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Baring Imperfect Human Truths | Holly Welker, ed., Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage

October 26, 2018

We all know the Sunday School answers, but life rarely, if ever, plays out like a seminary video. So what do love, sex, and marriage look like in the lived experience of Mormon women? 

Journalist, poet, and “spinster who thinks and writes a great deal about marriage” (1) Holly Welker has compiled a collection of essays that unapologetically reveals the intersection of Mormon theology, culture, individuality, and relational living in her latest book, Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage.

Mormon Women and the Anatomy of Belonging

October 26, 2018

Dialogue 50.1 (Spring 2017): 193–200
In looking at the definition of Mormon womanhood, it seems to me that the boundaries of that community have shifted over the past almost two hundred years from being initially proscribed by the institution, in the early days of the Nauvoo Relief Society, to essentially being defined by the Mormon women themselves in today’s modern global Church.

The Novel Mormon Doctrines of Ultimate Rewards and Punishments as First Revealed in the Vision: Some Observations on History, Sources, and Interpretation

October 26, 2018

The Vision (1832)is one of the most important revelations of the formative period of Mormon theological development, where novel and controversial doctrines of the afterlife first made their appearance.In a recent study I explored how The Vision expanded upon revealed teachings from the Book of Mormon and prior revelations, resolved some inherited theological problems, and set the stage for the unfolding of uniquely Mormon doctrines and practices.There I observed that The Vision appears to be a conflation of several independent sources. Literary evidence for this conclusion includes duplications, interruptions, awkward transitions, deletions, and variances in vocabulary, style, and setting.