Faith – Therese Doucet

Is the Tea Party Irrational?

A philosophy professor acquaintance of mine recently wrote an interesting blog post defending the Tea Party’s rationality, and then Salon.com came out with an article, Tea Party Radicalism is Misunderstood, echoing some of those points and differing on others. I appreciated the attempts at de-simplifying people’s views of the Tea Party’s tactics, and I haveContinue reading “Is the Tea Party Irrational?”

Authenticity

After my marriage ended about a year ago, I had no real intention of dating, at least not through my own efforts. As it happened, I ended up doing a surprising amount of dating that just sort of happened without my feeling like I’d gone much out of my way to cause it. In thisContinue reading “Authenticity”

A Surefire Recipe for Unassailable Faith, Involving Four Judgments and a Vegetable Analogy

I have a new essay out, published in the latest issue of a literary magazine called Hotel Amerika, which is run by Columbia College in Chicago. The essay is called “A Surefire Recipe for Unassailable Faith, Involving Four Judgments and a Vegetable Analogy.” In it, I give my own homecooked recipe for getting faith andContinue reading “A Surefire Recipe for Unassailable Faith, Involving Four Judgments and a Vegetable Analogy”

The Economy of Souls

I have a new print publication out in Jabberwock Review, a literary magazine published by Mississippi State University. It’s a nonfiction essay called “The Economy of Souls.” It’s kind of a long essay, so I will make cookies for anyone who manages to read the whole thing. There will be a quiz afterward. Enjoy!

More on the Great (Ex)Mormon Novel

Back in January, I wrote a bit about the question of whether the Great (Ex)Mormon Novel had been or would be written, and what it might look like. And now just recently, Slate has an article by the poetry editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought that explores some similar questions and reviews aContinue reading “More on the Great (Ex)Mormon Novel”

Songs of Humanism and Experience

(With apologies to William Blake, this is a post I’m writing specifically to submit to this Humanist Symposium thingie for bloggers I just learned about—the next one will be hosted April 4th by Letters from a Broad, a blog whose author is also a novelist.) Given the phase of music enthusiasm I’ve been going throughContinue reading “Songs of Humanism and Experience”

Persuasion

I had a religious upbringing. The religion I was raised in, Mormonism, was an evangelical kind, which means we were interested in converting other people to it. In my mid-twenties I had an intellectual falling-out with my church and left. Thanks to Facebook, I’m now in touch with a lot of old friends from myContinue reading “Persuasion”

The Great (Ex)Mormon Novel

Apparently this summer there was a mini-brouhaha over the question of whether “The Great Mormon Novel” would ever be written, and if so who would write it. A non-Mormon writer named Wallace Stegner said he thought it hadn’t been written yet, and it would probably be written by someone who’d left the Church and thenContinue reading “The Great (Ex)Mormon Novel”