By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

To start, this isn’t going to be a post about history, or about Deuteronomy, or about Chronicles. This is a post about storytelling. And about history, and about Deuteronomy, and about Chronicles.

Salman Rushdie observes that humans are “the only species that, from the beginning, has used stories to explain ourselves.”

Today is Pioneer Day. In some parts of the Intermountain West, Pioneer Day is an actual holiday. In other parts of the United States (where I live, for instance) we sing “Come, Come Ye Saints” on the Sunday that immediately precedes July 24th. In other parts of the world, LDS folks may not even know it exists.

I grew up with Pioneer Day even though I lived outside what...

On April 16, 1830—10 days after the Church was formally organized—Joseph Smith received a revelation directed to his wife Emma. The revelation designated her an elect lady and gave her three specific jobs in the Restoration: to be a s...

I think collective nouns (also called “terms of venery”) are really fun.

There are some that are commonly used: a herd of cows, a gaggle of geese, a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a deck of cards.

There are others that are less commonly used: a murder of crows, a bloat of hippopotamuses, an exaltation of larks, an unkindness of ravens, or a parliament of o...

For the first time, I’m making my way through Cervantes’ Don Quixote (for the book nerds out there, I’m reading the Edith Grossman translation). The book follows a gentleman named Alonso[1] who has become so engrossed with tales of chivalry that he comes to believe that he, himself, is a...