Christian Anderson

Christian N. K. Anderson {[email protected]} is a geneticist living in Southern California with his wife Marina Capella and their four rabbits. He was trained at Stanford University, The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Harvard University, and has published more than a dozen scientific articles in the field of mathematical biology. He first published in Dialogue at age 14, reviewing The Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon as a member of the target demographic. He currently serves as ward clerk in his local Spanish-speaking congregation.

The Loss of Art, The Art of Loss

Articles/Essays – Volume 51, No. 2

Sylvia Plath wrote “Dying / Is an art, like everything else.” Perhaps there is an art to grieving as well. People talk about “closure” and “saying goodbye” like discrete events: things you do once—well or poorly—and then move on. But where exactly do we move on to? As Mark Strand points out, “In a field / I am the absence / Of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing.” Since my father’s death, my missing place keeps converging with his ever-shifting empty place in surprising ways. I miss Paul, miss him the same way I might miss an imagined top stair on an unfamiliar staircase in the dark: the same betrayal of expectation, the same queasy-falling feeling in the stomach, the same jolt against reality.

Do We Have to Believe That? Canon and Extra-Canonical Sources of LDS Belief

Articles/Essays – Volume 50, No. 1

For two days in October 2010, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” was part of the LDS canon. Maybe.

Easy-to-Read: A Consumer’s Report | The Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon: Based on the Work Translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Articles/Essays – Volume 27, No. 1

Lynn Matthews Anderson. The Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon: Based on the Work Translated by Joseph Smith, Jr. Pittsburgh, PA: privately published, 1993. Includes Joseph Smith’s story, testimony of the three and eight witnesses, and “Words…

El Problema del Dolor/The Problem of Pain

Articles/Essays – Volume 43, No. 4

Buenos días, hermanos y hermanas. Para los que no me conocen, me llamo Cristian Anderson. Nací en el Lago Salado, Utah, y viví allí hasta los 18 años cuando fui a San Francisco para estudiar biología. Después de un año de estudios salí de misión a Houston Sur en el estado de Texas. Al regresar a la universidad conocí a mi esposa, Marina Capella. Ella nació en Los Ángeles y pasó la mayor parte de su vida en un suburbio que se llama Fontana, hasta que salió a estudiar en la misma universidad que yo. Nos conocimos en octubre y nos casamos en septiembre del siguiente año en el Templo de San Diego, hace 7 años. Todavía somos estudiantes, pero en menos de dos meses Marina recibirá su doctorado de médica pediatra y vamos a mudarnos a Boston, al otro lado del país donde ella estudiará medicina en Harvard y yo trabajaré en el Museo de Historia Natural.