A few years ago I was researching poems written about the Book of Mormon. I had read Eliza R. Snow’s “The Lamanite” (adapted from a poem she wrote before becoming a Latter-day Saint titled “The…
The notion of apostasy is central to the identity of the Mormon people.[1] One might even say it is the raison d’être of Mormonism. It is the thing that explains why there needed to be…
I am not a member of any Native American tribal nation, neither do I claim Indigenous heritage. I am a white American, and three of my four grandparents trace their family back to Mormon pioneers.…
“Lamanite! I am not a Lamanite. They are a wicked people. I am not a wicked person.” I can well remember my father, Albert H. Harris, saying this, both in church and to anyone else…
Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 17–28
Huston argues that we should interpret that text in its historical context and glean from it new possibilities. Drawing on feminist interpretive strategies, Huston reads for the “theological trajectory,” rather than the plain meaning, to discern principles that might endure beyond a narrowly heterosexual nuclear family.
Dialogue 31.3 (Fall 1998): 49–57
In Fall 1998 just a few years after The Family Proclamation, Gary Watts wrote, “The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships.” He notes the inner conflict that gay LDS members faced, having to choose between their desires to have a relaitonship and their desires to be in the church. It draws a lot of personal experiences and conversation to assess the issues. And he proposes that affirming committed, monogamous same-sex relationships would not change doctrines about reserving sexual initimacy for marriage, but proposed that these relationhips would not be eligible for sealings.
Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 137–151
Rees’s Fall 2000 artice is titled “”In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See”: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium.” A straight man and local LDS leader, Rees shares his own experience counseling with LGBTQ members and their struggles, from “gay bashing” violence, most famously the murder of Matthew Shephard, to prejudice and more. Rees talks about his own changed perspective on this issue that started when he was a singles ward bishop in LA in the 1980s and shares what he had learned along the way. Rees calls for a number of steps and changes as a body of the church to improve these conditions.
Dialogue 55.1 (Spring 2022): 135-166
When Dialogue asked us to write a personal article about our process of writing A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother (D Street Press, 2020), we were delighted.
Dialogue 55.3 (Fall 2022): 75-106
As a contribution to the larger project of examining the King James Bible’s influence on The Book of Mormon, this essay focuses on several aspects of the problem of Isaiah in The Book of Mormon as they relate to the more significant issue. I will focus on two problems with the use of Isaiah in The Book of Mormon. First, previous scholarship has assumed that none of Third Isaiah has had any effect on the text of The Book of Mormon and the Isaiah chapters it quotes
Dialogue 23.2 (1990): 61–83
Launius shares how the Reorganized Church has changed their stance on baptisms for the dead.