DiaBLOGue

The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020

More than ever before the LDS church seems to measure its milestones in terms of numbers. Almost every issue of the Church News and the En sign includes an article or a graphic that highlights…

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Who would have dared to predict in 1830 that a tiny, radical circle of religious seekers around the Joseph and Lucy Smith family would be a church of 10 million only a few generations later…

In a Far Land

So many women on their knees 
that if I knew how to tell them 
they could find hope here, 
or that there the men 

The Seduction of H. Lyman Winger

There were times, especially lately, when he wondered if he were doing any real good—any human good—other than keeping the Mt. Taylor 2nd Ward safely afloat and on course.  Maybe it was the weather. Monsoon…

They Eat Dogs in China

            Or so my father said— 
the clock on the mantle silenced, 
            that family Bible 
                        in his hands a weight in the pans 

Blessing the Dog

He waited, but the dog didn’t come.  He went back into the house. His wife was strapping on her brassiere, skin spilling over where the strap was tight.  “Seen the dog?” he said.  “Haen’t my…

Mr. Couch and Elder Roberts

The controversial Book of Mormon studies Elder B. H. Roberts under took in the early 1920s have been thoroughly treated in Studies of the Book of Mormon, edited by Brigham D. Madsen.[1] Roberts’s work addressed,…

The Structure of the Book of Mormon: A Theory of Evolutionary Development

Dialogue 29.2 (Summer 1998):129–154
WHEN JOSEPH SMITH BEGAN TO DICTATE the Book of Mormon, he did not understand the structure the book would ultimately take. He did not know that the first part of the manuscript would be lost, resulting in a major structural change in the first quarter of the book.