Winter 1993
The Winter 1993 Issue explores various aspects of Mormon history, theology, and personal narratives. Lawrence Foster examines Joseph Smith's role in shaping new religious movements and the psychology behind his religious genius. Mark R. Grandstaff revisits William E. M'Lellin's contributions to the Book of Commandments. Larry D. Christiansen discusses power struggles within the Mormon Battalion. Ronald W. Walker reflects on the significance of Ensign Peak in Mormon history, while Karl Sandberg addresses the challenges of writing the history of John A. Widtsoe. Douglas F. Tobler recounts the journeys of Heinrich Hug and Jacob Tobler from Switzerland to Santa Clara between 1854 and 1880.
Dialogue 26.4 (Winter 1993): 1–22
The analysis that follos is an admittedly speculative personal reflection on elements that need to be kept in mind in understanding the psychological dynamics of Joseph Smith’s creativity.
In November 1831, in a small out-of-the-way community in the Western Reserve of Ohio, known as Hiram, ten ordinary looking men met to discuss an extraordinary circumstance—the publication of a Book of Commandments. This book,…
The Mormon Battalion reached San Diego in late January 1847 with five and a half months of service remaining in its one-year enlistment. Mustered by the Mormon church at the request of the U.S. government,…
To the north of Salt Lake City, two or three miles from famed Temple Square, an odd, knob-shaped promontory rises above the community of Saint and gentile. Since pioneer times, it has been called Ensign…
Johns Valley is a high mountain valley about 7,000 feet in elevation, thirty miles long, and twenty wide. You can drive it today, partly on paved road, partly on gravel, starting from Bryce Canyon and…
“Not a day passes over the earth,” Charles Reade wrote, “but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great works and suffer noble sorrow. Of these obscure heroes, the greater part will…
I direct my thoughts and yours to the I-Thou model of human related ness as it is confirmed or denied in the all-too-human realm of ethnic, national, religious, and ideological differences. Any honest and wide treatment of how we behave in such circumstances is bound to cause some discomfort, since we may recognize ourselves in some of the horrible examples of non-dialogical relatedness.
It was my father who taught me to love Emerson. I can remember him wanting to know what authors I was studying in my tenth-grade English class, and then, at the mention of Keats or…
When I lay in a hospital very badly injured from the crash of my experimental airplane, a visitor asked me if I thought my injuries were a judgment for my sins. I remember saying no, and I even remember wondering that anyone should be so silly, let alone so tactless, as to ask such a question. But I don’t remember who asked it, and I don’t really want to. The asker and I have some differences in philosophy and theology that are so deep and irreconcilable that it would be difficult for us to continue to be friends if those differences surfaced again.
This essay examines Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s treatment of Romans 7 in the Joseph Smith Translation or “Inspired Version” of the King James Bible QST). First, Smith’s modifications of the chapter are compared to the…
I suppose we all share the same space at one time or another. One can search out these spaces, as I have. Outside Paris I spent an afternoon mulling about in Malmaison, Napoleon and Josephine’s…
As a somewhat minor consumer of professional counseling and psychotherapy I would like to offer some comments on Mark Koltko’s essay, “Latter-day Myths About Counseling and Psychotherapy,” which appeared in the winter 1992 issue of…
Within the last month, six Latter-day Saint scholars in Utah, representing both liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum, have been served with notices by their ecclesiastical leaders to appear before church courts, called “disciplinary councils,” to answer to charges of apostasy or conduct unbecoming a member of the LDS church. Within the last two weeks, beginning on 14 September 1993, one of the six has been disfellowshipped, four have been excommunicated, and the sixth court is scheduled for the morning of the 26th. The church denies that it is conducting a purge.
Wedged into the same chair,
my husband and son station
themselves, duplicates
of each other.
Too tired to talk,
my son listens.
Through Perean hills and Arabian desert,
pacing our journey by the pulsing star,
we come here, finally, to this quiet shelter
that houses the holy—to Bayt al-Lahm.
Parchmental stand aspens,
Paper atrmeble accepts scars,
Words healing standing parchmental
1. The sulfurous flame
sunbeams in corners
lightning like cracked glass
the bulb of an idea
your dark eyes
She adds up all the names
people have given her over the years:
‘Vain, difficult, cold.”
Someone once told her that
This is not just another book on science and Mormonism. Mercifully ab sent, for example, are inconclusive and dubious attempts to harmonize different scriptural versions of the Creation with each other and with modern scientific…
Marjorie Newton’s 60-page biography of Charles Wesley Wandell, Hero or Traitor, inaugurates the John Whitmer Historical Association’s scholarly monograph series. Those who have read her prize-winning Southern Cross Saints: The Mormons in Austrailia will be…
Although Hugh Nibley has often argued that there is no such a thing as a Mormon theology (theology being intrinsically incompatible with continuous revelation), a number of Nibley’s followers have produced what in any other…
R. A. Gilbert’s book, Casting the First Stone, is one of an increasing number of written responses to uninformed attacks by Fundamentalists against new religious movements and any other religious group which does not fit…
