Summer 2026
Our full color Summer Issue begins with three strong articles: "Jacob’s Temple Sermon as Reinterpretation of Scripture and Rethinking of Sexual Ethics" bySpencer P. Greenhalgh, "Why the Latter-day Saint Community Can Trust Science (In the Same Way Scientists Do)" by Steven L. Peck and "Latter-day Saint Membership Growth in Haiti, 1978-2018" by Henri Gooren Then find personal essays, poetry, reviews and review essay on Conclave in this fascinating issue. Purchase an individual issue here. And click here for an overview of the issue by our knowledgeable subject editors!
Someone turning to the Book of Mormon to defend their church’s traditional teachings on sexuality would likely consult the sermon given by the Nephite prophet Jacob in the second chapter of his eponymous book. Indeed, LDS and RLDS figures have often referred to Jacob 2 when making arguments about sexual ethics.
On June 30, 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, a fiery Anglican bishop, addressed the British Science Association at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on the subject of Darwin’s recent publication, On the Origin of Species…
In 1984, sociologist of religion Rodney Stark predicted there could be 267 million Mormons in the world by 2080, after extrapolating the 1982–1983 Latter-day Saints (LDS) growth rates into the far future. “His optimistic projections have so warmed the hearts of the faithful that they are often quoted over the pulpit, even in general conference now and then,” Armand Mauss dryly noted.
No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith.—Brigham Young The alien ship was beautiful. Ornately encrusted with organic shapes glowing with…
They told us she’d be dead by morning. Just like that, “dead by morning,” as if they were speaking about mail delivery or some such. To them, she wasn’t yet emergent. She was just another…
I have spent much time contemplating my journey as a mother, a religious educator, and an aspiring historian. There are moments where I have felt pride and hope, while also moments of discouragement and sorrow.…
Overnight, snow has deepened;
there’s this sense of it mending anything broken—
the slight roof-sag on a garden shed next door,
a riven support wall under back fence,
and something more. . . .
A nighttime hour came when I drove out and found a haven in the late year weather.
The rest of the world boozed and fought and laughed but mostly slept, and the year kept its schedule dreaming, and I stopped on a quiet hill
They said that shape held meaning,
the men in starched shirts: some symbol of eternity
or devotion. The spiral. I don’t mind
those messages, but they don’t fit a religion so linear
The call to go back. After days preaching, raising his voice to a people
become for themselves. A people who mocked his warnings (fools
mock), saw him as filthy and loathsome. Mistaking cankering riches
for rightness, whiteness for delightsome; heritage for righteousness;
ignoring
to be moved out of, finished.
Grief is like lichen on the north side of trees
in forests of your childhood, subtle
with color, some very drab.
“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” What will you do with your agency, your desires, your very body? These questions repeatedly came to mind as I read three recent poetry collections by Latter-day Saint authors—Brighter and Brighter Until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, We Wore Dresses by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, and Experiments in the Fading Light by Stephen Peck. Each collection, with its own themes and poetic styles, grapples with and answers these questions in its own way.
Cheryl Bruno’s edited volume, Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, gives us an important resource about Mormonism’s early implementation and practice of Joseph Smith’s secret practice of polygamy. As Bruno points out in…
On May 7, 2025, the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals sequestered themselves in conclave to elect a successor to deceased Pope Francis of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After only two days in conclave, white plumes of smoke billowed from a chimney atop Rome’s Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope: Habemus Papam! Robert Francis Prevost, a dark horse American candidate, born in Chicago, had surprisingly become the conclave’s choice as successor to Francis. Henceforth, he will be known to the world as Pope Leo XIV.
Jason Palmer’s Forever Familias: Race, Gender, and Indigeneity in Peruvian Mormonism offers a profound ethnographic exploration of how race, gender, and indigeneity intersect within the Mormon community in Peru, the migration process, and the United…
The intersection of Mormon feminism and faith deconstruction among Latter-day Saint women is well established. That intersection has hosted a chicken or egg debate for as long as I can remember, often centering on which…
The first poem will break your heart. It’s the shakedown start of a pilgrimage into loss and beauty that speaks in tough, physical language of the collecting—the “plucking”—of “an abandoned nest / from a red…
