The home page of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, the generally very useful and professional website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, currently touts the improved search feature in the Gospel Library app. However, if you’re trying to use it for research in the scriptures, there are some serious gaps that need to be understood. I’ve made multiple efforts over the past few weeks to point these problems out to the IT team responsible for the app, but I think they have been swamped with the roll out, so I’ve only received standardized responses so far. Until the bugs are recognized and fixed, users need to be aware of what can go wrong. There are some major gaps that can lead you to miss the things you are searching for. Any scholarly work requiring accurate search results may be impaired.

The Associated Press recently published an article about a case of abuse in Arizona that sharply criticized the Church. In “Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it…

Executive summary: Discoveries from the Arabian Peninsula supporting the existence of a place called Nahom (see 1 Nephi 16:34) face recent criticism for only showing that the NHM tribal name…

Watch the 2022 FAIR Conference for free! Formerly the FAIR Mormon Conference, the FAIR Conference features many outstanding Latter-day Saint scholars and authors who share insights on many important topics…

In my exploration of the “arise from the dust” theme in the Book of Mormon, published in several articles for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day saint Faith and Scholarship (see “Arise from the Dust,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and “Strong Like Unto Moses”) and the topic of my 2018 presentation at the FAIR Latter-day Saints Conference, I noted that passages from Isaiah 49 and Isaiah 52 play an important role in the Book of Mormon. Both involve the theme of dust….

The story of China’s economic revolution is barely known in the West, but has some vitally important lessons for all of us. Here I report on my trek to the small village in Anhui Province where that revolution began, and tell the story desperation and courage among a small group of farmers who risked their lives in 1978 to defy collectivism. Instead of being punished, their incredible success inspired Deng Xiao Ping and helped bring the blessings of increased economic liberty and prosperity to many millions in China. It was a quiet revolution that became a thunder sweeping China. The lessons from that revolution are now needed in the West.

Members of  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who understand the Church’s position on abortion or the reasons for its emphasis on the family and the sanctity of human life need to be better prepared to talk to our children and others about the issue of abortion. As we listen gently to sincere questions or concerns, we must also find the right moments to teach based on sound doctrine but also sound science.

A faithful Young Women’s leader here in Wisconsin was recently teaching some of her young women about the importance of family and the sacred blessings that come from raising children. One girl raised her hand and said she didn’t think she should have any children because her teachers at school had explained that the earth is about to run our of air and water, making this a terrible time to bring more children into the world.

One of the darkest chapters of American history, one that has caused the unnecessary deaths of millions of the most vulnerable and innocent among us, has just become a little brighter with a genuinely courageous Supreme Court ruling today that overturns one of the most egregious examples of bad law and bad science in recent decades. This doesn’t make abortion illegal, though. It just leaves the decision to the states. It’s not a huge change for the right to life, but an important decision nonetheless.

This is a time for parents around the world to be more vigilant when it comes to protecting their children. Parents in both China and the US have recently learned that schools can’t be blindly trusted to be safe or wise. But now parents need to recognize that health officials also might not be worthy of blind trust. The tricks with data used to justify vaccines for infants in the US may be a cause for parental concern.