Summer 2008
The Summer 2008 issue begins with Chiung Hwang Chen as he takes a look at the church in Taiwan, elaborating on the stagnating growth rate as well as the marginalization faced by the Taiwanese members both from within and outside the church. This is followed by a look at the church in Finland by Kim B. Ostman, this time examining the advances in Mormon Studies as well as barriers faced by Finnish scholars attempting to study church doctrine and teachings both in our day and in the time of the restoration. These are followed by "My Madness" by Steven L. Peck and "A New Future Requires a New Past" by Ken Driggs, several works of poetry, and "Polygamy, Mormonism, and Me" by B. Cameron Hardy in Avenues to Faith.
Gordon B. Hinckley remained a vital leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until the very end of his illustrious and prophetic life. President Hinckley’s de facto guidance of the LDS church…
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced stable growth in Taiwan since the first four missionaries arrived in 1956. Even in recent years, when the growth of the Church has slowed considerably in many countries including those in East Asia, LDS growth in Taiwan remains robust. Thus, something distinctive characterizes Mormonism in Taiwan compared to Mormonism in neighboring countries. Some scholars have used diminishing growth rates in the past decade or two to argue that Mormonism remains marginal in many countries.
The study of churches and religious movements is especially prone to the issues of bias and selective presentation due to researcher position and organizational politics. Like many other religions, Mormonism as an object of study has not escaped this problem.
I sat in the bed facing the two smiling demons—leaders of the great Satan/Wal-Mart Organization that ran the hospital. They were trying to convince me that I should let them adopt a clone of my five-year-old daughter Emily. She had been created by new genetic techniques developed by their powerful company and they insisted, “Her place will be great in the new world order.” Over the last few days, however, they had lied to me so often I knew it was a sham. Despair seemed to overwhelm me at the thought of the strange global changes that had recently taken place under this evil organization’s machinations. But I was resolute. I would never let them have the copy of my daughter.
I had never heard of fundamentalist Mormons until seeing a 60 Minutes segment about them in the late 1980s. During a western vacation, I visited Colorado City, Arizona, on January 2, 1988, and talked my way into some friendships which continue to this day. FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs, his father Rulon Jeffs, former Colorado City mayor Dan Barlow, the late Owen Allred, and his successor LeMoine Jenson of the Apostolic United Brethhren (AUB) were among my acquaintances. I later earned a graduate degree in legal history, and my thesis concerned an important event in their experience. I have continued to study, visit, and write about the fundamentalist Mormon universe since then.
Dialogue 41.2 (Summer 2009): 85–101
Hardy describes the long, difficult process of researching polygamy during a time that the church wasn’t open about polygamy.
Dialogue Best of the Year Awards Dialogue Best of the Year awards are for contributions judged as superior in their respective categories. ARTICLE Cetti Cherniak, “The Theology of Desire, Parts I and II” Spring and…
After our two-day honeymoon in West Yellowstone, we move into this one-bedroom place above the Modern Plumbing & Heating building in Rigby. There’s a door right on Main Street that opens up to a barn-red…
Winter was Domlik’s best season. The New Year rains were the earth’s sweat; and when the soil perspired, the dirt softened into mud so thick it postponed all organized demining activity. Even the bravest deminer—by…
Nothing thrilled me more as a little girl than hearing my parents’ courtship story: my mother, diminutive and dimpled, was eighteen, Australian, and a recent convert to the Church, living with her parents and six…
Cory and I more or less live in the cab of a long-haul semi. We have a house in Indiana, but we don’t make it home very often. It’s not unusual for two months to…
Attending sessions of April general conference with my wife in 2007, I was reminded in many ways of the goodness of the Church. Joining fellow Saints flowing into the Conference Center on a bright Sunday morning, I was aware that I was part of a body of believers whose collective faith and devotion constitute a vital force in the world. I was reminded of this goodness while watching the October 2007 general conference on television. The music for the Saturday afternoon session was performed by a chorus of young women in their midteens, all wearing a garden of blouses in solid colors. As the camera swept over that array of bright, beautiful faces, I was impressed by what they represented of the three great human quests—Truth, Beauty, and Goodness—whose fusion and harmony, as Wayne Booth argues, constitute God. Their faces, the words spoken during the conference sessions, the music, and the feelings—all of these things engendered in my heart a remembrance of the ways the goodness of the Church has blessed my life over the years.
I’m wedged between two lifetimes,
this one and that.
Like cement walls on either side,
they press close.
The ponderous round oak table
calls our family of ten
to their places,
the crowns of our heads
like small planets
stilled in orbit,
mealtime settings like jewels
in an expansive medallion.
Good advice was of no use in the garden,
reason only rudimentary in her
who slouched toward the tree and took unflinching
what was needed.
If you’re at all familiar with literary talk these days, you might be aware of the chatter about children’s and young adult literature being the hot new thing. Everyone’s wondering what will be the “next…
A staple of Douglas Thayer’s fiction is the sensitive, adolescent or young adult Mormon male struggling to come to terms with the burdens of mortality, a sense of sin, or the pressures of exemplary living.…
What happens when a quotation becomes a pop culture slogan—appearing on bumper stickers and coffee mugs and even thong panties? “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” wrote Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in a 1976 academic essay about…
Brian Kershisnik lives with his wife, Suzanne, and three children in Kanosh, Utah. The son of a petroleum geologist, he grew up in Angola, Thailand, Texas, and Pakistan. After serving a mission in Denmark, he…
