Volume 45, No. 2

Summer 2012

The first article in the Summer 2012 issue begins with a look at the Mormon church's relationship with the King James Version of the Bible and explores some of the challenges faced by the church's exclusive use of the King James Version. It explores the possibility of adopting of translations as a replacement or concurrent with the use of the King James Version while explaining the impact this would have on missionary work. Following this is an article by Ronan James Head advocating for the adoption by the church of newer translations of the Bible, arguing that the archaic language of the King James Version only acts as a hinderance to modern readers in the pursuit of scriptural interpretation. The issue is finished with several beautiful works of poetry, an interview, several reviews, and two inspired sermons.

Articles

The King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work

Grant Hardy

Not long ago I went out with the full-time elders and we taught a young mother who was quite interested in our message. In fact, she had been meeting with the missionaries for several weeks. When they referred to a biblical scripture and invited her to read along, she did so and then responded, “That’s not what it says in my Bible.” Even though she was a conservative Christian, from a Pentecostal background, she was using the New International Version (NIV). And it is not just that the words were different—most Christians are familiar with multiple versions of the Bi ble these days. The meanings did not match up. The elders were flustered, having no idea how to handle the situation, and they tried to move on to the next point as quickly as possible.

Unity and the King James Bible

Ronan James Head

The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (KJV)has been the de facto English LDS Bible since the very beginning of the Restoration. The initial reason for this is simple: The KJV was the Bible of American Protestantism in the nineteenth century and was therefore Joseph Smith’s Bible. For example, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery used an 1828 KJV to begin work on the Inspired Version of the Bible, known by Mormons as the “Joseph Smith Translation” (JST).

(Re)Interpreting Early Mormon Thought: Synthesizing Joseph Smith’s Theology and the Process of Religion Formation

Benjamin E. Park

Nine months after Joseph Smith and his brother were assassinated by an angry mob in June 1844, Parley P. Pratt published a proclamation addressed to the Church’s large and dispersed membership to assure them that all was well. In doing so, he sought to accomplish two things: first, to praise Smith’s legacy as the found ing prophet of a movement that had attracted thousands of converts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean; and second, to insist on the necessity of the Quorum of the Twelve’s institutional leadership—a role that meant not only continuing, but fulfilling and ex tending, Smith’s religious vision. “The chaos of materials prepared by [Smith] must now be placed in order in the building,” he wrote. “The laws revealed by him must now be administered in all their strictness and beauty. The measure commenced by him must now be carried into successful operation.”

Field Walking

Angela Hallstrom

Jennifer is a mother of three—Sadie in high school, Carson in middle school, Jordan in elementary—which means weekdays start at 6:00 A.M. and quickly unspool, devolving into a mad scramble of showers and hair dryers…

Mormon Authoritarianism and American Pluralism

David Campbell, Russell Arben Fox, Matthew Bowman and Kristine Haglund

Russell: I wanted to start off this conversation by asking David about the subtitle of his book, “How Religion Unites and Divides Us.” That concern over unity and division has been a serious one for the Mitt Romney campaign. He’s made efforts to bridge divides in order to make his candidacy appealing to a particular segment of conservative Republican primary voters who, generally speaking, have not looked well upon Mormons.

Our Dinner with Levi Peterson

Ruth A. Starkman

Levi Savage Peterson, the beloved and controversial Mormon writer, throws a quietly skeptical glance over his menu in a posh Palo Alto nouveaux-Middle Eastern restaurant on a recent evening in early June 2011. My partner, Russell A. Berman, of Stanford University, president of the Modern Language Association, and I had invited Peterson to speak about his work and his contributions as a “literary intellectual” in the American public sphere.

Undie Running on the Line between Church and State

Max Perry Mueller

They were wearing next to nothing. Thongs, boy-shorts, string bikinis. A lacy Victoria’s Secret red and black nightgown seemed downright conservative. Pro-gay slogans—“Marriage Equality!” and “Down with Prop 8!”—were plastered on chests, legs, butt cheeks, cheeks. “Judge not lest ye be judged” read one billboard/lower back, scrawled in what might have been red lipstick. Tattoo ink had rendered many of these mostly twenty- and thirty something-year-old bodies more permanent canvases.

Fierce Joy and Proof That It Happened

Libby Potter Boss

In my CD collection is a set of two semi-bootlegged discs, their cases held together with a rubber band, each marked La Pietà, 1/21/01 in permanent marker. The recording itself is perfectly legal; I arranged for it with an ebullient phone contact at NPR’s “Performance Today,” along with recordings of several other concerts on the “Chamber Music in Historic Sites” schedule that season. That I ended up with a copy of it is sheer luck, or divine intervention, or chutzpah. The music is a French-Canadian all-girl band, playing music written for young women, and it is my favorite CD.

Perplexed by the Revelator’s Heaven

Scott Cameron

Aren’t leaves crumbling against the edge
of autumn, the fibrous tangle
of the lesser shrew’s heart, and a prophet curled
in the belly of night, shaking like a reed fragile enough?

Mass Transit Madonna

Will Reger

She looks around wondering if
The driver remembers her stop.
She does not speak to me
But bends her white neck

Runaway

John Schouten

A bus token jingles
against the nickels and dimes
in the pocket of his Pendleton coat
as he lingers at the door

Finding Place

Douglas L. Talley

A fire in the pasture undulates
of blue and white and yellow flower,
a fire like a snake, it would seem, iridescent

After Her Stroke

Shannon Castleton

Above this cold chair
they say vegetable. Voices like calves
bawling for their mother’s teats.
I think yellow squash, summer,

Revelation

Elisa Pulido

I am ten, sitting on your sofa.
I watch as you paint and talk.
Your voice is a swallow,
which sometimes loops through the Andes,

Atlanta to Salt Lake

Elizabeth Garcia

Prose will not capture some people, the way
they drift. You can only see them dragging
their furniture through Wyoming night,
down a dark throat of road, the ice

The Afternoon Hour

Terresa Wellborn

You colored me
sienna, azure,
a shape I was becoming,
a bird, perhaps,

Making Visible the Hand of Ritual | Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842–1845: A Documentary History; Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845–1846: A Documentary History; and Devery S. Anderson, ed., The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History

Stephen Taysom

Although we may not know it, we live our lives immersed in ritual. Many of our daily exchanges with other human beings are ritualized. We often categorize and compare religions by referencing how highly structured, or not, their liturgical worlds are. I grew up being told that Mormons avoided ritual because it connoted empty practice and vulgar symbolism. The truth is, however, that Mormon temple worship is among the richest symbolic systems of worship in Christianity.

Errand Out of the Wilderness | Matthew Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

Robert Elder

In Perry Miller’s famous essay on the Puritans, he described how John Winthrop and his fellow dissenters left England in the hopes of establishing on the other side of the Atlantic a godly society that could serve as a model for the reformation of the mother country and its church. In the wake of the English Civil War and as the end of the seventeenth century neared, their descendants were plagued by the sense that the mission of their fathers had foundered. “Having failed to rivet the eyes of the world upon their city on the hill,” wrote Miller, “they were left alone with America.”

Dear Diary: Joseph F. Smith’s Mission Journals | Nathaniel R. Ricks, ed., “My Candid Opinion”: The Sandwich Island Diaries of Joseph F. Smith, 1856–1857

Steve Evans

Many examples of missionary journals are available from early days of the Church. (See, for example, the diaries collected in Brigham Young University’s online archive collection http://lib.byu.edu/digital/mmd/). In reading through them, one finds that they…

To the 78 Percent

Heidi Harris

“Have you ever acted as though you had a testimony of something you were still unsure of at church? Maybe you found yourself hoping that if you played the role, it would eventually feel real? Or have you ever said you believed something that you didn’t have a testimony of because you knew it was expected of you, and you were surrounded by people that wouldn’t hesitate to confirm their own witness of the same subject? Is this being dishonest?”

Uncertainty and Healing

Anne Lazenby

Two things have been on my mind recently. They have provoked a lot of thought and research. Over the past months, I have spent hours on the internet perusing medical studies, Church websites, and countless blogs, looking for answers. At first glance, the two seem to be entirely unrelated topics, but as they’ve occupied so much of my thoughts, I’ve come to notice some similarities.