Fall 2019
The Fall 2019 Issue has a long, wonderful Steven Peck story inside. To begin the issue, Steve Shields presents an argument for using the term "Smith-Rigdon Movement" in place of "Mormon Studies" in academic contexts while Rebecca de Schweinitz looks at the racist educational ideas of William E. Barrett.These will be followed by an important panel of students of color and then another roundtable looking at the change of the name of the church. So much goodness to be found!
Dialogue 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.
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 62–83
De Schweintiz documents how students at BYU still hear racist reasons for the priesthood/temple ban in classes, missions, Gospel Doctrine, sacrament meeting talks and even in books published by the Church.
Mnemosyne She was still puzzled that the stars were not the same ones she knew. She cor rects. That she used to know. Where was Orion, its belt and sword glowing bright with mythic power…
“Stop gawking at that guy,” Mother said, as I stood staring at a man while shopping in a five and dime store in Idaho Falls. I had never seen a black person before. I stood…
As part of your opening welcome over the pulpit, you announced to us that filming and photography were not allowed in the chapel. We had just gathered there in front of my father’s closed casket…
A star exploded, scattering its life
So earth could gather from the dust and churn
A healthy wheel of seasons. Life will burn
And feed the soil so seeds will germinate.
When Jesus took the church to bed, rocks rent,
earth groaned, sky split, spilt watered wine.
Trees shivered to their hearts to know the carpenter
laid in the bed he’d made, stone of his stone.
In the pasture behind the barn
where workhorse colts frolic all summer long,
the creek, once the broth of stones, freezes over,
greens and blues of creek bed and cottonwood
muted in meandering.
Among the death of foliage
in skeleton trees
he appears, moonlight gracing
his rack—that upturned,
The sky has fasted in the desert
forty thousand years.
Now it’s caught a glimpse
of barley fields and orange groves:
the table the world sets for winter.
After the staredown, saliva gathering in their mouths,
cotton swelling in his, Daniel invited the lions
out for drinks and a late supper.
When you’re young you think “widow” is a misprint for “window.”
Then the tarp of age gets pulled over you and the words drift apart.
There is a cleanness to good marriage that is like the Renaissance.
It is a force of beauty that tramples mere love. When the blood rushes
Taking the word “essay” in its root meaning as “an attempt,” BYU humanities professor George Handley’s new book of essays If Truth Were a Child comprises the attempts of the author to reconcile intellectual curiosity…
Most books serve a specific purpose: to provoke emotions, to educate, or to entertain. Rarely do I find a book that’s simultaneously evocative, educational, and entertaining. Crossings is one of the few. From researching in…
Steven L. Peck’s The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals is, like many of Peck’s works, almost impossible to categorize. Is it a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy?…
In Becoming the Beloved Disciple, Eric Huntsman successfully navigates a complex text, bringing clarity, insight, and charity to the Gospel of John in a way that will appeal both to those already well versed in…
It 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…
It’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…
After 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…
I 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…
When 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…
I have a six-year old named Sofia, who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, insisted that we all call her “Cat Poop” for about six months last year. This feels relevant to the conversation at hand.
I suppose I should have foreshadowed my own shadow. I should have seen what I did not want to see. That said, I must say, I see what I see for fear my shadow over-take me, for fear I become mere shadow of my former Mormon self. Formerly and formally, I tell it like it is, that is to say, “it” being what I see I say, what I say I mean, what I mean to say, I think is really me. I like to think I think so, so I say what I think.
“Rèv mwen pou demen” Douvanjou n se rèv demen ki dwe plòtonnen nan konbit tèt ansanm Mizè ayè n va sèvi fèy papye listwa pou korije devwa demen Nawè n va sèvi plim ak lank pou kouche sou papye zègrè n…
“Mami, you’re light brown. I’m dark brown. And Dada is dark brown,” my two-year-old daughter blurted out unexpectedly one night before her bedtime. “Yes mama, you’re right,” I responded as my mind raced. I could…
I remember the very first time I saw a painting of a black person in a Latter-day Saint building. It was the painting titled “And Thou Didst Hear Me” by Elspeth Young, located in the…
When Eve partook of the fruit, she envisioned a different kind of world than she knew in Eden—a world where she could learn, progress, and create. Unlike most Christians, Latter-day Saints believe that Eve knew…
“Tinesha, we found your relative’s headstone,” reads the email subject line. And then, a few days later: “Tinesha, your 4th great-grandmother was born in Finland.” From details of pioneer companies to the stories of my…
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 203–208
The only way that you can both help the poor and needy and preach the gospel is if you let go of racism “and help others to do the same.”
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 209–217
A sermon wrestling with the curse of blackness in the Book of Mormon.
This issue marks the first time that a Dialogue cover has ever had an LDS Church President riding on a dinosaur. Or a spiral jetty made of salt-water taffy. Or green jello stacked on a…
