Recommended: BYU-I Perspective Magazine
Tonight I discovered a Mormon Studies Magazine that I was not previously aware of. BYU- Idaho Perspective is sort of the small college equivalent of BYU Studies, The Religious Educator, and Something else all rolled into one.
The Magazine itself hasn’t been around very long and 80% of it’s material is available online. Tonight, while discussing evolution with some people at the Young Earth Creationist Friend “Mormons and Scienceâ€, I stumbled into some excellent articles defending evolution.
I want to commend the 2004 vol 2 especially with its three back-to-back articles:
A Delicate Balance: Teaching Biological Evolution at BYU-Idaho by Lynn Firestone
An explanation of the BYU Library Packet on Evolution by Stephen Ott
Perhaps my favorite article on evolution was Science And The Soul, by Lyle J. Lowder. I appreciated that he raised more issues than he had answers for and in a very clear fashion called forth the importance for continued study and work on these issues.
Moving beyond Evolution, I liked that Multiple articles in the magazine have been dedicated to a charitable teaching of Islam. Two of several examples are here and here. Way to go Brother Peck!
However, My favorite article was “What If “Plan A†Doesn’t Work? Helping Female Students Navigate an Uncertain Life Course†by Casey Hurley. This interesting essay discusses a basic concern I think that needs to be more generally addressed in the Church, which is when things do not go as planned. I think Casey does a great job and I am going to recommend this article to the Young Women, and quote large portions of it to my Young Men at Church.
Any way I want to highly commend the faculty at BYU Idaho for their efforts on producing Perspective and recommend it to you all as a very cool little LDS mag.
And now for something completely different:
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Matt,
Thanks for these. These are great! I hope they are widely read and discussed. Kudos to Ricks for publishing these. I’ve not seen their like published by BYU’s magazines.
Comment by Steve — October 30, 2008 @ 12:41 am
Back in the day my father served as an editor for this (back when it was still Ricks). There have been interesting articles in this publication for a long time.
Comment by Eric Nielson — October 30, 2008 @ 5:42 am
That’s Cool Eric. They don’t seem to have the Ricks issues online, but glad to know it’s an ongoing tradition.
Steve, glad you enjoyed them. Maybe you should push BYU to do an evolution isssue of BYU studies, or better, an article in the BYU Magazine. (Higher Readership) The closest I’ve seen to BYU touching these are a few articles in FARMS Review and Michael Whitings’ lecture on “the tree of life”. These lead me to believe there is a window of opportunity, but you’d be a better judge of how wide or narrow it is.
Comment by Matt W. — October 30, 2008 @ 6:37 am
Wow. WOW. How did I miss including that essential film in Mormon Youtube Progress Reports?!!
Comment by sister blah 2 — October 30, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Holy crap, that youtube clip is awesome.
Comment by Jacob J — October 30, 2008 @ 9:02 am
Thanks for the video clip. My kids are going to love it!
Oh, and thanks for the rest of the post, too; creating a good “Plan B” for life can be a real trick.
Comment by Amy (Researcher) — October 30, 2008 @ 10:05 am
I love this blog. It gets 200 posts in 2 days, then nothing for a week. Philosophy and Football. Then Spongebob theme song by MoTab. It just doesn’t get any more “special” in the bloggernacle, does it?
Comment by Kent (MC) — October 30, 2008 @ 10:41 am
Glad the vid was well liked. I thought about giving it it’s own post, but It was late last night, and I thought it was fun, so that’s what happens.
and Sister Blah, you haven’t even done a post on “Ask a Mormon Ninja (Nijormon)” Yet, so there is still plenty of work left…
Comment by Matt W. — October 30, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
I skimmed the Geology article because I wanted to see what Williams would say about Noah’s flood. He doesn’t mention it. I wonder what he tells his students about that issue?
Comment by ed johnson — October 30, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
Ed, that’s probably because the article was on evolution, not the old testament
Comment by Matt W. — October 31, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
I was an editor for the magazine when I was on campus last winter. It really is a great publication, and lots of fun to put together!
Comment by Lehla — January 13, 2009 @ 2:27 pm