The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t the only major Christian denomination to have a history of racism. But it is the largest in the United States to have had a codified form…
The Spring 2012 Issue opens with a feisty stack of letters to Dialogue before delving into Shawn Tucker’s exploration of Mormonism’s contribution to the “Virtues and Vices” tradition in various religious and philosophical schools of thought. Then John Bennion contributes a tribute to his ancestor Lucile Cannon Bennion and Gary Bergera examines the cases of two “liberal” professors at BYU during the Wilkinson years, offering new insight into Wilkinson’s modes of thought and management. Other highlights include poetry by Elizabeth Willes, creative nonfiction by A Motley Vision’s William Morris, an Easter homily and a Mother’s Day sermon you will actually like (really!).
There’s a new series of short commentaries on excerpts of the BoM in town. But this new series of books on the Book are, from the very beginning, said to be guided by interpretive strategies found within the BoM itself. Recall at the outset of this review I mentioned that the BoM contains scattered pieces of its own interpretive instruction manual. The editors and contributors to this collaborative new series excavate some of these instructions from Alma 32 (An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, ed. Adam S. Miller) and from 2 Nephi (Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: Reading 2 Nephi 26-27, ed. Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb).3
According to the series introduction, the books are produced by “The Mormon Theology Seminar,” an “unofficial and independent” scholarly collaboration. “Theology” is somewhat of a foreign word to many Mormons. (We have doctrine, we don’t have professional theologians, some might say.) But the series proposes and enacts a theological reading of the BoM. What does it mean to “read Mormon scripture theologically”? For this review I decided describe what Miller & co. mean by “Theology” in order to give you an idea if their approach is something you’d find worthwhile…
Dialogue 40.4 (2007): 70–105
The purpose of this article is to begin filling that gap by discussing some of the publicity accompanying the recently built Helsinki FinlandTemple, located in the southern Finland city of Espoo.
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…
Dialogue 43.1 (Spring 2010): 1–36
And in fact, what might it mean that God “used” evolution tocreate life’s diversity? Was this a choice for God among other al-ternatives? Do Wildman’s pessimistic conclusions hold for Mor-monism? Does evolution imply a noninterventionist Deity? Arethere more optimistic views possible, some of which may actuallysuggest that evolution enhances and expands our view of God?
I’ll be blogging conference live at Dialogue’s affiliated blog, By Common Consent, with real-time coverage from the Conference Center, photos, and lots of discussion, both serious and silly, in the comment section. Will President Monson arrive late? Will Elder Oaks talk about Religious Freedom? Will someone reference an April Fool’s Joke? You’ll find somebody talking about it at BCC. Twitter updates also available throughout the weekend at https://twitter.com/DialogueJournal and http://twitter.com/ByCommonConsent. Join us!
Rachel Farmer guest posts at Feminist Mormon Housewives to discuss her new art exhibit in New York, and describes her encounters with the archives of Dialogue.
It’s funny to exhibit my little ceramic pioneers here on the east coast. People wonder who they are and what they are doing. Are they prairie moms? Eastern European peasants? Pilgrims? What are those carts they are lugging around? Are they peddlers? One thing is certain – these women know how to work!
This fascination with my ancestry — and questions about my own place in the Mormon narrative — led my young nerdy self on a quest to read all the back-issues of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (that my parents kept conveniently stacked in their study).
The women I met on these pages forever changed my worldview: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Lavina Fielding Anderson. Though they wrote about contemporary feminist issues, it was their insights into Mormon women’s more independent and expansive role in the early church that gave me some extra backbone.
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
Steven L. Peck. Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck. Provo: Zarahemla Books, 2015. 220 pp. Paperback: $14.95. ISBN: 978-0988323346.
Steven L. Peck. Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2015. 211 pp. Paperback: $19.95. ISBN: 978-0842529440.
Reviewed by Michael Austin
If someone ever asks me what kinds of things Steven Peck writes, the best answer I can give goes like this: the BYU biology professor and raconteur writes primarily in the fields of evolutionary biology, speculative theology, literary fiction, computer modeling, poetry, existential horror, satire, personal essay, tsetse fly reproduction, young-adult literature, human ecology, science fiction, religious allegory, environmentalism, and devotional narrative. You know, that kind of thing.