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What if Mickey Mouse Isn’t Mormon? | Floyd Gottfredson, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “Race to Death Valley”

March 15, 2018

The 2010 videogame Epic Mickey, before its release, was looking to be one of the more controversial games of the year. And that’s without any sex or decapitation. What made it so controversial? Because its Mickey was a bit more adventurous and scrappy and dangerous than the carefully controlled Mickey Mouse that developed in the animated cartoons. But that Mickey was never the only Mickey—or even the original Mickey. 

Toward a Mormon Culinary History | Brock Cheney, Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers

March 15, 2018

Brock Cheney’s history of Mormon food, Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers does much to fill a surprising lacuna in Mormon history. Although a number of books on food and religion exist,  there is little academic exploration of the role that food played in the shaping and development of Latter-day Saint culture. While Cheney’s work reads a bit like a church potluck, lacking the unity of a well-constructed menu, it nonetheless provides interested readers and academics alike with a variety of tempting morsels to inspire further exploration. 

Rethinking the LDS Aversion to the Cross | Michael G. Reed, Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo

March 15, 2018

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are often perplexed when they are accused of not being Christian. We worship Christ, acknowledge him as the divine Son of God, and believe our hope for salvation centers on the atonement made possible by his sacrifice. Christ is central in Mormon scripture: his birth, death, and atonement are foretold by Book of Mormon prophets, revealed through terrestrial signs, and revealed in the flesh in Christ’s ministry to his “lost sheep” of the New World. Mormons celebrate Christian holy days such as Easter and Christmas. The very name of the Church points to Christ as our center.

God as Engineer | A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman, eds., Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision

March 15, 2018

Albert Einstein famously wrote: “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.” Einstein did not believe in a personal God, of course, but A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman do, and ask the same questions in their book, Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision. Written from the point of view of faithful LDS scientists and engineers, Bushman and Howe (an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab) attempt to tackle a question that has long fascinated me: what can we learn if we analyze God’s creations as the master work of the master Engineer?

“An Icon of White Supremacy”? | Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

March 15, 2018

Jesus and I were the only white people in the sanctuary. One summer, while outside Washington, D.C., on a college internship, I walked across the street to church. When I opened the door and went inside, I saw only black people—with one prominent exception: Above a side door, the church displayed a picture of Jesus. It was Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ. I wasn’t sure how church members felt about white visitors, but I didn’t think it appropriate to leave a church simply because of race. So I sat down. In this church, the deacons sat at the front and looked out at the congregation during the service. I wondered what they thought about a twenty-year-old white kid sitting in their church. It turns out they were extremely welcoming. I also wondered why a group of African American Baptists had a picture of a white Jesus.

What It Means

March 15, 2018

I was looking at the morning through the window in the front room like a bear in a cage remembering somewhere there are meadows, and I noticed how much water was running down the gutter…

Personal Revelation Narratives: An Interview with Tom Mould

March 15, 2018

Shawn Tucker conducted this interview with Tom Mould in April, 2013, in Elon, North Carolina. In 2011, Utah State University Press published Tom’s book Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition. Shawn is Tom’s colleague at Elon University, and Tom interviewed Shawn as part of his field work. A brief excerpt of the book follows the interview (reprinted with the kind permission of the Utah State University Press). 

Singing in the Easter Choir beside My Enemy

March 15, 2018

A sustained tone, our conductor says, 
must narrate our belief: begin, develop, 
then patiently subside. That’s what she 
learned in the Welsh choirs of her 

Puzzled

March 15, 2018

Two thousand pieces, but who 
counts them? Each a puzzle 
unto itself, a question of interlocking 
limbs and sockets. Each a question