Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 23–34
Brazil, with a high concentration of African heritage, was a difficult place for the Church (because of the Church’s racial policy) to make headway among native members. Due to the high risk of Brazilians potentially having African ancestry, the Church came to the point where they eventually discouraged missionaries in Brazil from baptizing anyone who is known to have African ancestry.
Dialogue 46.2 (Spring 2016): 1–39
Blythe shows the denial among Culterites followers that the founder was involved in plural marriage.
Dialogue readers, take note!
Unforgettable
Eric James Stone
Baen, January 2005
Trade paperback, 250pp., #15.00
Reviewed by Michael R. Collings
Eric James Stone is perhaps best known in the science-fiction community for his Nebula-winning, Hugo-nominated story, “That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made” (2010), one of fifty published short stories. “Leviathan” demonstrated Stone’s ability to tell a compelling story incorporating an SF theme—alien/human interaction—with equally compelling perspectives on ethics, morality, spirituality, and religion.
His novel, Unforgettable, at first feels more focused on the physical, however, in particular on connections between individuals and the fascinating worlds posited by quantum physics. Nat Morgan is a quantum “freak,” what one character refers to as “Schrödinger’s cat burglar,” who “exists” only as long as people physically see him; precisely one minute after he leaves, they immediately forget him. His mother has forgotten him. Cell phones forget him. ATM computers—indeed all computers—forget him. Worse, his handler at the CIA forgets him, so every time Morgan contacts the agency for an assignment, he must reestablish not only his identity but his existence.
In 1967, Dialogue published Richard Poll’s “What the Church Means to People Like Me,” a talk Poll gave in his Palo Alto ward earlier that year. Using imagery from the Book of Mormon, Poll described two “ideal types” of active, believing Mormons: Iron Rods and Liahonas. Iron Rod Mormons, Poll argued, are obedience-minded, loyal, and devout. They do not search for questions, and easily accept authoritative answers. Seeing God’s hand in their daily lives, they feel salvation is assured by clinging to the Iron Rod of revelation as found in the standard works, the words of General Authorities, and the workings of the Holy Spirit.
Baring Imperfect Human TruthsHolly Welker, ed. Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 296 pp. Paperback: $19.95.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Ostler. Dialogue, Summer 2017 (50:2).
We all know the Sunday School answers, but life rarely, if ever, plays out like a seminary video. So what do love, sex, and marriage look like in the lived experience of Mormon women?
Journalist, poet, and “spinster who thinks and writes a great deal about marriage” (1) Holly Welker has compiled a collection of essays that unapologetically reveals the intersection of Mormon theology, culture, individuality, and relational living in her latest book, Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage.
Memorial Service for Armand Mauss In Memoriam: Armand Mauss by Patrick Mason The academic field of Mormon studies lost one of its greatest pioneers and champions when Armand Lind Mauss passed away. In a field…
The scriptures often admonish us to pray continuously. Note that I said “continuously,” not “continually.” “Continually” means repeated with interruptions, but “continuously” means without interruptions. Paul tells the saints in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing”…
When a five-year-old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief-stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the new novel…
Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 69–79
Five years after my excommunication, I met and entered into a relationship with the man who is my husband to this day. We became a couple in 1991; we held a public commitment ceremony in 1995, a time when same-sex marriage was legal nowhere in the United States; we purchased a home together in 1996; and we legally married in California in 2008. Regardless of how or why I was excommunicated in 1986, current Church policy is such that if I were a member, my bishop would have grounds for excommunicating me now, and I cannot currently be reinstated into membership.