October 3, 1992, the first day of the 162d semiannual LDS general conference, was the 300th anniversary of the action that finally stopped the Salem witch trials. Those trials, perhaps the greatest blot on American religious devotion, had resulted in the deaths of twenty people, all of whom vigorously proclaimed their innocence to the end.
There are many in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believe we need a workable definition of religious dissent in order to help make way for more serious debate over its legitimacy…
Jacob and Rachel
But a little way to come to Beth-lehem,
and the pains came hard upon her. She heard,
“Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.”
When I first read Paul Toscano’s jeremiad I thought it was too harsh and angry. But on revisiting it three years later I say, “Yes!” to many of his points; for the ones I quibble…
One of the ironies of my life is that I decided in 1963 to leave the Catholic church as it was becoming more open to join the Mormon church as it was becoming more closed.…
Sleepless with fever,
under one small lamp you stared
at a cherry wood cabinet, dark whorls
spiraled like galaxies and polished
“Liberal spirituality” is the title and theme of this essay. A double entendre is intended—suggesting the interdependence of a free and abundant spiritual life. My aim is to explore the nature and possibilities of liberal spirituality by reflecting on some of the key experiences and major ideas that have shaped my philosophy. I am concerned here with the essential values at the core of religious experience, a state of mind and an approach to life. The Mormon church has been but one of the anvils against which I have forged my identity.
Often when entering sleep
I start awake, your form having drifted
into vision, your name embedded
in the thickness of my tongue.
Whose poem this is, I think I know—
New England bard of spring and snow,
But eighth-grade teachers don’t explain
The depths to which the poets go.
Mine is the interesting challenge to comment on “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology/’ The bill of particulars that Lavina Fielding Anderson has presented is comprehensive and disturbing, her recommendations are…