In his important study of Language, Belief, and Experience, the ethnographer Rodney Needham tells of a dream which disturbed his sleep one night. He found himself among a people he had once studied, the Penan of Borneo, struggling to converse with them in their native tongue. He was distressed to realize he could not translate one particular phrase: “I believe in God.”
Her afghans and roses give her day a pattern
that will untighten her mouth pursed by a memory—
how her mother would fatten the favored son with milk,
claiming only boys needed calcium, not girls.
In this paper I explore one of the key ways in which the idea of salvation as formulated within LDS thought differs from expressions of salvation in other religious groups. I will also raise the…
Christianity claims to be a universal religion, but in its origins and development it is also a Mediterranean religion, a religion which began among the Jews of Israel at the joining point of the great…
I am particularly grateful for the invitation to edit this special edition of Dialogue, largely because it allows me to address readers in a relatively informal and conversational way on certain academic issues which often…
Gene’s criticism is a stone upon my mouth. He accused:
“You resurrect words I like, like bodies brought too often
from the tomb to be surprising, interesting, new.” Like Clint, who
loved saying “portico,” and Gene himself: speaking all that religion
It is fitting that the 1850 exploration of the Mormon corridor through the Great Basin area of Brigham Young’s State of Deseret and the settlement that followed a year later received attention from Utah historians…
Church going is not usually one of the primary images associated with New York City, but it seems that “the city-that-never-sleeps” may not be such a godless metropolis after all. New York Glory is an…
In an episode in The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, the main character chastises his friends who have masqueraded as Mormon missionaries to res cue him from placement with a Mormon family. The friends have…
You do not have to do it again
any of it. Only if you care to.
You do not have to hold onto being anyone, anywhere.
Enough is more than plenty.