Lester E. Bush Jr.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine” 45 Years Later

It has been forty-five years since Dialogue published Bush’s essay entitled “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview”2 and forty years since Official Declaration 2 ended the priesthood/temple ban.

Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism

A Commentary of Stephen G. Taggart’s Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins

Dialogue 4.4 (Winter 1969): 86–103
Lester E Bush wrote in response to Stephen G Taggart’s book which the author tried to show that the Church came from abololonist ideas because the Church was orginially founded in New York, but when they encountered pro slavery settlers in Missouri and faced the hostiltiy from the settlers early church leaders apparently changed their mind, even though Joseph Smith eventually did a turnabout from what records have shown regarding African Americans.

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Dialogue 8.1 (Spring 1973): 11–68
Lester Bush’s landmark article tells the most comprehensive history of the church’s teachings on race and priesthood, destabilizing the idea that it originated with Joseph Smith or had been consistently taught.

Mormon Elders’ Wafers: Images on Mormon Virility in Patent Medicine Ads

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

The Spalding Theory Then and Now

Introduction

Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.

A Peculiar People: The Physiological Aspects of Mormonism, 1850-1875

On Mormonism, Moral Epidemics, Homeopathy and Death from Natural Causes

Excommunication and Church Courts: A Note From the General Handbook of Instructions

The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth-Century Perspective

Valedictory

Ethical Issues in Reproductive Medicine: A Mormon Perspective

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview