Advice
May 4, 2018Lift your withered hands and feelThe rush of words push from below.Lift up your dying hands and write. Trace the lifted arc of wheel Pitting itself against the flow Of earth’s slow water in the night. Force…
DiaBLOGue
The Difference
May 4, 2018This is not tragedy. A child Cannot suffer nobly, nor fling a wildCurse at the sky and die. A child can only flinch and cry,Soft hands outspread. No clenched fistFor you, my little one. You are pathos, I…
Joseph
May 4, 2018Joseph, according to the record just, angel-riddenand consulted last, what glory may you claim?Was yours a father’s care, but, God-bidden,respect for foster child you could not name?Was your pride greater than any heart-hiddencommon love for…
That They Might Not Suffer: The Gift of the Atonement
May 4, 2018A deep feeling of estrangement haunts modern life and literature and thought. The feeling is not at all new to human experience, but in our time we seem especially conscious of it. More men seem…
Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism: A Response
May 4, 2018Whenever a young Mormon intellectual attempts to discuss anti-intellectualism within his Church, especially in the broad, 166-year historical context attempted by Professor Bitton, it seems to me that he is faced with at least three…
Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History
May 4, 2018Almost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…
The Life of Brigham Young: A Biography Which Will Not Be Written
May 4, 2018On Sunday morning, October 5, 1856, Brigham Young stood before thousands of Mormons in Salt Lake City, to open the semi annual conference of the Church. During the morning he spoke twice. His very first…
Federal Authority Versus Polygamic Theocracy: James B. McKean and the Mormons, 1870-1875
May 4, 2018Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1966): 85–100
During the years of the Utah Territory, outsiders got appointed to the terrority to serve in various positions. For the most part, these Gentiles weren’t sympathetic towards the church, and one of the more famous outsiders is Chief Justice James B. McKean who tried to crack down on plural marriage.
The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward a Reinterpretation of Mormon History
May 4, 2018Polygamy, contrary to popular opinion, probably seduced few men into the seraglio that was Mormonism in the mind of a prurient, Victorian America. Yet it lured several generations of historians — not to speak of…
Writing the Mormon Past
May 4, 2018Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 47–62
Understanding Mormon history involves appreciating some of the formidable obstacles which confront throse who seek to write it. There is still sensitivity among Mormons to probing that might bring embarrassment to cherished offical views of Latter-day Saint orgins, martyrs, or heroes.