DiaBLOGue

“My Principality on Earth Began”: Millennialism and the Celestial Kingdom in the Development of Mormon Doctrine

March 15, 2018

Early Mormonism was thoroughly premillennial. The saints watched for latter-day signs of the times in anticipation of Jesus Christ’s imminent return, spoke of them in sermons, and published them in newspapers. The righteous would reign for one thousand years while the wicked would be swept off the earth to await their resurrection and judgment. Mormon missionaries urgently preached that God was gathering his elect before Christ’s coming in the clouds—a priority that overshadowed a salvation to-heaven-or-damnation-to-hell eschatology in Mormon discourse of the period. Latter-day Saint views of the very nature of eternal post-mortality, which to the present are considered a distinctive aspect of Mormon belief, developed out of their anticipation of Christ’s millennial reign.

“The Highest Class of Adulterers and Whoremongers”: Plural Marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and the Construction of Memory

March 15, 2018

Dialogue 46.2 (Spring 2016): 1–39
Blythe shows the denial among Culterites followers that the founder was involved in plural marriage.

Errata

March 15, 2018

In our Spring issue, we mistakenly omitted Terence L. Day’s biographical note. Our sincerest apologies.

There was also a mistake in the printing of James Goldberg’s poem, “The Feather Pen.”

“Questions at the Veil”

March 15, 2018

In the months after September 11, 2001, essayist and poet Frederick Turner crafted an unpublished tale entitled “The Terrorist Goes to Paradise.”

Told in the first person by the terrorist himself, the story recounts the glories and privileges that greet an operative who helped fly a jet into New York’s towering World Trade Center. Upon his arrival in heaven the terrorist discovers to his pleasure that, for his heroism, as he presumes, Allah has provided him with all his fantasies and more: movement without restriction, un encumbered by time; scenes of beauty surpassing mortal ability to express; seventy-two voluptuous virgins enacting without restraint his every whim; infinite, incomparable food without satiation; a ministering angel attending to his every request and answering every query. It is all . . . heavenly.

Dark Watch

March 15, 2018

“And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.” Isaiah 34:13 “I will make a wailing…

Mauss’s Travels | Armand L. Mauss, Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic

March 15, 2018

Sociologist Karl Mannheim believed that knowledge is relational. Our social positions, like community affiliations or the roles we take in a group, shape and constrain what we know and how we know it. As members…

The Past and Future Boundaries of Mormon Studies | Quincy D. Newell and Eric F. Mason, eds., New Perspectives in Mormon Studies: Creating and Crossing Boundaries

March 15, 2018

This is a book about boundaries: boundaries of belief, boundaries of discipline, and boundaries of methodology are all explored in various ways. How did Mormons challenge, create, and transgress boundaries of religion and culture? How…

Trying to Keep Quiet: A Poem Constructed Around Fragments of Leslie Norris’s “Borders”

March 15, 2018

The border I knew best as a child was halfway over
the swinging bridge in Provo Canyon, between the shade
of Wildwood and the Sundance road, just opposite
Dr. Weight’s place. Beneath it, white-cold waters from
the diminishing glacial edges of Mt. Timpanogos fell,
jumbled along the North Fork, then moved on to mark
other boundaries further down stream.

IRRELEVANT—RELEVANT

March 15, 2018

PROPHETS PONTIFICATE;
APOSTLES BLUSTER—

BUT A CERTAIN WIDOW:
HOW TOLERANT,

For Margene

March 15, 2018

The intensive care unit had never seen such a hostess
How was the show? And what did they serve?
We brought her primary stew
A fresh fruit bouquet