A Tentative Approach to the Book of Abraham
March 28, 2018During the 1830’s John Whitmer wrote, in connection with the ancient Egyptian records purchased by the church in July 1835 from Michael H. Chandler,
DiaBLOGue
The First Vision Controversy: A Critique and Reconciliation
March 28, 2018Ever since Fawn Brodie wrote No Man Knows My History in 1946 and emphatically denied that there was any valid evidence that Joseph Smith experienced a visitation from the Father and the Son in 1820,…
The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History
March 28, 2018The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, defined thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…
What the Church Means to People Like Me
March 28, 2018A natural reaction to my title—since this is not a testimony meeting in which each speaker is his own subject—might be, “Who cares?” For who in this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother,…
The Challenge of Honesty
March 28, 2018Both the Protestant and Catholic communities are being swept by a passion for honesty. They are scrutinizing centuries-old suppositions and re-examining current attitudes and goals. In the Protestant world, the writings of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, Tillich,…
About this Commemorative Issue
March 28, 2018In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott McLemee fixes the onset of the abundantly energetic “field of Mormon Studies” with two debuts: the Mormon History Association was organized in 1965 and…
A Variety of Women’s Voices | Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, ed., Life Writings of Frontier Women Series, Vol. 1-5
March 28, 2018This laudable and ambitious series presents a variety of life writing by Mormon women, ranging from diaries and letters to memoirs and more formal autobiography. Series editor Maureen Ursenbach Beecher begins each volume by advocating…
A Travelogue Nonpareil | Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons
March 28, 2018“Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history,” argues historian Jan Shipps in this outstanding collection of articles and essays (p. 165). Implicitly, the volume presents an argument for…
Ridiculously Sublime | Elouise Bell, Madame Ridiculous and Lady Sublime
March 28, 2018Midway through her latest collection of humorous essays, former Brigham Young University professor Eloise Bell pleads for a calculated spontaneity in humorous writing. “I do in fact know that much humor is intentional and crafted.…
Inherit the Wind, Mormon Style | Stan Larson, ed., Can Science be Faith-Promoting by Sterling B. Talmage, and Trent D. Stephens, D. Jeffrey Meldrum, and Forrest B. Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism
March 28, 2018In 1925, the town fathers of Dayton, Tennessee secured their place in history by trying John Scopes for teaching evolution in the public schools.[1] With William Jennings Bryan as prosecutor, Clarence Darrow for the defense,…