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Correlating Orthodoxy and Style: Institutionally “Approved” Christ-Centered Art in LDS Visual Resources and Meetinghouses, 1990–2021

Religious images have long been used in Latter-day Saint worship and instruction. Paintings, illustrations, and graphic works served a devotional function among the early Church members. Not only did the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo use…

Racial Innocence and the Christus-Based Latter-day Saints Symbol

On April 4, 2020, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) formally adopted an institutional symbol that is now prominently displayed on the Church logo and is imprinted on Church publications, websites, videos,…

Judging Israel

Listen to an interview about this piece here. We sat around a long rectangular table in the local church building. It was tapered at one end, almost trapezoidal. Five men lined each of the long…

The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. Michael Reed’s 2012 book Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo sets out an excellent account of the uncomfortable relationship between the Church…

BODIES OF CHRIST WRITING CONTEST

Editor’s Note: In 2021, Dialogue hosted a writing contest titled Bodies of Christ with the following parameters: Dialogue seeks submissions of poetry (up to 100 lines), short fiction (3500–6000 words), and personal voice (nonfiction, narrative…

Jesus and the Father. The Book of Mormon and the Early Nineteenth-Century Debates on the Trinity

Note: This article one of the special web-only series and not printed in a physical issue.

Jesus Christ, Esq.

I begin in the New Testament, in the book of 1 John, a text written by someone presumed to be John the Beloved: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will…

I Was a Stranger . . .

One hundred seventy-two years ago this coming Wednesday, July 24, the first company of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley, which was to be their new home. Being mostly a desert, it didn’t look…

Review: Embraced in Love Eric D. Huntsman. Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of John.

Jesus Christ

Reasonably Good Tidings of Greater- than-Average Joy Grant Hardy, ed. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition.

Resurrection

Since he was a child, he’d dreamed of himself in one form and woken up, always disappointed, always jolted by the reality and by the way that others looked at him. In the first years,…

On Solace

From the Pulpit: I’m Trying to Get to Know Jesus

What Does It Mean to Be Truly Christian?

Do We Have to Believe That? Canon and Extra-Canonical Sources of LDS Belief

“All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual”: Worship through Corporeality in Hasidism and Mormonism

Pre-Mortality in Mystical Islam and the Cosmic Journey of the Soul

Reimagining the Restoration: Why Liberalism is the Ultimate Flowering of Mormonism

The Elegance of Belief

Christ Without the Church: The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Mormon Doctrine of Baptism as Reflected in Early Christian Baptisteries

Worship and Architecture: Worship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Verena Ursenbach Hatch

Worship and Music: Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Verena Ursenbach Hatch

In Memory of P.A. Christensen

Another View of the Mormons: The Mormons: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Kathleen Elgin

Dramatic Christianity: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine by Daniel Berrigan

Are Mormons Christian?

The Christian Break

Three Christmas Hymns: A Christmas Hymn ; The Babe of Bethlehem ; Away in a Manger

A Child’s Christmas in Utah

The Second Coming of Santa Claus: Christmas in a Polygamous Family

Treasures In the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the Organizing of Worlds

Choral Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Eliza Enigma

Common Beginnings, Divergent Beliefs

Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1979): 19–31
Within two years of his assasination, however, the Church was torn by succession struggles that led to dispersion. Almost a century and a half later, the whereabouts of many of these saints is still unknown.

The Coniunctio in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

A Modern Evangelist: The Mortal Messiah, Book I by Bruce R. McConkie

Christ as Center: The Mortal Messiah, Book II by Bruce R. McConkie

Mormon Arts — A Contradiction!: A Review Essay: Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives edited by Steven P. Sondrup

Cultural Reflections: The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch

Marxism and Mormonism: Marxism: An American Christian Perspective by Arthur F. McGovern

Saints You Can Sink Your Teeth Into: Kindred Saints: The Mormon Immigrant Heritage of Alvin and Kathryn Christensen

Career of a Counter-Prophet: For Christ Will Come Tomorrow: The Saga of The Morrisites by C. LeRoy Anderson

“The Same Organization?”: The First Urban Christians by Wayne A. Meeks

Elohim and Jehovah in Mormonism and the Bible

The Restoration and History: New Testament Christianity

Christmas in Utah

Christmas Sonnets from Other Years

Christ’s World Government: An End of Nationalism and War

Balance and Faith: The Latter-day Saints: A Contemporary History of the Church of Jesus Christ by William E. Berrett

Mormon Christianity: A Critical Appreciation by a Christian Pluralist

Humanity or Divinity?: The Last Temptation of Christ a film by Martin Scorsese

Christ and the Constitution: Toward a Mormon Jurisprudence

Christmas Morning — 1906

Three Generations of Mormon Poetry: A zipper of haze; Tinder; Christmas Voices

Just Enough Truth for Christmastime

The Concept of Grace in Christian Thought

Comments on the Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Christianity

Anti-Christian Fundamentalism: Casting the First Stone: The Hypocrisy of Religious Fundamentalism by R. A. Gilbert

Non-Traditional Christianity: Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints

Did Jesus Heal Simon’s Mother-in-law of a Fever?

The Sabbath Day: To Heal or Not to Heal

The Continuing Quest for the Historical Jesus

Coming of Age? The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the 1960s

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.

American Christians Visit Mt. Nebo

The Miracles of Jesus: Three Basic Questions for the Historian

Jesus Christ in the New Testament: Part One: The Historical Jesus Behind the Gospels

Jesus Christ in the New Testament: Part Two: Various Images of Jesus in the Books of the New Testament

The First Christmas Eve at Home

“Easy to be Entreated:” Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent and Christian Communication

Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?

One Well-Wrought Side of the Story: Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887 by Scott R. Christensen

Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology

Taking Up the Cross

Bring Them Unto Christ

Eugene England: Our Brother in Christ

Christmas Card from Siple Station, Antarctica

No Other Way?: Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

Christian Spinning

The Woman of Christlike Love

Sunday Morning — Eight Days Before Christmas, 2001

The LDS Church and Community of Christ: Clearer Differences, Closer Friends

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2003): 177–192
In this paper I will briefly discuss what I see as the six major differences between the two churches during the first century of their existence, and then I will look at eight new differences that have emerged over the past forty years or so. I make no claim that either is a complete list.

Rooted in Christian Hope: The Case for Pacifism

Christmas Conflict 2001

The First Piece in the Puzzle: Walking in the Sand: A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana by Emmanuel Abu Kissi

Garden Tomb

Carterville

Christmas Carol (Post-Christmas: 2005)

Is Joseph Smith Relevant to the Community of Christ?

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 58–67
I spoke as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints/Community of Christ. As a result, I had a decidedly different perspective on Joseph Smith than my co-panelists.

Grant McMurray and the Succession Crisis in the Community of Christ

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 67–90
Members of the Community of Christ were shocked when our president, W. Grant McMurray, announced that he had resigned on November 29, 2004 , effective immediately.

Colonizing the Frontier between Faith and Doubt: A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography by Levi S. Peterson

Dining with the Devil: A Long Spoon: Poems by R. A. Christmas

Accusation

Who Brought Forth This Christmas Demon

Listen to the piece here.

“The Grandest Principle of the Gospel”: Christian Nihilis Sanctified Activism and Eternal Progression

Modernism and Mormonism: James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Responses to Biblical Criticism

Practicing Divinity

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

Looked like a Church, Sounded like a Church; How Beautiful Our Waters of Mormon

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Narnia’s Aslan, Earth’s Darwin, and Heaven’s God

Divine Darwinism, Comprehensible Christianity, and the Atheist’s Wager: Richard Rorty on Mormonism—an Interview with Mary V. Rorty and Patricia Rorty

“All Find What They Truly Seek”: C.S. Lewis and the ‘Virtuous Unbeliever’

The Great Vigil of Easter

“There Is Always a Struggle”: An Interview with Chieko N. Okazaki

Abundant Events or Narrative Abundance: Robert Orsi and the Academic Study of Mormonism

An Imperfect Brightness of Hope

Why the True Church Cannot Be Perfect

Bones Heal Faster: Spousal Abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Review: Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

“The Highest Class of Adulterers and Whoremongers”: Plural Marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and the Construction of Memory

Dialogue 46.2 (Spring 2016): 1–39
Blythe shows the denial among Culterites followers that the founder was involved in plural marriage.

Review: Adam S. Miller. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology

Woman: Joint Heiress With Christ

Review: Adam S. Miller. Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology

Review: Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith. Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of the Presiding Patriarch H. Michael Marquardt, ed. Early Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints H. Michael Marquardt, ed. Later Patriarchal Blessi

Review: Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

Two-Dog Dose

Review: Stephen H. Webb. Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints

Jesus Enough

Stella Nova

Putting Up the Blue Light

Awakening

Broken Vessels: A Series

Review: Liberalism and the American Mormon: Three Takes David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson. Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics Richard Davis. The Liberal Soul: Applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Politics Terryl

Jesus Sakura

From the Pulpit: Trajectory and Momentum

Correlating Orthodoxy and Style: Institutionally “Approved” Christ-Centered Art in LDS Visual Resources and Meetinghouses, 1990–2021

Religious images have long been used in Latter-day Saint worship and instruction. Paintings, illustrations, and graphic works served a devotional function among the early Church members. Not only did the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo use…

Racial Innocence and the Christus-Based Latter-day Saints Symbol

On April 4, 2020, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) formally adopted an institutional symbol that is now prominently displayed on the Church logo and is imprinted on Church publications, websites, videos,…

Judging Israel

Listen to an interview about this piece here. We sat around a long rectangular table in the local church building. It was tapered at one end, almost trapezoidal. Five men lined each of the long…

The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. Michael Reed’s 2012 book Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo sets out an excellent account of the uncomfortable relationship between the Church…

BODIES OF CHRIST WRITING CONTEST

Editor’s Note: In 2021, Dialogue hosted a writing contest titled Bodies of Christ with the following parameters: Dialogue seeks submissions of poetry (up to 100 lines), short fiction (3500–6000 words), and personal voice (nonfiction, narrative…

Jesus and the Father. The Book of Mormon and the Early Nineteenth-Century Debates on the Trinity

Note: This article one of the special web-only series and not printed in a physical issue.

Jesus Christ, Esq.

I begin in the New Testament, in the book of 1 John, a text written by someone presumed to be John the Beloved: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will…

I Was a Stranger . . .

One hundred seventy-two years ago this coming Wednesday, July 24, the first company of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley, which was to be their new home. Being mostly a desert, it didn’t look…

Review: Embraced in Love Eric D. Huntsman. Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of John.

Jesus Christ

Reasonably Good Tidings of Greater- than-Average Joy Grant Hardy, ed. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition.

Resurrection

Since he was a child, he’d dreamed of himself in one form and woken up, always disappointed, always jolted by the reality and by the way that others looked at him. In the first years,…

On Solace

From the Pulpit: I’m Trying to Get to Know Jesus

What Does It Mean to Be Truly Christian?

Do We Have to Believe That? Canon and Extra-Canonical Sources of LDS Belief

“All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual”: Worship through Corporeality in Hasidism and Mormonism

Pre-Mortality in Mystical Islam and the Cosmic Journey of the Soul

Reimagining the Restoration: Why Liberalism is the Ultimate Flowering of Mormonism

The Elegance of Belief

Christ Without the Church: The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Mormon Doctrine of Baptism as Reflected in Early Christian Baptisteries

Worship and Architecture: Worship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Verena Ursenbach Hatch

Worship and Music: Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Verena Ursenbach Hatch

In Memory of P.A. Christensen

Another View of the Mormons: The Mormons: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Kathleen Elgin

Dramatic Christianity: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine by Daniel Berrigan

Are Mormons Christian?

The Christian Break

Three Christmas Hymns: A Christmas Hymn ; The Babe of Bethlehem ; Away in a Manger

A Child’s Christmas in Utah

The Second Coming of Santa Claus: Christmas in a Polygamous Family

Treasures In the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the Organizing of Worlds

Choral Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Eliza Enigma

Common Beginnings, Divergent Beliefs

Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1979): 19–31
Within two years of his assasination, however, the Church was torn by succession struggles that led to dispersion. Almost a century and a half later, the whereabouts of many of these saints is still unknown.

The Coniunctio in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

A Modern Evangelist: The Mortal Messiah, Book I by Bruce R. McConkie

Christ as Center: The Mortal Messiah, Book II by Bruce R. McConkie

Mormon Arts — A Contradiction!: A Review Essay: Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives edited by Steven P. Sondrup

Cultural Reflections: The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch

Marxism and Mormonism: Marxism: An American Christian Perspective by Arthur F. McGovern

Saints You Can Sink Your Teeth Into: Kindred Saints: The Mormon Immigrant Heritage of Alvin and Kathryn Christensen

Career of a Counter-Prophet: For Christ Will Come Tomorrow: The Saga of The Morrisites by C. LeRoy Anderson

“The Same Organization?”: The First Urban Christians by Wayne A. Meeks

Elohim and Jehovah in Mormonism and the Bible

The Restoration and History: New Testament Christianity

Christmas in Utah

Christmas Sonnets from Other Years

Christ’s World Government: An End of Nationalism and War

Balance and Faith: The Latter-day Saints: A Contemporary History of the Church of Jesus Christ by William E. Berrett

Mormon Christianity: A Critical Appreciation by a Christian Pluralist

Humanity or Divinity?: The Last Temptation of Christ a film by Martin Scorsese

Christ and the Constitution: Toward a Mormon Jurisprudence

Christmas Morning — 1906

Three Generations of Mormon Poetry: A zipper of haze; Tinder; Christmas Voices

Just Enough Truth for Christmastime

The Concept of Grace in Christian Thought

Comments on the Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Christianity

Anti-Christian Fundamentalism: Casting the First Stone: The Hypocrisy of Religious Fundamentalism by R. A. Gilbert

Non-Traditional Christianity: Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints

Did Jesus Heal Simon’s Mother-in-law of a Fever?

The Sabbath Day: To Heal or Not to Heal

The Continuing Quest for the Historical Jesus

Coming of Age? The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the 1960s

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.

American Christians Visit Mt. Nebo

The Miracles of Jesus: Three Basic Questions for the Historian

Jesus Christ in the New Testament: Part One: The Historical Jesus Behind the Gospels

Jesus Christ in the New Testament: Part Two: Various Images of Jesus in the Books of the New Testament

The First Christmas Eve at Home

“Easy to be Entreated:” Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent and Christian Communication

Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?

One Well-Wrought Side of the Story: Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887 by Scott R. Christensen

Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology

Taking Up the Cross

Bring Them Unto Christ

Eugene England: Our Brother in Christ

Christmas Card from Siple Station, Antarctica

No Other Way?: Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

Christian Spinning

The Woman of Christlike Love

Sunday Morning — Eight Days Before Christmas, 2001

The LDS Church and Community of Christ: Clearer Differences, Closer Friends

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2003): 177–192
In this paper I will briefly discuss what I see as the six major differences between the two churches during the first century of their existence, and then I will look at eight new differences that have emerged over the past forty years or so. I make no claim that either is a complete list.

Rooted in Christian Hope: The Case for Pacifism

Christmas Conflict 2001

The First Piece in the Puzzle: Walking in the Sand: A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana by Emmanuel Abu Kissi

Garden Tomb

Carterville

Christmas Carol (Post-Christmas: 2005)

Is Joseph Smith Relevant to the Community of Christ?

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 58–67
I spoke as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints/Community of Christ. As a result, I had a decidedly different perspective on Joseph Smith than my co-panelists.

Grant McMurray and the Succession Crisis in the Community of Christ

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 67–90
Members of the Community of Christ were shocked when our president, W. Grant McMurray, announced that he had resigned on November 29, 2004 , effective immediately.

Colonizing the Frontier between Faith and Doubt: A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography by Levi S. Peterson

Dining with the Devil: A Long Spoon: Poems by R. A. Christmas

Accusation

Who Brought Forth This Christmas Demon

Listen to the piece here.

“The Grandest Principle of the Gospel”: Christian Nihilis Sanctified Activism and Eternal Progression

Modernism and Mormonism: James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Responses to Biblical Criticism

Practicing Divinity

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

Looked like a Church, Sounded like a Church; How Beautiful Our Waters of Mormon

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Narnia’s Aslan, Earth’s Darwin, and Heaven’s God

Divine Darwinism, Comprehensible Christianity, and the Atheist’s Wager: Richard Rorty on Mormonism—an Interview with Mary V. Rorty and Patricia Rorty

“All Find What They Truly Seek”: C.S. Lewis and the ‘Virtuous Unbeliever’

The Great Vigil of Easter

“There Is Always a Struggle”: An Interview with Chieko N. Okazaki

Abundant Events or Narrative Abundance: Robert Orsi and the Academic Study of Mormonism

An Imperfect Brightness of Hope

Why the True Church Cannot Be Perfect

Bones Heal Faster: Spousal Abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Review: Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

“The Highest Class of Adulterers and Whoremongers”: Plural Marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and the Construction of Memory

Dialogue 46.2 (Spring 2016): 1–39
Blythe shows the denial among Culterites followers that the founder was involved in plural marriage.

Review: Adam S. Miller. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology

Woman: Joint Heiress With Christ

Review: Adam S. Miller. Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology

Review: Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith. Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of the Presiding Patriarch H. Michael Marquardt, ed. Early Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints H. Michael Marquardt, ed. Later Patriarchal Blessi

Review: Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

Two-Dog Dose

Review: Stephen H. Webb. Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints

Jesus Enough

Stella Nova

Putting Up the Blue Light

Awakening

Broken Vessels: A Series

Review: Liberalism and the American Mormon: Three Takes David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson. Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics Richard Davis. The Liberal Soul: Applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Politics Terryl

Jesus Sakura

From the Pulpit: Trajectory and Momentum