Winter 1970
Though the Bible may have generated its share of scholarly disagreement, the New Testament’s message about the need for human understanding remains clear and unambiguous. Christians may be divided on various points of doctrine, but at least there is no disagreement that helping some one else in need has always been considered an act of Christian virtue.
Thus Clinton Larson in an interview published in Dialogue for Autumn 1969. Dr. Larson, whom Karl Keller has described as the first “Mormon poet,” also affirmed a hope that “If . . . literary artists . . . take their work as seriously as they should, and by ‘seriously’ I mean that they become professionally responsible, then a significant and coherent literary movement can begin.” Whether a “literary movement” in the church is possible, or even desirable, I wish to leave aside. Good poems, however, should be possible and certainly are desirable; they are, as Larson suggests, “part of the spiritual record” of this people. The recent books of three young writers, who might be thought of as second-generation L.D.S. poets, exhibit the grounds for both the hope and the negation in Larson’s remarks.
From safe within the geographical and philosophical matrix that is the Church, it is often difficult for people my age and older to realize that such a thing as a “generation gap” may in fact…
In areas distant from the central stakes of Zion, the church may occupy a more important position in the lives of members than it does where Mor mons are more numerous. This is particularly true…
Sitting back Philip felt the vibration of the train through his feet, and if he leaned forward a little he saw tops of heads and the silver sign that said “MEN” in black letters. The…
Both sides of the current debate over the date of the First Vision have tried to establish the time when members of the Smith family joined the Presbyterian church in Palmyra. The primary source for…
The two following commentaries on O. Kendall White’s “The Transformation of Mormon Theology” (Summer 1970) were received as Letters to the Editor, but due to their length we felt they would receive more attention here.
No, nothing will do just now
but to sit beneath a mesquite tree
in a dry creek bed and look long at cactus.
The saguaro does not sway or bend or mark the breeze.
It has no use. It simply is.
I can look at it until time is lost
and it will not move.
The sun is four hours high. The air is starting
to stir from the south, heavy and dry with sun.
there beyond
the beachballs of our peaceful days
beneath the rubble
of our fractured justice
The fault line shifts,
subterranean conflict rises.
Granite knitted together
in heat and compaction,
Thus begins Father Daniel Berrigan’s poem, “The Passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” which in some ways is also a poem about his own passion. On 17 May 1968, prompted by conscience and a courage similar to that of Bonhoeffer, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Jesuit priests, went with seven of their friends into draft board number 33 at Catonsville, Maryland, where they confiscated 378 individual draft files.
This is a brief autobiography of Alan Cherry, a young black man who grew up in New York City, entered the Air Force in Texas after a year and a half of college, was court…
The New English Bible was produced to enhance modern readers’ understanding of the Bible’s content. The recommendation of the multidenominational committee that initiated the translation project in October of 1946 was “that a completely new…
Over a score of years ago a committee of English Protestant scholars planned a major Bible translation, conceived in concern for their age of apathy and dedicated to the proposition that contemporary language was essential.…
There is no use discussing the Bible as literature (whether the King James, the New English Bible, or any other version) with anyone who doesn’t read it as literature but merely searches its pages for…
Over a year ago this column called attention to three new journals which in one way or another would be of interest to Mormons or bibliophiles of Mormonism. The journals noted were Mormon History, The Carpenter: Reflections on Mormon Life and The Western Historical Quarterly. Mormon History and The Carpenter are of unique Mormon interest and the latter journal has published a third issue, the contents of which are reported below. Mormon History (a journal of reprints) is now in its second volume.
Surely if it be worthwhile troubling ourselves about the works of art of today, of which any amount almost can be done, since we are yet alive, it is worthwhile spending a little care, forethought,…
As suggested in the preceding discussions, the confrontations surrounding the destruction of the Coalville Tabernacle were so devisive and frustrating that those involved on any side of the issue must have vowed to avoid similar…
One day last fall as I was getting acquainted with a student who was particularly interested in my Mormon background, the student told of being informed by a religion professor that Mormons weren’t Christians. This…
