Allen D. Roberts

From 1974-76, Roberts served as the State Architectural Historian/Historical Architect with the Utah State Historical Society. During this time, he began serious research into Utah’s architectural history, publishing his first article on the subject in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 1975. The following year, as a member of the editorial team and later as co-publisher/co-editor, he began writing articles for Sunstone Magazine, and years later, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, among other publications. In 1993 his article, “A Church Divided,” in City Weekly Magazine, won the “Best Article of the Year Award” from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Articles

The Godmakers: A Content Analysis

The Document Diggers and Their Discoveries: A Panel

Mormon history has always been a hot topic. From the earliest days of Church history over a century and a half ago, vastly divergent accounts of the origins and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been penned and published. In many cases, controversies about LDS historical topics have spilled over into the national press. In the last generation, for example, disputes about the accuracy of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Juanita Brooks’s Mountain Meadows Massacre have been avidly covered in national newspapers and magazines.

The “Lectures on Faith”: A Case Study in Decanonization

The “Lectures on Faith,” seven 1834-35 lessons on theology and doctrine prepared for the “School of the Elders” in Kirtland, Ohio, were canonized in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants by official vote…

“The Truth Is the Most Important Thing”: The New Mormon History According to Mark Hofmann

On 23 January 1987, an unemotional Mark W. Hofmann entered the Utah State Prison after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of theft by deception before third District Judge Kenneth Rigtrup.…

A Response to “The Dilemma of the Mormon Rationalist”

As one also interested in conflicts between faith and reason, I find Robert Anderson’s essay a well-documented, well-reasoned, literate, and thoughtful presentation of a subject I suspect is relevant for many readers. I would like…

A Dialogue Retrospective

Looking back at Dialogue from a perspective of six years seems to me a lot like looking at my six-year-old child and wondering how she grew so fast and unpredictably while pondering where the time…

Profile of Apostasy: Who Are the Bad Guys, Really?

What a difference a word makes. Consider, for example, these two words: apostle, a biblical word from the Greek apostalds, meaning “one sent forth.” For Mormons, an apostle is a man called of God as…

Two Friends for Peace: A Conversation with Diana Lee Hirschi

My “interview” with Diana Hirschi was not so much an interview as a wonderfully civilized conversation over dinner at the Singing Cricket in Salt Lake City. I had never met Diana before, but Karen Moloney…