Bridge of Reason

  Utah has become the first state in the USA to reinstate the firing squad to administer the death penalty. This is sometimes called fusillading, from the French fusil , rifle. This story has several layers, from the shortage of drugs for lethal injections, to the question of which method of killing a human being is most humane, to that of whether, as European society believes, execution is simply a barbaric throwback we don’t want in the 21st century. It is this last view in Europe that has created the shortage of drugs that European countries refuse to export to America. Fusillading as a form of execution has usually been practiced in a war setting, guns being the most easily available weapon for the job, and being the quickest and most humane method available in the circumstances. In America, apart from the Civil War, for which figures are unavailable, it is estimated that 142 men have been executed by this method since 1608. Utah’s record is most striking. Forty-four exec...

Some deceptions are so obvious as to be audacious, like the Jehovah’s Witness teaching that Jesus returned invisibly in 1914 when he failed to turn up physically, as predicted. Or the Mormon claim that Jesus walked the Americas following his resurrection and spoke to a boy in a grove of trees in 1820. Others are so subtle as to pass you by if you don’t know what you are seeing, what you are hearing. Easter this year of 2015 is the weekend of 3 rd to 5 th April. The March Ensign magazine of the Mormon Church, as you might expect, anticipates Easter, and the momentous events of that first Easter, as will Christian publications around the world. Well, not quite as will Christian publications. The Christian Easter The focus of every Christian on Good Friday is Golgotha, the place where Jesus bore the penalty for the sins of the world, suffered crucifixion, and died. The events surrounding that defining sacrifice are also in mind of course. The Last Supper, at which the new cove...

Bruce R McConkie (the ‘R’ stands for Redd), member of the First Council of the Seventy from 1946, was an apostle of the Mormon Church from 1972 until his death in April 1985. Born into a Mormon family he boasted polygamist forebears who rubbed shoulders with Joseph and Hyrum Smith. One biographer describes McConkie as, “breathing, talking, and living the principles of the [Mormon] gospel... in the McConkie home.” He married Emma, the daughter of Joseph Fielding Smith, grandson of Hyrum, apostle from 1910 and church president 1970-72. He studied at Utah Law School, obtaining his BA degree and his LLB, served in the military, retiring as lieutenant-colonel and worked for the CIA. His work has been described in glowing terms in a biographical note in the Ensign magazine, Jan.1973: “He has written numerous articles and handbooks and read hundreds of manuscripts submitted for his appraisal. His sermons at conferences have been consistently doctrinal in nature, pointing out the basic ...