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Rosalynde Welch

Columnist

Rosalynde Welch is a member of the Webster Groves, Missouri ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She holds degrees in English literature from Brigham Young University and the University of California, San Diego, where her dissertation focused on private conscience in early modern English literature. She writes on interreligious issues for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and she blogs on Mormon issues at timesandseasons.org. She also serves as the managing editor of the Mormon Review, and she steals the occasional afternoon to pursue her own research agendas in early modern literature and Mormon literature and philosophy. Rosalynde and her husband, together with their four young children, make their home in St Louis, Missouri.

Works by Rosalynde Welch

My Kids Hate Trump, and That Worries Me

Rosalynde Welch | March 01, 2016

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Whither Mormonism? Look to Quorums and Councils

Rosalynde Welch | October 05, 2015

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Family in the Future Tense: Accommodation and Critique in...

Rosalynde Welch | August 04, 2015

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A short, cranky list of highly curated links from all over

Rosalynde Welch | April 16, 2015

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I, Rosencrantz

Rosalynde Welch | January 11, 2014

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Singing in ten-thousand part harmony

Rosalynde Welch | November 04, 2013

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What we can't know about social conservatism

Rosalynde Welch | October 11, 2013

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All such good works to walk in: motherhood and female...

Rosalynde Welch | October 10, 2013

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Modesty and the Imaginary Me

Rosalynde Welch | October 08, 2013

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Stay-at-home mothers are not moochers

Rosalynde Welch | October 07, 2013

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"Austenland" is much better than the critics are saying

Rosalynde Welch | September 25, 2013

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On earth as it is in heaven: more on social construction

Rosalynde Welch | June 28, 2013

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The Great Existential Struggle of the Bi-monthly Gospel...

Rosalynde Welch | June 27, 2013

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A Review of "The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense...

Rosalynde Welch | January 15, 2013

The best question to ask is not whether this book is deeply right or deeply wrong, but......

Faith and Love in Ten Thousand Words or Less

Rosalynde Welch | November 27, 2012

What I learned in freshman English didn't change my life until years later....

Duck Beach to Absurdity: A Review of "Duck Beach to...

Rosalynde Welch | October 31, 2012

A fine, funny new film explores the fraught cultural territory of Mormon singles....

Shame, Stigma, and Social Engineering

Rosalynde Welch | October 17, 2012

Shame is destructive, but can it be harnessed by the community for good use?...

Verifying Scripture in an Empirical Age

Rosalynde Welch | October 04, 2012

We verify the Lord's word when we take it into our lives and make it true....

Chicken Omelettes, or What We're Really Arguing About

Rosalynde Welch | September 27, 2012

What a Facebook conversation taught me about the nature of reality, and what that means......

A Blogger Against Blogging

Rosalynde Welch | September 19, 2012

The present becomes merely an instrumental passage through time, a means to a deferred......

A Is for Agency

Rosalynde Welch | September 11, 2012

If agency is the condition that results in individual humans taking different paths, we......

Born on the Cricket Pitch

Rosalynde Welch | July 26, 2012

Are the Christian ethics of the global North good for the global South?...

The Odd Couple: Story and Community

Rosalynde Welch | June 28, 2012

John Dehlin's Mormon Stories project has a contradiction at its center. Whether it's a......

Anxiety and Resurrection

Rosalynde Welch | June 06, 2012

I was drowning in post-partum anxiety. Then theology saved my life....

Religious but Not Spiritual

Rosalynde Welch | May 30, 2012

What does it mean to "observe" a religious holiday? And more importantly, what should I......

One Weird Old Tip for Young Women Leaders

Rosalynde Welch | April 03, 2012

Less pampered princess, more spiritual self-reliance, please....

Abortion, Disability, and the Secret Life of Liberalism

Rosalynde Welch | March 13, 2012

Emily Rapp says that she wishes she had aborted her disabled son. The best response is......

Inside One Mormon Family: Raising Faithful Children

Rosalynde Welch | February 09, 2012

Everyday family life fosters or hinders a child's spiritual growth than any Sunday......

The Gospel According to Pinterest: Fear, Loathing, and...

Rosalynde Welch | January 26, 2012

Bring on your quinoa brownies, your Bible-verse Toms, your infants photographed in......

Occupy the Pink Aisle

Rosalynde Welch | January 12, 2012

Rather than dismissing the pink aisle in the toy store as illegitimate and artificial,......

Little Lord Jesus, Asleep on the Hay

Rosalynde Welch | December 22, 2011

What kind of a mother would leave her baby lying alone in a manger? It goes against......

Mormon Priesthood and Meritocracy

Rosalynde Welch | December 14, 2011

What good is a patriarchal priesthood, anyway? More than you might think....

Choosing Faith vs. Receiving Faith, Part 2

Rosalynde Welch | December 01, 2011

Religious beliefs are not chosen; they capture us. Faith is not a triumph of the human......

Choosing Faith vs. Receiving Faith

Rosalynde Welch | November 18, 2011

Is faith simply a choice to believe? Is doubt the necessary condition for a free choice?...

Flowers Under the Big Tent

Rosalynde Welch | October 23, 2011

Rock star Brandon Flowers is a new face of the LDS Church. What does this mean for......

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

Rosalynde Welch | October 13, 2011

How Latter-day Saints should -- and should not -- respond to charges that their......

Women's Voices, Women's Prayers

Rosalynde Welch | October 05, 2011

Women don't pray in LDS General Conferences. Is that a doctrine or a policy? Maybe it......

A Mormon Baptism and Happy Endings

Rosalynde Welch | September 14, 2011

Reflections on a son's baptism, and what it means....

Female Inequality, Two Ways

Rosalynde Welch | September 11, 2011

Feminists were right to worry about gender inequality in the classroom, but now they......

The Mormon Magnificat

Rosalynde Welch | September 01, 2011

In the LDS Church, to “magnify” a spiritual calling is to claim gifts both practical and......

Should I Burst My Filter Bubble?

Rosalynde Welch | July 26, 2011

What happened when the Internet collided with my deepest moral intuitions....

My Hot Heaven

Rosalynde Welch | July 20, 2011

Should large families be held to higher environmental standards?...

Mozart in Hell

Rosalynde Welch | July 13, 2011

Don Giovanni asks which is better: eternal suffering or eternal oblivion? It's not a......

Wishing Well, Penny

Rosalynde Welch | July 05, 2011

Personal revelation is wishful thinking, and it's okay for believers to acknowledge......

Christian Liberty, Secular Nation

Rosalynde Welch | June 28, 2011

The idea of Christian liberty underwrites the vocabulary of freedom Americans will......

The Book of Mormon, Redux

Rosalynde Welch | June 21, 2011

The surprising subtext of "The Book of Mormon" beats South Park at its own skeptical......

Perfect Union, Imperfect Family

Rosalynde Welch | May 31, 2011

Tatiana and Krista are twins conjoined at the head by a neural bridge. They offer a......

Rapture and Knowledge

Rosalynde Welch | May 24, 2011

I respect the courage and integrity of modern believers who are willing to hazard real......

Oxymormon: LDS Literary Fiction and the Problem of Genre

Rosalynde Welch | May 17, 2011

What is it with Mormons and trashy genre fiction?...

A Prairie Prodigal and a Saturday-Night Sabbath

Rosalynde Welch | May 03, 2011

Garrison Keillor's fundamentalist Christian upbringing feeds the genius of his work. Is......

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be English Majors

Rosalynde Welch | April 26, 2011

Why the academic humanities destroy religiosity, and what to do about it....

Seven Lessons for Easter from Exodus

Rosalynde Welch | April 19, 2011

A fortuitous encounter with the Old Testament has brought me surprising new perspectives......

Downstairs in Downton Abbey

Rosalynde Welch | April 12, 2011

Despite what you might think, the television series offers acute insight into the......

Milton to Mormon: Free Yourself from Mental Slavery

Rosalynde Welch | April 05, 2011

What a dialogue across the centuries can teach us about free agency -- and why it may......

Neat Girl Versus Sweet Girl

Rosalynde Welch | March 29, 2011

Neat girls and sweet girls negotiate our vexed relationship to feminism, even as they......

Catastrophes of Meaning

Rosalynde Welch | March 09, 2011

This is not the tired cliche about questions being more important than answers, nor is......

What "The King's Speech" Teaches about Mormon Culture

Rosalynde Welch | March 02, 2011

I may not mourn the passing of some of our cultural taboos, but I'm a qualified......

The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 3

Rosalynde Welch | February 24, 2011

Enlightenment liberalism has driven itself into a philosophical cul-de-sac, and the only......

The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 2

Rosalynde Welch | February 16, 2011

Societies in their creaky, many-limbed complexity have a way of lurching forward in......

The Arguments of Religious Freedom under Fire: Part 1

Rosalynde Welch | February 09, 2011

Elder Oaks' speech on religious freedom is built around a family of four related claims......

We're All Mormons Now, Janeen Jacobs Brady

Rosalynde Welch | February 04, 2011

How 70's Mormon kitsch from Janeen Jacobs Brady reflected the culture wars of the time. ...

To Choose or to Be Chosen: Lessons from "The Giver"

Rosalynde Welch | January 26, 2011

I am interested in refining a naive understanding of Mormon teachings on free will and......

The Cub in the Global Marketplace: Amy Chua's "Tiger...

Rosalynde Welch | January 19, 2011

American parents, riven by our own narcissism and the conflicted messages of a......

A Landmark Achievement

Rosalynde Welch | January 12, 2011

Grant Hardy's new book offers a neutral rendezvous space for devout and skeptical......

Mormon Forms and Mormon Formalism

Rosalynde Welch | January 05, 2011

Mormonism is deeply iconogenic, or at any rate iconophilic: it embraces social forms......

Santa, Signs, and the Nature of Belief: A Christmas Method

Rosalynde Welch | December 20, 2010

The story of Santa allows both children and adults to practice a kind of methodological......

Life Among the Sugarplums

Rosalynde Welch | December 15, 2010

Sometimes one cannot avoid the conclusion that life in the real world is indeed colder,......

Women, Desire, and the Hidden Discourse

Rosalynde Welch | December 08, 2010

We're already talking about female sexuality, a lot, but we don't recognize it. We......

On Black Friday and Other Religious Holidays

Rosalynde Welch | December 02, 2010

The Harry & David catalog may seem like a strange catechism, but markets... seem to......

After Choice

Rosalynde Welch | December 01, 2010

Third-wave feminism's emphasis on "choice" presents a theological problem. We need to......

Salt and Seed, an Introduction

Rosalynde Welch | November 16, 2010

Two purposes for this column: salt, to preserve and to season the best ideas I encounter......

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