News & Blog
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The Lord’s Invitation: You Are Capable and Needed (Adapted from Divine Aid, by Amy Easton)
“A great and marvelous work is about to come forth unto the children of men . . . Behold, the field is white already to harvest; therefore, whoso desireth to reap, let him thrust in his sickle with his might, and reap while the day lasts, that he may treasure up for his soul everlasting salvation in the kingdom of God.” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:1, 3; 11:1, 3; 12:1, 3; 14:1, 3)
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New Full-Time Faculty Fellow for Fall 2025
The Maxwell Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Steven L. Peck as a full-time faculty fellow, with his two-year term slated to begin in September 2025. Dr. Peck is a professor of biology in Brigham Young University’s College of Life Sciences and the author of the Living Faith title Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist, published with the Maxwell Institute in 2015.
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A Radical Sabbath (Adapted from Time by Philip L. Barlow)
When modeling and teaching of the Sabbath, my goodly parents, Latter-day Saints from birth, were encouraging rather than heavy-handed. This was prudent, given their children’s temperaments. Despite wise and faithful parents, a vague reluctance sometimes came upon my young self when the declining Saturday afternoon sun made long shadows. Thoughts of the morrow–a more regulated day–encroached. Transposing my imagination from an antebellum Missouri village to the twentieth-century suburbs of Salt Lake City, I retained enough Tom Sawyer in my blood to find the prospect of preachings and formal Sunday attire to be constricting.
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Insights from My Life
Elder Maxwell seldom spoke autobiographically because he did not like to draw attention to himself, but members of his family encouraged him to share some personal experiences and lessons he learned from them.
Elder Maxwell was in the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy when he delivered this devotional address at Brigham Young University on October 26, 1976.
Elder Maxwell was in the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy when he delivered this devotional address at Brigham Young University on October 26, 1976.
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Seeing With Our Whole Bodies (Adapted from Seeing by Mason Kamana Allred)
The Doctrine and Covenants makes the provocative wager that spiritual vision is a mode of seeing that lights up the whole body so that we feel, sense, and know not just through the eyes. This realization illuminates passages like those that promise readers if their eye is single to God’s glory, then their whole body will be filled with light.
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Call for Submissions: 2025 Book of Mormon Art Contest
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship is seeking original art created by BYU students for the 3rd Annual Book of Mormon Art Contest. Artwork will be featured in the Book of Mormon Art Catalog, in an art display on BYU campus, and winners will receive prize money.
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Notwithstanding My Weakness
First, my brothers and sisters, my gratitude to the prophet and his counselors for this call. To them, to Elder Richards and the members of the First Quorum of the Seventy, I pledge that my little footnote on the page of the quorum’s history will read clearly that I wore out my life in helping to spread Jesus’ gospel and helping to regulate His church.
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A Constitution for All (Adapted from Divine Law, by Justin Collings)
The notion that divine inspiration informs the U.S. Constitution is a distinctive teaching of the restored Church and a striking declaration, thrice repeated, of the Doctrine and Covenants. The revelations declare that the Constitution incorporates a “principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges” that “belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before” God (98:5); that God “suffered [it] to be established” and that it “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles,”
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Why Not Now?
My brothers and sisters, I would like to speak of and to a particular group of important individuals. These are they who fully intend, someday, to begin to believe and/or to be active in the Church. But not yet! These are not bad individuals but good individuals who simply do not know how much better they could be.
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2024 Annual Lecture Recording
Thank you for being here. I don't know what to say. It's overwhelming to be here with you and to have Elder Gilbert. Christina. What beautiful, beautiful words of consecration And thank you so much, Rosalynde, for that wonderful introduction. How many of you have an Elder Maxwell story where you remember something that he said or did that indelibly stays with you?
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Elder Maxwell Addresses Introduction
A few years ago, J. Spencer Fluhman, then-director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, and Elder Maxwell’s children (Cory Maxwell, Becky Maxwell Ahlander, Nancy Maxwell Anderson, and Jane Maxwell Sanders) collaborated on a volume of talks by Elder Maxwell that would allow Elder Maxwell’s words to echo through future generations. Considering over a hundred talks in a variety of settings, the family chose twenty-four talks they felt were the most incisive and enduring statements of gospel principles and of Elder Maxwell’s testimony.
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Moroni 10: That Which is Good...is True
Moroni, who brought the Book of Mormon to a close before “sealing up” the large record abridged by his father, was a veteran of calamity. And it can be dangerous to tame calamity too readily. In our zeal for happy endings, we risk trivializing tragedy, justifying wretchedness, domesticating human agony, or avoiding reality.
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Moroni 7-9: Without Love, Ye Are Nothing
The Book of Moroni is the only book within the Book of Mormon whose original 1830 chapter breaks have all been retained in our modern editions. I suspect the reason is that, for the most part, Moroni’s chapters were already short to begin with.
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Book series “Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants” is now available to order
BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship is pleased to announce the launch of a seven-volume book series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants. This multi-authored series, a first in Doctrine and Covenants scholarship, distills the significance of Joseph Smith’s revelations for readers seeking a life of faith in the modern world. Each concise volume traces a different theme across the Doctrine and Covenants, touching on the beloved and the lesser-known revelations and combining scholarly insight with practical application.
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Moroni 1-6: Sharing the Sacrament with Moroni at the End of Time
The book of Moroni is the only book in the Book of Mormon in which the phrase “it came to pass” is entirely absent. Perhaps that phrase seems trivial and its absence insignificant--though I think otherwise--but it at the very least it points to the unique character of the book of Moroni.
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Ether 12-15: Peacemakers and Pride
I can never come anymore to the last chapters of Ether without thinking of what still stands out in my mind as a wonderfully unexpected Ensign article from the February 2008 issue.
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Book of Mormon Art Catalog Expands to Include Restoration History and Scripture
The world’s largest database of Latter-day Saint art just got bigger. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog (https://bookofmormonartcatalog.org) now includes not only visual art inspired by the Book of Mormon but also art based on Church history, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
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Ether 6-11: Light and Void
Most of us know the story: The brother of Jared, concerned about crossing the ocean in waterproof—and, consequently, lightproof—ships, sought the Lord's help and, using his creativity, presented sixteen molten stones for the Lord to illuminate.
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