Volume 51, No. 1

Spring 2018

The Spring 2018 Issue begins with Roger Terry’s “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development” followed by a collaborative effort by John Ferguson III, Benjamin Knoll and Jana Riess looking at “The Word of Wisdom in Contemporary American Mormonism: Perceptions and Practice.” Inside the fiction section find new stories by Levi Peterson and Annette Haws. Also included are beautiful poems and fascinating reviews–including a second review of Steven L. Peck’s Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats. The issue concludes with a beautiful sermon by Kate Harline on how “I’m Trying to Get to Know Jesus.” And so much more!

Articles

Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development

Roger Terry

Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
The issue of authority in Mormonism became painfully public with the rise of the Ordain Women movement.

The Word of Wisdom in Contemporary American Mormonism: Perceptions and Practice

Jana Riess, John E. Ferguson III and Benjamin R. Knoll

Brigham Young University made headlines in 2012 for a series of controversies that would be, to say the least, unusual on most college campuses: a student-led push for the university to sell caffeinated beverages at student vending locations. Although a staple throughout the United States, caffeinated sodas had long been restricted from sale at BYU due to “lack of demand,” according to university officials.Five years later, however, caffeinated soda was, at last, approved for sale on BYU’s campus.

Thomas Aquinas Meets Joseph Smith: Toward a Mormon Ethics of Natural Law

Levi Checketts

In opposition to Christian traditions that teach human guilt as a result of original sin, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that humans “will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”Unlike the Lutheran simul justus et peccator, wherein human beings are thoroughly sinful and saved only by God’s mercy, Mormons believe that human agency is responsible for human sinfulness and that the same agency is required to do good works for which we are ultimately judged.

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Stacey Dearing

In her diary entry for March 20, 1848, Patty Bartlett Sessions (1795–1892) recorded an unusual note: she had begun to work on her sewing sampler, an item she had not touched for thirty-eight years. She writes simply, “commenced to finish my sampler that I began when I was a girl and went to school.”

Come to Zion

Annette Haws

Six months after she’d divorced her most recent husband, Sue kicked back the silk sheets one chilly morning and decided to take back her maiden name. She packed her bags, grabbed a cab to Charles…

The Shyster

Levi S. Peterson

Arne met Leanne Holburn at church during his final year in an MBA program at the University of Washington. He found her very attractive. Of medium height, she had sculpted cheeks, an aquiline nose, and…

Spare the Rod

Russell Arben Fox

At 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, I talked with Death on a mountain.

It’s hardly a mountain. It’s barely a hill.

I’m writing this, and so I can call it a mountain if I want. Besides, I’m from Wichita, Kansas; a sudden forty-foot-elevation hill is a genuine geographic landmark.

Still Making Sense of Suffering: Ruminations on Thirty-Five Years with Multiple Sclerosis

Marilyn D. White

My article “Making Sense of Suffering” was published in Dialogue’s Summer 1992 issue. It detailed my journey of coping with multiple sclerosis. At the time of its publication, I was working for Dialogue as an editorial assistant, back when Ross and Kay Peterson were at its helm.

Faith

Natalie Shaw Evjen

I once thought Faith the expense to secure
A pass aboard the Boat That Cannot Sink,
Destined for the Island Of The Sure:
A place of facts, concordance, sutured chinks.

As If Nothing Matters

Chris A. Peck

When I looked at the body
I thought only in clichés,
those that I had yet to experience
for thirty years.

Forgotten Birds

Robert A. Rees

The black-cassocked crow
broods in the eucalyptus
where blood-red umbellates
breathe out the odor of camphor.
As the graves grow green
and spring missiles its
multitudinous wings,

Alpha

Douglas Summers Stay

1. An advent: ancient archangels architect abstract astronomy and
arid asteroids.

2. All asteroids appeared amorphous and absent; And all asleep across
aquatic anarchy. And astral angels advanced across area.

Our Artistic Potential | The Mormon Arts Center, The Kimball Challenge at Fifty: Mormon Arts Center Essays

Jacob Bender

The occasion for this slim new volume of essays is the fiftieth anniversary of Spencer W. Kimball’s “Education for Eternity” talk, delivered to Brigham Young University faculty at the commencement of fall semester 1967. Although…

As the Savor: The Poetry of R. A. Christmas | R. A. Christmas, Saviors on Mt. Disneyland: New and Collected Poems

Dennis Clark

If you have never read a poem by Bob Christmas, this book is your chance to catch up. Take it.

If you have read poems by Bob Christmas, this book is your chance to enjoy yourself all over again. Plunge in.

Opening Invisible Doors: Considering Heavenly Mother | Rachel Hunt Steenblik, Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother

Kristen Eliason

Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother is a collection of poems written by Rachel Hunt Steenblik and illustrated by Ashley Mae Hoiland. Divided into four sections and armed with nearly thirty pages of notes, the work of this book appears to be two-fold: first, to enter into a discoveratory conversation about the nature of Heavenly Mother, and second, an outcropping of the research Steenblik conducted for the scholarly article “‘A Mother There’: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven.”

Resisting Interpretation | Lisa Bickmore, Ephemerist

Bert Fuller

Ephemerist, n.: (1) after the Greek word for day, a journal keeper; (2) a collector of ephemera (see archivist); (3) an inventor of ephemera (see capitalist); (4) a devotee of ephemera (see nudist); (5) one who privileges ephemera (see nepotist); (6) a scientist whose subject is ephemera (see mycologist).

What follows is a lecture on three samples from a known ephemerist.

Gender Structures within Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition | Sandra Clark Jergensen and Shelah Mastny Miner, eds. Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition

Mei Li Inouye

Aptly titled, Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition is a well-curated collection of prose and poetry featuring a specific demographic of Mormon women who read and contribute to the literary journal and blog Segullah. Eleven thoughtfully arranged categories containing fifty-eight voices capture a diversity of experiences that occasionally touch on issues of class, sexual orientation, ability, race, and ethnicity, but primarily plumb the life and death observations and gendered experiences of a middle-class swath of well-educated, able-bodied, heteronormative, married women from different age groups and North American geographies (their rare references to race or ethnicity also suggest racial homogeneity among them).

A Philosophical Portrait in Pieces | Steven L. Peck, Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Rachel Kirkwood

It has now been months since I first made the acquaintance of Gilda Trillim, but even now I must admit that I do not completely understand her.

I’m Trying to Get to Know Jesus

Kate Harline

For a good portion of my life, I didn’t understand how Jesus fit into the equation. I prayed to Heavenly Father and so I felt like I had some sort of connection to him because I talked to him. And I had often felt the presence of the Holy Ghost so there were some tangible experiences with that member of the Godhead. But I never talked to Jesus and I never felt him in my bosom, so I felt a little confused about how to connect with this brother of mine for whom I quite instinctively have always felt a deep love, even without—it seemed—much contact.

Norma: An Excerpt from The Encore

Charity Tillemann-Dick

The mid-November darkness settles early in the afternoon. As my window dims, a tall man with a chocolate complexion peeks through the door. “Charity,” his rich baritone voice fills my small room, “I’m one of…

An Intuitive Approach to Art

Daniel Hall Bartholomew

Throughout his life, Daniel has continually experimented with line, form, and color to create abstract artworks. He chiefly works with ink on paper, sometimes employing collage to bring more dimensionality and complexity to his endeavors.…