Fall 1991
The Fall 1991 Issue explores the cultural, historical, and personal dimensions of Mormonism, with a particular focus on international and introspective perspectives. Marjorie Newton examines the Americanization of Australian Mormon converts, while E. Leo Lyman and B. Carmon Hardy delve into the political and personal ramifications of the Woodruff Manifesto. Lowell Bennion shares a reflective view on life within a Mormon context, and Harold T. Christensen recounts his experiences as a mission president in New Zealand during the Great Depression. In "Personal Voices," Levi S. Peterson reflects on his mother’s home, G. Kevin Jones recounts personal trials through a “Liberty Jail” metaphor, and Dana Haight Cattani discusses independent faith. Stan Andersen presents a family history fragment, "Why Ane Wept," while Anita Tanner reflects on the costs of commitment. Kevin Christensen’s commentary touches on the evolving nature of scriptural scholarship.
A few years ago I listened to a group of American missionaries who had just eaten an enormous meal at our table and were showing their appreciation by telling us how backward Australia is in…
Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 21–39
Lyman discusses the political pressures from the United Government which led to the church issuing the First Manifesto.
Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 43–57
Before the Manifesto was first read in conference, members and church leaders fully believed in plural marriage as being a commandment from God. Once the Manifesto was read, over time members started wondering if it was because of their own actions that polygamy was no longer a commandment.
There are many vantage points from which to view a religion. In distinguishing one Christian religion from another, we might study its concept of God, the mission of Jesus Christ, or the role of the…
The time was 21 April 1932; the place, New Zealand. I had served as a Mormon missionary for nearly two and one-half years, the normal period according to Church practice for a foreign assignment at…
A drum was beating that night as my family and I entered the elementary school gymnasium. Animal skins were stretched across a portion of hollowed-out tree, two flat brown hands pounding on their surface. Instantly…
A Gift of Empowerment, Kimblee Staking
Copying, William L. Knecht
Spiritual Food, Dallas B. Robbins
Those Offending Covers, Stanley B. Kimball
A Fundamental Difference, Craig B. Wilson
Anthony Hutchinson’s A Mormon Midrash?: LDS Creation Narratives Reconsidered (DIALOGUE, Winter 1988) is a heroic and important article that deserves careful examination. Hutchinson’s provocative and illuminating themes range from modern scholarly techniques, through King James…
I spent the thirteenth of December 1985 traveling by automobile from Ogden, Utah, to Snowflake, Arizona, to attend my mother’s funeral. It was my fifty-second birthday. My wife, daughter, and I commandeered a bedroom in…
This dialogue of anguished questioning and consolation has an intensely personal meaning to me. The 1980s were a decade that severely tested my faith in Heavenly Father and my commitment to the Church. Whatever others will remember of these ten years, I will remember suffering: personally, professionally, and spiritually.
When I was a child, my mother read regularly to my siblings and me, and together we paged through all the children’s classics. I loved the sound of her voice repeating the familiar words and…
Ane PEdersdatter of Sjaelland, Denmark, entered Bear River Valley in northern Utah much as if she were going to jail. Her granddaughter Elvina told the story long afterwards: About April 15th [of 1866] Ane left…
It wasn’t the silver balance scale the teacher used for a centerpiece. Initially I thought it attractive, effective as a visual aid. It wasn’t her manner or her voice, all appealing, that offended me. It…
that loneliness is like
the whole of the moon
rising in a sky so lucent,
the clouds cast shadows
The dark gray morning has its eye on you
Forget about the stormy
you have more pressing worries. What to do?
The dark gray morning has its eye on you
All morning: rainwater
off the roof onto pebbles
washed smooth of pale soil
in the garden.
Anyone who has worked with Mormon music has likely experienced the frustration of being unable to learn much about its past —such things as composers, per formers, and institutional policy and practice. Collections of folk…
Historians of American religion often see a connection between Mormons and Puritans, if only because most early Saints came from New England. However, many studies which have mentioned similarities between these religions have done so…
About fifteen years ago, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher invited Franklin Fisher, a young and aesthetically bearded professor of English at the University of Utah, to read from his novel in progress at a gathering of the…
In 1879 a young Mormon missionary named Rudger Clawson watched as an anti-Mormon mob in Georgia killed his companion. Through bluff and bravado Clawson survived the assault and brought his companion’s body back to church…
If Clarice Short had not chosen to become a great educator, she might have developed into a major poet. Her poetic output, excellent in quality but admittedly limited, reveals her as a woman dedicated to her…
I first encountered Reed Smoot more than two decades ago while researching the life and political career of Parley P. Christensen, a Utah political maverick who became the Farmer-Labor party nominee for president in 1920.…
At least one Latter-day Saint in the early days of the Church truly understood what it means to have the heavens open and God speak after centuries of silence. Par ley Parker Pratt, one of…
Exiles in a Land of Liberty is part of the University of North Carolina’s “Studies in Religion” series. The author, Kenneth H. Winn, is a relative newcomer to Mormon studies and, if this book is…
Since the publication of the Hosea Stout Journals in 1964, the University of Utah Press has made a significant contribution to the study of western history by publishing a number of important diaries, journals, and letter collections. The Gold…
