Notes and Comments
July 11, 2024On Mormon Theology | Riding Herd (Excerpt from a Letter) | Production of Plays with Mormon Themes | Improving the Gospel Doctrine Class
On Mormon Theology | Riding Herd (Excerpt from a Letter) | Production of Plays with Mormon Themes | Improving the Gospel Doctrine Class
Listen to an interview about these pieces here.
Dear Editor,
I read with interest Robert A. Rees, “Truth and Reconciliation: Reflections on the Fortieth Anniversary of the LDS Church’s Lifting the Priesthood and Temple Restrictions for Black Mormons of African Descent” in the summer 2023 issue of Dialogue (56, no. 2).
My biography is much like Rees’s….
Dialogue 57.2 (Summer 2024): 5–40
This article will explain what trauma is and how to be trauma informed, describe a few examples from the Book of Mormon in which a sensitivity to trauma could reveal greater insights from the text, and argue for the importance of using a trauma hermeneutic. We conclude with an application of a trauma hermeneutic in religious settings and an argument for the importance of being aware of how scriptural trauma may interact with the potential trauma of readers.
Listen to an interview about this piece here. In 2014, Latter-day Saint painter Jon McNaughton painted a triumphal and patriotic, yet reverent, scene of Cliven Bundy on horseback, with one hand lifting an American flag…
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a global church based in the United States. The cultural context of the Church as a top-down, global entity with centralized leadership necessarily interacts with local…
Eldridge Cleaver, one-time Black Panther, author of the critically acclaimed best-selling memoir Soul on Ice, and notorious fugitive from justice, was the most famous African American to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day…
This took place back in the days when the city was small and its Jewish, dusty streets were trampled under the feet of the most magnificent, powerful empire on the face of the earth. This was the empire that soared like an eagle from the heated deserts of Arabia to the fathomless deep of the Mediterranean Sea to the valleys and mountains of the European continent. From there, from that Europe that did not worship Jehovah, the empire had struck Judea. Under Caesar’s ensign, it had pounced upon God’s people, advancing in swift chariots that carried men protected by breastplates and pagan arrogance. The empire had comfortably taken control of the sacred province, defiling it with Western traders, Greco-Roman tongues, voracious taxes, and imperial order.
Ziner didn’t make Mr. Lind sick, so he’s under no obligation to make him feel better. Whatever small thing he chooses to do is purely out of kindness. Mr. Lind wastes in his tender flesh while Ziner struts in front of his bed to show that the one who can still walk is the one who is not a fool.
when that moment comes,
let me rise like a swan, neck