As the Church moves into societies and culture never a significant part of its historical past, it will encounter new configurations of religion that it must understand to achieve its prophetic promise. Countries that have…
Joseph Smith was not the first person to use the plurality of worlds concept. In the early seventeenth century, natural philosophers began speculating on the idea of multiple world systems. By the eighteenth century, Protestant…
Northrop Frye, perhaps North America’s pre-eminent literary critic, is not a name ordinarily associated with scriptural exegesis. Yet his name virtually assures that this volume will be read and analyzed by those in literary fields,…
I discovered Ed Geary’s essays by chance — a friend happened to mention them to me: “You’ve got to read them; they’re about growing up in Utah, and they’re excellent.” Curious, but not so curious…
At least once a decade, it seems, someone publishes a book about the Latter-day Saints without taking the necessary “trouble” to adequately research the subject. Stanley Hirshon was judged guilty of this offense in 1969…
“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age,” Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1747, but “if we do not plant it while young it will give us no…
God gave David nightmares. The flame-eyed giant hurling thunderbolts from the mountain of heaven, hair and beard blown back by the storm of righteous wrath—it was he who haunted the boy. *** David knew his father…
A white pillar will glow from the sand as I die.
Those backyard trees will shake their empty pods
against the sky. My moldy body will sink
into its bed, smothered by sinners.
Grey clouds, March-heavy hung over
an old and mottled snow that day
we brought him there to you.
That fine white burst of bush blossom
Has come again. Blast
ing through the winter crust
And scattering the afterbirth of spring,