“Hi, I’m Brother Jake.” An image of a smiling white man in white shirt and tie flashes across the screen as I watch yet another edition of the “Brother Jake” YouTube video channel. Brother Jake, described by one YouTube commenter as “the Stephen Colbert of Mormon satire,” carries a growing audience through fallacious explanations of controversial or historically problematic aspects of Mormonism.
We will get to the violin playing. First, let’s talk about the dress. On May 17, 2015, the Mormon blogosphere erupted into controversy over the designer gown worn by dancing violinist and YouTube star Lindsey Stirling to the Billboard Music Awards show, where she was to receive the Top Dance/Electronic Album honor. Much of her fan base was torn. Her charm, her quirky fiddle-prancing shtick, and her unapologetic LDS religiosity had made her one of the most eminently Facebookable Mormons in an era in which LDS members have been encouraged quite specifically over the pulpit to share their faith online.
Most mainstream American Christian congregations sing hymns in unison. But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long favored congregational part-singing. Nevertheless, a small but vigorous LDS constituency in the past thirty years has advocated a shift to unison-singing.
The Book of Mormon opens with a provocative conundrum: how can the sensory world of revelation most effectively be rendered in language? After introducing himself and his process of making scripture, the prophet-narrator Nephi recounts his father Lehi’s throne theophany and calling to be a prophet.This calling entailed two dramatic audio-visual encounters with the divine. In the first, Lehi prayed, and in response a pillar of fire appeared on a rock in front of him. By means of the pillar, somehow, “he saw and heard much” with such intensity he quaked, trembled, and was ultimately incapacitated by the experience (1 Nephi 1:6–7).
Kristine Haglund gave me a gift. This issue is the long thank you note.
She had asked me from time to time to write something on music for Dialogue. Or take part in a panel discussion on music for the journal. Or do anything on music, since she loves the art and its place in our faith and I have been a kind of go-to guy on that for years.
Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 91 – 119
In 1967, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a gift to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of eleven papyrus fragments once owned by Joseph Smith and employed as the basis for “The Book of Abraham.”
Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 91 – 119
In 1967, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a gift to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of eleven papyrus fragments once owned by Joseph Smith and employed as the basis for “The Book of Abraham.”
Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 137 – 146
“Perhaps the most controversial and intensely contested revelatory claim of Joseph Smith Jr. is his translation of ancient papyri ostensibly written by the hand of Abraham.”
Dear Sirs: I am enclosing a check for $20.00 as a donation to Dialogue. I sincerely appreciate the efforts which have been made by the Dialogue staff to present such stimulating material. I will do…
Dear Sirs: With all the rhetoric in and out of the Church about law and order, I think it wise to get perspective on our objectivity. Thusly, I offer for consideration this statement: “The streets…