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A former Brigham Young University professor is sharing the story of how she and her husband, along all of with her children, left Mormonism for Christianity through God’s work of grace in their life. Lynn Wilder is the author of the book Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way out of the Mormon Church, released in late August of this year. Until March 16, 2008, Wilder was a professor at Brigham Young University and a dedicated member of the Latter-Day Saints. In a recent article in the Daily Beast, Wilder provided a condensed overview of her personal...

SALT LAKE CITY — Quintin Fullmer Smith, 33, walked down a 3rd District Court hallway Monday, flanked by family members. Minutes earlier, the group huddled outside the courtroom, several of them weeping. Smith has four days to turn himself in to Davis County Jail, where he will serve a term of 180 days on work release for two counts of attempted securities fraud, a class A misdemeanor, and begin paying restitution. His father, Michael Kay Smith, 66, was sentenced to serve one year in the Salt Lake County Jail for two counts of attempted securities fraud, third-degree felonies amended to...

Yes, BYU football fans are like football fans everywhere. They may not drink as much alcohol but when they get frustrated, they can do some ridiculous things. Saturday night proved to be a perfect example. Cougar supporters, incensed by what they perceived to be an erroneous no-call on what should've been a pass interference penalty on the final play of the game, were caught on camera peppering the officiating crew with trash and other items as the referees left the field. We all do things in the heat of the moment that we wouldn't do if we were able to...

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The Princeton Review released its 2014 edition of "The Best 378 Colleges" book Monday, which includes the lists of the Top 20 party schools and the Top 20 sober schools. TOP 20 PARTY SCHOOLS

Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture, June 3-July 12 The Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture “Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood: Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice.”Brigham Young University June 3 – July 12, 2013In the summer of 2013, the Neal A Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University, with support from the Mormon Scholars Foundation and the Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley Institution, will sponsor a summer seminar for graduate students and junior faculty on “Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood: Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice." The seminar...

...Follow me on Stand up comic, Dave Ackerman, goes to Brigham Young University to find out what BYU students know about Black History Month.

MessageToEagle.com - Normally, as a matter of personal preference I don’t get into politics, but when we have a presidential campaign that begins to cross over into the strange twilight zone of religious weirdness that centers on the one person who’s going to control the most powerful government and army on the face of the earth, well, it brings up some unusual scenarios to wonder about. It is being reported in the media today that former presidential candidate Mitt Romney only wrote a victory speech for Election Day; presumably a harried, last minute scramble to revise his speech was being...

PROVO — A former BYU student who is accused of molesting two roommates faces charges of forcible sex abuse. Court documents indicate Antonio Rubalcaba Lacy, 18, inappropriately touched a roommate at least three times last year while the victim was asleep. Lacy is accused of doing the same thing three times to another roommate in 2012. The documents state Lacy confessed verbally and in a written statement after a two-hour meeting with his LDS bishop. Lacy, who is from Monterey, Calif., no longer attends BYU. He is charged with six second-degree felonies for forcible sexual abuse. He was never arrested...

SALT LAKE CITY — A GOP activist who prosecutors say kidnapped and raped women that he met online and at church functions has been arrested and charged with 23 felonies. He appears to have targeted mostly LDS young adult women. Gregory Nathan Peterson, 37, of Orem, was charged Wednesday with seven counts of rape, three counts of object rape, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, nine counts of forcible sexual abuse, forcible sodomy, assault, burglary and sexual battery. Peterson is a GOP activist who held political events at his cabin in Heber City, 10160 E. Ridge Pine Drive, the same place...

SALT LAKE CITY — A conservative activist charged with raping four women rubbed shoulders with some of Utah's most prominent Republican politicians and served as co-chairman of a 2007 fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Many of them, including Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Gov. Gary Herbert and 4th Congressional District candidate Mia Love, have attended a barbecue Greg Peterson hosted what he called the Rocky Mountain Conservatives Conference at his lakeside cabin the past three years. Peterson organized it as a "healing" event in 2010 after the contentious state GOP convention that ousted Sen....

This is based on a genealogy table I made. Had a bit more trouble than I should have tracking down the first round results, wth.

“God has always been discriminatory.” So says Randy Bott, a professor of religion at Brigham Young University... Why did the church withhold the priesthood from blacks for over a century? Among the reasons trotted out by church leaders—including church presidents...Black people are the cursed descendants of ancient Biblical figures; black people committed pre-mortal perfidy; black people lacked the intelligence and personal integrity... Such past beliefs have never officially been repudiated. And the failure of the church to repudiate them helped set the stage for the comments made by Bott, perhaps the most popular professor at BYU... The Mormon Church’s own...

Racist apologetics by a popular Brigham Young University religion professor are sparking controversy, as election-year scrutiny sheds a revealing light on the persistence of racist belief among LDS Church members. On Tuesday, Randy Bott, a BYU professor of religion, told the Washington Post that the LDS Church’s historic prohibition on priesthood ordination for men of African descent was a “blessing” to blacks because they were not “ready” for priesthood authority. “God has always been discriminatory” when it comes to whom he grants the authority of the priesthood, says Bott... Bott compares blacks with a young child prematurely asking for the...

A YouTube video of a white comedian who painted his face black and quizzed Brigham Young University students about Black History Month has brought some unwanted attention to the Mormon-run school. Observers have called some student responses ignorant while others criticized the comedian's use of the 19th century theater technique considered racially offensive by black people.

Being Valentine's Day, it might have been hoped that an impromptu letter would be filled with admiring comments and sweet remarks. Unfortunately for one young woman she was passed a note by a fellow student.. offering some stern words about her sense of style. Brittany Molina, 21, who studies accountancy at Brigham Young University, Utah, was walking through campus when a young man approached her with a sheet of paper - and then dashed away. On Valentine's Day, Miss Molina posted on Twitter: 'So this boy came up to me... I thought he was giving me a love note. Turns...

Updated. The first time I read this, I thought it was parody: Independent Brigham Young University publication The Student Review reports that BYU-Idaho has banned skinny jeans as part of its honor code guidelines against "form-fitting clothing." Skinny jeans: trousers of the devil? Don't tell Mitt Romney. "It's useful for us to realize that fashions will come and go. There will always be some tempting new style," University Vice President Henry J. Eyring explained in September. Fun fact: According to Wikipedia, Eyring is a member of Romney's extended family. Anyway, I'm 95% sure that this Student Review article is not...

Merry Smithmas? Quoted: "We are the beneficiaries of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, a work which had its earthly commencement with the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith, in the hills of Vermont on a December day in 1805. As we commemorate the birth of the babe in Bethlehem, the Savior of the world, may we also remember his emissary, Joseph Smith, and consciously rejoice in his life and sacrifice, as well." (Larry C. Porter, "Christmas with the Prophet Joseph", Ensign, Dec. 1978, 9)

(To see Cal Grondahl’s cartoon that goes with this post, click here) In the latest issue of Sunstone magazine, Gary James Bergera has a very interesting article, “The Moniteering of BYU Faculty Tithing Payments, 1957-1963,” that involves yet another historical nugget of mirth created by the university’s late president, Ernest D. Wilkinson. Wilkinson, upon assuming the presidency of BYU in the 1950s, was outraged that some BYU professors paid only a partial tithing, and some paid none at all. (I digress here to admit that I too, was surprised that there were/are tithing shortfalls among BYU professors. I would have...

NOTE: This was originally written and published back in 1999. Unfortunately, it is still very pertinent. ----------------------------- What an interesting development this is! Forty-one years after publication, an article titled "Current Communist Goals", which is an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” written by Cleon Skousen in 1958, is beginning to receive national prominence. W. Cleon Skousen, we should add, was an FBI agent, the police chief of Salt Lake City and a full professor at Brigham Young University. Skousen was also the head of the National Center for Constitutional Studies and the author of a number of other books and...

Ex-Mormon Australia native Helen Radkey is a spiritual consultant and educator, soul reader, past-life therapist, prayer therapist, marriage celebrant, writer and researcher, but is best known as that rabble-rouser who’s been keeping close tabs on the LDS Church’s temple ordinances for the past 18 years. City Weekly caught up with Radkey to find out what she's been keeping tabs on lately. Why do proxy baptisms matter to people who don’t believe in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Alive or dead, people deserve to be treated with respect. Proxy baptism is a disrespectful attempt to reframe a person’s...