A Missionary Farewell
June 21, 2023Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A crowd of several thousand poured into the Provo Tabernacle. They filled the wooden pews, the kind that are never quite comfortable but perfect for keeping…
Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A crowd of several thousand poured into the Provo Tabernacle. They filled the wooden pews, the kind that are never quite comfortable but perfect for keeping…
Dialogue 38.4 (Winter 2006):83–104
Thus, regardless of how one chooses to resolve the issues surrounding its origins, one must conclude that the Book of Mormon’s theological arguments should be seen as designed to be read and understood by its early nineteenth-century audience.
Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 1–18
Shields argues that if you deny or dismiss Sidney Ridgon’s contributions to the early church, then the scripture canon during this time would need to be reinterpreted.
Patricia Nelson Limerick presents “Hair-Raising Tales from the Department of the Interior: A Report from the Front Lines of the Battle Against Boredom” on Thursday, September 29, 2016, 7 p.m. at the Logan LDS Tabernacle
Contrary to the stereotype of the boring bureaucrat, the stories of the men and women who have worked for the agencies of the Department of the Interior carry intrinsic interest and give rise to thought-provoking interpretations of and insights into the American West’s past and present. Enormously important in the shaping of the American West, federal employees have been unjustly and inaccurately classified as “boring.” Formed just as the United States completed its coast-to-coast conquest of contiguous land, Interior became the pivot point for the nation’s attempts to absorb and manage the West’s peoples and lands. In this talk, Patty Limerick will make the case for directing more sustained and robust attention to the roles of federal clerks, surveyors, engineers, superintendents, agents, rangers, teachers, inspectors, and scientists in shaping the region.
Dialogue was able to attend and tweet about a recent conference at Utah State University called “New Perspectives on Joseph Smith and Translation.” Participants in the all-day conference included many friends of Dialogue including Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, Jana Riess, Samuel Brown, Jared Hickman and Rosalynde Welch. The conference was conceived and hosted by Philip Barlow and the USU Dept. of History and Religious Studies, and was sponsored by the Faith Matters Foundation.
Now the videos are being made available, with all the videos slated to be up by May 20. Visit faithmatters.org to see a produced, session-by-session video of the conference, with some additional graphic features and context added.
Another review of Common Ground/Different Opinions: Latter-day Saints and Contemporary Issues, eds. Justin F. White and James E. Faulconer by Michael Austin, Dialogue Board member, and Provost of Newman University in Wichita, KS.
Cross-posted at By Common Consent
As citizens, we must argue with each other about important things. Participating in an inherently adversarial political system means proposing arguments and defending positions. Both our nation and the Constitution that governs it are built on a process designed to turn vigorous discussion and debate into manageable lumps of compromise that permit us to move ahead.
As Latter-day Saints, however, we must be of one heart and one mind. Becoming a Zion people means that we covenant to bear one another’s burdens that they may be light, to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those who stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God in all times and in all things (Mosiah 18:8-9).
These are not mutually exclusive responsibilities, of course, but they can be difficult to reconcile in the real world. To be good citizens and good saints, we must either learn how to agree with each other about everything, which is impossible, or we must find ways to disagree as loving brothers and sisters, which is really hard.
Jack Harrell. Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism. Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2016. 156 pp. Paperback: $18.95. ISBN: 978-1-58958-754-0.
Reviewed by Jennifer Quist
The back cover of Jack Harrell’s new collection Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism describes the book as a continuation of “a conversation as old as Mormonism itself.” It’s a fraught phrase, bringing to mind the image of an academic, artistic, and social in-group that has been conversing among themselves for a very long time. It isn’t the in-group’s fault that the conversation happens in the absence of non-members and newcomers to the Church, neither is it their fault that it goes on without writers, readers, and scholars unconnected to the American Mormon heartland. None of this is the in-group’s fault, but perhaps all of it is their problem. Many in the in-group strive to, in Harrell’s words,“giv[e] the church and its religion a human and literary face” (99). However, we can’t understand what our own faces look like without relying on the re ections and perceptions of people and objects outside ourselves. Perhaps Jack Harrell, as a previous outsider to not just the Mormon literary world but the Mormon world altogether, is especially well-suited to put himself forward to articulate what Mormon letters are and what they ought to be and become.
Shawn Vestal. Daredevils. New York: Penguin Press, 2016. 308 pp.
Reviewed by Julie J. Nichols
It’s a hard truth: you have to be damn smart to be a writer of good fiction. If you’re dumb, forget it. You have to hear words in your head—and who doesn’t? But you also have to know how to put them together in a sentence that’s not only grammatical but original in its context, truer than any other sentence could possibly be. Then you have to do that with paragraphs and chapters in the service of a whole whose shape knocks readers right out of unconsciousness, makes them alive, blasts their eyes open so they see the world new.
Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on Spotify. Dialogue is proud to launch a new monthly podcast series on the dialoguejournal.com/topicpages, exploring key issues in the history of LDS scholarship. Join host Taylor Petrey, editor of…
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”…