Ever since the dark hours of September 11, I have been disquieted about what is now called “The War on Terrorism.” While I share America’s moral outrage over the barbaric attacks on our nation […]
From September 1910 through August 1911, in an unusual confluence of focus, four popular national magazines critiqued the Mormon Church and its prophet in a series of articles that Mormon leader and historian B. […]
[…] JOSEPH SMITH GREW UP in a time and place where folk magic was an accepted part of the landscape. Before he was a prophet, he was a diviner, or more specifically, a scryer who […]
Dialogue 28.4 (Winter 1995): 31–55 In many respects the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of the 1960s mirrored the general tumult, if not the details, of the larger American society.
Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 35–70 When we assess Joseph Smith’s early trials as if the word “pretended” indicated deliberate deception on Joseph’s part, we miss the larger picture.
[…] thee. Go thy way, walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments. . . . Behold, the world . . . have turned aside from the Gosoel and keep not my commandments. They draw […]
[…] Historians will naturally seek to answer those questions most important to them and those who share their world view. As Croce put it, “Every true history is contemporary history,” since it addresses those questions […]
[…] down from revered forebears.”[8] The Treaty of Waitangi thus became a sacred authorizing text in the Maori world, where Pakeha refusal to acknowledge its provisions was perceived as political hypocrisy and spiritual malaise. Maori […]
[…] that he had now arrived for it to be brought to light, for the benefit of the world at large; and, if he would strictly follow his directions, he would direct him to where […]
[…] spent a professional lifetime reading, teaching, and writing about literary texts. Much of my interest in and approach to the Book of Mormon lies with the text—though not just as a field for scholarly exploration.