In her introduction to her book Katabasis, Heather Harris-Bergevin quotes someone who accused her at one time of “consorting with witches.” The word “witch” comes from an Old English “wicce,” meaning “female magician or sorceress.”…
Media scholars, take note: Mason Kamana Allred’s Seeing Things: Technologies of Vision and the Making of Mormonism is a haunting must-read that will leave you ghost hunting across other lanes of media history. After pointing…
Genealogical research has long played a prominent role in the theology and lived religious experiences of individuals, families, and communities associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Given this reality, one…
Good morning. It is an honor to speak to you today on the holiest of Sabbaths, when we come together to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Easter is, of course, a day of rejoicing. The events of Holy Week leading up to Easter—Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane and the Crucifixion—all lead inexorably to the joyful conclusion that “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.—William S. Burroughs (1914–1997)[1] Joseph Smith ascended to the revered position of…
Listen to an interview about this piece here. From 1986 to 1993, I was history curator at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the spring and summer of…
Listen to an interview about this piece here. My grandma was a collector. Of dolls, spoons, PEZ dispensers. When she died six years ago, all ten of her children were able to redistribute her hundreds of…
Listen to an interview about this piece here. I am a young mother. My arms have been full of putti almost exclusively for the past several years. I’ve done the work of mothering full-time for nearly…
I don’t want to let go of the rod. I don’t want to drift off and end up on paths that are dark, strange, and lonely. Sometimes I worry I may have already wandered without…
I don’t know who was sick. Maybe it was you. Let’s say it was.
You were sick and I was probably more worried than you (as per usual) but we brought our faith to our prayers and we pled that you would be healed. I anointed your head with oil. And I sealed that anointing and blessed you.