  I think it's fair, but it doesn't matter what I think about it, reporters are going to ask regardless.

TAPPER: Well, OK.  Here I go then.

You're Mormon. Until you were 18, your church had racist rules. It would not allow anyone with African ancestry to become a priest and blacks were also banned from participating in certain Mormon ordinances, such as temple marriages. Then the leadership of the church, in 1978, announced something along the lines of that God had changed his mind or the rules had changed because of revelation. You seem to be a thinking man. What was it like to go through this as a -- as a young man, your church having racist rules and then all of a sudden, God says no more?

LDS church and search engine optimization

Excerpts of Mormons using the Web to control their own image, By Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post
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Try this. Type "church," "Old Testament" or even "friend" into Google, and the Web site of the LDS church, the Mormons, pops up near the top of the list.

In the age of the Internet, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has found a way to dominate what is arguably today's most important information source: the search engine.

It's all about Mormons controlling their own image, church officials say. They've been doing that for a century or more. And now, with two of their own vying for the Republican nomination in the 2012 presidential race, and a Broadway hit and reality television generating huge interest in the denomination, much is at stake.

Death of Joseph Smith

As Mormon-Church-History has traced through the history of the church, it has finally arrived at the the events immediately preceding the death of Joseph Smith.  Over the next few days, an hour-by-hour chronology of the dramatic last few days of Joseph Smith's life will be detailed.

Tune in -- get your daily dose of Mormon History -- available via Blog, Rss, Email, Facebook or Twitter:  http://bit.ly/mohist

Scholars trace Bible's evolution

Excerpts of In Jerusalem, scholars trace Bible's evolution By Matti Friedman, associated press
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JERUSALEM (AP) — A dull-looking chart projected on the wall of a university office in Jerusalem displayed a revelation that would startle many readers of the Old Testament: the sacred text that people revered in the past was not the same one we study today.An ancient version of one book has an extra phrase. Another appears to have been revised to retroactively insert a prophecy after the events happened.
Scholars have been quietly at work for 53 years on one of the most ambitious projects attempted in biblical studies — publishing the authoritative edition of the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible, and tracking every single evolution of the text over centuries and millennia.

Review: Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism

As a young LDS missionary I was thrilled reading Parley P.  Pratt's epic biography.  I marveled at his tales of harrowing prison time and daring escapes, the Missouri persecutions, missionary travels, his view of the early Mormon Church and Joseph Smith.  I wondered why such things didn't seem to happen today.  Since then I've come to believe that autobiographies can often obscure as much as they reveal, and Pratt's book is no different (historian Benjamin Park has done excellent work on framing Pratt's autobiography as his way of maintaining relevance and connection to a LDS movement he sometimes felt adrift from; work which the biographers employ, though my index-less advanced copy of the book prevents my providing a page number for it!).  A new biography of the Mormon apostle tempers Pratt's autobiographical enthusiasm, offsetting his memories with many mundane actualities to bring him back down to earth a bit--enough to make him appear simultaneously less amazing and all the more compelling....

Mayan expert Michael Coe on Book of Mormon archeology

Dr. Michael Coe – An Outsider's View of Book of Mormon Archaeology, by John Dehlin
Dr. Michael Coe is the Charles J. MacCurdy professor emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University and curator emeritus of the Division of Anthropology at the school's Peabody Museum of Natural History.

He is an expert on the Maya, who inhabited the same part of Mexico and Central American where Mormon scholars say the events of the Book of Mormon took place.

In this interview, Coe discusses the challenges facing Mormon archaeologists attempting to prove the historical truth of their central scripture and his own views on Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library

Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library brings together a wealth of information and recent scholarship on Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. The Electronic Library also includes high-resolution images of every page of the original manuscripts, images and transcriptions of the earliest copies made from those manuscripts, and a collection of recently published studies based on the manuscripts. Each manuscript is preceded by a short introductory essay. This collection also includes the entire 851-page book, Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, edited by Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews.

An Evening with Michael Quinn

Excerpts of AN EVENING WITH D. MICHAEL QUINN, Benchmark Books

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Friday August 12th
Unitarian Universalist Sanctuary
569 South 1300 East, SLC
7:00 - 9:30 p.m.

This Friday, August 12th, John Dehlin of Mormon Stories will be interviewing D. Michael Quinn in the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary at 569 South 1300 East in Salt Lake City between 7:00 and 9:30 p.m.  Admission will be $15.  Proceeds will go to Michael and the Open Stories foundation. Click here for information and preregistration. 

Mormon Defense League

Excerpts of New website to jump to Mormonism's defense by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune

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On Thursday, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) announced that it was launching the Mormon Defense League (MDL) to help journalists "get it right" .

If the MDL notices a misstatement or mischaracterization, the group will first contact the journalist. But if a pattern of misrepresentation emerges, the defense league will "go after the writer" by posting the piece or pieces on its website (mdl.org) and pointing out the errors.

Genetic studies threaten Adam and Eve

Excerpts of Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve  by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR

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Let's go back to the beginning — all the way to Adam and Eve, and to the question: Did they exist, and did all of humanity descend from that single pair?

Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity.
But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

Review: Modern Polygamy in the United States: Historical, Cultural, and Legal Issues

Modern Polygamy, "primarily about the Federal raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) ... is a collection of essays written by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists familiar with the FLDS and various other polygamous groups.  ... [It is] predominately sympathetic of the polygamous life-style .... [providing] an insider's perspective."

Title: Modern Polygamy in the United States: Historical, Cultural, and Legal Issues
Author: Edited by Cardell K. Jacobson with Lara Burton

New York becomes 6th state to allow same-sex marriage

Excerpts of New York ushers in same-sex marriage, Douglas Sabiston, Examiner.com
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Hundreds of gay couples tied the knot in New York Sunday as the state became the sixth and largest to recognize same-sex marriage in the United States.

State lawmakers voted 33 to 29 June 24 to lift the ban on same-sex marriage, and a political campaign that lasted years finally came to an end. The new law took effect 30 days later, and at the stroke of midnight July 24, gay marriage became legal for the first time in New York history.

Thousands of opponents rallied in Manhattan, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo chanting "let the people vote!" The rallies, organized by National Organization for Marriage (NOM), were timed to coincide with the first day the new law took effect. Despite recent polls indicating that a majority of New Yorkers support gay marriage, opponents believe if the issue is put to a vote, traditional marriage will be upheld.

Mormon movie to be based on Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven"

Excerpts of Ron Howard to explore dark side of Mormon history, and more cheery stuff
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And in the closest thing to fresh movie news in this post, Ron Howard ...  has now set his sights on Mormons, but not the cute, cuddly kind that won "South Park" masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone the top Tony.

Instead, Howard will team up with scribe Dustin Lance Black ("Milk" and Clint Eastwood's upcoming J. Edgar Hoover biopic) for a movie based on Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Mormons love Harry Potter

Many fundamentalist Christians oppose the Harry Potter books and movies because aspects of the occult are treated in a favorable light. While Latter-day Saints are also religiously conservative, they apparently have no such aversion to the works of Rowling. Not only does "Harry Potter" rank  highly in Utah google searches, but Utah helped set a new record in box office receipts.

FOX News host says Mormons are not Christians

With Utah ranked as one of the most conservative states in the union, and FOX News the predominate news source for the politically conservative, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may feel conflicted by a recent statement on FOX News.

Excerpts of Mormon Mitt Romney not 'Christian,' says Fox News host by Elizabeth Tenety

Moroni Pratt not son of Joseph Smith says DNA researcher

Sarah Pratt, mother of Moroni Pratt

"Following another mission, this time to England, Pratt arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois, in July 1841. During Pratt's absence, Joseph Smith had begun practicing plural marriage. One of the women he approached was [Pratt's wife] Sarah, who rejected his advances. The next spring Sarah told Orson of Smith's proposals. Pratt became depressed and on 14 July disappeared; however, he was found near the Mississippi River and was persuaded to return home."  [Utah History Encyclopedia: Orson Pratt]   

Rumors have since circulated that Joseph Smith fathered Moroni Pratt, son of Sarah Pratt.  New DNA evidence sheds light on this proposed child of Joseph Smith. 
 
Excerpts of DNA solves a Joseph Smith mystery, by Michael De Groote, Deseret News
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Study to analyze impact of Mormonism on gays

Excerpts of Study Looks at Experiences of Gay Mormons, QSalt Lake

A new study assessing the experiences of gay and former members of the Mormon Church was launched by a Utah State University professor this week.

Renee Galliher, along with the Brigham Young University emeritus biology professor and chair of the pro-gay Family Fellowship, William Bradshaw, launched the 149-question survey to look at the impact the Mormon Church has had on gay and lesbian members.

The survey is anonymous and designed for gays and lesbians who have, at one point or another, been a member of the Mormon Church.

"The researchers hope this study may provide insights into the experiences of same-sex attracted Latter Day Saints, increasing the competence and sensitivity of the consumers of this research, who could potentially be psychologists, researchers, educators and other service providers interacting with individuals who identify with these experiences," the survey introduction says....

Click here to take the survey.

Mountain Meadows designated national historic landmark

Excerpts of Mountain Meadows now a national historic landmark By Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune

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... "The designation means the United States has recognized that this site is among the most important in U.S. history," said Lysa Wegman-French, a historian with the Intermountain regional office of the National Park Service. "I like to compare it to the Emmy or Oscar awards for actors. This is public recognition of the importance of the site to the nation."...

"This is the culmination of a multiyear collaboration between the church as landowner, victim groups and the federal government," Richard Turley, assistant LDS Church historian, said Thursday. "We are grateful that so many people came together to make this a reality."