What’s a Mormon Expert to Do?
October 5, 2019When I sold The Bishop’s Wife, a contemporary murder mystery set in Utah, to a national press in 2012, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my “bio” would be. I…
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“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma
October 5, 2019I have worked at The Salt Lake Tribune for nearly twenty-eight years, after being hired November 4, 1991 as a full-time religion writer. So my only beat for twenty-seven years has been religion, and, as…
On “Mormon” in Mormon Studies Publishing
October 5, 2019After arriving home during a long rainy drive from St. George on Conference Sunday last October, a headline from the Salt Lake Tribune on my social media feed immediately became a source of anxiety. Topping…
Why I’m So Bad at Not Using “Mormon”
October 5, 2019It’s been almost six months since we were asked to ditch the term “Mormon.” I’ve been reflecting on it lately, I think because I’m anticipating some sort of follow-up at General Conference and I am…
The Mormon Church and the Language of My Faith
October 5, 2019It is no easy thing to command a language to change. Language just sort of happens, and those who make the rules eventually have to get on board or become irrelevant. Only pedants and fools…
Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: Co-Founders of a Movement
October 5, 2019Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 1–18
Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted.
What Shall We See?
July 17, 2019I’m still haunted by a woman who died in our intensive care unit a decade ago. She was eighteen weeks pregnant and had a kidney infection serious enough that her lungs failed. She quickly ended up on maximal life support, barely surviving from day to day.
On My Art
July 17, 20191952. I was born in Canada and raised in Utah. Received a BFA and MFA from BYU and taught printmaking there for sixteen years. Drawing and then painting desert landscape has been my primary focus…
The Maidservant’s Witness | Mette Harrison, The Book of Abish
July 17, 2019Every writer, whether prophetic or not, questions some things and assumes others. One of the attractions of a retelling is the way it highlights subjectivity—something we tend to ignore as readers of history, myth, or…
Understudies for Angels | Megan Sanborn Jones, Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking After the Dead
July 17, 2019The cover photo startles us into the book’s theme: two tribes, ghosts and mortals, staring off in the same direction. Beyond that cover we take a trek through Mormonism’s pageantry—not the pageantry of temple rituals…