Spring 1994
The Spring 1994 Issue focuses on various historical, social, and theological dimensions of Mormonism. George D. Smith provides a preliminary demographic report on the roots of Mormon polygamy in Nauvoo from 1841 to 1846. Gary Topping examines the interplay of personality and motivation in Utah historiography. Clara V. Dobay explores the controversy surrounding revisionist Mormon history, while Roger D. Launius reflects on recent trends in "New Social History" and "New Mormon History." Armand L. Mauss discusses the challenges of assimilation and identity faced by Mormons since the mid-20th century. Massimo Introvigne addresses contemporary evangelical fundamentalist anti-Mormonism, and Michael W. Homer compares spiritualism and Mormonism, noting their similarities and differences. Lorin K. Hansen presents the "Moral" atonement as a unique interpretation within Mormon theology, and Lamb-Kwon contributes insights into the coyote hunter trade, enriching the discourse on cultural and economic aspects of the faith.
Dialogue 27.1(Spring 1994): 1–72
Smith discusses the importance of plural marriage in Nauvoo to church history. He shows that after Joseph Smith passed away, Nauvoo polygamy numbers rose.
BEGINNING IN THE 1930S UTAH HISTORIOGRAPHY began to grow rapidly in sophistication. Although the causes of that maturation have yet to be studied closely, it seems clear that federal relief programs for writers under the…
The story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides invaluable insights into the birth of a new religious tradition in a nineteenth-century American setting. Among other things the Mormon experience affords an…
Dialogue 27.1 (Spring 1994): 109–123
My own analysis of the state of Mormon history suggests that the field, while other factors have also been at work, suffers from some of the exclusiveness and intellectual imperialism that were nurtured during the glory days of the “New Mormon History ” in the 1970s.
THIS ESSAY IS A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION of the major developments in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the mid-twentieth century, not a comprehensive history. It is a study in large part of…
MORE THAN eleven years AGO ON 31 December 1982 a film entitled The God Makers premiered at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, before an audience of 4,000 Evangelical Protestants.1 According to Ed Decker,…
Spiritualism and Mormonism were both born in the “burned over district” in upper New York State within a generation of each another and teach that it is possible for the living to speak with the…
COMPARING RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS IS AN EFFECTIVE tool for developing insight and appreciation. And there is no more important Christian concept to which this approach can be applied than the doctrine of the atonement of Jesus…
ALL THE TIME I WAS GROWING UP, my father would go out coyote hunting. His was the typical beat-up pickup with the full gun rack in the back window. He had a gun cabinet in…
Mormons are not the only earnest seekers after plain and precious ideas suppressed by the early Christian church. Scholars may have found a few in recently discovered manuscripts that illuminate the beliefs of the Gnostic…
The same week Karmine discovers her husband is having an affair with a man, she takes her mother to a doctor who finds a tiny patch of cancer on the tip of the old woman’s…
The tapping of the shower is
the insistent brush of reeds
along the Charles and the slap
of oars I’ve just left.
Drops of water stretch and hold
in the sunlight: the small icicle
sways from the eaves in the thaw.
I see it fall
because I have come to the window
at this moment.
What holds us together is our discourse—
hints and asides, a whisper in the cloakroom,
School of the Prophets held across the backyard hedge.
Stealth gives Adam-God a reviving breath,
let Gog and Magog flex their muscle in the U.N.
Joseph, I too have known that sad angelic word
Visitation
Which renders a father not-father.
Your children
When did I find the music
of another open-window autumn?
I’ve left more vodka empties near
the wardhouse dumpster.
Prisoner for Polygamy is not simply another volume in the vast collection of diaries, histories, auto- biographies, and biographies of Mormon polygamists. Rather it is a slice of life, a document describing the immediate consequences of…
Lynn Matthews Anderson. The Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon: Based on the Work Translated by Joseph Smith, Jr. Pittsburgh, PA: privately published, 1993. Includes Joseph Smith’s story, testimony of the three and eight witnesses, and “Words…
The rights of women are a contested issue in religious communities which look to the Hebrew Bible, known as the Old Testament among Christians. A serious matter for these communities—Jewish, Christian, and Islamic—is how the…
