On December 6, 2019, the Western Mining and Railroad Museum in Helper, Utah hosted a release party for The Cunning Man. The novel, which has scenes in the city and in the old coal mines nearby…
Mariya Manzhos is a freelance journalist, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Boston Globe, among other publications. In her stories, she’s interested in exploring the complexities of…
Early this week, scholar John Turner presented an opinion piece in the New York Times on “Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons.” Turner, who has a new biography out on Brigham Young, says “The church could begin leaving those problems behind if its leaders explained that their predecessors had confused their own racist views with God’s will and that the priesthood ban resulted from human error and limitations rather than a divine curse. Given the church’s ecclesiology, this step would be difficult. Mormons have no reason to feel unusually ashamed of their church’s past racial restrictions, except maybe for their duration. Their church, like most other white American churches, was entangled in a deeply entrenched national sin. Still, acknowledging serious errors on the part of past prophets inevitably raises questions about the revelatory authority of contemporary leaders….
The 2017 Mormon Studies Conference is themed “Multicultural Mormonism: Religious Cohesion in a New Era of Diversity” and was held March 30 and 31st at Utah Valley University. Find videos of the presentations here.
This conference explored multicultural and intercultural interactions within Mormonism, focusing on issues surrounding ethnicity, race, and class; and with an eye toward the future of Mormonism as a global religion.
It included presentations by Gina Colvin, Ignacio Garcia, Janan Graham-Russell, Moroni Benally, Anapesi Ka’ili, Darron Smith, and more.
Find the entire schedule and video links here.
In this Dialogue podcast Thomas Wayment discusses “The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints A Study Bible.” From the Miller Eccles website: “I would like to share the story that is not told in…
For our second fireside on November 15th, Claudia Bushman will be teaching us about “Resurrection Month.” Claudia Lauper Bushman, born in Oakland, California, and raised in San Francisco, considers herself a California Mormon, an independent…
The Editors. Dialogue Journal. I am a long-time subscriber to Dialogue and thoroughly enjoy the scholarly articles that it features. I must inform you, however, that I found the fiction section of the Spring 2010…
In this issue, Armand Mauss looks back over the decades since his book The Angel and the Beehive was published, with its seminal theory of LDS assimilation and retrenchment, while Fred Gedicks looks forward to…
Title: The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy
Editors: Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster
Publisher: John Whitmer Books
Genre: History
Year: 2010
Pages: 306
Binding: Softcover
ISBN13: 978-1-934901-13-7
Price: $24.95
Reviewed by Blair Hodges
We usually just want the unvarnished truth. Tell us the facts. Drop the spin. Lay it all out on the table. State your case objectively and we’ll decide to believe you or to reject your views. Give us some easy bullet points, a quick overview, a succinct argument, and the jury will return shortly with the verdict. The problem is that we all too often forget we’re all incapable of constructing, let alone judging between, contrasting claims about our past in an “objective” way. This is my non-comprehensive way of explaining our persistent interest in history, of course. “History speaks not only of the past but also of the present.”1
Baring Imperfect Human TruthsHolly Welker, ed. Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 296 pp. Paperback: $19.95.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Ostler. Dialogue, Summer 2017 (50:2).
We all know the Sunday School answers, but life rarely, if ever, plays out like a seminary video. So what do love, sex, and marriage look like in the lived experience of Mormon women?
Journalist, poet, and “spinster who thinks and writes a great deal about marriage” (1) Holly Welker has compiled a collection of essays that unapologetically reveals the intersection of Mormon theology, culture, individuality, and relational living in her latest book, Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage.