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Guilty as Charged? | Mormonism in Nazi Germany David Conley Nelson, Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

March 13, 2018

Moroni and the Swastika arose, in part, as a response to a query put to the author about the persecution of Mormons in the Third Reich. David Conley Nelson describes how his stepson, raised on the stories of Mormon persecution and Latter-day Saints’ willingness to endure much for the sake of the gospel, made the inference that Mormons must have been among the victims of Nazi Germany. This query led to a research paper, a presentation at the Mormon History Association’s annual meeting, and ultimately a doctoral dissertation and a book. 

Confident Interpretations of Silence | David Conley Nelson, Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

March 13, 2018

David Conley Nelson’s Moroni and the Swastika, although based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, is not at heart a scholarly book. It is, rather, a polemical work dressed up in academic regalia. While its footnotes and bibliography give it the appearance of scholarly earnest, its primary commitment is not to placing events in historical context, or to giving a balanced account of primary sources and secondary literature, or to weighing the evidence for or against a given proposition, but to launching accusations against Mormons in Nazi Germany and LDS Church leaders in the United States. 

The Righteous Road

March 13, 2018

My mom held her hand over the phone. “It’s Reed,” she whispered. I took the phone and leaned against the countertop. “Hello,” I said. “Hello.” “What, Derrick? No call?” Reed asked. “I didn’t know you…

Tao Song

March 13, 2018

We create ourselves as we go: 
            memories folding inward 
                        like bread dough kneaded, 
                                    brain convolutions, or 
                                                tangible patterns on the shore. 

Canto 12

March 13, 2018

Lightning’s no easy light to see alive reflecting  
Joseph’s mind : No magic bottle holds it nor do I
Believe it possible, try as I will to engage in mirrors
As images : how can I imagine what ignited flashing glass 

Lyric of the Larks

March 13, 2018

            Sobbing boughs above me bend,  
            Throbbing red in August wind. 

Adam Had an Eden

March 13, 2018

in mankind is the end of kind 
in woman the beginning of woe 

One Glory of the Moon

March 13, 2018

Wild raspberry leaves had turned deep crimson and the stalks black.
For prayer I bowed in the field like one of the stalks, no less resigned.
Leaves of silver maple were shed and their underside had surrendered
to autumn mauve. In the eastern acre of the woods a sheet of yellow 

What the Call of the Deep Teaches

March 13, 2018

Of the ocean what can we say? It is one pure cask,
and that immensely, of salted water to the brim.

Our lives turn such narrow slivers of consideration
by contrast, largely what the eye and ear scuttle