News & Blog

Academic Vice President Justin Collings has appointed John B. White, PhD, as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, beginning Winter Semester 2026.

Steven C. Harper explains how cultural, linguistic, and interpretive “noise” affects our understanding of the biblical Creation accounts. It highlights key differences among the Genesis, Moses, and Abraham narratives and encourages readers to approach scripture with tools that clarify meaning and reduce misunderstanding.

Kelly Patterson Appointed as a Maxwell Institute Faculty Fellow

Elder Maxwell was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when he delivered this General Conference address in April 1994.

In the journey of discipleship we lose our old selves. The natural man and the natural woman are “put off,” and then we find ourselves having become more saintly. We see such saintliness all about us in the Church—quiet, good women and men, not particularly status-full, who are becoming saintly. This is what should be happening in the lives of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I am struck, brothers and sisters, by the apostolic request “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). As I study that expression, I find it occurred after the Twelve had already seen Jesus heal Peter’s mother-in-law, a leper, a paralytic, a withered hand, and the centurion’s servant. They had observed Jesus cast out devils, raise from the dead a widow’s son and Jairus’s daughter, still the tempest, cast out a legion of devils, feed the five thousand miraculously, and be transfigured on the Mount. Yet they still asked, “Lord, increase our faith”! That request tells us something about the nature of faith.

Only reform and self-restraint, institutional and individual, can finally rescue society! Only a sufficient number of sin-resistant souls can change the marketplace. As Church members, we should be part of that sin-resistant counterculture. Instead, too many members are sliding down the slope, though perhaps at a slower pace.

Since we have been told clearly by Jesus what manner of men and women we ought to become—even as He is (see 3 Nephi 27:27)—how can we do so, except each of us employs repentance as the regular means of personal progression? Personal repentance is part of taking up the cross daily. (See Luke 9:23.) Without it, clearly there could be no “perfecting of the Saints” (Ephesians 4:12).