DiaBLOGue

Latter-day Saints under Siege: The Unique Experience of Nicaraguan Mormons

March 21, 2018

The LDS Church is currently gaining many new members in Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America. Nowadays more than 35 percent of the worldwide membership is concentrated in Latin America, compared to about 45 percent in the United States and Canada. By 2020, the majority of Mormons in the world will be Latin Americans, if the current growth rates continue. Judging from current LDS growth rates, the future Mormon heartland will be the Andes and Central America, instead of the Wasatch Front. Rodney Stark is exaggerating, however, when he labels Mormonism the next world religion, since he ignores a drop-out rate for converts that generally exceeds 50 percent.

The Death and Resurrection of the RLDS Zion: A Case Study in “Failed Prophecy” 1930-70

March 21, 2018

On Resurrection Sunday, April 1930, Bishop J. A. Koehler of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints attended a priesthood prayer meeting at the Stone Church RLDS congregation in Independence, Missouri. After a week of solemn and joyful conference services remembering the past century of the denomination’s history, men from across the world sat seeking the Lord’s further direction before Easter services.

On Balancing Faith in Mormonism with Traditional Biblical Stories: The Noachian Flood Story

March 21, 2018

Describing the religion of the Latter-day Saints, John Taylor said that it “embraces every principle of truth and intelligence pertaining to us as moral, intellectual, mortal and immortal beings, pertaining to this world and the world that is to come. We are open to truth of every kind, no matter whence it comes, where it originates or who believes in it. . . . A man in search of the truth has no particular system to sustain, no particular dogma to defend or theory to uphold.”

The Encounter of the Young Joseph Smith with Presbyterianism

March 21, 2018

Of the Protestant denominations vying for converts in western New York during the early nineteenth century, Methodism is rightly regarded as having made the greatest religious impress on the young Joseph Smith. Oliver Cowdery claimed that Smith had been “awakened” during a sermon by the Methodist minister George Lane.

A Case for Same-Sex Marriage: Reply to Randolph Muhlestein

March 21, 2018

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 50–60

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage

March 21, 2018

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 11–41

Letters to the Editor

March 21, 2018

Richard Ward, Dialogue Reconsidered
Yukio Shimomura, A Note to Jiro Numano from a Nisei American
Jiro Numano, Jiro Numano Responds

About the Artist: Anne Muñoz

March 21, 2018

Anne Muñoz resides in Salt Lake City with her husband. Trained in art and textile design, she worked as a freelance graphic artist for many years but continued to produce her own artwork, taking part…

An Old Mormon Writes to Harold Bloom

March 21, 2018

In the fall of 1990, I was retired and we were back in academia fulltime at BYU: Carol was studying anthropology and I was studying English. We went to the University of Utah to listen…

Seeds of Faith in City Soil: Growing Up Mormon in New York City

March 21, 2018

In June 2004, I found myself, late on a Saturday night, climbing underneath the dressing room doors of the Manhattan New York Temple. Audio/visual equipment for the next morning’s temple dedication blocked most of the dressing room doors, but my goal was to reach every locker in both the men’s and women’s dressing rooms. Each key needed to be labeled with the corresponding locker’s number, and then a spare key had to be placed in the temple’s facilities closet.