Middle Space, A Blog

     Randy Powell is a Ph.D. candidate in History and the life of every ward Christmas party.           I remember one particularly troubling Christmas Eve I had several years ago. As I was driving with my little brother after having worked a long shift selling jewelry to last minute shoppers, a startling story came on the radio. Muslims and Christians in the Sudan were fighting and killing one another mercilessly. As I looked out the window I pondered what it means to celebrate the birth of Jesus at a time when “peace on earth” and “good will towards man” seems nonexistent across the globe.  In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.”  I still struggle with this issue every day, but especially Christmas. I wonder why violence continues, why we worry so much about gifts, trees, and for me at least, eggnog. Does the birth of Jesus really mean all that ...

Jonathan is a 30-year-old active gay member of the Church. I’ve liked men for as long as I remember. Probably even from before I can remember. Maybe even before I was in utero. Just a plucky sperm flirting with the other sperms. That’s probably why I was the one who won. I flirted them away! Mwa-ha! Charmed my way to the top! Only to find…..an egg. Ugh. It’s like a huge sperm without a tail. But a few other last-surviving sperms were still coming! So I dove in, head first, wiggly tail behind me! I WON! It was yucky and disgusting along the way, but I WON!!! Maybe liking the boys does help me win, after all. Maybe .  … One of my first memories of attraction was when I was nearly four and my family watched Savage Sam , the sequel to Old Yeller . There was a scene in which teenage Travis ran around without his shirt on. I was fascinated. Like a cat on a grasshopper, I leapt flailingly at the television and pointed at him. “Me! Me!” I exclaimed. “Sit down!” “I can’t see...

Randy Powell is a Ph.D. candidate in History. Just the other day I sat in my office discussing with a friend a study conducted by a literary scholar, now Dean of Arts and Sciences of the university at which I study, who wrote an article claiming proved once and for all that Solomon Spaulding and Sydney Rigdon authored the Book of Mormon. [1] In this conservation, I expressed doubt that his computational textual analysis actually proved anything as it conveniently ignored the larger historical context. Not only that, but I have had too many bad experiences with technology to put any kind of certainty into it. But this article is not what I want to focus on. Rather, I would like to discuss what came after. One of my professors walked by and entered the conversation. I was quickly reminded that Joseph Smith was indeed a fraud and made everything up (all religion is a fraud according to this him) and that faith blinded me to this fact. According to this professor, faith is nothing m...