DiaBLOGue

Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision

March 14, 2018

The First Vision, that seminal event which has inspired and intrigued all of us for nearly two centuries, came into sharp focus again in 2012 when another volume of the prestigious Joseph Smith Papers was published. Highlighting the volume is the earliest known description of what transpired during the “boy’s first uttered prayer”near his home in Palmyra in 1820. The narrative was written by Joseph Smith with his own pen in a ledger book in 1832.

What Shall We Do with Thou? Modern Mormonism’s Unruly Usage of Archaic English Pronouns

March 14, 2018

What shall we do with thou? If this question grates on your ear, it may be because you recognize that thou is a nominative pronoun (a subject) and therefore never follows a preposition. If it doesn’t grate, then you are living, breathing evidence of the difficulties presented by archaic second-person pronouns in twenty-first-century Mormonism.

Rethinking Retrenchment: Course Corrections in the Ongoing Quest for Respectability

March 14, 2018

Almost two decades have elapsed since I published The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). My book began by acknowledging and illustrating the “Americanization” thesis advanced by others— namely that the LDS Church and religion had spent the first half of the twentieth century in a deliberate policy of assimilation with American society and was thus following the time-honored trajectory traced by such early scholars as Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber—from a peculiar and disreputable sect toward a respectable church, increasingly comfortable with the surrounding American culture.

Letters to the Editor

March 14, 2018

Ryan T. Cruger, “Apostates,” “Anti-Mormons,” and Other Problems in Seth Payne’s “Ex-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics”
Seth Payne, Response

For All His Creations of Which I’m a Part: Buddha Nature, Neo-Animism, and Postmodern Mormonism

March 14, 2018

When my parents died, I inherited our family’s Buddhist altar, or butsudan. It now sits in my living room in Lexington, Massachusetts. I pray before it about twice a month. I burn a stick of incense and ring a small brass bell. I close my eyes, and thank my ancestors for what they have given me. Usually, I do this with my youngest son, Kan, who is now three years old.

Shifting Attitudes: Nauvoo Polygamy | Merina Smith, Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy: The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830–1853

March 14, 2018

Merina Smith’s book continues the fascination with Nauvoo polygamy. Other authors have considered such topics as Joseph Smith and his wives, the experience of those entering polygamy in Nauvoo (as well as the numbers and names of those who did so), the theology underpinning plural marriage, and much more. The major question Smith deals with is how Latter-day Saints “were persuaded to shift their understanding of marriage not only to accommodate polygamy, but to regard it, at least officially, as the ideal form of marriage” (2). Larry Foster has dealt with this question, though Smith explores it in more depth and frames her answer with theology rather than theory. 

Pre-Mortal Existence and the Problem of Suffering: Terryl Givens and the Heterodox Traditions | Terryl L. Givens, When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought

March 14, 2018

Terryl Givens’s work has, with good reason, become quite popular in Mormon circles over the past few years. Since The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (1997), he has become the most prolific and perhaps most important scholar writing about Mormon culture and theology today. He is difficult to categorize. He doesn’t quite fit the traditional roles of historian, literary critic, or theologian.

Moving On

March 14, 2018

So I’m down in Payson helping my father, Wymond, move his new wife’s things into storage. The landowner Peg has been renting from is selling out to developers who want the farmland. It’s early on…

The Postum Table

March 14, 2018

The family had been in the dream house about three months. It was October, and they were gathered for Family Night. A box of See’s chocolates, wrapped in glossy white paper, sat like the fruit…

A company man on his day off

March 14, 2018

thinks of:

blue sky
not the oppressive space of huge warehouses
chopped by endless categories of air