While the Tabernacle Choir’s total output of albums annually may be less than that of some orchestras, no classical recording organization approaches the Choir’s sales per album. This may be attributed to three factors: the…
John L. Lund has gone to a great deal of work to compile under the covers of this one small book pertinent excerpts from scriptures and from writings of Church leaders to clarify the Mormon…
From a lace-curtained upstairs window,
She absently watched the cluttered farmyard below.
In the shadow of the shed she saw his cold forge,
His heavy hammers, his grindstone and his powerful vise—
Beyond this the sheds and pens for his gentle cows and mares
And the high, strong corrals for his bull and stallion.
America’s worth to the world will be measured not by the solutions she seeks to impose on others, but by the degree to which she achieves her own ideals at home. That is a fitting…
Civil disturbances are rarely born of frivolous causes. Human beings are more inclined to suffer grievances than to pit themselves in what usually ap pears to be a hopeless battle against the authority and power…
Our society is afflicted with a tumorous disrespect for law. Ordinary citizens and public figures reject the requirements of law and boldly substitute some other set of values to justify clearly illegal behavior. Widely publicized…
The ultimate fate of American minorities is to become tourist attractions. . . . But the tourist boom means the same thing in Utah that it means in Vermont, the same thing it means wherever the past has been piously “restored,” roped off, and put on display—not the vitality but the decadence of a way of life.
Such is the devastating indictment of Mormonism by Christopher Lasch in the January 26, 1967, New York Review of Books
In 1930, when B. H. Roberts published his six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, learned journals were silent. But he himself, with pardonable pride, had described his work as “monumental.” One Mormon, answering Bernard De Voto’s contemptuous description of Utah as an intellectual desert, hailed Roberts as “another Gibbon.” Although hyperbolic, the favorable judgment was in general well deserved….
Among many Mormons there exists a genuine distrust of psychiatry. Apprehensions arise partly from misconceptions about psychotherapy and partly from a stigma that many attach to anything associated with emotional disorders. Many believe “If you live your religion, you won’t need a psychiatrist.” For many, to visit a psychiatrist would be to admit emotional and spiritual failure. Mormons might enter psychotherapy with not only the usual fears and anxieties concerning an unknown experience that lies ahead…
It is currently fashionable to look ahead to see what the future is likely to be, and, if what is seen is unsatisfactory, to consider alternative futures and means necessary to achieve them. This is…