Vision of an Older Faith
April 26, 2018Car window turned to shale from sun
burst, the car parked some summer
Sunday there before the church
house. Voices sing: “Spirit
DiaBLOGue
The Example of Flannery O’Connor
April 26, 2018The flaws of Mormon fiction are many. But so are the possibilities.
Digging the Foundation: Making and Reading Mormon Literature
April 26, 2018As an epigraph to their anthology A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints, Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert quote Orson F. Whitney’s 1888 Contributor essay, “Home Literature”:
We shall yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God’s ammunition is not yet exhausted. His highest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God’s name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundation may now be low on earth.
A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842
April 26, 2018Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 21–34
Foster points out that in 1842 an unpublished pamphlet was written called “The Peace Maker” that expressed its support for polygamy. It is the first-known defense of polygamy before 1852.
Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature
April 26, 2018Just over ten years ago I was approached by four young Mormons who were affiliated with Stanford University in one capacity or another. They wanted to know if there was a library market for a…
One of Ours | Annie Clark Tanner, A Biography of Ezra Thompson Clark
April 26, 2018This is a slender biography of a Mormon pioneer and patriarch which was written by an adoring daughter in her later years. The inclusion of this volume in the serial publications of the Tanner Trust…
A Quality Lacking | Melissa Merrill, Polygamist’s Wife
April 26, 2018“Oh Mother, Father will look so pretty for his wedding!” In these words this book begins and one feels instantly the poignant picture of the woman, Melissa, pressing her husband’s suit, a job she had…
The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith
April 26, 2018Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’
Grandpa’s Place
April 26, 2018My grandfather, for whom I was named, was born in 1878 in a four-room stone house built by his father in Round Valley, near Morgan, Utah. My great grandfather had a small farm there and a job on the Union Pacific Railroad, but in the spring of 1883…
A Latter-day Ode to Irrigation
April 26, 2018In 1907 J. J. McClellan, then organist for the Mormon Tabernacle, published a new choral suite under the extravagant title, “Ode to Irrigation.” The first of five choruses described in heavy Victorian prose a truly…