As a graduate student at the time of the 2016 presidential election, I felt the heightened tension of Utah’s vote and the ensuing schism as political and religious beliefs played out on a national stage that foregrounded environmental issues, such as the overturning of land designations for national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
In his article “Whither Mormon Environmental Theology?,” Jason M. Brown suggests that Mormon environmental scholarship and activism focuses on what he calls the “retrieval” of “earth-affirming doctrines” with the hope that the retrieval of these teachings “will foster more environmentally minded orthopraxis among the Mormon faithful.”Brown then goes on to suggest that those retrieved teachings about the earth can be divided into two traditions, the “stewardship tradition” and the “vitalistic tradition.”
In the year 2000, Nobel Prize–winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen together with Eugene Stoermer published a short article in a professional newsletter cataloging the manifold ways that humans as a species have affected the geology and atmosphere of the planet. They wrote, “The expansion of mankind, both in numbers and per capita exploitation of resources has been astounding” and then proceeded to list ways that humans have impacted the chemistry and functioning of local and planetary systems including the widespread transformation of the land surface, the synthetic fixing of nitrogen, the escape of gases into the atmosphere (including, importantly, greenhouse gases) by the burning of fossil fuels, the use of fresh water, increased rates of species extinction, the erosion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, overfishing of the world’s oceans, and the destruction of wetlands.
The articles collected in this issue were prepared for the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities 2019 annual conference, held in May 16–18 at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. The theme of the conference…
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 209–217
A sermon wrestling with the curse of blackness in the Book of Mormon.
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 203–208
The only way that you can both help the poor and needy and preach the gospel is if you let go of racism “and help others to do the same.”
In Becoming the Beloved Disciple, Eric Huntsman successfully navigates a complex text, bringing clarity, insight, and charity to the Gospel of John in a way that will appeal both to those already well versed in…
Steven L. Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals is, like many of Peck’s works, almost impossible to categorize. Is it a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy?…
Most books serve a specific purpose: to provoke emotions, to educate, or to entertain. Rarely do I find a book that’s simultaneously evocative, educational, and entertaining. Crossings is one of the few. From researching in…
Taking the word “essay” in its root meaning as “an attempt,” BYU humanities professor George Handley’s new book of essays If Truth Were a Child comprises the attempts of the author to reconcile intellectual curiosity…