Upon assuming the Leonard J. Arrington Endowed Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, I have to acknowledge two special individuals upon whose broad shoulders I stand. The first is the chair’s…
Dear Sirs:
Boycotts at BYU have reached our ears here. Considering the official and unofficial discrimination at the “Y” in the past it is not unexpected. (Actually one boycott lead er was from a black LDS family in Oakland)….
The scriptures often admonish us to pray continuously. Note that I said “continuously,” not “continually.” “Continually” means repeated with interruptions, but “continuously” means without interruptions. Paul tells the saints in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing”…
Railroading Religion is a welcome addition to the influx of timely scholarship published in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony. The tensions between religion, geography, and history provide a thought-provoking backdrop to…
In this carefully researched work, Quincy D. Newell produces a powerful narrative of Jane Manning James’s life from limited records. Newell reveals what life was like for someone like James, whom she refers to as…
Few topics have dominated modern Mormon discourse as much as those related to homosexuality. Especially following the contentious and engrossing debates surrounding Proposition 8—the electoral battle in California in 2008 over the legality of same-sex…
I first discovered James Goldberg when a friend from my mission shared a blog post from the Mormon Midrashim entitled “Explanation, Justification, Sanctification.” In it, the author shares some profound theology with his ten-year-old daughter in a…
“To speak to Moses, God / put a stone in his mouth, put on / a sackcloth of verbs (want, need), / cleared his throat. Cried out” (3). Sunni Brown Wilkinson this way begins her collection The…
Judging by its length, Irreversible Things is the kind of book that I should have been able to finish in a couple hours. Perhaps one evening, after the kids had gone to bed, I could curl up…
Latter-day Screens is a fascinating, compelling, and, at times, frustrating look at a wide range of Mormon-related media. This is largely due to the central conceit of the book—essentially working with Mormonism as a meme and…