Welcome to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought What is Dialogue? The Dialogue journal has been around for over 40 years (45!) providing an important space for the independent exploration of Mormonism from a broad…
By BHodges [Cross-posted to By Common Consent]
Twenty-five years ago, Michael Hicks published one of the most enjoyable books about Mormon history I’ve ever read. Mormonism and Music still flies under the radar when people compile lists of their favorite Mormon history books, but his analysis of LDS music as influenced by nineteenth and twentieth century culture holds up as a must-read study of Mormon religiosity to this day. He also contributed the entry on Music to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Hicks is adding upon that solid foundation with a new book: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography. And it’s just as fun, lucid, and intriguing as his earlier effort.
In this Dialogue podcast Jana Riess discusses “Millennial Mormons: The Rising Generation of Latter-day Saints.” From the Miller Eccles website: How do young adult Mormons — the “Millennials” — differ politically from older Mormons, and…
In 2008, I turned forty-five, Wall Street collapsed, California voters banned gay marriage, and I lost my virginity. The financial system’s meltdown changed the air I breathed, in the same way fire distributes ash for…
Dialogue 20.2 (Summer 1987): 31–43
Stout’s article is a reminder just how important psychology and psychologists were for mediating these early debates. It really was groundbreaking in LDS print media. He talks about how he believed and presented publicly theories on the cause and cure of homoseuxaity, following Freudian psychology in 1970. “16 years later, “he states, “I can state that what I presented was wrong and simplistic. The evolving change in my views came by examining new research, gaining more clinical experience, and looking for alternative explanations to clarify some of the mystery surrounding the development of human sexuality and specifically homosexuality.” Stout’s overview provides a guide to the updated psychological research from the 1970s and 80s that overturned earlier consensus on the pathologization of homosexuality and on whether it can be cured. He tackles the ethical and moral issues with forced celibacy, but leaves the question as a mystery of paradox of how to proceed on the topic, warning against “extremes” on all sides.
Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113
In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.
Dialogue 55.4 (Winter 2021): 1–50
While much has changed for women in the Church over the last half-century, much remains the same. Women consistently make up less than 3 percent of quotations in general conference. They are still described in terms of their appearance and relationship status; sermons about how they should live are the domain of male authority; their own representatives in the Church spend much of their time at the pulpit repeating male leaders’ words.
Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 41–65
However, the 1886 Revelation and subsequent statement also raised their own doctrinal questions that were continually developed through the lineage that became Woolleyite Mormonism. Namely, why was the resurrected Joseph Smith present alongside Jesus Christ at the meeting with John Taylor?
Dialogue 43.2 (Summer 2010): 1–44
A discussion of the theology of the body being combined with the spirit for various different reasons.
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.