Happy love / friendship / warm regards / commercial exploitation of affection season, everyone! This Mental Health Monday (at least in American Samoa!) let's break down the difference between love and codependency (and abuse), using various hymn examples and others from church. However, let's start by ruining this iconic photograph celebrating V-J Day (the end of WWII).

First, I’m not a lawyer. Second, this is not a political post. With that out of the way…. Part of the American Mythology is the notion that God has, many times, intervened to establish and preserve the territory of the United States, the representative republic that serves as its form of government, and, specifically, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

It’s a cruel irony, what ICE has done in the land of Minnesota Nice. People are not okay. People are mad. People are dead. I'd always heard it the other way, but apparently the only thing that can stop a good guy with a gun is a bad guy with a gun. To stay engaged in current events despite the multifaceted darkness of the world, I don’t watch the videos.

Over the last weeks and months, I've been thinking about the Church's self-image. How does it view itself? What does it think its mission is? What does it believe its obligations are? This is, naturally, in the context of the Church's silence in the face of a concerted assault on the U.S. Constitution, a terror campaign against immigrants, to whom the Bible assigns especial duties, and an…

By the time my youngest brother, Baden, and I arrived at the Spokane Valley Hospital in Washington state on Thursday, November 13, 2025, our mother, Kathleen Jolley Fox, was no longer truly communicating with others. Baden and I, residents of Nevada and Kansas respectively, had the furthest to travel out of our seven other siblings to get to our mother’s bedside.

A decade ago, Elder Ballard gave a talk admonishing members of the church to "Stay in the and Hold On!" Apparently Brigham Young referenced this metaphor frequently. Enough people asked for specific directions on -- what, exactly, is "The Old Ship of Zion" -- that Elder Ballard offered a second talk the next year, describing it as the modern restored church led by apostles and prophets.

Russell M. Nelson In the inaugural January 18, 2018 press conference of a newly installed First Presidency consisting of Presidents Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, and Henry B. Eyring, D&C 132 made an important appearance. In an exchange with Salt Lake Tribune reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack, Stack asked the new presidency how they might extend membership in the church’s leadership ranks to people of color, international members, and women.

It might come as a surprise to some (or maybe not) that BCC has within its ranks of bloggers a fair number of Deadheads.  We, like many of you, are deeply saddened by the passing Bobby Weir.  I count myself among the fortunate who got to see Bobby a bunch of times. And whether he was playing with Jerry or John (or Phil, or Pig, or TC, or Keith, or Brent, or Vince, or Bruce, or the Wolf Bros.), Bobby was always about the music.

The Bible begins with the words “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” But what was there before this “beginning”? --CFM for Jan 5-11, 2026 Well, Come Follow Me, I'm glad you asked! Joseph Smith provided an answer to that through the Books of Moses and Abraham. As did fiction writers Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, in ideas they sketched out that later found their way onto the screen:

And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords… And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance…And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did cause my people to be industrious and to labor with their hands.

A guest post from friend of the blog David Cook. Somewhere deep inside the machinery of the Trump travel ban, someone apparently decided that Tonga posed a serious threat to the United States. As of January 1, 2026, there are stark restrictions on student and short-term visas for the approximately 100,000 citizens of the small island nation. This is a country where…

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had restful and restorative time with family, friends and food. And I hope everyone has leftovers in the fridge, now that we're back to the grind. I've been toying around with the idea of writing a monthly (?) series about the intersection of the gospel and mental health. Most of the posts will probably be more theoretical (e.g., acting on adrenaline vs acting on faith).

You thought regular Cafeteria Mormonism was theologically precarious? Just wait until that cafeteria is in an elementary school.

Of all the songs the songs in the LDS hymnbook, the hymn “Ring Out, Wild Bells” may be the most niche: if you don’t sing it on the Sunday immediately before or after New Year's Day then it’s likely you won’t sing it all year. Partly for this reason—but also because if it’s haunting melody and profound poetic foundation (more on that in a moment)—the hymn gets justified focus in the bloggernacle this time of year.

Merry Christmas! At our home, Santa puts his big gifts under the tree. But the candy, the chocolate, and some smaller wrapped gifts end up in (or next to) the stockings that hang from our banister (because we don't have a chimney---I had to give Santa a key so that he could get in). These stocking gifts are cool, but they're rarely on anybody's wishlist.

Years ago, I put up a series of posts on the Christmas story from the Gospels. It was fun at the time, and you may find it useful in the present. Here you go, and Merry Christmas from all of us at BCC:

In a major oversight on the part of my Bishop, I was asked to share a five minute message during our Christmas service. I would like to share what I prepared for my ward with the BCC family as well. Merry Christmas, and thank you for being part of this little space of internet Mormondom.  As I have considered what to share in the short time I have today, my mind has consistently returned to a Chinese fable I learned while serving in the Mandarin Chinese Branch in Washington, D.C.

Merry Christmas! Update on garment survey at end of post. Earlier this year, I had what you might call an Abrahamic Test. I felt very, very strongly prompted that I should do a Specific Thing. I was uncomfortable with it. It went against my grain in a number of ways. The Specific Thing was deeply frowned upon in my community, and…

The word “incarnation” has had a tough ride in LDS circles. At the most basic level, the word incarnation communicates the idea that in Jesus, God became flesh. However, this is where things get a little complicated for the LDS community. In most Christian circles, when they say “God became flesh” they mean that the “one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth” was made manifest in Jesus, and that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”

As 2025 comes to a close, the LDS study of the Doctrine and Covenants also wraps up (I hope everyone will read WVS’s series on “The Family: A Proclamation to the Word” in preparation for the discussion tomorrow!). And with the transition from 2025 to 2026, LDS congregations around the world are about to move into a study of the Hebrew Bible.

By Matt Bowman The LDS church has authorized the use of non-KJV Bibles. There are two reasons why this shift is significant. First, not to be underestimated, I think this will lead to more LDS study of the Bible. King James English is even somewhat more obscure than that of Restoration scripture that imitates it. That's one reason why LDS study of the Bible tends only to hit a few highlights throughout the entire text - Genesis 1-12; the first three chapters of Exodus, snippets of Isaiah and that's about it for the Hebrew Bible, and only certain passages of the gospels from the New Testament.

After the shepherds had returned to watch their flocks at night, after the wise men had left to their own country, deliberately avoiding another audience with Herod, after the shepherds had returned to watch their flocks at night, the Holy Family received one more visit: the angel of the Lord came to Joseph and warned him to take his family, leave Bethlehem, and seek refuge in Egypt.

The last time we discussed garments, the conversation centered on where they came from, things that feel powerful about their symbolism, and nods to specific ways the culture around them objectifies women's bodies. Now that the new garments have been out for a little while, I'd love to know what people's experiences have been like: (Note: this survey should take about 5-10 minutes; you can stop at any time)

Families Are Forever? A Building Block of Rhetoric for the Proclamation The sealing of parent to child, husband to wife, and the living to the dead suggested (or at least partly enabled) by D&C 132 and Joseph Smith’s preaching, was reinforced by a sacramental/ritual interpretation of the Elijah vision. But in the minds of Nauvoo leaders, linking the living to the dead was a risky business.

Once we pass Thanksgiving, it's officially Christmas music season! And there is absolutely a wealth of Christmas music---if no new Christmas album ever came out, we could probably still be content for decades. But Christmas music does keep coming out. And some of it is legitimately good! This year, my favorite new Christmas find is "Swinging in the Holidays…