Robert Nisbet defines the idea of progress as the notion that mankind has advanced in the past from barbarism and ignorance, is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. It is arguably the central motivating philosophy that has led men and women throughout history to forge ahead to a brighter future.
I hope I’m not extending the metaphor too far, but it seems apparent the field is less white and more colorful as the church moves into the twenty first century. Most church members are aware (although some along the Wasatch Front have a hard time visualizing it) that rapid growth rates in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines are essentially among people of color. However, it is my contention that future growth of the church even in the bastions of Nordic, Teutonic, British, and Celtic Europe—a region which supplied membership and leadership during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—will increasingly be among people of color not native to the European continent.
In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…
In this paper, I sing the virtues of Edward W. Tullidge, English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cultural enthusiast, and serious journalist and author. Tullidge, who was mercurial, changeable, and…
I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented
oil poured over me in the upper room on
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull
On a spring day in 1955, a group of distinguished gentlemen gathered at a White House dinner at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower. The guests included founding partners of three law firms, the President of the Teamsters’ Union, three Army Generals, a Cabinet Secretary, the publisher of the Boston Globe, the Vice President of ABC, the Chairman of CBS, the President of MIT, four CEO’s and one clergyman—David O. McKay, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 319–325
But the fact that we must look at organizational dynamics before we can begin to understand the issues that would be raised by expanding priesthood to include women is an apt commentary on the complex and sometimes confused role that priesthood authority has come to play in the modern church.
I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, “Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity…
There once was a time, albeit brief, when a “Negro problem” did not exist for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During those early months in New York and Ohio no mention was even made of Church attitudes towards blacks. The Gospel was for “all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples,” and no exceptions were made. A Negro, “Black Pete,” was among the first converts in Ohio, and his story was prominently reported in the local press. W. W. Phelps opened a mission to Missouri in July, 1831, and preached to “all the families of the earth,” specifically mentioning Negroes among his first audience. The following year another black, Elijah Abel, was baptized in Mary land.
Ever since his great synthesis, Darwin’s name has been a source of discomfort to the religious world. Too sweeping to be fully fathomed, too revolutionary to be easily accepted, but too well documented to be…