Here are some of the notable posts from the past week, drawn from the 7 display boxes at Mormon Archipelago. Plus a couple of extras.

Box 1 – I liked Imposed Openness at FPR, exploring how the LDS Church can have a theological approach that welcomes “a variety of viewpoints,” yet have manuals and a membership that is inclined to suppress diversity and openness in most discussions of most topics.

Box 2 – How to Make Mormon Literature Great. Nice discussion in the post and comments on this perennial yet still beguiling question.

Box 3 – The LDS Newsroom Blog lists LDS athletes competing at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. May they all perform well and make their countries proud.

Box 4 – At ZD, the latest entry in a series on being 30-something and single in the Church.

Box 5 – Along the same lines as the FPR post discussed in Box 1, Clean Cut posts Wide Latitude of Possible Beliefs in Mormonism.

Now for some blogs you may be less familiar with.

Box 6 – At Pieran Spring, a detailed and very enlightening post on Joseph Smith’s Revelations on Preexistence and Spirits. The post also provides historical religious context by summarizing what other Christians believed about spirits at this time:

From the outset, it’s important to note the religious environment at the time. Spirit was universally held to be immaterial. Early converts to Mormonism would have accepted the traditional worldview that God created all things, including souls, ex nihilo. There were, however, differing views among Christians as to when and how the soul was created. Among the variations, two are particularly important to note. Some believed that the soul was created at the moment of conception or birth (creationism). Others believed that the souls of all men were created during God’s initial creative act in the beginning (preexistencism).

Box 7 – At Poor Rustic, a post on Pre-Adamites that’s not just a rehash of what Nibley said. The post reviews essays in a book titled Reading Genesis After Darwin, summarizing the approach taken by the authors like this:

Although the authors seem to come from more conservative Christian traditions, so far in my reading none has tried mount a defense of a literal reading of Genesis, or to harmonize it with biology, geology, or cosmogony. In fact, to this point they have all rejected that sort of an approach.

Also in Box 7, Pure Mormonism writes about The Best Conference Talk You Never Read. It was an actual Conference talk; toward the end of the post there is a link to a transcript.

Outside the Box – Not all LDS blogs are listed at MA. Here are a couple of posts from outside the box.

• At Heavenly Ascents, On Corruptions in the Biblical Text: Ancient and Modern.
• At Lehi’s Library, A Review of Pelagianism. Given that Mormons are often dismissed as modern-day Pelagians by modern-day Christians, it’s worth getting to know the views of Brother Pelagius a bit better.