Volume 55, No. 3

Fall 2022

Our Fall 2022 Issue is filled with important issues. It begins with Matthew Harris's "Joseph Fielding Smith’s Evolving Views on Race: The Odyssey of a Mormon Apostle-Prophet" and continues with "Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion within Haiti’s Culture of Vodou" by Catherine S. Freeman and "'The Robe of Righteousness': Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in The Book of Mormon" by Colby Townsend. Then many, many fascinating reviews, poetry, personal essays, including "Trans in the Chapel: Attending Church as a Newly Out Transgender Woman" by Emily English and more. And you are going to want this physical issue just because of the incredible cover art. Purchase single issue here.

Articles/Essays

Joseph Fielding Smith’s Evolving Views on Race: The Odyssey of a Mormon Apostle-President

Matthew L. Harris

In 1963, Joseph Henderson, a non-Mormon from New York, wrote a pointed letter to LDS Church apostle Joseph Fielding Smith asking him about the racial teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[1] The letter triggered a sharp response from Smith, who informed his interrogator that he was...

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Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion within Haiti’s Culture of Vodou

Catherine S. Freeman

At first glance, it may be difficult to see a relationship between Haitian Vodou and Mormonism.[1] How could Mormonism, which established and upheld racist policies and doctrines, be associated with a religion born out of Black power?[2] Connections between Haitian Vodou and Mormonism, however, are worth investigating because thousands of...

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“The Robe of Righteousness”: Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in The Book of Mormon

Colby Townsend

The book of Isaiah has enjoyed an enduring presence within Christian thought since the earliest period of Christian history. Isaiah has famously been called “the fifth gospel”[1] because of its ubiquitous presence within Christian writing, thought, and history and its immense influence on the New Testament.[2] The importance of Isaiah...

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Fiction

The Great Zucchini War

Lisa Bolin Hawkins

We figured the Utah Mormons started it, because they were the gardening crowd. Now, to most of the Saints in the College Village Ward, my family and I were Utah Mormons, since we had come to the university town from BYU so Jeff could get his PhD. As a convert...

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Personal Voices

Trans in the Chapel: Attending Church as a Newly Out Transgender Woman

Emily English

The ratchet tightened in my chest pulling into the parking lot. Four of our five children in tow and one serving a mission. Fifteen minutes early in the hopes that we could settle in before anyone noticed. My children insist we sit in our usual pew to the right side,...

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Pioneer Mother

Tara Godwin

I come from a family of Mormons, although perhaps somewhat unorthodox ones. Somewhere in England and what is today Romania, my father’s ancestors heard of a man named Joseph Smith and his vision of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. They left Europe and traveled with other devout...

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Moroni, Moses, and President Nelson: Vital Correlations with the COVID-19 Vaccine

Robin Litster Johnson

I listen to the Book of Mormon almost every day and often find what I consider to be interesting correlations with other goings-on in life. Most recently, I am struck by the similarities between the Nephites’ attitudes regarding defending themselves against the Lamanites, Moroni’s preparations for war, Moses and the...

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Poetry

Bear One Another’s Burdens

Lorren Lemmons

I. When I was a child I entered baptismal waters with one pair of folded hands and rose up, one with hosts of linked fingers weaving nets for catching burdens— for bearing the weight of doubts and doubters. II. I know the Shepherd counts each woolly head, knows each bleating...

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Getting there

Millie Tullis

my husband questions the good historical centers like this do. Kids come every year on a field trip and leave thinking history sucks because they don’t want to touch a cow’s hot udder. He did not want to touch the cow’s udder and is remembering how the man dressed as...

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Saint George, Utah

Millie Tullis

Not named for the Saint who met the princess by the lake and with her girdle leashed the dragon. Who killed it for the people’s conversion. Whose chapel in Windsor holds a part of his skull part of his arm or his heart. In a cup of griffin’s egg...

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Reviews

This Girl Is On Fire: Strength, Faith, and Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops Allison Hong Merrill, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops: A Memoir

Shayla Frandsen

Allison Hong Merrill’s menstrual period begins when she’s in the fifth grade, and she feels palpable confusion and worry that she’s going to bleed all over everything. When a concerned teacher spots her stained skirt, Allison remembers wanting to shout, “I’m innocent! My body is doing its own thing. I...

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Joseph Smith’s History: It’s Complicated Ronald O. Barney, Joseph Smith: History, Methods, and Memory

Samuel B. Hislop

Joseph Smith defined truth as a “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24, emphasis added). I remember well the first time I learned that I did not know nearly as much as I thought I did about things “as...

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Book of Mormon Theology— Anticipating the Future of a Discipline Neal A. Maxwell Institute, The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions

John Christopher Thomas

The academic discipline of Book of Mormon theology is a relatively recent development that appears to have begun in earnest with a little-cited 1997 University of Nottingham PhD thesis by Tyler Rex Moulton entitled “Divine Benevolence, Embodiment, and Salvation in the Teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.”...

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Mormonism and the Natural World Karin Anderson and Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, eds., Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild

Gary Ettari

This collection of fiction, essays, and poetry is a timely and necessary one, reflecting a growing Mormon interest in and concern for the natural world. The theme of the 2019 Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference, for instance, was “Ecologies,” and there has been a steadily growing scholarly interest in...

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Grappling with LDS Identity Formation: A Review of Recent Young Adult Novels Rosalyn Eves, Beyond the Mapped Stars James Goldberg and Janci Patterson, The Bollywood Lovers’ Club

Lisa Torcasso Downing

Identity formation is a challenge for any teenager, but when the hand-me-down identity a teen receives stretches beyond holiday expectations into realms fraught with eternal consequences, a high-stakes story is born. Because the formation of self can be a risky endeavor for LDS youth, it’s not surprising that two recently...

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Understanding the Community of Christ’s Doctrine and Covenants Dale E. Luffman, Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants. Volume 2: The Reorganization—Community of Christ Era

Chrystal Vanel

Even though with nearly 200,000 members worldwide Community of Christ (CofC) is the second-largest denomination finding its roots in Joseph Smith’s Restoration movement, publications on CofC history and theology are much less numerous than publications tackling the sixteen million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered...

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Mormonism’s Inside-Outsider Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, Jan Shipps: A Social and Intellectual Portrait: How a Methodist Girl from Hueytown, Alabama, Became an Acclaimed Mormon Studies Scholar

Cristina Rosetti

Jan Shipps is Mormonism’s “inside-outsider” who transformed the field of Mormon studies and paved the way for many who followed in her footsteps. Her book Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition remains one of the most widely read and assigned books about the Mormon Restoration, offering a concise...

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From Private Dreams to Public Damnings George D. Smith, ed., Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Katie Ludlow Rich

“Dont give me Council, its an insult to me . . . any man who takes a course independent of me—its a stink to me—I can not bear it” (1:200). On Saturday, September 23, 1849, Brigham Young spoke from the stand in Salt Lake City with the sharpness and bravado that characterized many...

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Searching For Sally Virginia Kerns, Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young

Jenny Hale Pulsipher

Over the long history of the genre, most biographies have been written about elite white men. There is a practical reason for that: the wealth and status of those subjects made them far more likely than other people to be literate, to have access to the materials needed to create...

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Vardis Fisher Pioneered Literary Mormon Writing Michael Austin, Vardis Fisher: A Mormon Novelist

John Bennion

Michael Austin’s biography positions Vardis Fisher as the first Mormon novelist to escape the binary of ardent anti-Mormon writing and just as ardent home literature. This work is one of the first two books in a series published by the University of Illinois Press—Introductions to Mormon Thought. The second being...

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Sermon

On the Value of Doubt

Arle Lommel

I start my talk with the tale of a young man who grew up in a house of faith but had serious doubts about what he had been taught. He did not believe what his religious authorities told him, or was at least profoundly uncertain about their teachings. In short,...

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Volume Art

ART NOTE Black Joy

Grace Soelberg

When the Stop Your Silence organization began in the spring of 2020, our goal was to create a safe space where Brigham Young University students of color could share their stories of racist discrimination and hardships and find community, healing, and support. Via Instagram, we rapidly received hundreds of stories...

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