Winter 1967
As this issue was going to press, news was released of presentation to the Church of eleven fragments of the papyrus scrolls from which Joseph Smith obtained the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. Dialogue has obtained photographs of all eleven fragments and publishes the first part of them in this issue, as well as important information concerning their recovery and significance through interviews with Aziz S. Atiya, who helped recover them for the Church, and Henry G. Fischer, Curator of the Egyptian Collection at New York's Metropolitan Museum where they were recovered. The relevance of Mormon doctrine and experience to what are likely the two most compelling concerns of this decade - civil rights and Vietnam - are explored in depth in this issue. Armand L. Mauss, in our lead essay, separates folklore from clearly established doctrines and policies, and vigorously denies, on the basis of some original sociological research, the allegation that the Church's position makes Mormons more prejudiced than others. In the Roundtable, Ray C. Hillam, Eugene England, and John Sorenson attempt in quite different ways to assess the political and moral costs of the war in Vietnam and to define responses for the future based on legitimate national interests and the dictates of a conscience informed by Mormon principles and training. Sterling McMurrin claims that B. H. Roberts has been, since his death in 1933, a much-neglected figure in the Church. In this issue there is also special attention to that great Mormon theologian and historian through Davis Bitton's review of a recent biography and also a reprinting of McMurrin's own introduction to a new publication of Roberts's Joseph Smith, the Prophet-teacher.
Dialogue 2.4 (Winter 1967): 19–40
In this historical analysis, Mauss argues that starting in the 1850s, the church started to deny priesthood and temple blessings to anyone who had even a trace of African ancestry.
The frontier experience of early pioneers is history; even the friendly small town atmosphere enjoyed by their children is all but gone. Today most people live in an “organizational society.” In every field modern culture…
DIALOGUE: On Monday, November 27, 1967, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented a number of documents to President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, who accepted them on behalf of…
Dear Sirs: Re: Secretary Udall’s letter The Lord has not spoken, The Prophet is silent, And so am I. Alexander T. Stecker Belmont, Massachusetts *** Dear Sirs: You wanted a Dialogue—so now you have a dialogue;…
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. Robert Louis Stevenson As is all too evident from the newspapers, we are again approaching that quadrennial time when nominations for the…
In writing a comment of this sort, one runs the risk of having it construed as a boorish intrusion into a private argument among gentlemen; and the only excuse I can offer is that a…
Although the fundamentals of Mormon thought were quite firmly established in the Church’s first generation, it was the second generation which pulled the philosophical and theological strands together. It was the intellectual leaders of this…
The best of words, like the best of men, may suffer the woes of slander. Such a word is “criticism,” and such a man was Socrates. Socrates, though slandered and finally slain, achieved a lasting…
Mahlzeiten is one of Germany’s most discussed current films, and one which will be of special interest to Latter-day Saints. The plot could be reduced to sound like a sensational nineteenth-century thriller: a young married…
Among Mormon leaders of the past generation few were as charismatic as Melvin J. Ballard and B. H. Roberts. Both, in different ways, were significant in the shaping of twentieth-century Mormonism. Both deserve solid biographies.…
If you think you don’t like poetry, be prepared for a surprise when you pick up Carol Lynn Pearson’s new book, Beginnings. I have yet to talk to a person who was not impressed with…
The publishers of The Valley of Tomorrow and Strangers on Earth are moving to fill a very real need for suitable reading for young adults. Most books for younger readers are appropriate for all children,…
A natural reaction to my title—since this is not a testimony meeting in which each speaker is his own subject—might be, “Who cares?” For who in this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother,…
