Agency Is Not the Enemy
June 15, 2026I have spent much time contemplating my journey as a mother, a religious educator, and an aspiring historian. There are moments where I have felt pride and hope, while also moments of discouragement and sorrow.…
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Living Alone at High Elevation, After Loss
June 15, 2026Overnight, snow has deepened;
there’s this sense of it mending anything broken—
the slight roof-sag on a garden shed next door,
a riven support wall under back fence,
and something more. . . .
Narrow Is the Gate
June 15, 2026No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith.—Brigham Young The alien ship was beautiful. Ornately encrusted with organic shapes glowing with…
Conclave, Priesthood Ordination, and God’s Spirit in an Evangelizing Church: A Review Essay
June 15, 2026On May 7, 2025, the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals sequestered themselves in conclave to elect a successor to deceased Pope Francis of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After only two days in conclave, white plumes of smoke billowed from a chimney atop Rome’s Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope: Habemus Papam! Robert Francis Prevost, a dark horse American candidate, born in Chicago, had surprisingly become the conclave’s choice as successor to Francis. Henceforth, he will be known to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
(Re)Grounding Complex Legacies of Culture ,Identity, and Faithscapes in Jason Palmer’s Forever Familias | Jason Palmer, Forever Familias: Race, Gender, and Indigeneity in Peruvian Mormonism
June 15, 2026Jason Palmer’s Forever Familias: Race, Gender, and Indigeneity in Peruvian Mormonism offers a profound ethnographic exploration of how race, gender, and indigeneity intersect within the Mormon community in Peru, the migration process, and the United…
Reenvisioning the Spiritual Authority of Women | Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward, At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, and Everything in Between
June 15, 2026The intersection of Mormon feminism and faith deconstruction among Latter-day Saint women is well established. That intersection has hosted a chicken or egg debate for as long as I can remember, often centering on which…
A Crossing of Boundaries | Laura Stott, The Bear’s Mouth
June 15, 2026The first poem will break your heart. It’s the shakedown start of a pilgrimage into loss and beauty that speaks in tough, physical language of the collecting—the “plucking”—of “an abandoned nest / from a red…
Jacob’s Temple Sermon as Reinterpretation of Scripture and Rethinking of Sexual Ethics
June 15, 2026Someone turning to the Book of Mormon to defend their church’s traditional teachings on sexuality would likely consult the sermon given by the Nephite prophet Jacob in the second chapter of his eponymous book. Indeed, LDS and RLDS figures have often referred to Jacob 2 when making arguments about sexual ethics.
Agency and Its Aftermath in Three Recent Poetry Collections | Sharlee Mullins Glenn, Brighter and Brighter Until the Perfect Day; Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, We Wore Dresses; and Steven Peck, Experiments in the Fading Light
June 15, 2026“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” What will you do with your agency, your desires, your very body? These questions repeatedly came to mind as I read three recent poetry collections by Latter-day Saint authors—Brighter and Brighter Until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, We Wore Dresses by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, and Experiments in the Fading Light by Stephen Peck. Each collection, with its own themes and poetic styles, grapples with and answers these questions in its own way.
Secret, Not Sacred | Cheryl L. Bruno, ed., Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy
June 15, 2026Cheryl Bruno’s edited volume, Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, gives us an important resource about Mormonism’s early implementation and practice of Joseph Smith’s secret practice of polygamy. As Bruno points out in…