Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 Issue begins with "The Correct [Domain] Name of the Church: Technology, Naming, and Legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition" by Spencer P. Greenhalgh and is followed by "Transcending Mormonism: Trangender Experiences in the LDS Church" by Keith Burns and Linwood J. Lewis. The issue is also filled with marvelous personal essays, eight in total, covering such issues as racial justice, dissociative identity disorder, the atonement and more. Plus poetry, art, reviews and a lovely sermon to finish. Purchase single issue here.
Of all the changes made in response to the 2018 decision to emphasize the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, those made to the official Latter-day Saint web and digital…
Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 27–55
Enjoy an interview about this piece here.
Desiring to better understand how people are navigating these complex identity negotiations, I interviewed seven trans and/or gender nonconforming Mormons between eighteen and forty-four years old living in various regions of the United States as part of my graduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York
Listen to the interview about this piece here. Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A man stands naked on the rubber of a checkout counter’s clnveyer belt, face smeared with something red.…
Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 7–50
In the decade since I made that decision, a lot has happened that ultimately reoriented me back to the academy and to theological studies in particular. First, the job I took after graduating from Brigham Young University took me to Boston, Massachusetts. I immediately noticed a refreshing difference between the congregations I attended in Utah and congregations in Boston. These were the most educated people I had ever worshiped with in my adult life, and it was the safest I had ever felt being my authentic self at church.
Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 83–89
A couple months earlier, I had written to a friend back in Utah. It was June and she was celebrating Pride. I asked her to send me something. I’d been feeling terribly lonely in the missionary culture and wanted a physical reminder that there were others like me out in the world. She mentioned pronoun pins, and in a moment of rash decision I asked for “they/them” as well as “she/her.” Why not? I guess I thought, what harm could it do?
Listen to an interview about this piece here. We sat around a long rectangular table in the local church building. It was tapered at one end, almost trapezoidal. Five men lined each of the long…
Dissociative Identity Disorder.[1] The words stung more than I thought they would. Dissociative Identity Disorder. The diagnosis did not come as a surprise. I had specifically sought out psychological assessment to evaluate my theory as…
I’ve heard many women say that the day their child was born was the best day of their life, but it was the worst day of mine. After laboring for nearly forty hours, my body…
If you mistake a model car for a real car, you’re going to have problems. I spent much of my life making that mistake in my thinking about atonement. I had read that “God’s justice…
Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. In his artistic agony,diamond drops of bloodcovered Christ’s chiseled body,sacred sweat shimmeredin the light of the Passover moon.The Son of God, an altarpiece,in serene pain and…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Stern little lady,ancestor in an oval frame,I like the way your shoulders slopeand your fingers dangleover the book and the carpetbag skirt.I like the way your…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. It was somewhere around here, I think.Where they buried that baby,yeah, the one I told you about.No, not by the pioneer obelisksa wife for each sidefresh…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. How that late sabbath afternoon you sat cross-legged on their lawn, Elder S at your side, the couple just across, their backs to her late summer…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. 1. a patient’s accountof medical history,a reiteration of conditionscontracted by mortality,a form of proud flesh’sgranulation over a wound,a raised tissue massdelineating impact to sayhere is pain,…
Sometimes from the thresholdof these doorswe are greeted by another self,another worldwe wish to worship, incarnationthe tithe we offerfor such a crossing: we, seeking the divine,the divine leaning toward us,fading coal of memory igniting into…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Halfway through the session, I become awareof a full bladder and nothing else.All that is holy is eclipsedby flesh. I pant in claustrophobiabetween the lady who…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. O, preening angels, voyeursof bright and burning things, of underbuilding flare-ups andflaming caved-in tinder, whose breathing—plumed, infernal,unforgiving—sweltered her last daybreak with unholy invocation—Please, if mercy be,…
Frankly, I am not sure why I was invited to review Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Whole Being. It is not an opportunity that I sought or for which I volunteered. I have written very…
Renaissance scholar Ada Palmer estimates we know 1 percent of what happened five hundred years ago and that two-thirds of what we know is wrong. I have no reason to doubt her expertise—and every reason…
Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…
A few years ago, William Logan wrote, “Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience.”[1] We could more accurately call it a major art with many minor audiences grouped, like the poets,…
Among the benefits to reading authors with large, proven oeuvres is trust. We can trust Steven L. Peck. Remember that through the provocations of the opening of his astonishing new release from BCC Press, a…
When I was about twelve, yet another retelling of the Cinderella story was released into theatres in a magic-free but nonetheless magical version called Ever After. One of my favorite scenes in this film involves…
MOH: In official LDS Church materials, from magazines to manuals to temple walls, there’s a lack of abstract art, in favor of highly representational, literal art. What is the role of abstraction in religious art,…
