Book Review: Three frontier-era novels republished and annotated
June 20, 2017Alfreda Eva Bell. Boadicea; The Mormon Wife: Life-Scenes in Utah. Edited and annotated by Michael Austin and Ardis E. Parshall. The Mormon Image in Literature. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016 [1855]. 151 pp. Paperback: $15.95.
Nephi Anderson. Dorian: A Peculiar Edition with Annotated Text & Scholarship. Edited by Eric W. Jepson. Annotated by Mason Allred, Jacob Bender, Scott Hales, Blair Dee Hodges, Eric W. Jepson, Sarah C. Reed, and A. Arwen Taylor. El Cerrito, Calif.: Peculiar Pages, 2015 [1921]. 316 pp. Paperback: $21.99.
Reviewed by Jenny Webb
Dialogue, Winter 2016
The continual rising interest in all things Mormon, whether they be historical, cultural, social, doctrinal, or even theological, has led to a number of interesting publication projects. The texts gathered in this review represent a particular focus within this broader interest: the recovery and re-examination of the various historical forms of the “Mormon novel.”
Book Review: Thomas F. Rogers. Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Re ections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty
September 19, 2017The Fruit of Knowledge
Thomas F. Rogers. Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2016. 349 pp.
Reviewed by Mahonri Stewart
As a book of short, religious, and academic non-fiction, Thomas F. Rogers’s Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand is extremely valuable to the Mormon intellectual community; but as a reflection of a devoted disciple and a soulful artist, it goes beyond even that to be authentically moving. In a modern world where spirituality and religious belief is a place of tension and contention, Rogers has written from his place of the faithful agitator—pushing our culture’s boundaries where needed and then turning around to help the Mormon community reach inward and pull the wagons around shared principles.
Book Review: Matthew James Babcock. Heterodoxologies: Essays.
January 26, 2018
Anything but Orthodox
Matthew James Babcock. Heterodoxologies: Essays. Butte, Mont.: Educe Press, 2017. 204 pp.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Tidwell. Published in Dialogue, Fall 2017 (50:3)
I was nineteen years old when I first learned about the essay form. I was enrolled in an introductory survey of creative writing, sitting in a middle row of pocked and drab desks in a windowless classroom when the instructor drew a daisy on the board to illustrate the fragility of the essay form—how distinct petals of thought all encircle and emerge from the central theme and become something more beautiful in juxtaposition and conversation. That moment was a lightning bolt moment for me: This is how my brain works! And so I became an essayist.
The instructor that day was Matthew James Babcock, or Brother Babcock as I knew him at BYU–Idaho. That day was just a few months shy of ten years ago and my first lesson in the essay, but not my last. Before graduating from BYU–Idaho, I took a second class with Brother Babcock, this one focused solely on writing the essay. His lessons have stayed with me, shaped me. So, when I heard about his recently published debut essay collection, I couldn’t wait to learn from him again. Within minutes of opening Heterodoxologies, I felt Babcock’s presence almost tangibly. The collection is reminiscent of my classroom experiences with him at the helm: moments of profound insight sprinkled with healthy doses of goof. But this time the only prerequisite for the course is being human, of any variety: a music lover; a seventh grader; a bowler; a thinker; a dad; a dreamer.
Web Only: Christmas Sermon "Wonder in Christ"
December 12, 2019Cathrine Wheeler grew up in Idaho and migrated to Seattle where she lives with her husband, son and Black Lab. She works as a physician and serves as Relief Society President. Her favorite things include…
Topic Pages: First Vision
June 3, 20212020: Steven C. Harper, “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins.” Dialogue Lectures Podcast #48. Harper discusses how the principles of memory may have influenced Joseph Smith as he recorded his multiple First Vision accounts. Harper essentially…
Book Review: A Not-So-Innocent Abroad. Way Below the Angels, by Craig Harline
June 24, 2016
Craig Harline. Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014.
Reviewed by Rosalynde Frandsen Welch
Craig Harline’s mission memoir, Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary, is a hilarious, heart-of-gold account of the highs and lows of the author’s experiences in the Belgium Antwerp Mission in the early 1970s. The story proceeds chronologically through the events of Harline’s mission call and training period in the old LTM, his arrival in Belgium and subsequent travails with uninterested Belgians, and his eventual return home as a slightly-older and probably-a-bit-wiser young man. Throughout, young Elder Harline wrestles with his own unrealistic expectations of grandeur and occasionally encounters a moment of shimmering grace. The events and settings are, on the surface, highly entertaining but hardly exceptional. Non-Mormon readers, who are the primary audience for the book’s publisher, Eerdmans, will come away with a lightly-seasoned glimpse of a Mormon mission experience in Europe; Mormon readers familiar with mission culture will respond with recognition and identification.
Dialogue Lectures #26 w/Patrick Mason
January 15, 2016
The 26th Dialogue podcast features Dialogue Board Chair Patrick Mason discussing his new book Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt and how Mormons can better live with questions while holding onto their faith. From the Miller Eccles website:
Professor Patrick Q. Mason, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Mason is the author of a much-anticipated book scheduled for release in December — Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt. This important work will explore the challenges many LDS members face when Church doctrines are opposed by worldly influences, or seem opposed to current scientific knowledge, possibly causing doubt, disbelief, inactivity, or formal opposition.
Ceci n’est pas une Mormon Studies Book Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism
December 10, 2021When I first sidled up to Make Yourselves Gods, I did so in the spirit of the Mormon Creed: “Mind your own business and let everybody else do likewise” (Trademark: 1842). Yes, I was suspicious.…
Politicking with the Saints: On Reading Benjamin Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo Benjamin E. Park, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
April 24, 2021In an era awash in a sea of reboots and re-examinations, one may be forgiven for initially wondering why yet another treatment of Mormon Nauvoo is strictly necessary. The city, after all, has received its…
Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions
March 22, 2018Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 133–145
In Fall 2005, there is a roundtable on mix-orientation marriages from some who were in them and from therapist Marybeth Raynes and long-time activist Ron Schow.