Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 29–44
Smith considers “why would any self-aware Black person find Mormonism the least bit appealing given its ignoble history of racial exclusion and marginalization?”
Title: The Book of Mormon: A Biography
Editor: Paul C. Gutjahr
Reviewed by Blair Hodges
The Book of Mormon, that curious text said to be dug from a hill in upstate New York and translated by the gift and power of God, has been reincarnated over its 180-plus year lifespan into an interesting variety of bodies: from its various print editions, to films in silent black-and-white and full color, as children’s editions and comic books, even inspiring an award-winning Broadway musical. It’s spawned paintings, cartoon show episodes, and action figures. Since its birth in 1830 the Book of Mormon has been argued over and analyzed in print—approaches ranging from polemical to academic and any mix of the two. Most significantly, it has served as a key religious devotional text within the still-growing branches of Mormonism, the most prominent being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has shepherded the text through translation into 109 world languages from Afrikaans to Zulu, with more on the way.1 All of this and other interesting elements of its impressive life are explored in Paul C. Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, part of Princeton University Press’s impressive new “Lives of Great Religious Books” series—handsome little clothbound volumes short enough to get through in one or two sittings.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “A Child’s Christmas in Utah” a story by Wayne Carver
Here’s a taste:
“Overhead the attic creaks as the old house sways a little in the winter chill that comes down on a black wind from the black mountains to the east and moves through the valley and across the salt lake and into all the years to come — but that cannot touch the bed-covering warmth of a Christmas that is past.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “A Child’s Christmas in Utah” a story by Wayne Carver
Here’s a taste:
“Overhead the attic creaks as the old house sways a little in the winter chill that comes down on a black wind from the black mountains to the east and moves through the valley and across the salt lake and into all the years to come — but that cannot touch the bed-covering warmth of a Christmas that is past.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “Christmas Morning—1906” a personal essay by Aldyth Morris
Here’s a taste:
“Winter of 1906 came late to Logan, Utah, the small Rocky Mountain town where I grew up. The mild autumn weather had held through Thanksgiving, but next day large feathery flakes began to fall and continued, silent and relentless, for days. When at last they stopped, volunteers turned out to clear the sidewalks, leaving snow banks so high that when Bishop Newbold passed on his way to the Fourth Ward meeting house all I could see from our parlor window was the tip of his black hat.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “Christmas in Central Park” a photographic card by Kah Leong Poon
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering:”The First Christmas Eve at Home” a poem by N. Andrew Spackman
Here’s a taste:
“Crouched beneath the smoke,
Kathy and I drank eggnog.
On our hands and knees,
we lap it up like kittens.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering:”The Second Coming of Santa Clause: Christmas in a Polygamous Family” a personal essay by Samuel W. Taylor
Here’s a taste:
“Four of my father’s wives lived at Provo during my childhood, a situation particularly fortunate for the swarm of Taylor kids. Santa Claus came twice
to us, instead of just the single time he visited homes of those unfortunates whose fathers had only one wife. We were taught how blessed we were, to be among the very last to be privileged to live the fullness of the gospel; and here was a tangible evidence.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering:”Christmas Sonnets from Other Years” a poem by Helen Candland Stark
Here’s a taste:
“So we would wish you peace beside your fire,
Peace with your children, peace between you two,
Peace with your friends, and those you serve or hire,
Peace in your country”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.
Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “A Jew Among Mormons“ (In honor of the first night of Hanukkah) a personal essay by Steve Siporin
Here’s a taste:
“When Christmas approaches, our usually sensitive system suddenly suspends the separation of church and state. Ethnocentrism takes over and runs amuck. To protest puts one in the position of Scrooge in the perennial favorite, A Christmas Carol.To protest is to spoil everyone’s fun, to refuse to join in and be a part of it all. But Jews cannot, by definition, be part of Christmas, if they are to be Jews.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.