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“And now, behold, I say unto you, my servant James [Covel], I have looked upon thy works and I know thee. . . . I have prepared thee for a greater work” (Doctrine and Covenants 39:7, 11). . . . “And [James Covel] received the word with gladness, but straightway Satan tempted him; and the fear of persecution and the cares of the world caused him to reject the word.” (Doctrine and Covenants 40:2)

BYU’s Academic Vice President Justin Collings has appointed Steven Harper as a Maxwell Institute Faculty Fellow, filling one of the Institute’s two-year rotating fellowships. His term will begin in September 2025.

In a world of competing voices, discerning the Lord’s voice can feel more difficult than ever. But Rosalynde Welch, associate director of BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute, says one book of scripture is equipped to help: the Doctrine and Covenants.

The deadline for the 2025 Book of Mormon Art Contest is fast approaching. Remember to submit your artwork by June 1 at 11:59 PM. You can find the form by clicking on the Book of Mormon Art Contest tab or by clicking this link.

The Maxwell Institute’s 2024 Annual Report is now available to read online. Thank you for your support of the Institute this past year.

As part of a course I taught years ago on “religion and the concept of Time” at Hanover College in Indiana, a bright college sophomore conducted an informal survey among her peers around campus. Her initial question was: “What is the first thing that comes to mind when I say the word ‘time’?” The first twenty responses she received were: “stress,” “intense,” “hourglass,” “goes fast,” “schedules,” “stress,” “always going,” “never enough,” “calendar,” “wasted,” “stress,” “restriction,” “chases us,” “clock,” “goes fast,” “ahhh! Stressful,” “running out,” “in motion,” “time flies,” and “stressful.”

The Doctrine and Covenants is one of many tools at our disposal to develop our vision. As we expand the ways the Lord is able to enlighten our eyes, we will experience more instances of epiphany, or sudden strokes of revelation and insight. But we can also have more instances of “hierophany.” As the influential historian of religion Mircea Eliade explains, these are moments when the divine manifests itself in the profane, which here just means the everyday.

His thoughts soared far beyond the stars, but he worried about the wind. He had, in a sense, waited his whole life to preach this sermon. “He lived his life in crescendo,” a later admirer wrote, and this was to be a kind of climax. He had a dazzling vision to unfold, a soaring theology to set forth. He had friends to comfort and eternity to hold before their gaze. If only the wind would cooperate. If only his lungs could hold up. If only his voice would carry. If only he could find the words to match his message.

The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship concluded the Wonder of Scripture Lecture series on April 11, 2025, with a concluding lecture from Rosalynde Welch, Associate Director of the Institute. These lectures, organized by Maxwell Research Fellows Kimberly Matheson and Kristian Heal, have explored different books of scripture from various religions and inspired hundreds of students and faculty across campus. 24 speakers spanned two semesters, each bringing a unique perspective to scripture in and outside of the Latter-day Saint canon.

If revelation is abundant in the Restoration, then why are there times when we feel as though silence reigns? (38:12). At times we cry out, “O God where are thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” (121:1–2). Even a half hour of “silence in heaven” in God’s timeline can feel like an eternity to us (88:95).

Joseph Smith’s teachings and revelations uniquely connected the seemingly mundane tasks of record-keeping to the theological bedrock of the Atonement and its ability to save each priceless soul. On one hand, this is not particularly surprising, given that Joseph’s first major revelatory action was to produce the Book of Mormon—a sacred text that emphasizes the importance of record-keeping as a bulwark against spiritual decay.

Agency existed in those premortal worlds from which we come. And yet, we know that in some essential way agency became operative with new stakes and new conditions in the Garden of Eden. The Genesis narrative makes clear that human creation is not finished—we do not exist in any complete or perfect way—until the first human creation has been differentiated, organized, into two human entities.

“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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,”