Dialogue 38.4 (Winter 2006):45–82
the original text, unfortunately, no longer exists on this earth, and we are left only with the assurances of a “translator” that the testimony contained in the record is “true,” although we do not, in fact, have even the complete text as it left the hand of the translator/scribe.
Mormon history is part of the colonization history of the American West; and the LDS Church, as a major player in that process, still bears a colonization imprint in many ways. The colonizing days are over now, and the Church is part of a major political presence in the world, no longer the colonized, but rather the colonizer. In this article, I argue that the Utah-based modern Church has replicated the same colonization process on its membership abroad to which it was once subjected.
With this issue, Dialogue begins a special series which, rather than filling a single issue, will present a number of articles in successive issues. Under the supervision of guest editor Ethan Yorgason, this series will…
Douglas F. Taber, Mormons as Christians
A native of Salt Lake City, Bonnie Posselli was introduced early by her mother to plein air painting, which she describes as her “abiding love and strongest asset.” She has traveled extensively to paint in…
Mormons love telling each other what to do more than any group I know.
When we meet up together at that great regional conference in the sky and the Lord reviews our collective performance at keeping the commandments, I think that he, unlike most of us, will start with our strengths and congratulate us for observing, to a man [person] and to a fault, the injunction to “give your language to exhortation continually” (D&C 23:7).
A few years back, I was assisting the Ethics Committee of a large metropolitan hospital. The second case on our agenda one afternoon was presented by a pediatric nurse. Two weeks earlier, a baby in…
If we simply open our eyes and look about us, it would seem that Amos got it wrong. In societies insulated by affluence, where life runs in routine and moves by diversion, it is visible that the word of God is something most people get along very well without. But in the lives of individuals and societies, tragedies befall, the comforts of routine and the anodyne of affluence cease to satisfy, and people are at length obliged to look for what supports life at its foundations.
Those of us who study material culture frequently use “rootedness,” which is the quality of an object or a structure when it is fixed in association with a geographical place. For example, a group of…
I have a distant relative who is an avid genealogist. She is fond of joking that, whenever two people talk about genealogy, one of them is bored. If this quip has any truth to it,…