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A Content Analysis of Doubt: How Latter-day Saints Interact Online When One of Their Own Seeks Answers
No full textThis content analysis examines how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) interact with doubting members in online forums, focusing on Facebook and Reddit. Analyzing 1,115 comments from four public posts (August 2024–January 2025), six emergent themes characterize these interactions: (1) normalizing doubt, (2) thought-terminating clichés, (3) bringing back to the fold, (4) hierarchical escalation, (5) attributing doubt to Satan, and (6) emotional reasoning. Findings reveal that LDS members overwhelmingly dominate these discussions, employing doctrinal language, personal narratives, and appeals to authority to reintegrate doubters. Notably, non-member interference was rare, suggesting moderated or self-selected engagement. The study highlights how digital platforms serve as spaces for communal care during faith crises, though their reliance on doctrinal shortcuts may inadvertently marginalize intellectual doubt. Limitations include platform-specific dynamics and the absence of offline comparisons. This research contributes to scholarship on religious doubt, digital community-building, and the interplay of emotion and authority in online Mormon discourse
Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy: Essays (2024), by Nancy Bunting, Seamus Hamill-Keays, and Toby Widdicombe
Get PDFBook review, by Douglas Charles Kane, of Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy: Essays (2024), by Nancy Bunting, Seamus Hamill-Keays, and Toby Widdicomb
Sounds of Battle and Battle of Sounds: Belliphonic in Tolkien
Get PDFThis paper explores the concept of the belliphonic—a term denoting the acoustic dimensions of warfare—within the context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, focusing on the Battle of the Five Armies. While modern war studies have mainly centered on the mechanized soundscapes of twentieth-century conflict, this study engages with recent scholarly efforts to recover the sonic textures of medieval battle. Drawing on theories of wartime acoustics and examples from medieval literature, the paper examines how Tolkien, informed by his expertise in Old and Middle English texts and his lived experience in World War I, crafts a dynamic and psychologically rich auditory battlefield. Through an analysis of trumpet calls, war cries, strategic silences, and sonic intrusions—from thunderous arrivals to commanding speeches—the paper argues that sound in Tolkien’s battle scenes is a potent force of organization, disorientation, memory, and moral ambiguity. The study reveals how the belliphonic enriches the dramatic structure of the battle and deepens our understanding of character agency, emotional states, and ethical tensions. Ultimately, the paper calls for broader engagement with sonic warfare in Tolkien’s legendarium and related works, positioning the belliphonic as a critical yet underexplored element of his world-building and literary craft
The Caddisflies (Trichoptera) of an Undisturbed Lower Michigan Habitat
Get PDFThe caddisfly assemblages of small streams, medium floodplain and forested rivers, and lakes within the Black River Ranch, a relatively undisturbed habitat in northern Lower Michigan, were sampled during 2014–2015 using ultraviolet light traps to establish a reference assemblage for the caddisflies of the region. A total of 117 species were collected including three—Hydroptila amoena Ross, H. novicola Blickle and Morse, and H. quinola Ross—not previously reported from Michigan. All species and their habitat affinities are reported herein. Individual sampling sites all had high levels of species richness compared to similar habitat types throughout Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and included the single most species-rich sample from any of the three states. Due to this high species richness, as well as a trophic functional composition indicative of undisturbed ecosystems, the Black River Ranch assemblage is probably the most appropriate assemblage to use as a regional biological monitoring reference site
First Record of Eurypogon niger (Melsheimer) (Coleoptera: Artematopodidae) in Illinois
Get PDFThe elateroid species, Eurypogon niger (Melsheimer) (Coleoptera: Artematopodidae), is recorded for the first time from Illinois. This brings to 10 the number of U.S. states (plus the District of Columbia) from which the species has been reported. Its occurrence has also been noted in Canada
The Wheel of Fire: An Obsessive-Compulsive Reading of Frodo Baggins
Get PDFAlthough addiction has been the main psychological framework for understanding the Ring’s influence, it does not fully capture Frodo’s inner conflict. This paper argues that an obsessive-compulsive reading accounts for his ego-dystonic relationship with the Ring and his lack of an initial period of using it for pleasure, both of which differentiate his experience from other Ringbearers. This reading, rather than in opposition to addictive or post-traumatic frameworks, can coexist with both to bring added nuance to how readers and scholars understand Frodo’s experience
Grief, Grieving, and Permission to Mourn in the Quenta Silmarillion
Get PDFTolkien asserted on multiple occasions that death was a primary theme of his work, and there are over ninety deaths of named characters in the Quenta Silmarillion alone. In reading the Quenta Silmarillion as historiography, the universality and psychologically powerful experience of death, grief, and mourning allows the narrators of the Quenta Silmarillion to shape how readers perceive characters, events, and themes in the text. Assuming Pengolodh as the primary narrator, this paper investigates how Tolkien used a limited, flawed, and biased narrative point of view as a strategy to shape reader responses and theme. Characters who die in the Quenta Silmarillion vary in whether they are grieved and how they are mourned such that some characters are aggrandized and their negative deeds deemphasized, while others conspicuously lack any mention of grief or mourning, drawing attention to their negative actions and essentially dehumanizing them as people capable of being loved and grieved (or in some cases, capable of the normal human emotions of love and grief). The biased treatment of death by the Quenta Silmarillion narrator not only uses psychology to shape readers\u27 perceptions but stands as moral guideposts to the fictional audience of later ages in the legendarium and creates the sense of untold stories that Tolkien used to create the impression historical depth in his work
Redescription of the female of Oobius depressus (Girault) (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), newly found in Michigan, U.S.A.
Get PDFA female of Oobius depressus (Girault) (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), collected in a modified Malaise trap in the canopy of a black locust tree, Robinia pseudoacacia, at Rose Lake State Wildlife Area in Bath Charter Township, Clinton Co., Michigan, U.S.A., is re-described and illustrated. This species was previously known only from the type series of headless specimens of both sexes from the type locality in Morristown, Henry Co., Illinois, U.S.A. These type specimens were from a single cohort of locust borer, Megacyllene robiniae (Forster) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), eggs collected and reared over one hundred years ago. An updated taxonomic key to females of native and introduced species of the genus Oobius Trjapitzin, which now includes O. depressus, is provided
The native and introduced bark and ambrosia beetles of Michigan (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae)
Get PDFOur knowledge of the biogeography of Scolytinae of eastern temperate North America is very patchy. We used data from hand collecting, trapped material (from 65 of 83 counties), and museum collections, supplemented by literature records, to compile a list comprising 107 bark beetle species in 45 genera for Michigan, a state with an especially rich diversity of woody plants. We provide detailed collection data documenting 32 species not previously catalogued for Michigan, 23 of which are new state records; the genera Trypophloeus and Trischidias are reported from Michigan for the first time. Fifteen Michigan scolytines are not native to North America; Ambrosiodmus rubricollis (Eichhoff), Crypturgus pusillus (Gyllenhal), Euwallacea validus (Eichhoff), Xyleborus californicus Wood, Xylosandrus crassiusculus (Motschulsky) have not previously been found in the state. We report Michigan hosts for 67 species, including 49 new host associations for the 93 native species. Despite identifying over 4000 specimens for this study, we fully expect to find many more species: over 30 additional species occur in the Great Lakes region