Against my better judgment, I have been persuaded to discuss the place of literature in the history of the Mormon Church in the context of this special issue of Dialogue. That the topic is too…
While it is true that there has been no substantial literary tradition among the Mormons, there are indications that one is beginning. For the first time there is a sufficient number of Mormon scholars and critics who can help establish the climate for a legitimate literature and there are more and more creative writers who are turning their talents to Mormon subjects. Therefore, it is not my purpose to lament the fact that a Mormon literature does not now exist. Rather, I choose to discuss how the literary esthetic can serve religion and how a rebirth of the imagination can and should serve the Church today. For if anything would militate against acceptance of an emerging Mormon literature it would be our continued distrust of the imagination.
A poet, a painter, a musician, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian. William Blake Observers of the Church must think it odd that for all…
Czechoslovakia is much colder and darker now than it was last year. Not that the meteorological phenomena have been all that different: Prague has consistently registered temperatures as warm as or warmer than those of…
We wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that two (or more) different Mor mons in good standing have rather different attitudes and opinions. Aside from matters of Church doctrine, they may belong to opposing…
By the time he was twenty-five, Milovan Djilas had already served three years in prison for communist activities. His keen mind, energetic spirit, and Partisan valor endeared him to Josip Broz Tito, and before he reached…
Dialogue 4.4 (Winter 1969): 86–103
Lester E Bush wrote in response to Stephen G Taggart’s book which the author tried to show that the Church came from abololonist ideas because the Church was orginially founded in New York, but when they encountered pro slavery settlers in Missouri and faced the hostiltiy from the settlers early church leaders apparently changed their mind, even though Joseph Smith eventually did a turnabout from what records have shown regarding African Americans.
What message has the Book of Mormon for our world? Does it speak to those who sense their own involvement in the greatness and the misery of secular existence? Hugh Nibley, in a portion of…
A boy with joy and fear inside
stood on the plank
above the pond.
He sensed the cold, dark water
underneath,
and, daring,