• Salt Lake Tribune: "Utah will take first crack at the challenge of prosecuting Jeffs"
• Salt Lake Tribune: "Hearing: Jeffs agrees to return to Utah"
• Salt Lake Tribune: "Jeffs waives extradition; FLDS members released from custody"
• TIME: "Who Will be the Next Polygamist Prophet?"
• Deseret News: "'Mormon' often misused"

The whole thing reminds me of child-rearing. As the parent of any toddler can tell you, the younger the child, the louder the screams for attention — and quite often, the degree of the crisis is in reverse proportion to the decibels of the bellows.

To that end, it's important to remember that the blogosphere is still in its infancy, and like any kid, it needs to be watched very carefully.

The leader of a polygamist sect who was on the FBI's Most Wanted List has been arrested and faces sexual misconduct charges for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men, authorities said Tuesday.

Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, was taken into custody after he and two other people were pulled over late Monday by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, FBI spokesman David Staretz said.

The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was wanted in Utah and Arizona on suspicion of sexual misconduct for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men.

Scripture is God’s true, perfect, delightful, inspired and sufficient word to the world. While every Christian I know affirms all of this, in practice the sufficiency of Scripture seems to be getting far less attention, and I am convinced that it is the most important aspect of Scripture for the church in the 21st century to wrestle with. It is possible to affirm verbal, plenary inspiration and the inerrant and infallible nature of Scripture, and still miss the principle that it is enough; that the Scripture alone is our only rule in faith and practice. When we miss this truth, we may find ourselves falling into the errors of legalism, speculative theology, or ecclesiological invention that goes beyond and works against what God has revealed. If we really believe in both the authority and sufficiency of God’s word, then we will embrace both certainty and mystery when it comes to our faith and express that faith in confidence and humility.

The help-wanted ad had the whiff of a practical joke. “Documentary will pay you $5,000 to start your own religion,” it said. “No exp. necessary.”

“I laughed out loud,” said Joshua Boden, 35, a bald-headed bassist in an indie rock band, the Angelic Bombs, who stumbled across the ad in the Village Voice last spring.

But Mr. Boden, whose friends have long urged him to write down some of the bits of pop religion and philosophy that he has developed over the years, said his curiosity was piqued. He went to the corresponding Web site and dashed off an application.

As it turned out, the advertisement was seeking participants for a very real, albeit unusual, social experiment: take $5,000 to start your own religious movement, in exchange for allowing a film crew to follow you around as you try to get under way.

The project, while certainly amusing to some, is intended to examine a serious set of questions about how religious movements begin and take hold. “It’s not cynical or skeptical,” said Andy Deemer, 33, an independent filmmaker who hatched the idea. “Ultimately, I want the project to be interfaith and supporting different faiths.”

And while it may seem like a funny idea, embedded within this project lies a serious thought: every religion, from the ones with millions of believers to those with just a handful, started somewhere, with someone.

Sin is naturally exceeding dear to us; to part with it is compared to plucking out our right eyes. Men may refrain from wonted ways of sin for a little while, and may deny their lusts in a partial degree, with less difficulty; but it is heart-rending work, finally to part with all sin, and to give our dearest lusts a bill of divorce, utterly to send them away. But this we must do, if we would follow those that are truly turning to God: yea, we must not only forsake sin, but must, in a sense, forsake all the world, Luke xiv.33 'Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.'

The restored gospel of Jesus Christ must be shared with all people — regardless of culture, ethnicity, religious background or heritage — and Latter-day Saints have an obligation to share their faith without arrogance or self-righteousness.

Speaking during the keynote session of the 84th annual Education Week at Brigham Young University, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf told thousands gathered at the Marriott Center Tuesday that when Jesus Christ established his church anciently, he knew there would be a great apostasy to follow.

Elder Uchtdorf, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, said Christ "established a divine pattern" for his church anciently, knowing that "future generations would recognize the same priesthood authority and structure" featuring apostles and a living prophet when the church was restored centuries later.

"Without the Prophet Joseph Smith (LDS Church founder), the world would still be in the same state of confusion and darkness" that existed during the Dark Ages with respect to religion, he said.

• Setting the Cultural Stage; Describing the Emerging Church
• Describing the Emerging Church; Conversation on Community
• Conversation on Community; Conversation on Worship
• Conversation on Homiletics/Teaching
• Conversation on Postmodern Theology/Epistemology
• Panel Discussion-Q&A

For the second week in a row, an evangelical Christian minister has been arrested outside a Mormon-themed pageant in northern Utah.

Daniel "Chip" Thompson, the 47-year-old director of Solid Rock Christian Fellowship, a campus ministry at Snow College in Ephraim, was arrested for investigation of criminal trespassing by the Cache County sheriff's office Friday night at the Clarkston Pageant. The pageant depicts the life of Martin Harris, an early follower of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Thompson was with eight others handing out religious tracts that compare Mormonism with the beliefs of other forms of Christianity. He said the Clarkston City cemetery's amphitheater, where the pageant is performed, is public property, so he should not have been arrested.

It's tragic that extremists co-opt the notion of God, and that hipsters and artists reject spirituality out of hand. I don't have a fixed idea of God. But I feel that it's us -- the messed-up, the half-crazy, the burning, the questioning -- that need God, a lot more than the goody-two-shoes do.

And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5:29-32)

True union makes a true Christian: many close with Christ, but it is upon their own terms; they take and own him, but not as God offers him. The terms upon which God in the gospel offers Christ, are, that we shall accept of a broken Christ with a broken heart, and yet a whole Christ with the whole heart. A broken Christ with a broken heart, as a witness of our humility; a whole Christ with a whole heart, as a witness of our sincerity. A broken Christ respects his suffering for sin; a broken heart respects our sense of sin; a whole Christ includes all his offices; a whole heart includes all our faculties. Christ as King, Priest, and Prophet, and as a Mediator. Without any one of these offices, the work of salvation could not have been completed.

The Spencers increased their brood — which included Koa and Nat — to five and Fiona later went on to have three more daughters, including Tally, with a new partner.

All eight children grew up under the strict regime of the communes in which the Children of God — or The Family, as the cult now calls itself — live.

All have now left the sect, although their parents are still going strong: Jeremy lives in Ireland and phones sporadically ("Though I don't think he likes it much there," says one of his sons. "It's too wet. I think he'd like to go back to Brazil.") and Fiona is still in Italy.

The dying woman looked up at her physician. "What do you believe?"

The question unsettled Dr. Francis Collins. For days, he had watched the elderly woman serenely endure the pain of a failing heart, certain she was leaving this world for a better one. She talked to him often of her faith. He listened with bemusement.

He was a man of science; he had earned a PhD in physical chemistry at Yale and was completing his medical degree with bedside training at a North Carolina hospital. When his patients talked of God, he pitied them.

Yet confronted with the woman's earnest question, Collins felt not superior, but oddly ashamed. After 30 years, he still remembers how he flushed as he stammered: "I'm not really sure."

The patient died soon after. And Collins embarked on a journey of exploration that took him to the White House to discuss his landmark map of human DNA with President Clinton — and to a lonely mountain meadow, where he dropped to his knees one bright morning and surrendered himself to Jesus Christ.

• "Accounting for One Enoch in Religious Literature: Beowulf, the Book of Moses and LDS Apologetics" by Daniel Hadley
• "'Why then introduce them into our inner temple?' The Masonic Influence on Mormon Denial of Priesthood Ordination to African American Men" by Michael W. Homer

Born-Again churches have set up a special committee to probe allegations of two pastors involved in false teachings and cultism.

The probe was prompted by reports from the public that there are two prominent pastors in the city engaged in false teachings.

The Rev. Geoffrey Byarugaba of the African Evangelistic Enterprise heads the committee which brings together Deliverance, Pentecostal and National Fellowship of Born Again churches.

Addressing a press conference at Pearl Restaurant, Nakasero on Monday, Byarugaba said if the allegations are found to be true, the churches and the pastors will be banned.

He said, “As churches remember the Kanungu Kibwetere Cult massacre this week, the committee has set up a strategy to decampaign and open war on false prophets and churches that indulge in cultism.

“The Kanungu saga ought to have awakened the country. Tough laws are needed to control cult churches.”

Byarugaba said the week would create awareness among churches and pastors about the need to heed to Bible teachings about false teaching.

Church of Uganda assistant bishop Kampala Diocese the Rt. Rev. David Zac Niringye, said, “the issue is not the number of mushrooming churches but false teaching. In fact we need more churches. The point is, are these churches leading the flock to a life that is honourable and abundant?”

They said false teachings included openly dishonouring the word of God.

• What Is a Reverse Interlinear?
• The Purpose and Benefits of a Reverse Interlinear
• Overcoming the Objection of the Dangers of Dabbling in Greek

One product, however, proved to be just too much for me. Though my wife insisted on its necessity, I could not seem to justify the immediate expense or the lasting consequences of owning what is known as a “wipe warmer.” This silly apparatus claims to “take the jolt out” of wiping a baby’s undercarriage by warming the moist “baby wipes” to a more balmy temperature. As if “room temperature” is somehow abusively cold. This is one of those shame products that you’re supposed to buy so that you don’t raise the ire of visitors to your baby nursery. (“Did you hear? The Gresses are not warming their baby wipes! Unconscionable! Don’t they know that their baby could get Sudden Sphincter Frostnip?”)

Before moving to Washington, D.C., I worked as a mountain guide in the Rocky and Cascade mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest, leading winter mountaineering and backcountry skiing excursions. On extended trips, toilet paper often consisted of carefully shaped snowballs — so I’m not at all sympathetic to the idea that my kids cannot stand a mildly cool wipe of the bum that lasts about two thirds of a second.

What most concerns me about the wipe warmer is the attitude it could engender, and that I’ll one day wake up to realize that I have raised exceedingly effete and spoiled children who cower from any “jolt” or discomfort. I fear that they will recoil from worthy pursuits that involve suffering, like studying and work, and worry how they will react to the compulsory sufferings of life. I do not know whether our kids will take up pursuits such as mountaineering like their father, or marathon running like their mother — two pursuits which can stockpile suffering, but can also develop degrees of character and confidence not found in, say, videogames. But I’d at least like them to be comfortable with austerity and quiet in the face of adversity. In short, the wipe warmer represents an affront to everything that I want my kids to be.

Morgan begins by discussing other theories on the atonement and the weaknesses in these theories. He notes that the early and most current Church Authorities have adopted the penal-substitution theory. In a nutshell, this theory is that we must accept Jesus' atonement and repent, or we will pay for our own sins. He gives some good reasons why this theory is not truly sound, such as: if Jesus has already paid for our sins, why must he then insist on us repaying him? How is it that Justice demands not only payment, but also that we stay fully obedient to Christ? It also is contradicted by certain scriptural events: when Alma falls into an angel-induced coma and has a near-death experience, he starts out suffering for his own sins, but upon calling on Jesus' name for deliverance, he is immediately delivered from his sufferings. Why did God not require Alma to suffer for his sins until they were paid for first, and then free him, if the penal substitution theory was in force? The penal-substitution theory requires payment to Justice prior to forgiveness, but Alma seemed to receive it immediately - clearly there are holes in this theory.

Using D&C 93 and 88 as his primary scriptures, Morgan explains that the universe is filled with the Light of Christ. This light infuses all things with existence, and the more light an individual receives the more like God one becomes. Essentially, in the Divine Infusion theory, Christ's atonement lifts the universe out of total spiritual (and possibly also physical) darkness, allowing us to be able to become celestial.

Morgan writes, "The atonement was not a matter of satisfying justice's relentless thirst for suffering. Instead, it was a matter of pulling the universe far enough out of the darkness to make repentance and growth possible. The atonement 'bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance" (Alma 34:15). Thus, the atonement satisfies the demands of justice by making it possible for us to become celestial. A dual emphasis on grace and works follows naturally. Our works make us who we are and determine our final destiny, but every good work we do is enabled and influenced by the light of Christ in us."

An evangelical Christian minister claims he was unlawfully arrested after taping part of a performance of a Mormon-themed pageant in the Clarkston Cemetery near Logan Friday night.

Joel Kramer, 39, was arrested and booked for investigation of disorderly conduct after he told a Cache County sheriff's deputy he was not violating any laws by videotaping the pageant. The pageant depicts the life of Martin Harris, an early disciple of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"These are free pageants, so there's no copyright violation, and I'm within my rights to be on public land," Kramer said. "I feel like it was the LDS Church influence. That's the reason I was arrested."

Kramer, who claims the entire incident was recorded on video and audio tape, said he was told by a sheriff's deputy the LDS Church had requested Kramer turn off his cameras.

Jail records and an online incident report for the Cache County Sheriff's Office confirm Kramer's arrest and booking. He posted $280 bail and was released.