Contents

Articles

Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years



Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 167–180
Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.



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Mormon Priesthood Against the Meritocracy



Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 85–90 Defenses of the male-only LDS priesthood generally pursue a combination of three approaches: ground the practice in ancient scripture, secure it in Restoration history and tradition, or justify it through its sociological effects on gender culture and family formation in the present day.



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Fiction

Jesus Enough



1886  When Darby turned fifteen, his mother Cora said if he didn’t make up his mind to accept Jesus pretty soon, it would be too late. She said he had to make the choice either…



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Interview

Developing Integrity in an Uncertain World: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

and

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is an LDS, licensed psychotherapist specializing in relationship and sexuality counseling. In addition to her dissertation research on women’s sexual ity and desire in long-term relationships, she has taught college level human sexuality courses, as well as community and internet based relationship and sexuality workshops. Her clinical work focuses primarily on helping individuals and couples achieve greater satisfaction and passion in their emotional and sexual relationships. 



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Personal Voices

In Light



Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 89–94
The day the missionaries came to our house in 1988, a rainbow fell across the sky in our neighborhood on the hill. I stood on the ledge of the bathtub and curled my fingers on the windowsill to pull my scrawny body up to see.



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Pornographic



I get up in the morning to go to church. I pull a dress out of my closet, deciding between this or my regular pants, shirt, and tie combination. It’s short, six inches above the…



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Poetry

Awakening



His thumb and forefinger raised in declaratives
Draw initial notice, but it’s the hands of those
Near him that pull me back—something almost festive
Yet closer to restrained, in the bowed, worn widow



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Reviews

When Good is Better than Great—Susan Elizabeth Howe’s Salt | Susan Elizabeth Howe, Salt: Poems



What Beatrice said of Dante might well apply to Susan Elizabeth Howe’s latest collection of poetry, titled Salt. The observation was fictional, served up in an obscure but brilliant nineteenth-century book, Classical Conversations by Walter Landor, in which, during an imagined last conversation, Beatrice tells Dante, “You will be great, and, what is above all greatness, good.”



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Negotiating the Paradoxes: Neylan McBaine’s Women at Church | Neylan McBaine, Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact



Neylan McBaine’s book Women at Church includes the following interview excerpt: 

On one Sunday in my ward, the final assigned speaker was a woman. She seemed flustered to be in the last slot, was apologetic to the audience and lamented that we weren’t going to get the final word in the meeting from a priesthood holder. And then she gave her talk.

The stake president happened to be visiting, and after she finished he stood to make a few comments. He thanked her for the talk, and acknowledged she was just being self-deprecating. But he said it was his responsibility as presiding officer in the stake to correct misinformation. He then affirmed that there is nothing wrong with scheduling a sister to speak in the last slot in sacrament meeting, that that is perfectly appropriate. When we don’t do that, it is just a tradition.



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Sermon

Standards Night



Last spring the daughter of my best friend from graduate school asked if I would speak at her Stake Standards Night. Sophie (whom her mother and I used to call “the Queen of the World” when she was a child) made one request: my talk could not be the standard Standards Night talk. She wanted all those young women to walk away from the evening feeling—you know—upbeat. 



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Charity on the Rocks



My husband grew up backpacking, and it was one of the conditions of our marriage that I would learn to backpack too. I do it now, and occasionally even enjoy it, but it’s definitely a stretch to say that I’m good at it or love it as wholeheartedly as Mike does; backpacking is perpetually a challenge for me, and my favorite part is the end of the day when I collapse in our tent with my Kindle. I say this by way of prefacing a personal story so that you understand the context as I start telling you about a time when nature nearly got the best of me. 



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