I wrote an essay for @sltrib.com about how the academic study of Mormonism was enabled by a partnership between individuals, community, and state, and how that structure, always tenuous, is now under siege.

I had not realized how much LDS history outside of traditional narratives relied on public support. Commentary from @benjaminepark.bsky.social

Terrifying and disgusting.

If you want an excellent and comprehensive overview of Nelson’s life and impact, @pfstack.bsky.social and David Noyce wrote a great obituary.

RIP Russell Nelson As a sign of his longevity, I was interviewed for this obit several years ago. Dude just refused to slow down.

If I can’t add to a conference through wit, I’ll do so through sartorial grace.

Note to anyone traveling to Boston: one of their airport runways is down for construction and is causing absolute madness. My flight was delayed two hours coming in, and our Boston crew said this is standard now. Will probably be this way through Thanksgiving. (Take note AAR folk.)

Trying to find joy where I can, so I’m loving the t-shirt my family got for my birthday. 41 and not-so-strong, but still fighting.

Very honored to share AMERICAN ZION won @aschurchhistory.bsky.social’s Philip Schaff Prize for best book in the history of Christianity. Given Schaff believed Mormonism was an “abnormal American phenomenon” & more like orientalism than Christianity, I’d like to think he’s spinning in his grave.

Tim Ballard showing up in a @benjaminepark.bsky.social TikTok explainer. LDS adjacent are going to know who he’s talking about before Park explains it to the wider audience. I don’t think Tim’s planning on coming back to the LDS church for a while. Watch Park’s video to see where Tim goes with this

There’s a special place reserved in Hades for people who claim one of the gym’s few bench presses during peak Monday hours and proceed to lift three sets across thirty minutes.

This last week, which featured multiple tenured professors losing their jobs & a direct erosion of academic freedom on multiple campuses, feels even more depressing and exhausting than the week in April when so many had their NEH grants cancelled. I knew it'd get bad, but not this quick. Dark days.

did a read-aloud of my latest column, set to the backdrop of a drive through central virginia youtu.be/pq8TUlk4BxQ

Hasn’t Utah already suffered enough?

"This is not Utah," says that state that has loosened open carry laws on campuses.

The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere.

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.

I'll never get over how there is a large segment of society that claimed to be dedicated to researching, exposing, and taking down a ring of elite pedophiles who allegedly manipulated the strings of justice... ...only to then support the most prominent example of that very type of immoral cabal.

In the inaugural episode of Dialogue Unbound, co-editors Caroline Kline and Margaret Olsen Hemming sit down with scholar Patrick Mason to explore what Mormon theology has to say about peace and peacemaking in our turbulent world. www.dialoguejournal.com/podcasts/mor...

My latest column for National Geographic is on Joseph Smith. It features the amazing new biography by @georgemasonu.bsky.social prof. John Turner and quotes from @benjaminepark.bsky.social's American Zion. www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Trump’s move to rename the Department of Defense to Department of War is more than mere stylistic PR: it is the convergence of political, cultural, and even religious trajectories that have been simmering since Harry Truman. I tried to explain this context and its meanings in a new YouTube video.

Is it Trump? Are we human, or are we dancer? Why does a loving God allow the presence of evil?

Our book is out!! Happy publication day to our fantastic team of editors and authors.

If you're curious why I won't be sleeping anytime soon.

Today is publication day for The Nursing Clio Reader. As I write in the preface of the book, I started Nursing Clio back when I was a second-semester grad student as part of a final project in a public humanities seminar taught by historian Matthew Countryman at UMich. 🧵

Have you registered for the free webinar on birthright citizenship yet? It’s time to learn what’s at stake. We cannot protect it if we don’t understand it. howard.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

For real, if you've ever been considering reviewing / interviewing / etc. someone but stopped yourself because the book was released months ago... do it! We love getting coverage after pub day.

Whenever conservatives claim democrats are immoral and hate traditional values, I’m just going to respond with this image.

A new book by John Turner is always an event, and this book is an especially big event! So glad to see this, @yalepress.bsky.social! The vitality of Mormon history as a subfield has been nothing short of remarkable.

I did a thing on Reddit: “Ask a Historian,” about my book, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. I’m posting it here if anyone wants to take a look. People asked lots of great questions!

Thinking about this, for no reason.

I’m thinking about starting a new major in blueskyist studies.

Surrender DonOLD!

Question for those of you who follow football a lot closer than I do: Do knee pads just not matter anymore? It seems all these players hike their pants/pads up to mid-thigh.

@shearites.bsky.social Thanks to the generosity of @robynlilyphd.bsky.social, we have renamed this annual prize the SHEAR Robyn Lily Davis Dissertation Prize. Now it'll come with a $1000 prize as well as a book contract and ms. workshop. Thank you, Robyn & Bill! shear.org/shear-book-p...

RFK Jr. transformed conspiracy theories into action and reshaped American policy in just a few months. @annamerlan.bsky.social and @kieraevebutler.bsky.social break down just how we got here:

thanks i hate it

First pass pages (a.k.a. page proofs). LFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I print the whole thing out. Yes, I go line-by-line using a wooden ruler I have had since college. #oldschool

Just randomly thinking of this Community scene. For no reason.

Let’s just say if Biden went three days without being seen the New York Times would have organized a search party akin to what Boston did with the marathon bombers.

Trump cut tens of billions of aid to dying communities, cancelled billions of funding for scientific research, rescinded tens of millions of grant dollars for scholarship, and fired tens of thousands of dedicated employees, but are willing to simply burn cash in a fascist show of strength.

I'm not the only one to make this point, but there will need to be the equivalent of Nuremberg Trials when this is all over (however long that takes). If there are no consequences for fascists, we'll keep having fascism.

2025 is all about finding the little things that help you survive. For me, one of those is buying a piece of tres leches cake from HEB, keeping it in my department's fridge, and taking a few bites whenever I walk by.

Come be my colleague at the University of Minnesota -- we are hiring! @umn-rels.bsky.social The Religious Studies program at UMN is searching for a new TT position in Buddhist Studies. Please circulate widely!

Sometimes history can be a real slog. And then sometimes its a joy, and you feel immensely proud of a particular manuscript section. I've had a lot of the former recently, so I'm glad this week has been more of the latter.

A day late to bluesky, but yesterday was the official pub day for 'Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis' with @pennpress.bsky.social Interested in infrastructure, war, revolution and the rise (and fall) of the British Empire in North America? Get your own copy from www.pennpress.org/978151282828...

Remember how the in the tv series 24 the first few chaotic episodes would introduce potential threats that then recede, only to reappear later that season and you’re like, “oh yeah, I forgot things could be even worse!” That’s how I feel expecting the Greenland/Panama/Canada nonsense to resurface.

Job: Associate or Full Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College specializing in modern American Christianity. Deadline: October 1, 2025.

So how much of my first-day lecture am I supposed to scrap so we can talk about the Taylor Swift news? A quarter? The entire thing?