I listen to the Book of Mormon almost every day and often find what I consider to be interesting correlations with other goings-on in life. Most recently, I am struck by the similarities between the…
MOH: In official LDS Church materials, from magazines to manuals to temple walls, there’s a lack of abstract art, in favor of highly representational, literal art. What is the role of abstraction in religious art,…
Dialogue 21.4 (Winter 1990): 114–121
Lehr discussed the journey undertaken by Charles O. Card to move to Canada and preserve polygamy, before the First Manifesto during a time that members were being hunted down for for their religious beliefs.
Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 22–36
Elijah Abel, a black man ordained to the priesthood, was restricted in his church participation starting in 1843, even though he was well respected by both members and leaders. Newell G. Bringhurst discusses why the priesthood and temple ban might have occured. One of the reasons was when the pioneers were crossing the plains, a man by the name of William McCary, who had Native American and African American ancestry, caused a lot of grief and trouble for both saints and the leaders of the Church.
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 61–64
Over the past forty years the top leadership of the Community of Christ church (until recently the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter -Day Saints) has gone through significant changes in religious thought. I have contended elsewhere that the decisive changes occurred in the 1960s.
Richard Bushman: My thanks to Grant Underwood for conceiving this panel and going to all the work to put it together under the auspices of the American Society of Church History. It was a generous…
Title: The Book of Mormon: A Biography
Editor: Paul C. Gutjahr
Reviewed by Blair Hodges
The Book of Mormon, that curious text said to be dug from a hill in upstate New York and translated by the gift and power of God, has been reincarnated over its 180-plus year lifespan into an interesting variety of bodies: from its various print editions, to films in silent black-and-white and full color, as children’s editions and comic books, even inspiring an award-winning Broadway musical. It’s spawned paintings, cartoon show episodes, and action figures. Since its birth in 1830 the Book of Mormon has been argued over and analyzed in print—approaches ranging from polemical to academic and any mix of the two. Most significantly, it has served as a key religious devotional text within the still-growing branches of Mormonism, the most prominent being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has shepherded the text through translation into 109 world languages from Afrikaans to Zulu, with more on the way.1 All of this and other interesting elements of its impressive life are explored in Paul C. Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, part of Princeton University Press’s impressive new “Lives of Great Religious Books” series—handsome little clothbound volumes short enough to get through in one or two sittings.
Theology as Poetry A review of Adam S. Miller’s Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2012), 132 pp. Robert A. Rees “If I read a book and it…
Title: Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theolog
I watched Groundhog Day the other night. I’ve owned the DVD for years but never tore the plastic wrapping until Adam Miller put a bug in my ear via one of his theological essays. (It was just as good as I remembered it!) Miller, the theological film critic. I laughed when Phil, Bill Murray’s character, punched Ned Ryerson in the face at a busy intersection and I teared up as he fruitlessly pummeled the chest of a dying homeless man in a freezing alleyway. “Come on, pops, come on pops, don’t die on me.” Watching Phil struggle through incomprehension, laugh at absurdity, and find joy in relationships, reminded me a lot of reading Miller’s book. I’d already read great reviews of it, I couldn’t wait to get a copy. But I hit many more brick walls than I anticipated. This deceptively thin volume will take much more of your time than you might think. It felt at times like the alarm clock kept hitting 6:00 AM, February 2, and I was in for another round of difficulty. Not that all the essays were the same, but that they were each difficult in their own way. It’s way above my level to feel confident in doing this, but my review is an attempt to help readers like me have a better chance at making it through the book.
There was no way I could fit all the amazing blogs from the past 10+ years into the print feature in the Summer 2014 Issue so for a special treat for all online Dialogue readers, a supplemental featuring of more wonderful posts from the LDS blog world and beyond. Enjoy! – EmJen