Summer 2010
The Summer 2010 issue begins with Benjamin E. Park exploring the link between Parley Pratt and Platonic philosophy, specifically regarding the afterlife and the material status of our souls in this world and the next. This is followed by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who provides an in-depth look at the relationship between second wave feminism and the Mormon church, followed by Heikki Raisanen who explores Joseph Smith's translation process and postulates that his experiences with the Bible at the time may have influenced his translation. Finally Christopher C. Smith writes about the religious landscape Joseph Smith grew up in as well as his vision for codifying church doctrine as the church matured. Also included in this issue are several beautiful works of poetry and fiction, as well as a thought provoking interview about Atheism and Mormonism.
Dialogue 43.2 (Summer 2010): 1–44
A discussion of the theology of the body being combined with the spirit for various different reasons.
Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63
Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.
My involvement in biblical studies has also awakened in me an interest in other holy books. In the 1970s, I had the opportunity to do some work on the Qur’an, a fascinating combination of things familiar and unfamiliar for a biblical scholar. I had a vague hunch that, in a somewhat similar way, the Book of Mormon might make exciting reading, but a contact with that book and its study came about quite accidentally.
Marvin Hill argued in 1989 that the fundamental problem early Mormonism was designed to address was the problem of pluralism. Pluralism, according to Hill, caused a situation of social disintegration and insecurity to which Mormons hoped to bring stability and uniformity.Hill’s analysis is insightful in its attention to the institutional and political issues but does not fully engage the religious dimensions of the problem
Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63
Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.
We’ll find the place which God for us prepared, In His house full of light, Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid; There the saints will shine bright. William Clayton, 1846 I’m cold. We’ve been walking…
1 First he went down to Pappy’s pasture. The pasture was a strip of marshy land down the hill from our house, sandwiched by the inter state and train tracks where Pappy kept his cows.…
Cranney: Richard mentions in Philosophy and Social Hope the dangers of fundamentalist religions and the extent of their political influence. Where did Mormonism fit on the fundamentalist continuum?
Mary Rorty: That’s a very interesting question because that’s something that has changed a great deal in my lifetime. The thought that Mormonism now considers itself in part an ally of the Evangelical Protestant movement is a surprise to many people, and that’s certainly not the side of Mormonism to which Richard had been exposed.
Cranney: Were there any specific instances . . . Of course, he died before Proposition 8 in California.
When philosopher Alastair MacIntyre came striding into my Vanderbilt University office brandishing the New York Times in October of 1985, I knew something was up. “Congratulations,” he said, “your church has just entered its Renaissance period.” I was used to seeing him walk into Furman Hall on Ash Wednesdays with a gray streak on his forehead, and we had talked about Mormonism, but I had no clue what he was talking about. He showed me the front page of the paper. It was the Mark Hofmann bombings—murders to cover up Hofmann’s forgeries. “It only took you 150 years,” Alastair noted. “It took us a millennium and a half.”
Even when we are asleep, our minds are active. Scientists surmise that our brains process and sort the events of the day at this time. Spiritual people believe God sometimes uses these moments to communicate…
He is, perhaps, the same god as the God of Big Things,
but not meant to be worshipped or to run your life,
only to annoy you or not annoy you,
whichever the script calls for.
As my head rests
on your sleeping back
I begin to question
certain laws of nature
and the actual shape
of the Earth.
It’s hard to balance
the pads of your feet on a railing.
He hadn’t thought of that
until just now,
with the sound of water
skirting below him.
If you get snowed in, locked into your home
so long the food runs out,
I suggest peeling the walls to find the mice,
or scouring the attics for nests, for beehives.
All our dinner smells have long since mixed with the wind.
Our voices echoed down these halls receding
by halves with every reverb
till even now, if our ears were small enough,
we might hear them tumble back to us
softer than dandelion fur.
Amasa Mason Lyman (pronounced “AM-uh-see,” according to phonetically spelled family documents) made many important contributions to the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Until now, however, the apostle-turned-apostate has remained a peripheral figure in much of Mormon historical literature. This new biography aims to provide a definitive treatment of Amasa’s life.
Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical letter, is a striking beginning for his papal contribution to Catholic social teaching. In a sense, the encyclical confirms one piece of conventional wisdom about his papacy—that it is a work of consolidating the monumental legacy of John Paul II and, less directly, the ecclesiastical and theological developments of the whole post-Vatican II period.
HBO’s popular Big Love series and David Ebershoff’s bestselling novel The 19th Wife (New York: Random House, 2008), stand as evidence that polygamy remains a perennial topic of interest for Mormons and non-Mormons alike. It…
Polygamy and blood atonement, whatever their real-world drawbacks, can make for profitable novels. If Zane Grey were still alive, he might be plotting another sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage in hopes of riding the titillation wave created by Big Love, Warren Jeffs, and the Yearning for Zion fiasco. Yet shifts in readership that have accompanied the media innovations of the last century have led the descendants of Grey’s initial audience to spend much more time looking at flickering screens than at badly printed pages, greatly reducing the market for the kind of pulpy tales Grey wrote.
Dialogue 45.3 (Fall 2013):188–206
The scripture I have in mind, of course, is the Book of Mormon. What follows is a Gentile’s appreciation—even recommendation—of this well-known but largely unread example of worldclass scripture.
Michael Slade has been photographing all over the world for the past twenty years. A Cache Valley native, Slade received his B.A. degree in photography from Utah State University (1994) and is currently an MFA…
