When it comes to American exceptionalism, Mitt Romney is going all in.

After FreeBYU filed a religious discrimination complaint against Brigham Young University with the American Bar Association last fall, BYU adjusted its Honor Code.

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. Somewhere in the backs of our minds, we know it’s about long-ago celebration between the newly arrived pilgrims and the Native Americans, but in today’s culture that idea has taken a back burner to family, football, and of course, the food. Whether you like turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls or pumpkin pie, that’s what Thanksgiving is about, Charlie Brown. The Thanksgiving meal is one that stands out because it requires us to spend nearly all day in the kitchen. It is rare, in America, to spend an entire day in the kitchen. As a young college student studying in Russia, I was astounded to watch my host mother spend hours either shopping at the outdoor markets or stirring a cabbage soup on the stove. Slapping a bag of chicken nuggets on a tray and popping them in the oven was not an option — not part of the culture.

On Dec. 19, Mitt Romney appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to read “The Top Ten Things Mitt Romney Would Like to Say to the American People.” He gazed into the camera and deadpanned, “Isn’t it time for a President who looks like a 1970s game show host?” He also poked fun at his helmet hair and took a jab at Newt Gingrich. One thing absent from the list: his religion. In speeches, Romney often talks about faith and prayer but rarely mentions that he is a devout Mormon. Perhaps that’s because national polls show many Americans—particularly evangelical Christians he needs to win—know little about the religion and are suspicious of it. A June Gallup poll found that 18 percent of Republicans wouldn’t vote for a Mormon for President.

Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was a significant reason why his campaign for the presidency struggled against incumbent President Barack Obama, but it was far from the main factor in his eventual defeat in the 2012 election, according to a panel of experts in a discussion on politics and religion at the University of Notre Dame.

The Book of Mormon is among five holy books that go "under the knife" in a new publication by the American Humanist Association that attempts to do for these religious texts what Thomas Jefferson did with his personal cut-and-paste Bible. “A Jefferson Bible for the Twenty-First Century,” an e-book available through HumanistPress.com, includes a copy of the original Jefferson Bible, which the third president of the United States created for his personal use by cutting favored passages of scripture from the four New Testament gospels and pasting them together to form a single sequential narrative. According to the American Humanist Association website, the new publication “also includes similarly edited versions of the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh), the Quran, the (Hindu) Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhist sutras and the Book of Mormon.”

We're coming up on a new year, and with that comes new resolutions and new challenges. Among one of the most common of those resolutions among Americans is the goal to drop a few pounds. And, if you're among them, then you should realize you're not alone.

As part of the Church's 2016 "Light the World" Christmas campaign, many LDS artists have released music videos to spread the message of the gospel with their fans. American Heritage Lyceum Philharmonic also released a peaceful instrumental version of "Candlelight Carol" to #LIGHTtheWORLD.

Remember the emotional faces and powerful words of African Americans four years ago, as the country was voting whether to elect the first black president? You won’t see much of that among Mormon Americans, regardless of Tuesday’s outcome.Sure, there will be celebrating or mourning among Mormons who describe themselves as political conservatives (which is to say, most of them). But most members of Mitt Romney’s faith won’t even be at results-watching events; church officials are barely acknowledging Tuesday’s vote (the top item on the LDS Web site says: “members invited to share the gospel through magazine subscriptions”); and even at the Northwest D.C. Mormon church a President Romney would attend, regular weekly classes are all that’s scheduled Tuesday night.

There are undeniable trends in the world of faith today, each leading to places that we may or may not appreciate. As one who makes his living in the field of religion, participates in two different religious traditions on a regular basis, and passionately studies what's happening among the spiritually mindful, I have an abiding interest in what follows. Wading hip-deep into these waters, the following are my opinions of where we may find ourselves nearly two years from now, as we look back on the year 2012.