No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith.—Brigham Young The alien ship was beautiful. Ornately encrusted with organic shapes glowing with…
On May 7, 2025, the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals sequestered themselves in conclave to elect a successor to deceased Pope Francis of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After only two days in conclave, white plumes of smoke billowed from a chimney atop Rome’s Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope: Habemus Papam! Robert Francis Prevost, a dark horse American candidate, born in Chicago, had surprisingly become the conclave’s choice as successor to Francis. Henceforth, he will be known to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
Jason Palmer’s Forever Familias: Race, Gender, and Indigeneity in Peruvian Mormonism offers a profound ethnographic exploration of how race, gender, and indigeneity intersect within the Mormon community in Peru, the migration process, and the United…
The intersection of Mormon feminism and faith deconstruction among Latter-day Saint women is well established. That intersection has hosted a chicken or egg debate for as long as I can remember, often centering on which…
The first poem will break your heart. It’s the shakedown start of a pilgrimage into loss and beauty that speaks in tough, physical language of the collecting—the “plucking”—of “an abandoned nest / from a red…
Someone turning to the Book of Mormon to defend their church’s traditional teachings on sexuality would likely consult the sermon given by the Nephite prophet Jacob in the second chapter of his eponymous book. Indeed, LDS and RLDS figures have often referred to Jacob 2 when making arguments about sexual ethics.
“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” What will you do with your agency, your desires, your very body? These questions repeatedly came to mind as I read three recent poetry collections by Latter-day Saint authors—Brighter and Brighter Until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, We Wore Dresses by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, and Experiments in the Fading Light by Stephen Peck. Each collection, with its own themes and poetic styles, grapples with and answers these questions in its own way.
Cheryl Bruno’s edited volume, Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, gives us an important resource about Mormonism’s early implementation and practice of Joseph Smith’s secret practice of polygamy. As Bruno points out in…
Neighbors
they were, when they broke up your baptisms
Americans
they were, when they scattered your press
I don’t know where I was or what I was doing when news spread about what has become known as the November 2015 exclusion policy. I might not have known about it at all. At the time, I was a high school senior, a member of the debate team, an active Latter-day Saint, a Boy Scout, a priest. Devout, in a way that doesn’t ask too many questions.