Railroading Religion is a welcome addition to the influx of timely scholarship published in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony. The tensions between religion, geography, and history provide a thought-provoking backdrop to…
Growing up in the LDS faith, my parents always dutifully had large quantities of wheat, rice, beans, and all other manner of food stored—food we never ate in our daily lives. While they rarely discussed…
Dialogue 26.3 (Fall 1993): 119–140
In fall 1993, TJ O’Brian wrote, “You are Not Alone: A Please for Understanding the Homosexual Condition.” O’Brian was a gay man and this esay addresses how church members should treat LGBT members. He points to Jan Stout’s article among other influential pieces that were beginning to soften LDS attitudes and change practices in the early 90s. But he also notes several examples of terrible things that LDS members were still saying and doing, not including an imfamous homophobic rant from Orson Scott Card in Sunstone magazine in 1990.
I don’t live in California, and so the questions of what I thought of Proposition 8 and of my Church’s involvement in it were never presented to me with any more force than that of…
In 2018, the Sunday School instructor of my Mormon congregation was assigned to teach the stories about Lot found in Genesis 19. The teacher confessed that he was very uncomfortable discussing these narratives. Instead, he…
Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 73–76
Church members, from some General Authorities to some Sunday School teachers, are generally impressed with and concerned about “scientific proof” of the Book of Mormon. As a practicing scientist and Church member, I am singularly unconcerned about such studies — in fact, when it comes to such matters, I am hyper-conservative.
Dialogue 26.3 (Summer 1995):163–180
FOR TRADITION-MINDED MEMBERS of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints the Book of Mormon’s historicity is a given: Book of Mormon events actually occurred and its ancient participants existed in ancient history
Dialogue 16.2 (Summer 1983): 39–45
This paper examines Isaiah’s prophecies in their historical context and compares their meaning as a message for his time with the expanded meaning that Christians — and specifically Mormons — have since applied to them thousands of years later.
Dialogue 31.4 (Winter 1999):190–199
It is noteworthy because, instead of laying out the original historical meaning of Isaiah, it reapplies the text to the time of Joseph Smith and to the course of Jewish and Christian history up to his time.
Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 1–18
Well, I was raised in a rather unscientific environment , a little farming community.