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The Godfather | Francis Ford Coppola, dir., The Godfather

April 30, 2018

I drove to the city to see “The Godfather.” I worried about it because it had an “R” rating. By way of comparison, “The Graduate” is now rated only “PG,” despite those lurid bed scenes with Mrs. Robinson, and the frequent taking of the Lord’s name in vain. So because “The Godfather” was rated “R,” I expected the worst. Half way to Idaho Falls, I nearly turned back. But now I can report to you that “The Godfather” is not deserving of its “R” rating. It’s relatively clean. 

Recent Scholarship on New World Archaeology | Carrol L. Riley, J. Charles Kelley, Campbell W. Pennington, and Robert L. Rands, eds., Man Across the Sea: Problems in Pre-Columbian Contacts, and Cyrus Gordon, Before Columbus: Links Between the Old World and Ancient America

April 30, 2018

Latter-day Saints have long had an interest in pre-Columbian ocean travel. Americanist scholars, with a few notable exceptions such as Gordon Ekholm, J. Charles Kelley and a few others, have in the past either rejected…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

April 30, 2018

The world of Mormon-directed periodicals continues to thrive as new journals appear and old (those that began within the last few years) journals struggle for continued existence

God and Man in History

April 30, 2018

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sees both God and man in a temporal, that i§^ historical,’ context, but it has developed no authoritative, systematic statement of the philosophical implications of historical relationships. It has no official philosophy of history. What follows, therefore, are simply reflections on some problems which relate to the religious affirmations of the L.D.S. people and a tentative approach to my personal philosophy of history. 

The Reorganization in the Twentieth Century

April 30, 2018

On April 15, 1972 the Mormon History Association held a notable convention at Independence, Missouri. Some 130 members and friends of the Association visited historic Mormon sites and heard discourses from scholars representing both the…

Revolution and Mormonism in Asia: What the Church Might Offer a Changing Society

April 30, 2018

Asia is a land of revolution, a land where a complex of revolutions are inter related in such a way that one phase is not understood independent of the others, nor of the traditions from which they stem. These revolutionary trends are creating rapid changes throughout Asian society, one of which is a search for a new stability, and this greatly influences the development of Mormonism in Asia, including the kinds of people it attracts and its relative success or failure in sustaining activity and building a strong organization. 

Three Myths About Mormons in Latin America

April 30, 2018

For the most part, Mormons have been a socially homogeneous people. True, the initial Anglo-American stock was reinforced from time to time by immigrants from Western Europe, but these converts were quickly absorbed into the Church’s social and cultural mainstream. Although successful missions were established among the Indians and especially among the Polynesians, it was nevertheless the English-speaking white Americans who gave the Church its leadership and set the tone of its culture.

Mormons in the Third Reich: 1933-1945

April 30, 2018

The experience of the Church in non-American countries has not always been easy. In Germany in the 1930’s, for example, the Hitler regime viewed the Mormon Church as an American institution and therefore open to…