Fall 2021
The Fall 2021 issue begins with Michael MacKay's "The Secular Binary of Joseph Smith's Translations." This fascinating piece is followed by Cristina Rosetti's intriguing "The Development of Joseph Smith Deification in Woolleyite Mormonism." Also includes many reviews, poetry, a new fiction piece and gorgeous art. Plus "An Open Letter to Bishops" from a bishop.
By 1828, Joseph Smith had carefully created copies and an “alphabet” of the characters on the gold plates to take to scholars to “git them translated.”[1] At this early stage it is easy to see…
“My testimony is that Joseph Smith is at the head of this dispensation; he is a member of the Godhead and he is the One Mighty and Strong. And it is his work to set…
The notion of apostasy is central to the identity of the Mormon people.[1] One might even say it is the raison d’être of Mormonism. It is the thing that explains why there needed to be…
Ever since Socrates banished poetry in Book X of Plato’s Republic with a flippant “if . . . poetry can show any reason for her existence in a well-governed state, we would gladly admit her,”[1] Western poets…
Podcast version of this fiction piece. This was not the only time that Richards, originally born Neville Colyer, the son of a millwright in Oxfordshire, had worked through the imagery of the stars. He had…
Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…
Dear Bishop, The mantle you bear will be a delight. You will observe the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ and feel the love our heavenly parents have for their children. You will…
Instead of unremitting lucha libre, I desired détente between my sexuality and birth faith. A gap between graduation from law school and starting work opened a unique space for spiritual odyssey. I resumed attending church…
I.The first lie they told me wasBlonde Jesus. Thick Belinda locks,And blue ocean eyes.He hangs on the cross, whiteLike a tender lamb, orWhite like a lily flower,Or like white snowSmothering brown ground. II.The second lie…
Your lips are melting petals,Wilting into my mouth.My tears not clearEnough to revive them. When you learn to fly,Will they forget to dance?Lose their maypole eyelashesAnd languish, lonely, withWings cut. And yet,I pray, make me…
I suppose only the animals that paired offand shuffled up the rampsurvived the flood. So this Bishop, pointing outthat we would rather flirtthan marry—well, he built an Ark out of the treeslining the church property.He…
An armadillo dug up the grassin my parents’ yard last year— the kind that bounce buckshotoff their back and carry leprosy. If only I could do the same:materialize armor, lumber along. I could curl up…
John the Baptist was a hairy scorpionwho skittered out from the wildernessand began stinging folksuntil they saw the Holy Ghost. He molted like all prophets do,lived in caves, under rocks,until the predators found him—took his…
Slipping off a Sunday dress—hoping you’ll join me and undress.No more dark slacks and white shirts,corruption of innocence tends to hurt.It’s worship too irreverent for pews,forgive my transgression against a holy muse,but, trust me, crisis…
Like a mother opening her arms to embrace her children, the span of mountains and trees that look over my childhood home in Salt Lake City extend to the south and cradle also the homes…
When a five-year-old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief-stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the new novel…
A few years ago I was researching poems written about the Book of Mormon. I had read Eliza R. Snow’s “The Lamanite” (adapted from a poem she wrote before becoming a Latter-day Saint titled “The…
Inevitably at some point, due to structural white patriarchal privilege and a central and abiding concern with discrete gendered bodies and heteronormative relations, the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will…
In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…
When it comes to sacred places, I feel considerable holy envy toward the Latter-day Saints. Their sacred sites stretch across the continent, from Vermont to California. Mormons can visit their founding prophet’s birthplace, the grove…
