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Brigham Young as Pastor: Compassion and Mercy During the Utah War, 1857–1858

Will I run from the sheep? No. Will I forsake the flock? No. . . . I want you to understand that if I am your earthly shepherd you must follow me, or else we shall be…

Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture

When fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…

The Enduring Vertigo of the Elect Lady Libbie Grant, The Prophet’s Wife

Of the legacy of Joseph Smith, historian Bernard DeVoto wrote in 1936, “The vision perishes; it is the vertigo that endures.” Reading the novel The Prophet’s Wife by Libbie Grant is to feel that same…

From Private Dreams to Public Damnings George D. Smith, ed., Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Searching For Sally Virginia Kerns, Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young

Pioneer Mother

Listen to this piece here.  I come from a family of Mormons, although perhaps somewhat unorthodox ones. Somewhere in England and what is today Romania, my father’s ancestors heard of a man named Joseph Smith…

Joseph Smith’s History: It’s Complicated Ronald O. Barney, Joseph Smith: History, Methods, and Memory

Missing and Restoring Meaning

Fifty years ago I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a shotgun apartment just off Mass. Ave. at Central Square: 22 Magazine Street, Apt. 3. Spring 1971 marked the last months of my master of…

Smoot in New Light

The eight essays in this collection describe and interpret the US Senate’s investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era. Nominally an investigative hearing on the election of Utah…

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle

On April 13, 2021, President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, indicating a shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saints at War: The Gulf War,…

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Brigham Young as Pastor: Compassion and Mercy During the Utah War, 1857–1858

Will I run from the sheep? No. Will I forsake the flock? No. . . . I want you to understand that if I am your earthly shepherd you must follow me, or else we shall be…

Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture

When fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…

The Enduring Vertigo of the Elect Lady Libbie Grant, The Prophet’s Wife

Of the legacy of Joseph Smith, historian Bernard DeVoto wrote in 1936, “The vision perishes; it is the vertigo that endures.” Reading the novel The Prophet’s Wife by Libbie Grant is to feel that same…

From Private Dreams to Public Damnings George D. Smith, ed., Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Searching For Sally Virginia Kerns, Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young

Pioneer Mother

Listen to this piece here.  I come from a family of Mormons, although perhaps somewhat unorthodox ones. Somewhere in England and what is today Romania, my father’s ancestors heard of a man named Joseph Smith…

Joseph Smith’s History: It’s Complicated Ronald O. Barney, Joseph Smith: History, Methods, and Memory

Missing and Restoring Meaning

Fifty years ago I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a shotgun apartment just off Mass. Ave. at Central Square: 22 Magazine Street, Apt. 3. Spring 1971 marked the last months of my master of…

Smoot in New Light

The eight essays in this collection describe and interpret the US Senate’s investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era. Nominally an investigative hearing on the election of Utah…

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle

On April 13, 2021, President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, indicating a shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saints at War: The Gulf War,…

“O My Mother”: Mormon Fundamentalist Mothers in Heaven and Women’s Authority

Dialogue 55.1 (Spring 2022): 119–135
As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints moved away from the plural marriage revelation, a marital system that created the cosmological backdrop for the doctrine of Heavenly Mothers, the status of the divine feminine became increasingly distant from the lived experience of LDS women. Ecclesiastical changes altered women’s place within the cosmos.

Salt Lake City, 1957

Podcast version of this piece. Sunday morning in Salt Lake City, whenfaithful Mormons flock to worshipat neighborhood wards, my father’ssecret psychiatric patients slip insidethe back door of 508 East South Temple,for fifty-five-minute appointments.A nurse impersonator,…

Historic Sites Holy Envy Sara M. Patterson, Pioneers in the Attic: Place and Memory Along the Mormon Trail

When it comes to sacred places, I feel considerable holy envy toward the Latter-day Saints. Their sacred sites stretch across the continent, from Vermont to California. Mormons can visit their founding prophet’s birthplace, the grove…

The Words and Worlds of Smith and Brown Samuel Morris Brown, Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…

Unpacking Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Mormonism Taylor G. Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism

Inevitably at some point, due to structural white patriarchal privilege and a central and abiding concern with discrete gendered bodies and heteronormative relations, the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will…

Review: On Truth-Telling and Positionalities P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink, eds., Essays on American Indian and Mormon History

I struggle with beginnings. I always just want to get to it. However, allow me to take a bit of time to introduce myself before I tell the story of my experience with the collection…

Review: Unerasing Shoshone Testaments of Survival, Faith, and Hope Darren Parry, The Bear River Massacre

Although Darren Parry claims to not begrudge the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he does not hold back when addressing the injustices and wrongs that his people have faced at the expense of…

Review: Brigham Young Wanted Every Thing  From the Indians Will Bagley, ed., The Whites Want Every Thing: Indian-Mormon Relations, 1847–1877

Will Bagley is a historian who has written and edited more than a dozen books on Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) history and the American West. His best known work is…

Roundtable: Time to Let Go of Columbus

For me, as a Native American member of the Church, I approach the hero worship of Columbus perhaps more critically and apprehensively than the average member would. I was taught that he was a man…

Roundtable: Columbus Day and the “Rest of the Story”

Fall of 2010 was the beginning of my last year as an undergraduate at BYU studying public health. I had just returned from an internship in Washington, DC with the Office of Minority Health (OMH).…

Roundtable: I Am Giving Columbus No More of My Time

In 2017, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement condemning “white supremacist attitudes.” As a member of the Church who also knows the history, erasure, and pain…

Politicking with the Saints: On Reading Benjamin Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo Benjamin E. Park, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier

In an era awash in a sea of reboots and re-examinations, one may be forgiven for initially wondering why yet another treatment of Mormon Nauvoo is strictly necessary. The city, after all, has received its…

Matthew L. Harris, ed., Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics

The Politics of Mormon History

Mormon Modernity David Walker. Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West

Railroading Religion is a welcome addition to the influx of timely scholarship published in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony. The tensions between religion, geography, and history provide a thought-provoking backdrop to…

Remembering Jane Manning James Quincy D. Newell. Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon

In this carefully researched work, Quincy D. Newell produces a powerful narrative of Jane Manning James’s life from limited records. Newell reveals what life was like for someone like James, whom she refers to as…

Modern Mormonism, Gender, and the Tangled Nature of History Gregory A. Prince. Gay Rights and the Mormon Church

Few topics have dominated modern Mormon discourse as much as those related to homosexuality. Especially following the contentious and engrossing debates surrounding Proposition 8—the electoral battle in California in 2008 over the legality of same-sex…

Latter-Day Screens: Mormonism in Popular Culture Brenda R. Weber. Latter-Day Screens: Gender, Sexuality & Mediated Mormonism

Latter-day Screens is a fascinating, compelling, and, at times, frustrating look at a wide range of Mormon-related media. This is largely due to the central conceit of the book—essentially working with Mormonism as a meme and…

History Written in Celluloid Randy Astle. Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952

In March of 1895, in Paris, Auguste and Louis Lumière screened ten short, single-shot films for an audience of two hundred, and the movies were born. Less than ten months later, after years of petitioning,…

A Commentary on Joseph Smith’s Revision of First Corinthians

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 57–106
Although Smith desired to publish the new translation, circumstances were such that publication at that time was not possible.

What Size of City, and What Sort of City, Could (or Should) the City of Zion Be?

Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 1–35
This article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world.

A 1945 Perspective

This 1945 ward teachers’ message on the obedience apparently required of Church members, the response it sparked from a concerned Salt Lake City Unitarian minister, and the response of Church President George Albert Smith to…

“For the Power is In Them”: Leonard Arrington and the Founders of Exponent II

The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah

Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47
In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology.

Worthy of Their Hire? Mormon Leaders’ Relationship with Wealth D. Michael Quinn. The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.

Proving Subcontraries: In memoriam G. Eugene England, 1933–2001

“There Is No Equality”: William E. Berrett, BYU, and Healing the Wounds of Racism in the Latter-day Saint Past and Present

Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 62–83
De Schweintiz documents how students at BYU still hear racist reasons for the priesthood/temple ban in classes, missions, Gospel Doctrine, sacrament meeting talks and even in books published by the Church.

Feminism, Polygamy, and Murder John Bennion. An Unarmed Woman.

John Bennion’s work is set in the late 1880s and focuses on plural marriage through the lens of a murder mystery.

British Latter Day Saint Conscientious Objectors in World War I

Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 49–76
What of the Latter Day Saint movement that claimed to prophetically discern the times and seasons of these latter days and also boldly proclaimed that they were the restoration church?

The Restoration of Conscientious Objection

Letter to the Editor

Review: Priesthood Power Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology download

Review: An Essential Conversation Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, eds. The Mormon Church & Blacks: A Documentary History

The Pioneer Woman, St. George

Martin Luther King Jr. and Mormonism: Dialogue, Race, and Pluralism

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 131–153
This essay provides an outline for how to have a more robust intrafaith dialogue about race among members of the LDS church. Using principles from Martin Luther King, Jr. about dialogue on race, Whitaker argues for the need for greater dialogue to overcome the past.

Mormons & Lineage: The Complicated History of Blacks & Patriarchal Blessings, 1830–2018

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 83–129
The priesthood revelation of 1978 eased some of the tension when the apostles affirmed that Blacks could now be “adopted into the House of Israel” as full participants in Mormon liturgical rites. But this doctrinal shift did not resolve the vexing question of whether or not Black people derived from the “seed of Cain.”

Looking Back, Looking Forward: “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine” 45 Years Later

It has been forty-five years since Dialogue published Bush’s essay entitled “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview”2 and forty years since Official Declaration 2 ended the priesthood/temple ban.

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Thomas Aquinas Meets Joseph Smith: Toward a Mormon Ethics of Natural Law

The Word of Wisdom in Contemporary American Mormonism: Perceptions and Practice

Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, Quorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans

Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
In the prequel to this article, I discussed in general contours the dual nature of authority—individual and institutional—and how the modern LDS concept of priesthood differs significantly from the ancient version in that it has become an abstract form of authority that can be “held” (or withheld, as the case might be).

The Darkest Abyss in America

Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must…

Yearning for Notoriety: Questionable and False Claimants to America’s Worst Emigrant Massacre

A History of Two Stories: Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society

Preparation for the Kingdom | Milton V. Backman, American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism

This book will satisfy an intellectual need which has long existed in the L.D.S. Church and among all those who wish to investigate the “apostasy” from the Early Christian Church and the course of religious…

Joseph Smith and the Sources of Love

My brothers and sisters, today we reach into a realm that is subtle and intricate, all intertwined with feeling. More than usual I pray that you will be forgiving if my own feelings are apparent.…

The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism

If there is to be any honest dialogue whatsoever between educated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and outsiders, the question of the historical origins of Mormonism must ever remain…

The Faith of a Psychologist: A Personal Document

In 1933 James Leuba[1] conducted a survey of the beliefs in deity held by scientific and professional men. He found that only ten per cent of the psychologists surveyed admitted to a belief in God.…

The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Some Literary, Historical, and Critical Reflections

I suppose by this time the reader has either forgotten the circumstances in which he took leave of myself, or else is somewhat weary with the winding of the narrative and impatient for it to…

Scholarly Studies of Mormonism in the Twentieth Century

Although reared in a Mormon home in Idaho and although my family were devout members of the Mormon faith, I was first introduced to Mormon studies as a graduate student in economics at the University…

The Church and the Law | Dallin H. Oaks, “The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor,” and Orma Linford, “The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases”

Throughout the nineteenth century, the Church and its leaders were regularly involved with federal and state law. The recent article by Professor Dallin H. Oaks[1] is a prudent, well researched attempt to deal with one…

Mormonism and American Religion | Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, and Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America

In a sense this review can be termed an attempt to make much of fairly little, for the amount of space devoted to Mormonism in each of these works is very small — six pages…

Brigham Young and the American Economy | Jonathan Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists

Jonathan Hughes has written a spritely book about those men, the vital few in American history, who have had a major impact on our economic growth. Brigham Young is selected as one of them. Hughes,…

Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism: A Response

Whenever a young Mormon intellectual attempts to discuss anti-intellectualism within his Church, especially in the broad, 166-year historical context attempted by Professor Bitton, it seems to me that he is faced with at least three…

Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History

Almost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…

The Life of Brigham Young: A Biography Which Will Not Be Written

On Sunday morning, October 5, 1856, Brigham Young stood before thousands of Mormons in Salt Lake City, to open the semi annual conference of the Church. During the morning he spoke twice. His very first…

Federal Authority Versus Polygamic Theocracy: James B. McKean and the Mormons, 1870-1875

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1966): 85–100
During the years of the Utah Territory, outsiders got appointed to the terrority to serve in various positions. For the most part, these Gentiles weren’t sympathetic towards the church, and one of the more famous outsiders is Chief Justice James B. McKean who tried to crack down on plural marriage.

The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward a Reinterpretation of Mormon History

Polygamy, contrary to popular opinion, probably seduced few men into the seraglio that was Mormonism in the mind of a prurient, Victorian America. Yet it lured several generations of historians — not to speak of…

Writing the Mormon Past

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 47–62
Understanding Mormon history involves appreciating some of the formidable obstacles which confront throse who seek to write it. There is still sensitivity among Mormons to probing that might bring embarrassment to cherished offical views of Latter-day Saint orgins, martyrs, or heroes. 

The Significance of Joseph Smith’s “First Vision” in Mormon Thought

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 29–46
In this early article, Allen shows that the First Vision was not well known during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It became well known after the Prophet’s death, which is when missionaries started to teach about it for the first time.

Introduction: The Future of Mormonism

Preface  The articles in this section reveal the strength and vibrancy of current Mormon historiography. In December, 1965, in connection with the meetings of the American Historical Association at San Francisco, approximately 100 Mormon historians,…

Early Mormon Churches in Utah: A Photographic Essay

The following photographs are geographically and, I believe, architecturally representative of early Mormon churches in Utah. I have concerned myself only with existing churches that were built between 1861 and 1905. A truly representative selection…

The Legend of Porter Rockwell | Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder

The history of Mormonism and of early Utah as the two merge after 1847 has customarily featured ecclesiastical and political leaders, leaving others who played significant roles on the fighting front of westward expansion to…

“’I Never Knew a Time When I Did Not Know Joseph Smith”: A Son’s Record Of The Life And Testimony Of Sidney Rigdon

Dialogue 1.4 (Spring 1966): 15–42
Not very long after the death of Sidney Rigdon, the influential preacher and compatriate to Joseph Smith in the first years of the Church, his son, John Wickliffe Rigdon, wrote an apology for his father.

The “Legend” and the “Case” of Joe Hill | Philip S. Foner, The Case of Joe Hill

Legends often live on simply because believers like them. Some people like them so much they want to prove them. Legends may have their origins in real situations and may have relationships to some facts,…

Christ Without the Church: The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On August 24, 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began an address at the International Youth Conference in Glad, Switzerland, with the words, “The Church is Dead.”[1] Today, 1966, Bonhoeffer is dead, yet the church lives. However, a…

Strange People in a Strange Land | Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History

Howard R. Lamar, professor of history at Yale University and author of Dakota Territory, 1861-1899: A Study of Frontier Politics (1956), has extended his investigations to the Far Southwest and produced a scholarly, highly readable,…

A Kingdom to Come | Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History

In January, 1863, when Union fortunes were low in the Civil War, the governor of the self-proclaimed State of Deseret (Utah) sent these words to the legislature of that quasi-government:  This body of men will…

The Facsimile Found: The Recovery of Joseph Smith’s Papyrus Manuscripts: An Interview with Dr. Fischer

DIALOGUE: On Monday, November 27, 1967, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented a number of documents to President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, who accepted them on behalf of…

The Facsimile Found: The Recovery of Joseph Smith’s Papyrus Manuscripts: A Conversation with Professor Atiya

Dialogue 2.4 (Winter 1967)51– 54.
Although not a member of the Church, Dr. Atiya for many years had cherished his Latter-day Saint friends and is well informed about Church beliefs. He is aware of the history of the papyri and their relationship to the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price and is acquainted with the three facsimiles.

Some Reflections on the Kingdom and the Gathering in Early Mormon History

Dialogue 9.1 (Spring 1976): 34–42
Historical studies embrace the most extensive, intensive, and well-matured of the scholarly endeavors which have the Restoration as their subject. The paucity of critical writings in the various fields of theology and philosophy is by comparison especially striking.

Learning to Lead | Kent Lloyd, Kendall Price, V. Dallas Merrell, and Ellsworth Johnson, The Church Executive, and Paul H. Dunn, The Ten Most Wanted Men

The Church Executive is a report (also summarized in the Winter 1967 issue of Dialogue) of a seminar (workshop training program) conducted by three weeks, they hoped to see the stake presidents achieve the following:…

On the Mormon Trail | Alma P. Burton, Mormon Trail from Vermon to Utah, and R. Don Oscarson and Stanley B. Kimball, The Travelers’ Guide to Historic Mormon America

Dr. Alma P. Burton, currently Assistant Administrator of Seminaries and Institutes for the L.D.S. Department of Education, first published his guide in 1952 to satisfy a long-felt want of many people who desired to trace…

Storybook Grandmothers | Don Cecil Corbett, Mary Fielding Smith: Daughter of Britain, and Olive Kimball B. Mitchell, Life Is a Fulfilling

Mormon history is full of tales about formidable women, bearing the stamp of true matriarchs despite petticoats and plural marriage. The present biography of Mary Fielding Smith is written by one of her descendants and…

The Divinity in Humanity | Erich Fromm, You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition

Erich Fromm has a large international reputation as a psychologist and social critic; his numerous writings treat various aspects of psychology (particularly psychotherapy), sociology, politics, philosophy, and religion. Some may feel that his wide ranging…

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: Phase One

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968)101 – 105
Even a casual reading of the Book of Abraham shows that the story refers not so much to unique historic events as to ritual forms and traditions—all these must be checked. So far we have heard what is wrong or at least suspect about the Book of Abraham, but as yet nobody has cared to report on the other side of the picture. It is for that we are saving our footnotes.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Book of Breathings

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968)98
THE BOOK OF BREATHINGS (FRAGMENT I, THE “SENSEN” TEXT, WITH RESTORATIONS FROM LOUVRE PAPYRUS 3284) translated by Richard A. Parker

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Source of the Book of Abraham Identified

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 92–97
A description of the alleged Egyptain papyri used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Abraham

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: A Tentative Approach to the Book of Abraham

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):89 – 92
It appears that in time the mystery of the Book of Abraham will be unveiled. Meanwhile, it is significant for the Reorganized Church that undue haste and overzealous faith did not move it in the nineteenth century to canonize this work of Joseph Smith, Jr., primarily on the basis that it was accomplished by Joseph Smith, Jr.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Joseph Smith Papyri: A Preliminary Report

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):86 – 88
The papyri need to be carefully cleaned and straightened and then rephotographed with care to illuminate the under side somewhat to eliminate all shadows in cracks and breaks, which can frequently look just like writing.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: A Summary Report

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):67 – 85
The Joseph Smith Egyptian papyri once consisted of at least six separate documents, possibly eight or more.

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, denned thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 41–55
Zucker describes the efforts that Joseph Smith went through to study Hebrew. Joseph Smith’s personal behavior was apparently not changed, but in other aspects in later years there is evidence that Joseph Smith was using Hebrew language structure

Mrs. Brodie and Joseph Smith | F. L. Stewart, Exploding the Myth about Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet

Dialogue 3.3 (Fall 1968): 142–145
In response to Fawn Brodies’s biography of Joseph Smith, F.L. Stewart published a book called Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.

A Mirror for Mormon’s | Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints

A superlative is an automatic challenge, and when Mrs. Brodie calls City of the Saints “the best book on the Mormons published during the nineteenth century,” my impulse is to disprove it. At surface glance…

One Man’s Utah | Wayne Stout, History of Utah

The writing of history is fraught with difficulties because the historian has no direct access to the past. Through newspapers, diaries, journals, and public documents prior events may be glimpsed as shadows, but even then…

Whose Victory? | W. Cleon Skousen, Fantastic Victory: Israel’s Rendezvous with Destiny

Fantastic Victory is without a doubt the most ambitious attempt by any “Mormon scholar” to set the recent Arab—Israeli conflict into some perspec tive. Cleon Skousen, in the amazingly short period of less than three…

A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham

The speed with which photographs of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri were published once they came into the possession of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a gratifying contrast to the secrecy with which their previous custodians surrounded them. The definitive edition of the documents will take time, but in the meantime the Egyptologist can show his appreciation by taking advantage of the opportunity to make preliminary studies.

Mormons in the Executive Suite

Only in a city can a full cast of characters for the human drama be assembled; hence only in the city is there sufficient diversity and competition to enliven the plot and bring the performers up to the highest pitch…

Art and the Church

It is through the performance of creative arts, in art, in thought in personal relationships that the city can be identified as something more than a purely functional organization . . .  Lewis Mumford Perhaps it is presumptuous to…

Manhattan Faces

If you like fresh air, 25¢ hamburgers, and security, New York may not be the place for you. If you want a Rinso-clean wash you can hang in the backyard, where crickets sound at night, and neighbors who are people much like you, the city probably isn’t your bag.

Mormons as City Planners

. . . one key to urban development should be plain—it lies in the widening of the circle of those capable of participating in it, till in the end all men will take part in the conversation.  Lewis Mumford…

The Challenge of Secularism

Belief in the eternal and the infinite, the omniscient and the omnipotent succeeded, over the milleniums, in exalting the very possibilities of human existence . . .  Lewis Mumford One of the most pressing theological questions of our time…

Villa Mae

When I saw Villa Mae Ferguson for the first time, standing gaunt and forlorn in the wind, my impulse was to keep on driving. I recognized her from Louise’s description: tall, plain, grayheaded. But she…

A Time of Transition

Our home is in the Alexandria (Va.) Ward and we live within eight blocks of the chapel. The school district was recently redistricted to dip into the “close to downtown” areas and therefore includes many…

A Personal Commitment to Civil Equality

We call upon all men, everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God’s children. Anything less than this defeats our high ideal…

Reflections at Hopkins House

“What’s your name?”

“Are you coming back?”

“I love you.”

These are the words of a Hopkins House child. Being young, very young, living in a poverty-ridden neighborhood . . .

Mormons in the Urban Community

Unless you consult particulars, you cannot see.  William Blake The average L.D.S. Church member finds many societal forces buffered or muted for him by the Church. Among other factors, our focus on the eternal nature of…

Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform: The Political Legacy of Joseph Smith

There is a game popular among Mormons which any number can play; it is easy to learn and it requires very little equipment: it is called, “Quoting the Prophet.” To play the game all one…

Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform: Joseph Smith and the Presidency, 1844

At a meeting in the mayor’s office in Nauvoo, Illinois, on January 29, 1844, it was moved and voted unanimously that “we will have an independent electoral ticket, and that Joseph Smith be a candidate…

The Changing Image of Mormonism

The ultimate fate of American minorities is to become tourist attractions. . . . But the tourist boom means the same thing in Utah that it means in Vermont, the same thing it means wherever the past has been piously “restored,” roped off, and put on display—not the vitality but the decadence of a way of life.
Such is the devastating indictment of Mormonism by Christopher Lasch in the January 26, 1967, New York Review of Books

B.H. Roberts as an Historian

In 1930, when B. H. Roberts published his six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, learned journals were silent. But he himself, with pardonable pride, had described his work as “monumental.” One Mormon, answering Bernard De Voto’s contemptuous description of Utah as an intellectual desert, hailed Roberts as “another Gibbon.” Although hyperbolic, the favorable judgment was in general well deserved….

Mormons and Psychiatry

Among many Mormons there exists a genuine distrust of psychiatry. Apprehensions arise partly from misconceptions about psychotherapy and partly from a stigma that many attach to anything associated with emotional disorders. Many believe “If you live your religion, you won’t need a psychiatrist.” For many, to visit a psychiatrist would be to admit emotional and spiritual failure. Mormons might enter psychotherapy with not only the usual fears and anxieties concerning an unknown experience that lies ahead…

Income and Membership Projections for the Church Through the Year 2000

It is currently fashionable to look ahead to see what the future is likely to be, and, if what is seen is unsatisfactory, to consider alternative futures and means necessary to achieve them. This is…

Concern for the Urban Condition

The urban age—with all its complexities, opportunities, and monstrous problems—is upon us. How are Christians—and Mormons—responding to this new environment? This article will present exploratory research com paring Mormons and non-Mormons and will be followed…

The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints

In one of the earliest books of imaginative literature about the Ameri can West (published in 1826), novelist-editor-missionary-biographer Timothy Flint reveals a common impression of the time that “in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing…

The Joseph Smith Papyri

Of the subject of my study, only fragments and copies of fragments are left. These are “Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Papyri” numbers 1, 10 and 11, and the three Facsimiles of the Pearl of Great Price. But these are enough. I have glued them to a roll of paper 10×150 centimeters long (according to Doctor Baer’s indications), and I have a pretty good idea of what PJS (as I shall call this document) must have looked like before it broke into pieces over a century ago. 

Toward a History of Ancient America

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 65–68
If there is no history of ancient Antarctica, there is a valid reason for it. Stone Age man penetrated every continent except Antarctica, and until mod￾ern times, Antarctica was unexplored

Governor Thomas Ford and the Murderers of Joseph Smith

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1969): 41–52
Member and non members have criticized Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois for his inability to save Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Huntress was arguing that Governor Ford had a lot of difficulties that he had to deal with at that time.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Mormon Dilemma?

The power struggle inherent in the Arab-Israeli confrontation is taking place in a deep chasm of conflicting goals and aspirations. The visible issues that separate the Arabs and Israelis may not seem overly complex to…

The Reliability of the Early History of Lucy and Joseph Smith

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 13–28
Mormon history is a part of this magnificent proliferation of data and research techniques. Its own archives are in the midst of classification by professionally competent standards. There is hope for a new era, in which Mormon and non-Mormon may meet on the common ground of objective fact.

Literature in the History of the Church: The Importance of Involvement

Against my better judgment, I have been persuaded to discuss the place of literature in the history of the Mormon Church in the context of this special issue of Dialogue. That the topic is too…

A Commentary of Stephen G. Taggart’s Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins

Dialogue 4.4 (Winter 1969): 86–103
Lester E Bush wrote in response to Stephen G Taggart’s book which the author tried to show that the Church came from abololonist ideas because the Church was orginially founded in New York, but when they encountered pro slavery settlers in Missouri and faced the hostiltiy from the settlers early church leaders apparently changed their mind, even though Joseph Smith eventually did a turnabout from what records have shown regarding African Americans.

The Secular Relevance of the Gospel | Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah

What message has the Book of Mormon for our world? Does it speak to those who sense their own involvement in the greatness and the misery of secular existence? Hugh Nibley, in a portion of…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: President McKay As a Neighbor

My grandfather used to say “There’s lots and lots of ‘man-ism’ in Mor monism.” Often we see President McKay and we think and talk of him as the prophet. I grew up in the same little valley in Northern Utah where he was from, and we saw him and thought of him as a man, of the real things he did as our neighbor. 

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: On Shaking Hands with David O. McKay

There were advantages and disadvantages to living across the street from Brother and Sister McKay. On Sunday we couldn’t play football in the street because there was always the possibility that President David O. McKay…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: The Prophet is Dead

The prophet is dead. Feeling a special quiet in the chapel this morning I sensed others were experiencing his going too. What did this mean to me? Why my tears and sorrow? Surely he was…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: Reflections on the Ministry of President David O. McKay

It is not difficult to identify the large difference that President McKay has made in the character and historical movement of the Church. I refer to the obvious fact that especially during the period of…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: “When Spirit Speaks to Spirit”

The deep sense of sorrow that I felt upon hearing of the passing of the prophet was incurred not because of any direct relationship I’ve had with him, nor was it the type of remorse…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: A Man of Love and Personal Concern

I have had but few opportunities to come close to David O. McKay, but each time has proved to be personal, memorable, and cherished deeply. I have sensed that I have had a rare opportunity in…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: Tribute to President David O. McKay

I do not hesitate and without reservation repeat from this remote end of the big wide world the very often heard expression from the lips of about three million people who have accepted the message…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: My Memories of President David O. McKay

My first recollection of David O. McKay is a sermon he gave in a Sacrament Meeting which led me as a teenager to engage in critical self-examination and to leave the meeting with high resolve. …

Willard Young: The Prophet’s Son at West Point

A common object of humor among visitors to Mormon Country in the nineteenth century was the large number of children. Many travellers’ accounts contain a version of the story of Brigham Young’s encounter with a…

Spiritual Problems in the Teaching of Modern Literature

There are certain problems which a Mormon must cope with in teaching any secular literature. What does he do, for example, with a literary work which expresses ideas and attitudes in opposition to his theology?…

Faithful History

Written history rarely survives the three score and ten years allotted to the men who write it. Countless histories of the French Revolution have moved on to the library shelves since 1789, and no end…

Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1832-48, and A Bibliographic Note

“Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1839-48” at Southern Illinois University, is a collection of documents (most of which are on microfilm), which was assembled by Stanley B. Kimball, who also published an annotated catalog…

The Church and the Orient | Spencer J. Palmer, The Church Encounters Asia

The motion picture Mondo Cane taught us that the chronicler’s job is to assemble his collectanea in straightforward reportage. Dr. Palmer’s book is a lucid chronicle (from 1851 to 1969) of some missionarying Mormons turning…

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

The Mormons is the second in the Freedom to Worship series designed to tell stories of “outstanding Americans of the nineteenth century and their different religious beliefs.” The series is intended to fit into the…

Dialogue East | Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action

In the spring of 1970, with the biennial world conference of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints approaching, an acute polarization of theological positions and emotional sets seemed to have occurred in the movement over the identity, the character, and the mission of the (RLDS) church.

The Manipulation of History | Can We Manipulate the Past? By Fawn Brodie

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1970): 96–99
Marvin S Hill was responding to Fawn Brodie’s lecture at the Hotel Utah in 1970 called “Can We Manipulate the Past?” Her point in giving it was she was claiming that the people in charge only emphasize the points of history that fit their gains. She then compared that to Church Leaders only focusing on Joseph Smith’s early attitudes towards slavery, but then she claimed that Church Leaders didn’t focus on the fact that in the future he changed his mind regarding Slavery and became more against it, kind of like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson. Marvin S Hill kept mentioning that she overlooked certain aspects.

The Coming of the Manifesto

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1970): 11–25
Godfrey describes the steps leading to Wilford Woodruff issuing the First Manifesto.

The Lesson of Coalville

As suggested in the preceding discussions, the confrontations surrounding the destruction of the Coalville Tabernacle were so devisive and frustrating that those involved on any side of the issue must have vowed to avoid similar…

The Last Days of the Coalville Tabernacle

Surely if it be worthwhile troubling ourselves about the works of art of today, of which any amount almost can be done, since we are yet alive, it is worthwhile spending a little care, forethought,…

A Comment on Joseph Smith’s Account of His First Vision and the 1820 Revival

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 106–107
Ever since people first heard of the First Vision, the events surrounding it has been clouded by controversy. Crawley comments with historical references that help to clarify this controversy.

Joseph Smith, An American Muhammad? An Essay On the Perils of Historical Analogy

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 46–58
Since around the time as the martyrdom, Joseph Smith has been compared to Muhammad who was the founder of Islam. Green and Goldrup presents evidence for how Islam and the church are different.

Blessed Damozels: Women in Mormon History

Historians have long recognized the role of women in the development of Western civilization and culture, but for some reason the role of women in Mormon history has been overlooked. Among both Mormon and non-Mormon…

God and Man in History

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sees both God and man in a temporal, that i§^ historical,’ context, but it has developed no authoritative, systematic statement of the philosophical implications of historical relationships. It has no official philosophy of history. What follows, therefore, are simply reflections on some problems which relate to the religious affirmations of the L.D.S. people and a tentative approach to my personal philosophy of history. 

The Sterling M. McMurring Papers

Dr. Sterling Moss McMurrin needs no introduction to Dialogue readers. He is one of the Church’s most outstanding scholars, and is a nationally recognized administrator, educator, and philosopher. He has been a member of the…

Modern Biblical Scholarship | P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, eds., The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. I: From the Beginnings to Jerome

With the publication of this volume, the three-part Cambridge History of the Bible is now complete. That this volume, the first in the chronological sequence, should be the final number published is a testimony both…

From Gadfly to Watchdog | O. N. Malmquist, The First 100 Years: A History of the Salt Lake Tribune, 1871–1971

For every serious student of Utah’s history, there is a first time to visit the dusty archives or the microfilm files of the Salt Lake Tribune of half a century or more ago.  Two impressions…

A Prophet’s Goodly Grandparents | Richard Lloyd Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage: Influences of Grandfathers Solomon Mack and Asael Smith

Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage by Dr. Richard L. Anderson is an important contribution to an understanding of Joseph Smith’s immediate ancestry and the domestic environment in which he was raised. Since Joseph attributed dominant…

Brodie Revisited: A Reappraisal | Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet

For more than a quarter century Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History has been recognized by most professional American historians as the standard work on the life of Joseph Smith and perhaps the most…

Mormonism as an Eddy in American Religious History | Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People

For the past one hundred and thirty years various historians have attempted to write a panoramic history of religion in the United States. The 1960s saw the publication of three major surveys: Clifton E. Olmstead’s…

James E. Talmage: A Personal History | John R. Talmage, The Talmage Story: Life of James E. Talmage—Educator, Scientist, Apostle

James E. Talmage was one of the most significant Mormon leaders in the early twentieth century. Internationally known scientist, outstanding educator, Apostle, and author of some of the most enduring theological works in the Church,…

New Essays on Mormon History | F. Mark McKiernan, Alma R. Blair, and Paul Edwards, eds., The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History

“It is still surprising,” state the editors of this volume, “how little good material is available in many areas of Mormon history.” To help correct this deficiency, F. Mark McKiernan of the Restoration Trails Foundation,…

J. Golden Kimball: Apostle and Folk Hero | Thomas E. Cheney, The Golden Legacy: A Folk History of J. Golden Kimball

Even before his death in 1938 at the age of eighty-five, J. Golden Kimball had become the most talked about of all Mormon churchmen. He was himself cognizant of his reputation, and when a nephew…

Judah Among the Ephriamites | Juanita Brooks, History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho

This might well be the most difficult book Juanita Brooks ever undertook. Consider the formidable problems: Though Mrs. Brooks is the scholar’s scholar of Mormonism, what can she do about the fact that the Jews…

Some Reflections on the New Mormon History

In the last quarter-century a significantly different understanding of the Latter day Saint past has begun to emerge in a series of books, journal articles, oral ad dresses at various conferences, and more informally, in…

Riding Herd: A Conversation with Juanita Brooks

Elsewhere in this issue Robert Flanders speaks of the New Mormon History as having begun in 1945 with the publication of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History. While Brodie’s book is certainly pivotal, an…

“No Continuing City””: Reading a Local History | Marilyn McMeen Miller and John Clifton Moffitt, Provo: A Story of People in Motion

In its almost-square format, in its design and layout, its good-sized type and sepia toned pictures on stiff, just about grocery-bag-brown paper, Miller and Moffitt’s Provo is easily the most attractive and readable work of local history I have come across.

A Hint of an Explanation | Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: an Egyptian Endowment

Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 74–75
Review of An Egyptian Endowment by Hugh Nibley, which discusses the papyri that Joseph Smith allegedly used to help translate the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley decided to state his case, but allow readers to form their own conclusions after reading it.

A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842

Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 21–34
Foster points out that in 1842 an unpublished pamphlet was written called “The Peace Maker” that expressed its support for polygamy. It is the first-known defense of polygamy before 1852.

The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith

Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’

Photography as History: Through Camera Eyes, Nelson B. Wadsworth

Mormonism and Labor | J. Kenneth Davies, Deseret’s Sons of Toil, A History of the Worker Movements of Territorial Utah, 1852–1896

J. Kenneth Davies, a long-time student of Utah labor history, has been interested in the relationship between the labor movement in Utah and the Mormon Church. Deseret’s Sons of Toil is intended to be a…

Robert Leroy Parker on Family History | Lulu Parker Betenson, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, and Larry Pointer, In Search of Butch Cassidy

What interest can two books about an outlaw have for Dialogue readers? An obvious answer is that Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was a Mormon boy who went bad, but another is that these…

An Enduring History | Charles S. Peterson, Utah: A Bicentennial History

The States and the Nation Series is a set of histories of each state and the District of Columbia “designed to assist the American people in a serious look at the ideals they have espoused…

Fate and the Persecutors of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth

Dialogue 11.4 (1977): 63-70
In the 1950s there was a book published call Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith, which contains stories that have been part of folklore that have been passed down discussing what happened to the people who helped kill Joseph Smith.

Generalized Hatred | Marilyn French, The Women’s Room

Mira, the protagonist of Marilyn French’s best-selling novel, did not usually buy women’s magazines, but she pored over them at the dentist’s office: “Rate yourself: are you a good wife? Are you still attractive? Are…

Fishing for Emma | Roy A. Cheville, Joseph and Emma Companions, and Erwin E. Wirkus, Judge Me Dear Reader

Accounts of Emma Hale Smith and her relationship with her husband Joseph are scattered, sketchy and superficial. In 1973 Irwin E. Wirkus published Judge Me Dear Reader, a little twenty-five-page booklet about Emma. This past…

Two Venturesome Women | Juanita Brooks, ed., Not By Bread Alone: The Journal of Martha Spence Heywood, 1850–56

The study of early Utah history has been notably enriched by the recent publication of two contemporary accounts from the 1850s. The Journal of Martha Spence Hey wood, 1850 to 1856 includes Martha’s accounts of…

The Cost of Living in Kirtland | Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, and Larry T. Wimmer, The Kirtland Economy Revisited: A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics

Most readers of Mormon fiction would quickly agree that the genre still awaits a writer of the stature of Chaim Potok or James Michener, to say nothing of a Joyce or a Faulkner. Perhaps one…

Faith and History: The Snell Controversy

In early March, 1937, Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, of the Council of the Twelve, sent a strongly worded letter to church Commissioner of Education Franklin West. The subject of Elder Smith’s criticism was a pair…

State-of-the-Art Mormon History | Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints

For years Latter-day Saints yearned for a one-volume history of the Church which could be recommended to members and non-members alike as factually sound and not so fervently partisan as to “turn off” the critical…

A Priestly Role for a Prophetic Church: The RLDS Church and Black Americans

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 37–50
In recent years many RLDS Church members have been proud of the fact that the church has been ordaining blacks into the priesthood since early in its history. Sometimes they have made unfavorable comparisons between RLDS policy and that of their cousins in Utah who denied holy orders to black men and women until last year when half of the restriction was lifted.

Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks Within Mormonism

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 22–36
Elijah Abel, a black man ordained to the priesthood, was restricted in his church participation starting in 1843, even though he was well respected by both members and leaders. Newell G. Bringhurst discusses why the priesthood and temple ban might have occured. One of the reasons was when the pioneers were crossing the plains, a man by the name of William McCary, who had Native American and African American ancestry, caused a lot of grief and trouble for both saints and the leaders of the Church.

Saint Without Priesthood: The Collected Testimonies of Ex-Slave Samuel D. Chambers

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 13–21
The editors of Dialogue in 1979 compiled the testimonies of a former slave, Samuel Chambers, who was a member of the church.

Introduction

Friday, June 9, 1978. A day not to be forgotten. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of President Kennedy, most Mormons will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing…

Utah in One Volume | Richard D. Poll, Thomas G. Alexander, Eugene E. Campbell, and David E. Miller, eds., Utah’s History

This recent publication is the best one volume history of Utah available, but it is not as good as it could or should be. The ideal volume would present a clear narrative, be integrated by…

Peripheral Mormondom: The Frenetic Frontier

A concept called the “center periphery dichotomy” is sometimes used by social scientists to illustrate and analyze regional disparities.[1] Center or core usually refers to those areas so richly endowed in population and resources that…

The Orson Pratt-Brigham Young Controversies: Conflict Within the Quorums, 1853 to 1868

Brigham Young and Orson Pratt are both regarded as valiant leaders during the first generation of the restored Church. Both worked mightily in the missionary field and showed themselves stalwart defenders of the faith. Yet…

Joseph Smith and Thomas Paine? | Robert N. Hullinger, Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon

Thirteen years ago a heavily publicized and startling book called The Passover Plot, by Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield, daringly asserted that Jesus Christ planned his own arrest, crucifixion and resurrection; that he had beforehand arranged…

Mormonism: From Its New York Beginnings

That the handful of early Mormon converts decided to migrate from New York only nine months after their church was organized has led some scholars to suppose that the basic influence on Latter-day Saint doctrines…

An Hour in the Grove

I have visited this spot before—in my youth, in art, in my thoughts—so often that it has become cliche. The grove, a ripe symbol extending back through time and myth, has become too ripe in…

Fawn McKay Brodie: An Oral History Interview

The following is excerpted from a longer interview conducted by Shirley E. Stephenson as part of the Oral History Program at California State University at Fullerton, November 30, 1975.

Local History, Well Done | Brigham D. Madsen, Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah

According to a myth which circulated in Utah during the 1870s, Brigham Young had placed a curse on the town of Corinne and prophesied that the community’s ungodly existence would be short-lived. In Corinne: The…

The Writing of Latter-day Saints History: Problems, Accomplishments and Admonitions

The challenge of writing religious history is an old one.[1] The ancient Hebrews incorporated history into their scriptures, and Luke the physician is but one of the historians whose writings were canonized in the Christian…

Sensational Virtue: Nineteenth-Century Mormon Fiction and American Popular Taste

Before 1900, novels about Mormons ranged from the amateurish to the slick, from the scurrilous to the rather even-handed, from the realistic to the wildly imaginary. Their one common thread was that almost all of…

Joseph Smith and the Structure of Mormon Identity

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 89–100
Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision has taken priority in structuring Mormon identity, despite the existence of different versions. This article explores why that version is so meaningful to Latter-day Saints, reflecting on the symbolic strucutre of the account.

The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement

The status of the Word of Wisdom at the turn of the century is evident from contemporary sources. At a meeting on May 5,1898, the First Presidency and Twelve discussed the Word of Wisdom. One…

Did the Word of Wisdom Become a Commandment in 1851?

Joseph Fielding Smith, Apostle and Church Historian, once published an answer to an inquiry about when the Word of Wisdom became a commandment. His response, widely accepted as definitive both then and subsequently, was included…

The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth-Century Perspective

The success of Mormonism’s “Word of Wisdom,” especially its prohibition of tobacco—in promoting Mormon health is now widely acknowledged. Mor mons have shown that they experience what medical science would predict from their lifestyle: a longevity several years greater than non-Mormons, with much less cancer and heart disease.

The Fading of the Pharaoh’s Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban Against Blacks

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 11–45
Mauss situates the 1978 revelation on the priesthood in modern American historical context. Everything changed for the Church during the Civil Rights Movement when people both inside and outside the Church were harshly critcizing the priesthood ban. When the world was changing, it looked like the Church was still adherring to the past.

An “Inside-Outsider” in Zion

At the invitation of Sunstone, I sat down a couple of years ago to write a book review of Samuel Woolley Taylor’s Rocky Mountain Empire. As did Topsy, that review just grew and grew until…

Joseph Smith III’s 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah

Members of the Mormon Church headquartered in Salt Lake City may have reacted anywhere along the spectrum from sublime indifference to temporary discomfiture to cold terror at the recently discovered blessing by Joseph Smith, Jr.,…

Joseph Smith: “The Gift of Seeing”

Dialogue 15.2 (Summer 1982): 48–68
Van Wagoner and Walker focus on the seer stones that Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon translation process.

Thoughts on the Mormon Scriptures: An Outsider’s View of the Inspiration of Joseph Smith

How is the Mormon Church viewed by those who are not members? One view is that Mormons are successful and prosperous, that they “take care of their own,” that they live good lives, and that…

An Introduction to Mormon Administrative History

Institutional vitality has characterized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from its organization with six members in 1830 to over five million by 1982. Its capacity to govern and manage an ever-enlarging…

The Millennial Hymns of Parley P. Pratt

Born in 1807 in Burlington, New York, Parley P. Pratt was baptized by Oliver Cowdery in Seneca Lake on 1 September 1830, less than five months after the Church’s founding. Among the first to be…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Theses and Dissertations

Despite the marked decline in the number of students seeking advanced degrees, which is sending shock waves throughout American academia, interest in Mormon-related programs remains remarkably high. This trend becomes considerably more understandable when we…

A Bluestocking in Zion: The Literary Life of Emmeline B. Wells

In the afternoon of 1 July 1895, Emmeline Wells and thirteen other Mormon literary lights and friends met in the parlor of Julia C. Howe’s home in memory of a deceased colleague, poet Hannah King.…

Forgotten Relief Societies, 1844-67

Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint women showed a remarkable propensity for organizing. To engage in benevolent service, to share useful information, to fill social and spiritual needs, they met together in the humid summers of Nauvoo, Illinois,…

From Apostle to Apostate: The Personal Struggle of Amasa Mason Lyman

The principles of the gospel are perfect,” President Brigham Young admonished his audience early in the summer of 1867, “but are the Apostles who teach it perfect?” Even though he provided an answer (“No, they…

The Seventies in the 1880s: Revelations and Reorganizing

“These 76 quorums were all torn to pieces.” That disturbing report card for seventies quorums came from Joseph Young, senior president of all seventies in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in January…

Allegiance and Stewardship: Holy War, Just War, and the Mormon Tradition in the Nuclear Age

The present escalation in nuclear weapons technology between the United States and the Soviet Union has progressed beyond the point where any increase in such weaponry necessarily results in increased national security. It has become, in fact, the ultimate act of idolatry, a reliance upon technology, a false god which cannot save us but which will insure our destruction.

“The Fullness of the Priesthood”: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice

There is no exaltation in the kingdom of God without the fulness of the priesthood. . . . Every man who is faithful and will receive these [temple] ordinances and blessings obtains a fulness of…

Voices from the Dust: Women in Zion | Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr, Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints 1830-1900

The subtitle of this book indicates its primary shortcoming. This is, indeed, one more history of the Mormons. The chapter headings could be those of any similar work giving a general overview of the growth…

A Personal Odyssey: My Encounter with Mormon History

For nearly a decade, the greater part of my waking hours has been spent in the study of Mormon history. In writing a dissertation at the University of Chicago and then a book dealing in…

Swarming Progeny of the Restoration | Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration: A History of the Latter Day Saint Movement

Did you know that James Brighouse has been, among others, Adam, Enoch, Michael, George Washington, and Joseph Smith? Did you know that Max E. Powers was in attendance at the grand council in heaven before…

Saints You Can Sink Your Teeth Into | William G. Hartley, Kindred Saints: The Mormon Immigrant Heritage of Alvin and Kathryn Christensen

With us, someone else’s genealogy ranks right up there with reading the tele phone directory or watching someone else’s home movies. Most Mormon family histories are about as much fun as funerals. Thus, it was…

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

“If there is anything virtuous, lovely . . . we seek after these things.” Granted. But loveliness by what criteria? We in the Church often presume a common aesthetic; or when conflicts in judgment arise—whether…

Faithful History/Secular Faith

I readily admit that the topic of “faithful history” may gain more by praying for the demise of the debate than by trying to provide life-extending arguments or by seeking to resurrect it. However, I…

Rx With a Historical Slant | Robert T. Divett, Medicine and the Mormons: An Introduction to the History of Latter-day Saint Health Care

It is easy for me to be enthusiastic about this relatively short, readable volume, which in many ways breaks new ground in Mormon historiography. It is a book for all fascinated with Mormon health attitudes…

Moving Swiftly Upon the Waters | Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration 1830-1890

After the Latter-day Saints began building Zion in the Great Basin it was natural to celebrate crossing the plains as pioneers. Succeeding generations of land lubbers have been less inclined to remember a similarly pivotal…

A Physician’s Reflections on Old Testament Medicine

Latter-day Saints demonstrate a perennial interest in health issues of all kinds, from the dietary role of meats to the therapeutic use of herb teas. At least some of this interest can be attributed to…

Refracted Visions and Future Worlds: Mormonism and Science Fiction

Although science fiction and religion both attempt to define possible or J probable future states, they often seem incompatible. Critics of science fiction frequently argue that including religion in science fiction vitiates the power of…

Emma Smith Through Her Writings

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Emma Hale Smith’s adult life spanned more than a half century from the 1820s to 1879.

The Emma Smith Lore Reconsidered

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 1984): 69-76
Emma spent her remaining years far removed from the associates who had helped shape the events of that first decade of the Nauvoo period. Like those around her, she did not always react rationally nor did she always make decisions in those trying years that others would have wished her to make.

Joseph Smith and Process Theology

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints.

Book of Mormon Usage in Early LDS Theology

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 37–75
As one step in that direction, this article explores Book of Mormon usage in the pre-Utah period (1830—46), and seeks answers to the following questions: Which passages from the Book of Mormon were cited and with what frequency? How were they understood?

Religious Accommodation in the Land of Racial Democracy

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 23–34
Brazil, with a high concentration of African heritage, was a difficult place for the Church (because of the Church’s racial policy) to make headway among native members. Due to the high risk of Brazilians potentially having African ancestry, the Church came to the point where they eventually discouraged missionaries in Brazil from baptizing anyone who is known to have African ancestry.

A Shaded View | Leonard J. Arrington and Susan Arrington Madsen, Sunbonnet Sisters: True Stories of Mormon Women and Frontier Life

Another “sisters” book—enough for a quartet. Where Mormon Sisters is a topical approach to pioneer women’s history, Sister Saints a compilation of biographical essays, and Women’s Voices a selection of diary excerpts with historical commentary,…

Bleaker by the Dozen? | H. M. Bahr, S. J. Condie, and K. Goodman, Life in Large Families: Views of Mormon Women

“Today,” said the teacher, “we have a special activity. We’re going to have a survey and find out how many brothers and sisters we all have.” One little girl from an LDS family of six…

Paul: Early-Day Saint | Richard Lloyd Anderson, Understanding Paul

As  a protestant minister who has taught a college course on the letters of Paul, I admittedly approached this book with some skepticism. Having read it, I found the book to be unquestionably thorough. Following presentations…

Emigrant Guides | Stanley B. Kimball, ed., The Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide by W. Clayton

The story of the western movement runs deep in American and Mormon history. The rolling of wagons west toward Oregon, California, and Utah is as basic to our national experience as Plymouth Rock and Independence…

“The Same Organization?” | Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians

In an 1842 description of Latter-day Saint beliefs written for John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat, Joseph Smith said: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, viz. apostles, prophets, pastors,…

Meet the Author of The Prophet of Palmyra | John E. Hallwas, Thomas Gregg: Early Illinois Journalist and Author

I was anxious to review this biography of the founder of eight nineteenth-century newspapers in and near western Illinois (including the Warsaw Message), the author of The History of Hancock County, and, especially, the author of…

Genealogical Blockbuster | Arlene H. Eakle and Johni Cerny, eds., The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy

You don’t have to be consumed with genealogical passion to profit from this new work of far-reaching and fundamental importance, though those who are will buy it as a matter of course and use it…

Sister Sense and Hard Facts | Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith

Samuel Johnson coined the phrase, and Virginia Woolf gave it its place in the language: the “common reader.” That per son, Doctor Johnson wrote, by whose common sense, “uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the…

Missionary to the Mind | Eugene England, Dialogues with Myself: Personal Essays on Mormon Experience

John Roche published a very thick book of essays a number of years ago. He was, he lamented, an essayist in an age when the essay was not flourishing. Fortunately this did not prevent publication.…

Fast and Loose Freemasonry | Mervin B. Hogan, Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode, and Mervin B. Hogan, The Involvement of Freemasonry with Mormonism on the American Midwestern Frontier

Mervin B. Hogan, a prolific expositor on the subject of Mormonism and Freemasonry, is apparently gaining some reputation among Mormons and Freemasons alike for “impeccable” and “peerless” scholar ship. (See Jerry Marsengill, Introduction, The Official…

Faithful History | Milton V. Backman, Jr., The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1839

Milton Backman, a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, has written a history of Mormon ism in Ohio in the 1830s. He appears to have consulted virtually all of the primary…

In Silence She Speaks | Susan Evans McCloud, Not in Vain

Dr. Ellis Reynolds Shipp closed her un published autobiography with the words, “Great minds are they who suffered not in vain. . . . I do not feel my spirit great, but oh, I have…

Exiles for the Principle: LDS Polygamy in Canada

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 108–116
Embry describes the role that polygamy played in the forming of Cardston Canada, both Pre-Manifesto and Post Manifesto.

Mothers and Daughters in Polygamy

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 99–107
An analysis of what the individual wives’ roles are in the 19th century among plural marriages. Embry and Bradley make the argument that the daughters in a polygamous relationship pay attention to how their own mom is doing, which determines whether or not when they are older they enter into a polygamous relationship.

Women’s Response to Plural Marriage

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 84–98
Mehr shares stories of polygamy in late 19th century and early 20th century. He especially focused on LDS women’s opinions of polygamy when they entered into polygamous relationsips.

Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 67–83
Van Wagoner defines polyandry as having two or more husbands at the same time. He identifies women who ended up marrying members of the Twelve or Joseph Smith while they were were already married to their own husband

Government-Sponsored Prayer in the Classroom

During its 1984 session the United States Senate fell eleven votes short of the two-thirds majority required to endorse a constitutional amendment allowing government-sponsored prayers in public schools (S. J. Res. 1983). This was the…

LDS Women and Priesthood: An Expanded Definition of Priesthood: Some Present and Future Consequences

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 35–42
In seeking to predict what might occur in the Church if priesthood were extended to women, it is helpful to focus attention on some of these organizational dynamics.

LDS Women and Priesthood: The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 21–32
While an examination of that history leaves unanswered the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood, the historical overview of LDS women’s relationship to priesthood suggests a more expansive view than many members now hold.

LDS Women and Priesthood: Scriptural Precedents for Priesthood

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 15–20
I have heard many LDS women approach the issue of women and the priesthood by protesting that they do not want to hold the priesthood because they have no interest in passing the sacrament or performing some other ecclesiastical duty. I will venture a guess that many men who have the priesthood do not particularly want to hold it either, and that some of them also have no interest in passing the sacrament. But the reluctance of some men would hardly be a good reason to prevent all men from holding the priesthood.

The Ultimate Stegner Interview | Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature

With the possible exception of Louis L’Amour, Wallace Stegner has probably been interviewed more frequently than any other living Western writer. This is an impressive tribute to Stegner’s accessibility to representatives of both scholarly and…

The Benefits of Partisanship | Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism

During the 1970s a comprehensive history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in sixteen volumes was contemplated as one of the projects of the Historical Department of the Church, with Leonard J.…

Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures

Dialogue 18.4 (Winter 1984): 65–80
Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites.

Joseph Smith, Sr., Dreams of His Namesake

Vermont, Autumn 1805 

And the boy, the milky angel said, 
will be like the wild rain 
that shatters the crops and spins the brittle stalks 
end upon end.

In loco parentis — Alive and Well in Provo | Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith

David Riesman, in his landmark study of American higher education entitled The Academic Revolution (1969), was fascinated by BYU and insightfully observes: “Despite academic upgrading, Brigham Young has not lost its sectarian character nor even…

The United Order of Joseph Smith’s Times

Section 82 of the Doctrine and Covenants, dated 26 April 1832, guided the formation of a united order in the Joseph Smith era. Until recently, code names were shown for the nine participants: Ahashdah (Newel…

The Restoration and History: New Testament Christianity

The Restoration movements have tended to elevate historical claims to the level of theological dogma. But in our defense of historical beliefs we have often denied the reality of historical process by asserting that ideas,…

Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea

Joseph Smith was not the first person to use the plurality of worlds concept. In the early seventeenth century, natural philosophers began speculating on the idea of multiple world systems. By the eighteenth century, Protestant…

A Survey of Current Dissertations

“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age,” Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1747, but “if we do not plant it while young it will give us no…

Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective

Seventeen years ago, Moses Rischin, Fulbright Professor of History at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, in a review essay first used the phrase, “the New Mormon History.” By it, he meant to categorize the…

Eastward to Eden: The Nauvoo Rescue Missions

These were the words of Brigham Young to his Mormon followers at the first Sunday services held at Winter Quarters on a wind-swept rise of land on the west side of the city’s proposed Main Street. Daniel H. Wells and William Cutler had brought the sobering news into camp just two days before that Nauvoo had been overrun in the skirmish known as the Nauvoo Battle. The subsequent sufferings of the dispossessed and starving citizens of Nauvoo spurred Brigham and his fellow apostles into even greater relief action than that already underway. “Let the fire of the covenant which you made in the House of the Lord, burn in your hearts, like flame unquenchable,” he re minded the Saints, “till you, by yourselves or delegates . . . [can] rise up with his team and go straightway and bring a load of the poor from Nauvoo . . . [for] this is a day of action and not of argument” (Journal History, 28 Sept. 1846). 

Objectivity and History

In the early 1960s, a crisis occurred in the academic field of the philosophy of science, spilling over into the philosophy of history and the philosophy of social sciences. The crisis emerged from research in…

Leadership and the Ethics of Prophecy

Dialogue 19.4 (Winter 1986): 77–85
The role of leadership within the Mormon community is vastly interrelated, and thus often confused , with management.

Document Dealing: A Dealer’s Response

I believe that a response to the point of view represented on the panel by Jeffery O. Johnson is appropriate. I also believe that what I say here would fairly represent most rare book and manuscript dealers as well as some archivists and librarians who acquire and manage rare books and manuscripts for large institutions. However, this is a personal statement and I alone am responsible for its content. 

The Document Diggers and Their Discoveries: A Panel

Mormon history has always been a hot topic. From the earliest days of Church history over a century and a half ago, vastly divergent accounts of the origins and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been penned and published. In many cases, controversies about LDS historical topics have spilled over into the national press. In the last generation, for example, disputes about the accuracy of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Juanita Brooks’s Mountain Meadows Massacre have been avidly covered in national newspapers and magazines. 

Martin Harris: Mormonism’s Early Convert

It began in the autumn of 1874 with a knock that interrupted Pilkingtons’ evening devotions. The stranger at the door explained that he wished to hire a boy to do chores and promised room, board,…

Dale Morgan’s Unfinished Mormon History | John Philip Walker, ed., Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History

It would be difficult to say too much in praise of John Phillip Walker’s new contribution to Mormon historiography, a field that is bursting with recent major studies. Walker’s book deserves a place on the…

Polygamy Examined | Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History

In his introduction to Mormon Polygamy: A History, Richard S. Van Wagoner correctly reminds us that even though “many Mormons are descendants of polygamists, most Church members are often no better informed on the critical…

Determining and Defining “Wife”: The Brigham Young Households

Utah satirist Al Church, among other suggestions on how to survive as a gentile in Utah, offered this tip: “Ask guides at the Beehive House how many wives Brigham Young had. (Of my last four…

Refugee Converts: One Stake’s Experience

Situated on a prominent knoll in the Oakland hills, the Oakland Temple is the most visible symbol of the Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. The temple is located within the boundaries of the…

Brave New Bureaucracy

Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and Vonnegut’s Player Piano all envision a world where the system—big bureaucracy, big government, corporations, changing technology, or a mix of these—achieves total, albeit benign, control. The individual is…

BIG D/little d: The View from the Basement

Recently I finished my first book, a brief journey on the road to self-definition. I called it Leaving Home[1] because my life has been a series of comings and goings to and from various homes…

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

Thousands of Latter-day Saints were first introduced to William E. Berrett and the Church’s history when they were assigned in seminary to read his book The Restored Church (1940). Initially written in the late 1930s,…

“The Truth Is the Most Important Thing”: The New Mormon History According to Mark Hofmann

On 23 January 1987, an unemotional Mark W. Hofmann entered the Utah State Prison after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of theft by deception before third District Judge Kenneth Rigtrup.…

God’s Hand in Mormon History | Richard O. Cowan, The Church in the Twentieth Century: The Impressive Story of the Advancing Kingdom

For Richard O. Cowan, a professor of LDS history at Brigham Young University specializing in twentieth-century Mormon ism, the history of the Mormon kingdom is not only the religious success story of the last 2,000…

Who Came in Second?

My late father-in-law, Anchor Luke Clegg, often told the following story at family gatherings: “My direct relative, and yours too, was the second convert in the British Isles. He would have been first, but he…

Why Were Scholars Misled? What Can We Learn From This?

In the May 1986 Mormon History Association meetings, a panel of historians and archivists explored the impact of the Mark Hofmann documents on the LDS and RLDS churches and views of their common origin. Soon…

The “New Mormon History” Reassessed in Light of Recent Book on Joseph Smith and Mormon Origins

In 1959, while a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I wrote a review of the historiography of Mormonism for Church History which incorporated the major books and articles from 1832 to 1959 in…

The Need for a New Mormon Heaven

Dialogue 21.3 (Fall 1988): 73–85
I used to love this description because my Mormon heaven seemed far superior to this standard Christian heaven that Twain’s Satan describes. Sexual intercourse does have a place in Mormon heaven, though not as an end in itself. Heavenly residents are busy with activities. Those righteous individuals who become gods in Mormon heaven will certainly be using their intellects as they create worlds and keep them running, and they will undoubtedly be learning continuously. Mormonism never suggested there would be continual music, nor continual church or Sabbath days in heaven.

Voyage of the Brooklyn

On 8 November 1845 Saints in the eastern states gathered together in conference at American Hall in New York City and listened to Apostle Orson Pratt deliver an impassioned call to exodus: “Brethren Awake !!…

The Trial of the French Mission

Short, solid, bull-necked Elder William Tucker, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would grip your hand firmly and ask earnestly, “How are you, Brother?” (Harvey, April 1986) Elder Loftin Harvey, Jr., several months senior…

Freeways, Parking Lots, and Ice Cream Stands: The Three Nephites in Contemporary Society

In the 1892–93 issue of The Folk-Lorist, a publication of the old Chicago Folk-Lore Society, the Reverend David Utter, from Salt Lake City, published a short piece entitled “Mormon Superstition.” He recounted Mormon beliefs about…

Honoring Arrington | Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, eds., New Views of Mormon History: Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington

Leonard Arrington deserves to be honored. Nineteen of his professional associates, former employees, and friends have each contributed to this book a previously unpublished essay to thank a man who fostered their individual careers. Although Arrington’s…

The Case for the New Mormon History: Thomas G. Alexander and His Critics

My overwhelming first impression of Thomas G. Alexander’s “Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective” published in DIALOGUE (Fall 1986) is that the author, in the words of a character in a recent…

History of Historians | Davis Bitton and Leonard Arrington, Mormons and Their Historians

That such a volume as this could be written at all is happy testimony to the development of a Mormon historiographical tradition. Its appearance at this late date, however—over a century and a half after…

History for the People | Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History

Dean L. May has tackled a difficult problem in this brief survey of Utah’s history. First of all, his book came after the successful media presentation of the same material instead of vice versa, as…

On the Edge of Solipsism | Larry E. Morris, The Edge of the Reservoir

Comparisons, they say, are odious, yet I find it difficult to comment on Larry E. Morris’s new novel, The Edge of the Reservoir, without referring to Anne Tyler’s latest novel, Breathing Lessons (New York: Alfred…

A Double Dose of Revisionism | Stephen C. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri

Each year first-class presses add to the growing number of excellent Mormon monographs. Twenty-nine major studies appeared in 1988 alone. These two volumes from the University of Missouri Press and the University of Oklahoma Press…

Latter-day Saints, Lawyers, and the Legal Process | Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900

The attitude of nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints toward lawyers and the legal process is well documented and has been widely discussed ever since Joseph Smith studied law hoping to be admitted to the bar. What has…

Twin Contributions | Eugene E. Campbell, Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847-1869

While Gene Campbell lived through much of the twentieth century (1915-86), the focus of much of his historical research and interest was the nineteenth century. His earlier research and writing on Brig ham Young, Fort…

Mormondom’s Second Greatest King: King of Beaver Island: The Life and Assassination of James Jesse Strang by Roger Van Noord

Living the Principle | Jessie L. Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle

Unfortunately but undeniably, the practice of polygamy is closely associated in the popular mind with the Mormons, fascinating both scholars and casual readers, generating a plethora of anecdotal studies, and resulting in many oversimplifications and…

Reply to “Forever Tentative”

I wish to thank Charles Boyd for bringing to light some additional material relevant to the topics discussed in my article on science and Mormonism. I will briefly respond to some of the issues he…

Forever Tentative

I was stimulated, concerned, and saddened simultaneously as I read David Bailey’s article in DIALOGUE (Summer 1988) and reread Richard Pearson Smith’s Spring 1986 article, both discussing science and the LDS Church.  I was stimulated…

Jews in the Columns of Joseph’s Times and Seasons

On 21 May 1839, Joseph Smith introduced an unusual entry in his journal history, writing, “To show the feelings of that long scattered branch of the house of Israel, the Jews, I here quote a…

Hearkening Unto Other Voices | Robert L. Millet, ed., “To Be Learned Is Good If…”

When I first picked up a copy of To Be Learned Is Good If . . . I assumed that the implied remainder of the title would be a continuation of Jacob’s famous statement about hearkening…

Passion Poems | Emma Lou Thayne, How Much for the Earth?

One might suspect that a book of poems published by Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race might possess as interesting a history as the poems that comprise it. How Much for the Earth? by…

New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century St. George | Larry M. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert: Belief and Behavior in Early St. George, Utah

A Sermon in the Desert should be taken seriously by those interested in early St. George and in the workings of polygamy and family life in a small nineteenth-century Utah community. It offers to local…

Mormon Splinter Groups | Hans A. Baer, Recreating Utopia in the Desert: A Sectarian Challenge to Modern Mormonism

In this ethnography of a Mormon splinter group, Hans Baer postulates that Mormonism’s capacity to produce schisms is a two-fold reflection of itself. As Mor monism entered the mainstream in this century, it abandoned its…

“What Has Become of Our Fathers?” Baptism for the Dead at Nauvoo

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 85–97
Chronicling the history  of baptizing for the dead during the Nauvoo Period, this article introduces the practice from the first baptizers to how it was altered after Joseph Smith’s death.

An Ambivalent Rejection: Baptism for the Dead and the Reorganized Church Experience

Dialogue 23.2 (1990): 61–83

Launius shares how the Reorganized Church has changed their stance on baptisms for the dead.

Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward the Church: The Sermons of Leroy S. Johnson

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 39–60
Driggs shares what an early fundamentalist leader by the name of Leory S. Johnson taught about the church and polygamy.

The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 15–38
Bradley describes how even after the Short Creek Raids happened, the women there still believed in plural marriage.

Nothing New Under the Sun | Mary Farrell Bednarowski, New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America

While it is beyond the capability of any book to demonstrate the infinite capacity of human belief, there seems nevertheless to be little reason to doubt the existence of such infinitude, and Mary Farrell Bednarowski…

Religious Themes in American Culture | Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestantism in America, 1630–1875, and Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity

The writers of these books, with painstaking research, have produced studies that may help the present generation understand American history and culture just as Perry Miller and Henry Nash Smith aided understanding a generation ago. …

Plight and Promise | Linda Sillitoe, Windows on the Sea and Other Stories

Linda Sillitoe is a powerful wielder of the story writer’s craft. In the stories at hand, her plots are organic, her sentences are flexible and lucid, and her metaphors convey a kinetic motion. Over and…

Kimball’s Diaries | Stanley B. Kimball, ed., On the Potter’s Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball

A clergyman visiting Salt Lake City was invited to the Tabernacle where Heber C. Kimball addressed the congregation. The minister was so disturbed by Kimball’s impish and impious ways that had his own family been…

Strange Love | Phyllis Barber, The School of Love

Disparate voices of contemporary short story writers, among them Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, and even Mormon author Linda Sillitoe, all use external situations to probe the inner life of characters. All…

A Reasonable Approach to History and Faith | Richard D. Poll, History and Faith: Reflections of a Mormon Historian

Richard Poll’s to the study of Mormon history is significant. As a scholar and teacher, he has influenced many for decades. In this collection of ten essays, he reflects on his personal experience as a…

“A Profound Sense of Community”: Mormon Values in Wallace Stegner’s Recapitulation

In his carefully crafted and distinguished novel Recapitulation (1979), Wallace Stegner, Iowa-born, Saskatchewan-reared, but Utah-formed, joins his protagonist Bruce Mason on a brief visit to Salt Lake City some forty-five years after leaving home. The seventy-ish Mason, now a successful lawyer, distinguished internationalist and former ambassador, returns to the city of his youth and young manhood to arrange for the burial of his Aunt Margaret. To his surprise, his Gentile return to Zion releases—through an outpouring of nostalgia, memories, dreams and fantasies—the ghosts of unresolved conflicts which have haunted him, consciously and subconsciously, from those early years.

The Temple in Zion: A Reorganized Perspective on a Latter Day Saint Institution

Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 86–98
In preparation for the Independence Temple that was dedicated in 1994, an RLDS member shares ideas about temples in general.

The Development of the Mormon Concept of Grace

Latter-day Saints may be surprised to discover that Joseph Smith did not reject the importance of grace. Indeed, he developed a profound and novel view resolving many problems presented by the grace freedom dichotomy in…

“All Alone and None to Cheer Me”: The Soughern States Mission Diary of J. Golden Kimball

If you had been a guest in Chattanooga’s Florentine Hotel on the evening of 14 April 1883, your sleep might have been disturbed, particularly if your room were near one of those occupied by the…

Speaking in Tongues in the Restoration Churches

Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 13–35
However, during the mid-1800s, speaking in tongues was so commonplace in the LDS and RLDS churches that a person who had not spoken  in tongues, or who had not heard others do so, was a rarity.

The Paradox of Paradox | Margaret Toscano and Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology

Recently I was asked to review Margaret and Paul Toscano’s Strangers in Paradox for a local newspaper. While I tried in that review to be as honest and true as I know how, I realize…

Affidavits Revisited | Roger I. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined

In Another Part of the Twenties (1977), Paul A. Carter upended all of the stereo types advanced by historians about the 1920s. The jazz age was really more of a waltz than most people thought;…

Scripture in the Reorganization: Exegesis, Authority, and the “Prophetic Mantle”

From the earliest days of Mormonism, Latter Day Saints have held distinctive views about scripture. Particular, even peculiar, Latter Day Saint understandings of scripture surface at the very foundations of the movement. Historian Jan Shipps…

Dale Morgan, Writer’s Project, and Mormon History as a Regional Study

At the 1968 annual meeting of the Utah Historical Society, Juanita Brooks read a paper about the Southern Utah Records Survey of the early and mid-1930s that had been a forerunner to the Federal Writers’…

The Eastern Edge: LDS Missionary Work in Hungarian Lands

On the periphery of his thoughts, iron wheels clanked, March winds scratched past windows, a swaying passenger wagon groaned, and a steam engine chugged rhythmically. The tracks traversed the massive Iron Gate gorge, a slit…

A Teenager’s Mormon Battalion Journal | David L. Bigler, ed., The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith

Since the publication of the Hosea Stout Journals in 1964, the University of Utah Press has made a significant contribution to the study of western history by publishing a number of important diaries, journals, and letter collections. The Gold…

A New Synthesis | Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846

Exiles in a Land of Liberty is part of the University of North Carolina’s “Studies in Religion” series. The author, Kenneth H. Winn, is a relative newcomer to Mormon studies and, if this book is…

Mormonism’s First Theologian | The Essential Parley P. Pratt with foreword by Peter L. Crawley

At least one Latter-day Saint in the early days of the Church truly understood what it means to have the heavens open and God speak after centuries of silence. Par ley Parker Pratt, one of…

Utah’s Original “Mr. Republican” | Milton R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics

I first encountered Reed Smoot more than two decades ago while researching the life and political career of Parley P. Christensen, a Utah political maverick who became the Farmer-Labor party nominee for president in 1920.…

A Poetic Legacy | Clarice Short, The Owl on the Aerial

If Clarice Short had not chosen to become a great educator, she might have developed into a major poet. Her poetic output, excellent in quality but admittedly limited, reveals her as a woman dedicated to her…

Clawson and the Mormon Experience | David S. Hoopes and Ray Hoopes, The Making of a Mormon Apostle: The Story of Rudger Clawson

In 1879 a young Mormon missionary named Rudger Clawson watched as an anti-Mormon mob in Georgia killed his companion. Through bluff and bravado Clawson survived the assault and brought his companion’s body back to church…

Delusion as an Exceedingly Fine Art | Franklin Fisher, Bones

About fifteen years ago, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher invited Franklin Fisher, a young and aesthetically bearded professor of English at the University of Utah, to read from his novel in progress at a gathering of the…

Two Covenant Systems | Rex Eugene Cooper, Promises Made to the Father: Mormon Covenant Organization

Historians of American religion often see a connection between Mormons and Puritans, if only because most early Saints came from New England. However, many studies which have mentioned similarities between these religions have done so…

A Song Worth Singing | Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History

Anyone who has worked with Mormon music has likely experienced the frustration of being unable to learn much about its past —such things as composers, per formers, and institutional policy and practice. Collections of folk…

Why Ane Wept: A Family History Fragment

Ane PEdersdatter of Sjaelland, Denmark, entered Bear River Valley in northern Utah much as if she were going to jail. Her granddaughter Elvina told the story long afterwards:  About April 15th [of 1866] Ane left…

The New Zealand Mission During the Great Depression: Reflections of a Former Acting President

The time was 21 April 1932; the place, New Zealand. I had served as a Mormon missionary for nearly two and one-half years, the normal period according to Church practice for a foreign assignment at…

A Mormon View of Life

There are many vantage points from which to view a religion. In distinguishing one Christian religion from another, we might study its concept of God, the mission of Jesus Christ, or the role of the…

Self-Blame and the Manifesto

Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 43–57
Before the Manifesto was first read in conference, members and church leaders fully believed in plural marriage as being a commandment from God. Once the Manifesto was read, over time members started wondering if it was because of their own actions that polygamy was no longer a commandment.

The Political Background of the Woodruff Manifesto

Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 21–39
Lyman discusses the political pressures from the United Government which led to the church issuing the First Manifesto.

“Almost Like Us”: The American Socialization of Australian Converts

A few years ago I listened to a group of American missionaries who had just eaten an enormous meal at our table and were showing their appreciation by telling us how backward Australia is in…

My Ghosts

When I was twenty and dewy-eyed, I visited Auschwitz. I found ghosts there. The red bricks of the camp were gritty with the black soot which was all that remained of four million people, gassed…

Is There Such a Thing as a “Moral War”?

As anti-war demonstrations gained in size and frequency throughout the Western world during the Gulf War, it is doubtful that many Latter-day Saints took part, if experience during earlier conflicts is anything to judge by.…

The Moral Failures of Operation Desert Storm

The successes of Operation Desert Storm hardly need to be mentioned. The media have joined forces with politicians to praise the superior fighting ability of the United States military, the diverse international coalition that was…

The Thoughtful Patriot — 1991

During the first few weeks of January this past year, I suspect the thoughts of most Americans seldom moved for very long from the subject of war. Most of us felt hopeful and fearful, stimulated…

The Building of Mormon History in Italy | Massimo Introvigne, Le nuove religioni; Massimo Introvigne, Le sette cristiane: Dai Testimoni di Geova al Reverendo Moon; Massimo Introvigne, “Il canone aperto: rivelazione e nuove rivelazioni nella teologia e nella storia dei Mormoni”; and Michele Straniero, I Mormoni. Leggenda e storia, liturgia e teologia dei Santi degli Ultimi Giorni

Since 1844 numerous books have been published in Italy containing the observations of travelers who have visited Nauvoo or Salt Lake City. While some of these travel accounts have been remark ably objective, most have been…

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: Sexuality and Contemporary Mormonism

Several years ago, I presented a series of guest lectures on sexuality to undergraduate nursing classes at Brigham Young University’s Salt Lake Center. My presentations were aimed at preparing students for their work with patients…

Comments on the Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Christianity

Historical Christianity is a remarkable composite of diverse religious cultures, a mixture that even today, after two millennia, is still mixing, blending things that often will not blend and fusing the unfusible. Sometimes severe, chaste,…

On Becoming a Universal Church: Some Historical Perspectives

Dialogue 25.1 (Spring 1992): 13–36
A historical analysis of the globalization of the Church. Under President David O McKay, the Church was able to reach out to more people beyond North America and Europe, which led to an increase in membership, temples and missionaries.

Unnatural History | Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Sometimes when I go to readings given by Nature writers, that new and popular set exploring their private, half-mystical genre, I think for a moment that I’m listening to LDS general conference talks—the histrionic intoning…

Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57

For about two years after the Mormon pioneers first began to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, they devoted themselves to the dual jobs of developing the territory and promoting the interests of the…

The Wake of a Media Crisis: Guilt by Association or Innocence by Proclamation?

On 4 January 1990, police following a tip dug a family of five from a common grave in a barn in Kirtland, Ohio. Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three young daughters, hands, feet, and…

A Closer Focus: Challenges in Doing Local History

The sweep of wide-angle Mormon history is impressive, offering a comprehensive panorama of the Church’s worldwide workings, progress, and achievements. But to see Mormon history only through this wide-angle lens is to miss the rich…

Seeking the Past: Nobel Quest of Fool’s Errand | George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History

This anthology is designed for people with a professional interest in Mormon historiography as well as for the much larger number of men and women who have been intrigued or alarmed by the rhetoric about…

Is There a New Mormon History? | D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past

D. Michael Quinn, one of the foremost practitioners of the type of work distinguished as the “New Mormon History,” certainly thinks so. He has assembled in this volume a set of fifteen previously published essays…

Speaking for Themselves: LDS Ethnic Groups Oral History Project

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 99–110
An oral history project on ethnic wards and branches.

Great Basin Kingdom Revisited

Telling It Slant: Aiming for Truth in Contemporary Mormon Literature

How Common the Principle? Women as Plural Wives in 1860

Dialogue 26.2 (Summer 1993): 139–153
A study done to see how many polygamous wives there were at the peak of polygamy in the church.

Each in Her Own Time: Four Zinas

B.H. Roberts’s Autobiography

The B.H. Roberts Papers at the University of Utah

In the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought appeared Leonard Arrington’s article, ‘The Intellectual Traditions of the Latter-day Saints,” based partly on a questionnaire he had sent to “50 prominent LDS…

Intellectuals in Mormon History: An Update

More than twenty-four years ago, Leonard Arrington asked some fifty prominent Mormons to identify the most important intellectuals in Mormon history. He published his findings in the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of…

Apologetic and Critical Assumptions About Book of Mormon Historicity

Dialogue 26.3 (Summer 1995):163–180
FOR TRADITION-MINDED MEMBERS of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter￾day Saints the Book of Mormon’s historicity is a given: Book of Mormon events actually occurred and its ancient participants existed in ancient history

Watching

You Are Not Alone: A Plea for Understanding the Homosexual Condition

Dialogue 26.3 (Fall 1993): 119–140
In fall 1993, TJ O’Brian wrote, “You are Not Alone: A Please for Understanding the Homosexual Condition.” O’Brian was a gay man and this esay addresses how church members should treat LGBT members. He points to Jan Stout’s article among other influential pieces that were beginning to soften LDS attitudes and change practices in the early 90s. But he also notes several examples of terrible things that LDS members were still saying and doing, not including an imfamous homophobic rant from Orson Scott Card in Sunstone magazine in 1990.

Hannah Grover Hegsted and Post-Manifesto Plural Marriage

The Ordeal of Lowry Nelson and the Mis-spoken Word

B.H. Roberts’s Studies of the Book of Mormon

Remembering B. H. Roberts

In my early years, I had occasional personal contact with B. H. Roberts. He was a friend of both of my grandfathers, and one of his daughters was married to my mother’s brother, with whose…

Does Paying Tithing Make You a Voting Shareholder? BYU’s Worldwide Board of Trustees

Free Expression: The LDS Church and Brigham Young University

Patriarchal Blessings and the Routinization of Charisma

Telling the Tales and Telling the Truth: Writing the History of Widtsoe

The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation and Identity: Trends and Developments Since Midcentury

The “New Social History” and the “New Mormon History”: Reflections on Recent Trends

Dialogue 27.1 (Spring 1994): 109–123
My own analysis of the state of Mormon history suggests that the field, while other factors have also been at work, suffers from some of the exclusiveness and intellectual imperialism that were nurtured during the glory days of the “New Mormon History ” in the 1970s.

Intellect and Faith: The Controversy Over Revisionist Mormon History

Personality and Motivation in Utah Historiography

Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841-46: A Preliminary Demographic Report

Dialogue 27.1(Spring 1994): 1–72
Smith discusses the importance of plural marriage in Nauvoo to church history. He shows that after Joseph Smith passed away, Nauvoo polygamy numbers rose.

Memory and Familiarity | Thomas Edward Cheney, Voices from the Bottom of the Bowl: A Folk History of Teton Valley, Idaho, from 1823-1952

This collection of reminiscences about life in a tiny southern Idaho com munity has such an authentic flavor of small-town Mormon country, a flavor which I did not experience first-hand but at a second-generation level…

From Temple to Anti-Mormon: The Ambivalent Odyssey of Increase Van Dusen

Toward an Introduction to a Psychobiography of Joseph Smith

One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 233–247
Snow puts Joseph Smith squarely within Joseph Campbell’s famous work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is also known as the heroes journey.

The Locations of Joseph Smith’s Early Treasure Quests

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 197–231

Vogel uses firsthand accounts of people’s reactions to Joseph Smith’s treasure digging.

Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection

“Critical” Book of Mormon Scholarship: New Approaches to the Book of Mormon

Welfare as Warfare | Garth L. Mangum and Bruce D. Blumell, The Mormons’ War on Poverty: A History of LDS Welfare, 1830-1990

Although this book has an overly dramatic title, it is a magnificent and sensitive history of the efforts by church members and leaders to respond meaningfully to economic need, not only in LDS communities but…

“My Father’s Business”: Thomas Taylor and Mormon Frontier Economic Enterprise

Shortly after Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah in July 1847 Brigham Young planned for an anticipated population explosion by exploring the region and locating sites which could support new settlements and industries. Parley P. Pratt…

A Granddaughter Remembers

I was a blessed child. I had a grandmother who loved me and who showed it. Her name was Ruth Alice Bird Harper Lewis, and as grand mothers go, she was a rare and wonderful…

The Noon of Life: Mid-Life Transition in the Married LDS Priesthood Holder

The ancient Chinese curse has plainly caught up with the LDS church over the past decade—never have the Saints lived in more interesting times. The recent whirlwind of world political changes has opened up mission fields undreamed of only a few years ago, faster almost than we can respond. It has also made us the target of anti-American sentiment and violence. Yet, in spite of all, church membership has now reached nine million. 

“Come Ye Disconsolate”: Is There a Mercy Seat in Mormon Theology and Practice?

At age sixty-eight I have lived long enough to know some of the sorrows of this life. More than once I have cried out with the Psalmist: “Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!”

The Law That Brings Life

In writing these thoughts, I am documenting the abandonment of a theological philosophy that has been a central, if somewhat beleaguered, feature of my faith. The decision to abandon the traditions of my heritage was…

Wallace Stegner: The Unwritten Letter

I remember well the first time I met Wallace Stegner because I wanted so much to prove him wrong. 

The Education of a BYU Professor

In the fall of 1948 I began my career as a teacher of history at Brigham Young University and continued there until I resigned in the spring of 1954. During those six years I was…

Sterling Moss McMurrin: A Philosopher in Action

Sterling M. McMurrin, a man of letters, has spent most of his life in the world of affairs. A distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Utah for four decades, he held key academic…

“The Strange Mixture of Emotion and Intellect”: A Social History of Dale L. Morgan 1933-42

Mormon Static | Roger D. Launius and Linda Tatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History

In their introductory essay editors Roger Launius and Linda Thatcher provide an informative overview of the nature of religious dissent, particularly in the history of Mormon ism. They note that Joseph Smith, Jr., was himself…

New Paradigms for Understanding Mormonism and Mormon History

Within historically-oriented religious faiths, such as those deriving from Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, any effort to develop new paradigms for understanding their historical development, especially in their formative stages, is inextricably intertwined with efforts to…

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

Participants

Todd Compton: Ph.D., classics, University of California, Los Angeles. Dean, Graduate Studies, Park College, Independence, Missouri; Director, Temple School Center, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri. 

Steven Epperson: Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, specializing in American religious history and history of Christian doctrine. 

Mark D. Thomas: Scriptural Studies Editor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 

Margaret Toscano: Ph.D. candidate, comparative literature, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 

David P. Wright: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

How the History Is Told | William G. Hartley, My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler, A Mormon Frontiersman

“Whatever you do, do not prettify me!” This declaration by Walt Whitman to his friend and biographer, Horace Traubel, might have also been in William Hartley’s mind as he finished writing an in-depth history of…

Editing William Clayton and the Politics of Mormon History

Editing William Clayton, James B. Allen
A Response: The Politics of Mormon History, George D. Smith
A Reply, James B. Allen
A Rejoinder, George D. Smith

Reflections on LDS Disbelief in the Book of Mormon as History

Dialogue 30.3 (Fall 1999):90–103
To average LDS church members in 1909, Roberts’s New Witnesses for God substantiated their beliefs and further embellished his stature for them as a historian and defender of the Book of Mormon. But only thirteen years later Roberts was to change his mind and that dramatically.

History

Small things: 
the smell of 

blocks he cut 
from pine light

Quilts as Women’s History | Mary Bywater Cross, Quilts and Women of the Mormon Migrations: Treasures of Transition, and Kate Covington, ed., Gathered in Time: Utah Quilts and Their Makers, Settlement to 1950

Women’s history got short shrift when the telling of the past focused entirely on wars and laws, but increasingly, as attention is being paid to the domestic history of day-to-day lives, historians are recovering women’s…

More Than Just a Battle for the Ballot | Carol Cornwall Madsen, ed., Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870-1896

Among the great political battles in American history is the heroic struggle of women to gain a voice in government and to overthrow the state and federal barriers which prevented the exercise of women’s rights.…

New York City Rain

WEDNESDAY—ALL MY LUGGAGE IS SOAKED and I tore the sleeve of my brand new overcoat in the subway station. Elder Sessions told me not to look away if I noticed someone staring. “Just stare them…

Madeline McQuown, Dale Morgan, and the Great Unfinished Brigham Young Biography

Shortly after completing The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton in 1967, Fawn M. Brodie wrote to her friend Dale Morgan confessing that she had “been periodically haunted by the desire to do…

Similar yet Different | Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson, How Wide the Divide?

How Wide the Divide? Is a nice change from the typical literature published by evangelical publishing houses concerning the subject of Mor monism. This book attempts to enter into an open dialogue on the basic…

Issues of Individual Freedoms | Linda Sillitoe, Friendly Fire: The ACLU in Utah

At first, the title of this book seems a bit misleading and confusing. “Friendly fire” became popular during the Gulf War as a description of how American troops were killed by their comrades during desert…

A Part of History Overlooked | Leslie G. Kelen and Eileen Hallet Stone, Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah

How do non-Mormons feel about living in Utah? Missing Stories answers many such questions. These are the people’s words and not interpretation. As Helen Papanikolas explains in the introduction, “This is not a book of…

Reflections on Mormon History: Zion and the Anti-Legal Tradition

Sir Henry Maine, our first great modern legal historian of the English language and law, in describing the paradigmatic shift from early feudal European society to a world of secular, territorial nation-states and market economy, observed that we had moved “from status to contract.” “Status” assumes an immutable condition not changeable by individual choice and action. “Contract” assumes that one can change existing conditions by choice and action. No statement describes with more insight the nineteenth-century Mormon concept of Zion. 

Leonard J. Arrington: Reflections on a Humble Walk

History itself—and historians in particular—will for years to come continue to assess the importance of Leonard J. Arrington to Mormon and western thought. From 1972, when he was appointed Church Historian, to his retirement as…

Mormon Psychohistory: Psychological Insights into the Latter-day Saint Past, Present, and Future

Several years ago, I was speaking with a fellow Saint and convert at the Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City. We described ourselves to each other as “Joseph Smith converts.” By that, we meant that…

A History of Dialogue, Part One: The Early Years, 1965-1971

For nearly thirty-four years, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought has occupied a place, defined by former co-editor Allen Roberts, as the “pa triarch (or matriarch)” of independent Mormon scholarship.[1] And notwithstanding an increase of…

Mission Complexities in Asia | R. Lanier Britsch, From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851-1996

As a missionary in Taiwan many years ago, I often reflected on the historical significance of our work. President Hyer numbly reminded us that we were only the most recent phase of an historical process…

Plural Marriage, Singular Lives | Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith’s polygamous relationships have been a topic of great interest and controversy among Mormons and non-Mormons alike. The reactions of the women whom Joseph Smith took as plural wives and the way in which…

A Welcome Arrival, A Promising Standard | Will Bagley, ed., The Pioneer Camp of the Saints: The 1846 and 1847 Moron Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock

The 150th anniversary celebrations of the exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Rocky Mountains saw the publication of several significant new works in Mormon history. Surely one of the most significant contributions of these is…

Making the Mormon Trek Come Alive | Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848

Author Richard E. Bennet describes his book as: 

. .. not so much a study of the train or of the trek, but of a religious exodus of one of the 19th century’s most persecuted and despised groups of religionists—the Latter day Saints—who were bound neither for Oregon nor for California but either for survival or extinction. This was not just another march westward “across the wide Missouri” in fulfillment of America’s Manifest Destiny; rather, it was a destiny in motion yet to be mani fest, for it was not at all certain that this enterprise of Joseph Smith, Jr.—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—would ever survive to live a new day. The story of the Mormon exodus is that of a religion in torment, desperately seeking to save itself from persecution, to rid itself of its own detractors and obstructionists, and to find it self in some unknown valley, “far away in the west.” It was Mor monism in the raw and on the move—forging a new identity while seeking a safe refuge in the tops of “the everlasting hills” (xiv).

Mormonism and the Radical Religious Movement in Early Colonial New England

Mormons believe that forerunners prepared the way for the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. This paper examines a special set of those forerunners, namely, the progenitors of the early converts to the LDS church, whose religious experiences took them through a refiner’s fire so significant and revolutionary that it helped provide their descendants with the disposition to embrace a new, radical faith.

The Discovery of Native “Mormon” Communities in Russia

In early June 1998, Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mission, felt moved to place missionaries in a small village called Bogdanovka. This was an exciting change in policy. Early LDS missionary work in Russia had been concentrated in large urban areas where most missionaries could enjoy such civilized luxuries as paved roads, frequent public transportation, telephone lines, and running water. In recent years missions branched into smaller cities, but the Russian village was an altogether new frontier. Bogdanovka, although it is only 100 miles or so from the large regional capital city of Samara, is a world apart. 

Busing to Kolob | James W. Ure, Leaving the Fold: Candid Conversations with Inactive Mormons

Years ago, I visit-taught a single mother of three young boys whose grasp of Mormon doctrine seemed patchy, at best. Our so-called “les sons”—punctuated by frequent smoking breaks—were seldom more than lively recitations regarding her…

Good Book about the Good Book | Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880

Paul Gutjahr, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Indiana University, has written an elegant and engaging study of “The Good Book” in America. Readers of An American Bible: A History of the Good…

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

Scott R. Christensen has made an auspicious entry into the realm of Mormon history with his book Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887. Already the volume has won the 1999 Evans Handcart Prize and the…

Missionary Roots of Change | San Larson and Patricia Larson, eds., What E’er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part: The Missionary Diaries of David O. McKay

In the century since twenty-five year-old David Oman McKay made his last formal entry in his missionary diary in Glasgow, Scotland, Mor monism has metamorphosed from a small religious group centered in Utah’s Wasatch Front…

The Life of a Controversial Biographer | Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life

Winner of the 1999 “Best Biography Award” from the Mormon History Association, Fawn McKay Brodie measures up to the honor. A biographer commonly finds varied reasons for selecting his or her subject. Newell Bringhurst candidly…

Being Joseph Smith | William D. Morain, The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Dissociated Mind, and Robert D. Anderson, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon

New York Times reviewer Christopher Lasch, reviewing Erik Erikson’s psychobiography of Mahatma Gandhi in 1969, wrote: “Erikson understands that to reduce illustrious men to their symptoms explains everything except the one thing that most needs…

A History of Dialogue, Part Two: Struggle toward Maturity, 1971-1982

After Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was founded by Mormons at Stanford University in 1966, it attracted Latter-day Saint scholars from all over the United States, and soon its success surpassed the expectations of…

Protocols of the (Other) Elders of Zion | Andrew F. Smith, ed., The History of the Saints, 3d edition, by John C. Bennett

One may impute two possible rationales to the decision by the University of Illinois Press to reprint an 1842 expose of Joseph Smith and Mor monism. Its re-publication may represent an appreciation for its value…

Finitism and the Problem of Evil

According to traditional theism, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If God were omnibenevolent, he would want to eliminate evil. If God were omnipotent, he would be able to eliminate evil. So why should there be any evil? This problem is, by far, the most discussed subject in the philosophy of religion. In this paper, I argue that rejecting the traditional notion of God is the best way to deal with this problem.

Mormonism and the Idea of Progress

Robert Nisbet defines the idea of progress as the notion that mankind has advanced in the past from barbarism and ignorance, is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. It is arguably the central motivating philosophy that has led men and women throughout history to forge ahead to a brighter future. 

Mormon Membership Trends in Europe Among People of Color: Present and Future Assessment

I hope I’m not extending the metaphor too far, but it seems apparent the field is less white and more colorful as the church moves into the twenty first century. Most church members are aware (although some along the Wasatch Front have a hard time visualizing it) that rapid growth rates in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines are essentially among people of color. However, it is my contention that future growth of the church even in the bastions of Nordic, Teutonic, British, and Celtic Europe—a region which supplied membership and leadership during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—will increasingly be among people of color not native to the European continent. 

Preaching the Gospel of Church and Sex: Mormon Women’s Fiction in the Young Woman’s Journal, 1889-1910

In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…

Edward W. Tullidge and The Women of Mormondom

In this paper, I sing the virtues of Edward W. Tullidge, English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cultural enthusiast, and serious journalist and author. Tullidge, who was mercurial, changeable, and…

History of the Church — Part One

I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented 
oil poured over me in the upper room on 
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of 
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull 

David O. McKay and the “Twin Sisters” Free Agency and Tolerance

On a spring day in 1955, a group of distinguished gentlemen gathered at a White House dinner at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower. The guests included founding partners of three law firms, the President of the Teamsters’ Union, three Army Generals, a Cabinet Secretary, the publisher of the Boston Globe, the Vice President of ABC, the Chairman of CBS, the President of MIT, four CEO’s and one clergyman—David O. McKay, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, defined thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

Mormonism’s Worldwide Aspirations and its Changing Conceptions of Race and Lineage

Mormon history contains its fair share of ironies and unintended consequences. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began with a mission to restore the ancient church, but not for everyone at the same time. In its earliest days, the church was preoccupied with its mission to seek out the descendants of Abraham through Jacob or Israel; these Israelites, in turn, would prepare the world for the millennial reign of the Messiah.

Root and Branch: An Abstract of the Structuralist Analysis of the Allegoryof the Olive Tree

The Allegory of the Olive Tree, as found in Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon, is one of the most complicated and enigmatic of texts. These com plications, however, can be resolved when the…

History, Memory and Imagination in Virginia Eggertsen Sorensen’s Kingdom Come

Many years ago Virginia Sorensen wrote me a prophetic letter. She had just read my article, “Through Immigrant Eyes: Utah History at the Grass Roots.” She sounded breathless: “For years and years/’ she wrote, “I have believed—for what reason, I wonder, since I never really lived in the houses where the true tradition was but could only visit a while, and listen, and pause always by the gate where I could hear and see it?—that I was the one to tell this story you speak of. Almost I have heard The Call!”

An Other Mormon History | Jorge Iber, Hispanics in the Mormon Zion, 1912-1999

Jorge Iber’s debut, Hispanics in the Mormon Zion, earned the impressive honor of the Mormon History As sociation’s 2001 Best First Book Award. Iber brings the intellectual tools and fresh insight of ethnic studies into…

A History of Dialogue, Part Three: “Coming of Age” in Utah, 1982-1989

By 1982 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought had been publishing for sixteen years and had operated at both ends of the U.S. under three different editorships. It was born, flourished for several years, then…

Lucy’s Own Voice | Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir

In the winter after the martyrdom of her sons, Joseph and Hyrum, Lucy Mack Smith dictated a history of her family to Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, a sympathetic schoolteacher in Nauvoo. Two copies were made…

Book of Mormon Stories | Mark D. Thomas, Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives, and Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New Religion

After decades of neglect by scholars, theologians, and even rank and-file Latter-day Saints, the Book of Mormon may be finally getting its due. Recently, several books have under scored the importance of this controversial work…

Friendly History | Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise

Glen Leonard’s long-awaited history of Nauvoo is friendly history at its finest. It gently questions some deeply held beliefs about the Saints’ tumultuous sojourn at the fringes of western Illinois. The writing is read able…

Critique of a Limited Geography for Book of Mormon Events

Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):127–168
DURING THE PAST FEW DECADES, a number of LDS scholars have developed various “limited geography” models of where the events of the Book of Mormon occurred. These models contrast with the traditional western hemisphere model, which is still the most familiar to Book of Mormon readers.

Form Criticism of Joseph Smith’s 1823 Vision of the Angel Moroni

This paper will examine the vision or purported vision of the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith on the night of 21-22 September 1823, announcing the location of the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon. The 1839 history of Joseph Smith contains by far the most detailed description of the vision, but there are details in this account which could not have occurred prior to 1834. The process used here (as in New Testament “form criticism”) will be to distinguish the original historic core of the visionary narrative and experience from later anachronistic redactions. Finally, if Joseph Smith did see what he claimed to see on that night, what does that represent—a dream, a representation of a being actually in his room, an altered state of sight, etc.? 

A Uniform and Common Recollection: Joseph Smith’s Legacy, Polygamy, and the Creation of Mormon Public Memory, 1852-2002

Historians have long believed that history does not consist simply of recounting the past according to the Rankean ideal of telling it “as it really was.” The process of researching, selecting, and emplotting historical evidence within a narrative structure is often idiosyncratic, and may be employed to further a host of goals. Within communities, history represents a way of appropriating the past in order to serve the needs of the present. Maurice Halbwachs’s work emphasizes the role history plays as the “collective memory” of a community. Halbwachs argues that “no memory is possible outside frameworks used by the people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections.” This process involves the retention of useful historical emplotment points coupled with the suppression of those “facts” which threaten to undermine a community’s structures. 

Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance

Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):9a–128
I am a literary critic who has 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.

Prophecy and Palimpsest

In 2 Kings 22, the priest Hilkiah sends word to Josiah the King: “I have found a book.” Hilkiah had been busy locating funds to compensate the work crews refurbishing the temple, when suddenly the…

The Earliest Eternal Sealing for Civilly Married Couples Living and Dead

During the early 1840S, founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith introduced members of his young church to the ordinances of baptism for the dead (1840), eternal marriage (1841), and eternal proxy marriage (1842). These ordinances, and the doctrine underpinning them, united Smith’s beliefs in obedience to divine law, the importance of mortality, and the eternal nature of the family.

Martin Harris: The Kirtland Years, 1831-1870

Martin Harris is known for being a Book of Mormon scribe, witness, and financier. However, little is known about his activities while living in Kirtland, Ohio, for over thirty-five years. This article will present what…

A Patchwork Biography | Margaret K. Brady, Mormon Healer and Folk Poet: Mary Susannah Fowler’s Life of “Unselfish Usefulness”

“. . .I cut out my patch work & you rested from shoveling snow.” (105) 

In pioneer times, women salvaged and collected whatever scraps of fabric they could find and created quilts that were often colorful, dynamic, and artistic.

Navigating the Difficult Terrain of the Mormon Experience | James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker, Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1897, and Ronald W. Walker, David J. Whittaker, and James B. Allen, Mormon History

For the last several years I have had the opportunity to serve on the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee. That assignment— in addition to my day job as Curator of Special Collections at Weber…

The Local Politics of Vice and Virtue | Jeffrey Nichols, Prostitution, Polygamy and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918

One of the most intriguing ironies of life in Salt Lake City during the nineteenth century was the clash of the Mormons who were morally outraged to see the advent of prostitution in their valley…

A Bloody and Diabolical Deed | Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Will Bagley stands, metaphorically, on the shoulders of Juanita Brooks, peering into southwestern Utah’s landscape to witness a ghastly sight: the murder of over one hundred men, women, and children at the hands of Mormon…

“Not Invited, But Welcome”: The History and Impact of Church Policy on Sister Missionaries

Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have engaged in missionary work since the year of the religion’s founding. But sociological research on the experience of these missionaries is still young and stands as a field white and ready to harvest.

A Frank Analysis of a Troubling Legacy | Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage

Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of Sociology and Religious Studies at Washington State University, has produced the authoritative and definitive study of the evolution of Mormon conceptions of race and lineage. As a practicing Latter-day Saint,…

Charismatic Leader and Organizing Genius | Robert V. Reminin, Joseph Smith

In this biography of Joseph Smith by a non-Mormon historian, we have a short, readable, mostly chronological narrative that presents Joseph Smith and Mormonism as the products of a particular historical period. A professor emeritus…

Identifying the Sites at Mountain Meadows | A New Look at Old Sites on Mountain Meadows: Historical Topography, by Morris A. Shirts and Frances Anne Smeath

This slim volume is intended by its publisher to inaugurate a series of monographs devoted to the study of the infamous 1857 massacre of over 100 emigrants by misguided Mormons and their Indian allies in southern Utah. The massacre was initially treated…

Power and Powerlessness: A Personal Perspective

In his book Power and Innocence, Rollo May defines power as “the ability to cause or prevent change.” May identifies five kinds of power: exploitative, “the simplest and, humanly speaking, most destructive kind of power”; manipulative, which is “power over another person”; competitive, “power against another”; nutrient, “power for the other”; and integrative, “power with another person.”

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.

On Being Adopted: Julia Murdock Smith

Julia Murdock Smith was one of the infant twins adopted by Joseph and Emma Smith. She was raised as the oldest child in the Smith household. In recent years, biographers have claimed Julia as primary…

Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio

One month after Sidney Rigdon’s  conversion to Mormonism, he visited Joseph Smith in New York, occasioning the following revelation: 

I say unto my servant Sidney, I have looked upon thee and thy works. I have heard thy prayers, and prepared thee for a greater work. Thou art blessed, for thou shalt do great things. Behold, thou wast sent forth, even as John, to prepare the way before me. . .and thou knewest it not. (Doctrine and Covenants, hereafter D&C, 35:3-5)

The Search for the Seed of Lehi: How Defining Alternative Models Helps in the Interpretation of Genetic Data

A culture’s level of scientific understanding significantly influences how its religious texts are interpreted. The interplay between scientific discovery and scriptural understanding has been controversial throughout history. For example, the Catholic church’s response to scholars…

Simply Implausible: DNA and a Mesoamerican Setting for the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):129–167
Instead of lending support to an Israelite origin as posited by Mormon scripture, genetic data have confirmed already existing archaeological, cultural, linguistic, and biological data, pointing to migrations from Asia as “the primary source of American In￾dian origins

A Biographer’s Burden: Evaluating Robert Remini’s Joseph Smith and Will Bagley’s Brigham Young

[1]During the past year, I have had the opportunity to read and review two significant books Robert Remini’s Joseph Smith (New York: Viking Press, 2003) and Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and…

Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):109–128
DID JOSEPH SMITH WRITE the Book of Mormon? To this over-familiar question the orthodox Latter-day Saint answer is a resounding “No” because the official belief is that a series of men with quasi-biblical names wrote the book over many centuries.

“There Really is a God and He Dwells in the Temporal Parietal Lobe of Joseph Smith’s Brain”

In a recent issue of Dialogue, Robert M. Price offers his perspective on the origin of the Book of Mormon and a recommendation for how Latter-day Saints should understand the significance of that book.[1] Dr.…

Scrying for the Lord: Magic, Mysticism, and the Origins of the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):109–128
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 specif￾ically, a scryer who used his peepstone to discover the location of buried trea￾sure.

From Captain Kidd’s Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism

One day in late March 1697, a ship named the Adventure Galley arrived at the Island of Mohilla, one of the Comoro Islands. Its fever-stricken crew careened the vessel for cleaning and then proceeded to…

The Prophet’s Fall: A Note in Response to Lawrence Foster’s “The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma”

As is Usual and to be expected, Lawrence Foster’s article is excellent. Let me simply share a few additional thoughts about how my understanding of the charismatic prophet’s regress and demise has changed since my…

The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma: New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership

The issue of Charismatic Leadership—whether in religious, political, or other types of groups—has been the focus of widespread popular and scholarly attention. The word “charismatic” derives from the name of the Greek goddess Charis and…

Editor’s Introduction: Wicks, Modems, and the Winds of War

Standing as we still do on the brink of a new millennium, Latter-day Saints share with their neighbors and friends across the globe a profound interest in the fortunes of twenty-first-century war and peace. Not only do we wish to live our lives and raise our children under a quiet sky in safety and peace, far from the addictive savagery to which humankind sinks in time of war, but as an increasingly international church committed to sending missionaries into all the countries of the world, who could dispute the advantages if all those countries were at peace?

A Tribute for Service Well Rendered

The Bishop in Neal Chandler’s story “The Call” counsels a young man: “It’s not easy to be a real writer. . . .” How true, especially when you want, as did the bishop in Neal’s…

The Freiberg Temple: An Unexpected Legacy of a Communist State and a Faithful People

On April 23, 1983, a groundbreaking ceremony for the only temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built behind the Iron Curtain was held in the city of Freiberg, in the German…

The Red Peril, the Candy Maker, and the Apostle: David O. McKay’s Confrontation with Communism

Throughout his long tenure as a General Authority, David O. McKay was consistently opposed to Communism, as were his fellow General Authorities. Ironically, once he had become president of the Church, opposition to Communism became…

Living and Dying with Fallout

Last summer, while I was reading the Salt Lake Tribune, I stumbled across the obituary of a beautiful woman who looked uncannily like my older sister, Ann. That’s why I read her obituary. Only when I saw the list of Lisa McPhie’s survivors did I realize she was Lisa Lundberg, who had grown up with me on a quiet tree-lined street in Salt Lake City. Her older sisters were my best friends in junior high school. We were inseparable then. Thirty years later, Lisa, who watched our teenage escapades with a hint of boredom, was dead of a rare blood disorder that had defied diagnosis since she first became ill in 1985. 

Utah Historians | Gary Topping, Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History

Bernard DeVoto gave an impromptu lecture about the process of writing nonfiction at the 1955 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Conference Director Theodore Morrison described the lecture as “an exacting intellectual test for his audience. .…

Relief Society’s Golden Years: The Magazine

My mother was an enthusiastic, devoted member of the Relief Society—the old Relief Society, the pre-block-meeting-schedule, pre-Correlation Relief Society. She belonged to a Relief Society that LDS women chose to join by paying a small…

“Changing Times Bring Changing Conditions”: Relief Society, 1960 to the Present

The 1960s marked for Latter-day Saints the commencement of a new era of consolidation and growth that have led to multiple changes in the Relief Society. The organization experienced the automatic enrollment of women in…

What Does God Write in His Franklin Planner? The Paradoxes of Providence, Prophecy, and Petitionary Prayer

The doctrine of divine providence states that God is the supreme governor of the world—past, present, and future. Different versions of the doctrine depend on different interpretations of governance. The strongest version of this doctrine comes from the Calvinists who assert that each and every event in the history of the world is planned by God and happens only because God wills it, including anything that humans do.

Mormons and the Omnis: The Dangers of Theological Speculation

Engaging in doctrinal speculation, and then later adopting these speculations as religious dogmas, is as old as recorded history. One example is the adoption of the traditional geocentric, flat-earth cosmology of antiquity into the doctrinal…

Imprisonment, Defiance, and Division: The History of Mormon Fundamentalism in the 1940s and 1950s

The modern Fundamentalist Mormon community consists of a number of groups and many independent family clusters. The two largest are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) centered in Colorado City, Arizona,…

Saving the Germans from Themselves? | Alan Keele, In Search of the Supernal: Pre-Existence, Eternal Marriage, and Apotheosis in German Literary, Operatic and Cinematic Texts

This engaging labor-of-love book is a pleasure to read even if one does not always agree with its arguments. In it, BYU German professor Alan Keele mines German literature and drama for what he calls…

Triptych-History of the Church

I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented 
oil poured over me in the upper room on 
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of 
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull 

Women in a Time Warp | Sheree Maxwell Bench and Susan Elizabeth Howe, eds., Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women

Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women is a slim publication attempting to represent two hundred years of poetry by Mormon women. The anthology is divided into sections that portray the stages of a…

The Open Canon and Innovation | Gary JAmes Bergera, Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith

Gary James Bergera’s book, Conflict in the Quorum, is a well written and fascinating account of Orson Pratt, one of Joseph Smith’s original Twelve Apostles, that highlights some of his disagreements with Church leaders (including…

Belief, Respect, and an Elbow to the Ribs | Richard Lyman Bushman, Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essaysm

I had a very strange experience once in which Richard Bushman was indirectly involved. This experience took place when I was in an interview with the chairman of a graduate program at a well-respected university.…

“He Was ‘Game'” | Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet

Dan Vogel has written an extensive volume on the controversial Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, focusing on his creation of the Book of Mormon as “the making of a prophet.”[1] Vogel has done impressive research, not…

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

When teaching argumentative writing, a wise instructor will often introduce her students to what is called the principle of charity, or the realization that problematic arguments were composed by intelligent people who faced rhetorical constraints…

The Weight of Priesthood

I was eight years old one March Sunday. The chapel curtains were bright with the springtime sun, as if angels were standing outside. The church itself was new, built only a year or two before…

The Remnant Church: An RLDS Schismatic Group Finds a Prophet of Joseph’s Seed

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 26–54
When the 1984 conference approved Section 156 , which also indicated that the soon-to-be-built temple in Independence would be dedicated to the pursuit of peace, it became clear that the largest “schism”—separation from the unity of the Church—in the history of the RLDS Church was in the making.

Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841-1844

Dialogue 38.3 (Spring 2004): 1–74
Bergera uses evidence from plural wives to show who some of the first polygamists were in the church.

Tending the Desert | Alan K. Parish, John A. Widtsoe: A Biography

We have waited five decades for a biography of one of our most prominent apostles, and I am grateful to Alan Parish for bringing the volume into existence. He is to be congratulated for returning…

The Un-Hagiography | Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

The term “hagiography” refers to writings indicating that an individual is worthy of sainthood. Chiefly produced by Catholics during the Middle Ages, hagiography takes many forms. The most common is the vitae—biographies that document the…

A Scholarly Tribute to Leonard Arrington | Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University Libraries, The Collected Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lectures

Contained in this informative volume are ten essays originally delivered as annual lectures from 1995 through 2004 honoring Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of Utah-Mormon history, former LDS Church Historian, and one-time Utah State University…

A Trader and His Friends | Susan E. Woods and Robert S. McPherson, eds., Along Navajo Trails: Recollections of a Trader by Will Evans

“Imagine.” Will Evans’s evocative text begins with an invitation to the reader to enter the Welsh immigrant’s bull pen, roll a smoke with free tobacco plugged on the nailed-down lid of a lard can, and…

A National Conspiracy? | Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius & Joseph: presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet

Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister selected the title Junius & Joseph to emphasize their thesis that Joseph Smith’s death was a political assassination. The authors point out that the Junius tracts were “issued…

A Forty-Year View: Dialogue and the Sober Lessons of History

I well remember the spring and summer of 1965 when Gene England, Wesley Johnson, Paul Salisbury, Joseph Jeppson, and I got together to explore the idea of an unofficial Mormon publication. There were lively conversations culminating in a meeting at the Johnson home on July 11, where we voted to incorporate as a non-profit under the laws of Utah. The History Department at Stanford allowed us to use a portion of Wes’s office as our base—no rent, no utilities to pay. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was the result. A lot has been written about that early history. However, there are a couple of things I see now that I didn’t clearly grasp then. First, I, for one, was a thoroughly pre-correlation Mormon. Second, the Church is not immune from the sober lessons of history. 

The Death and Resurrection of the RLDS Zion: A Case Study in “Failed Prophecy” 1930-70

On Resurrection Sunday, April 1930, Bishop J. A. Koehler of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints attended a priesthood prayer meeting at the Stone Church RLDS congregation in Independence, Missouri. After a week of solemn and joyful conference services remembering the past century of the denomination’s history, men from across the world sat seeking the Lord’s further direction before Easter services.

A Novel with a Lot of Way-Out-There Ideas : D. Michael Martindale, Brother Brigham

Balancing Faith and Honesty : Segullah: Writings by Latter-day Saint Women

A Must-Read on Gender Politics : Martha Sonntag Bradley, Pedestals, Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights

Building “as Great a Temple as Ever Solomon Did” : Matthew McBrid A House for the Most High: The Story of the Original Nauvoo Temple

The Kind of Woman Future Historians Will Study : Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Innocent Hooligan : Douglas Thayer, Hooligan: A Morman Boyhood

Good Stories Told Well : A Survey of Mainstream Children’s Books by LDS Authors

Polygamy, Mormonism, and Me

Dialogue 41.2 (Summer 2009): 85–101
Hardy describes the long, difficult process of researching polygamy during a time that the church wasn’t open about polygamy.

“A New Future Requires a New Past”

My Madness

The Scholar as Celebrant : Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture

A History of Dialogue, Part Four: A Tale in Two Cities, 1987-92

Tribute to Levi S. Peterson

A Most Amazing Gift

Revelations from a Silent Angel

Not Your Parents’ Mormonism

The Remembering and Forgetting of Utah County’s Landmarks

Dixie Heart of Darkness

Mountain Meadows: Not Yet Gone

A Missive on Mountain Meadows

Roundtable on Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Time Tabled by Mormon History

The Beginnings of Latter-day Plurality Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage.” by George D. Smith

Nauvoo Polygamy: The Latest Word Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage.” by George D. Smith

Complete History of the Church

A Small History of Joseph Smith; Biography of Eugene England

Mordred Had a Good Point Gary Topping, Leonard J. Arrington: A Historian’s Life

Prophet, Seer, Revelator, American Icon Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens, eds., Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries

Formulas and Facts: A Response to John Gee

Dialogue 45.3 (Fall 2012): 1–10
In Winter 2010, Chris Smith and I published an article in Dialogue demonstrating that no more than ~56 cm of papyrus can be missing from the interior of the scroll of Hôr—the papyrus Joseph Smith identified as the Book of Abraham. John Gee has responded by claiming that our method is “anything but accurate” and that it “glaringly underestimates the length of the scroll.” He states that “Two different formulas have been published for estimating the original length of a scroll,” then attempts to show that “Hoffmann’s formula approximates the actual length of the papyrus,” whereas “Cook and Smith’s formula predicts a highly inaccurate length.” The fact is, the two formulas are completely equivalent. They are both exact expressions of an Archimedean spiral and they yield precisely the same results, if correctly applied.

Mormon Pulp with a Reading Group Guide David Ebershoff. The 19th Wife: A Novel

Twilight and Dawn: Turn-of-the-Century Mormonism Lu Ann Faylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder, eds. Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899–1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff

Response to Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899–1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff that contains letter correspondence between Apostle Owen Woodruff and his wives after Woodruff’s father issued the Manifesto.

Loving Truthfully Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate

Legacy of a Lesser-Known Apostle Edward Leo Lyman. Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate: A Study in Dedication

Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism

Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63
Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.

In Lieu of History: Mormon Monuments and the Shaping of Memory

Finding the Presence in Mormon History: An Interview with Susanna Morrill, Richard Lyman Bushman,and Robert Orsi

Reid L. Neilson, Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901–1924

Patrick Q. Mason, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South

The Persistence of Mormon Plural Marriage

Review: Edward Leo Lyman, Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889–1895

Review: The Truth Will Set You Free Errol Morris, Tabloid

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

The Richard D. Poll and J. Kenneth Davies Cases: Politics and Religion at BYU during the Wilkinson Years

Mapping Manifest Destiny: Lucile Cannon Bennion (1891–1966)

Home and Adventure: An LDS Contribution to the Virtues and Vices Tradition

Dear Diary: Joseph F. Smith’s Mission Journals Nathaniel R. Ricks, ed. “My Candid Opinion”: The Sandwich Island Diaries of Joseph F. Smith, 1856–1857

Errand Out of the Wilderness Matthew Bowman. The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

Making Visible the Hand of Ritual: Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842–1845: A Documentary History; Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845–1846: A Docu

Mormon Authoritarianism and American Pluralism

Review: Terryl L. Givens, Matthew J. Grow Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism

Mormon History Association Conference: Comment on “Conversion in 19th Century Mormonism: Identities and Associations in the Atlantic World”

Mormon History Association Conference: The Theology of a Career Convert: Edward Tullidge’s Evolving Identities

Mormon History Association Conference: To Forsake Thy Father and Mother: Mary Fielding Smith and the Familial Politics of Conversion

UVU Mormon Studies Conference: Mormon Blogs, Mormon Studies, and the Mormon Mind

Conference Report: Editor’s Introduction

Review: Hugh J. Cannon. To the Peripheries of Mormondom. Edited by Reid Neilson

Review: Kim Östman. The Introduction of Mormonism to Finnish Society, 1840–1900

Reviews: Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds. Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds. Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843

“And Now It Is the Mormons”: The Magazine Crusade against the Mormon Church, 1910–1911

Our Bickering Founding Fathers and Their Messy, Flawed, Divinely Inspired Constitution

Review: Reid L. Neilson, ed. In the Whirlpool: The Pre-Manifesto Letters of President Wilford Woodruff to the William Atkin Family, 1885–1890

Review: Brock Cheney. Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers

Review: J. Spencer Fluhman. “A Peculiar People”:Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

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

“My Principality on Earth Began”: Millennialism and the Celestial Kingdom in the Development of Mormon Doctrine

“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: Patrick Q. Mason, J. David Pulsipher, and Richard L. Bushman, eds. War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives

Review: Robert S. McPherson, Jim Dandy, and Sarah E. Burak. Navajo Tradition, Mormon Life: The Autobiography and Teachings of Jim Dandy

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

The Kirtland Temple as a Shared Space: A Conversation with David J. Howlett

Dialogue 47.1 (Spring 2014): 104–123
An oral interview between an LDS Member and a Community of Christ member regarding the history of the Kirtland Temple. They explain that despite differences in religious beliefs, people can still form friendships and cooperate.

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

Dialoguing Online: The Best of 10+ Years of Mormons Blogging

A Swelling Tide: Nineteen-Year-Old Sister Missionaries in the Twenty-First Century

“It was not a self-consistent ideology but a movement—a tremor in the earth, a lift in the wind, a swelling tide . . . an exhilarating sense of discovery, a utopian hope that women might…

Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years

Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 167–180
Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.

Review: Full Lives but Not Fulfilling Paula Kelly Harline. The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women

The Present, Past, and Future of LDS Financial Transparency

Review: Confident Interpretations of Silence David Conley Nelson. Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

The Last Memory: Joseph F. Smith and Lieux de Mémoire in Late Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

Brigham Young as Pastor: Compassion and Mercy During the Utah War, 1857–1858

Will I run from the sheep? No. Will I forsake the flock? No. . . . I want you to understand that if I am your earthly shepherd you must follow me, or else we shall be…

Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture

When fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…

The Enduring Vertigo of the Elect Lady Libbie Grant, The Prophet’s Wife

Of the legacy of Joseph Smith, historian Bernard DeVoto wrote in 1936, “The vision perishes; it is the vertigo that endures.” Reading the novel The Prophet’s Wife by Libbie Grant is to feel that same…

From Private Dreams to Public Damnings George D. Smith, ed., Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Searching For Sally Virginia Kerns, Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young

Pioneer Mother

Listen to this piece here.  I come from a family of Mormons, although perhaps somewhat unorthodox ones. Somewhere in England and what is today Romania, my father’s ancestors heard of a man named Joseph Smith…

Joseph Smith’s History: It’s Complicated Ronald O. Barney, Joseph Smith: History, Methods, and Memory

Missing and Restoring Meaning

Fifty years ago I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a shotgun apartment just off Mass. Ave. at Central Square: 22 Magazine Street, Apt. 3. Spring 1971 marked the last months of my master of…

Smoot in New Light

The eight essays in this collection describe and interpret the US Senate’s investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era. Nominally an investigative hearing on the election of Utah…

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle

On April 13, 2021, President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, indicating a shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saints at War: The Gulf War,…

“O My Mother”: Mormon Fundamentalist Mothers in Heaven and Women’s Authority

Dialogue 55.1 (Spring 2022): 119–135
As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints moved away from the plural marriage revelation, a marital system that created the cosmological backdrop for the doctrine of Heavenly Mothers, the status of the divine feminine became increasingly distant from the lived experience of LDS women. Ecclesiastical changes altered women’s place within the cosmos.

Salt Lake City, 1957

Podcast version of this piece. Sunday morning in Salt Lake City, whenfaithful Mormons flock to worshipat neighborhood wards, my father’ssecret psychiatric patients slip insidethe back door of 508 East South Temple,for fifty-five-minute appointments.A nurse impersonator,…

Historic Sites Holy Envy Sara M. Patterson, Pioneers in the Attic: Place and Memory Along the Mormon Trail

When it comes to sacred places, I feel considerable holy envy toward the Latter-day Saints. Their sacred sites stretch across the continent, from Vermont to California. Mormons can visit their founding prophet’s birthplace, the grove…

The Words and Worlds of Smith and Brown Samuel Morris Brown, Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…

Unpacking Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Mormonism Taylor G. Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism

Inevitably at some point, due to structural white patriarchal privilege and a central and abiding concern with discrete gendered bodies and heteronormative relations, the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will…

Review: On Truth-Telling and Positionalities P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink, eds., Essays on American Indian and Mormon History

I struggle with beginnings. I always just want to get to it. However, allow me to take a bit of time to introduce myself before I tell the story of my experience with the collection…

Review: Unerasing Shoshone Testaments of Survival, Faith, and Hope Darren Parry, The Bear River Massacre

Although Darren Parry claims to not begrudge the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he does not hold back when addressing the injustices and wrongs that his people have faced at the expense of…

Review: Brigham Young Wanted Every Thing  From the Indians Will Bagley, ed., The Whites Want Every Thing: Indian-Mormon Relations, 1847–1877

Will Bagley is a historian who has written and edited more than a dozen books on Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) history and the American West. His best known work is…

Roundtable: Time to Let Go of Columbus

For me, as a Native American member of the Church, I approach the hero worship of Columbus perhaps more critically and apprehensively than the average member would. I was taught that he was a man…

Roundtable: Columbus Day and the “Rest of the Story”

Fall of 2010 was the beginning of my last year as an undergraduate at BYU studying public health. I had just returned from an internship in Washington, DC with the Office of Minority Health (OMH).…

Roundtable: I Am Giving Columbus No More of My Time

In 2017, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement condemning “white supremacist attitudes.” As a member of the Church who also knows the history, erasure, and pain…

Politicking with the Saints: On Reading Benjamin Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo Benjamin E. Park, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier

In an era awash in a sea of reboots and re-examinations, one may be forgiven for initially wondering why yet another treatment of Mormon Nauvoo is strictly necessary. The city, after all, has received its…

Matthew L. Harris, ed., Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics

The Politics of Mormon History

Mormon Modernity David Walker. Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West

Railroading Religion is a welcome addition to the influx of timely scholarship published in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony. The tensions between religion, geography, and history provide a thought-provoking backdrop to…

Remembering Jane Manning James Quincy D. Newell. Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon

In this carefully researched work, Quincy D. Newell produces a powerful narrative of Jane Manning James’s life from limited records. Newell reveals what life was like for someone like James, whom she refers to as…

Modern Mormonism, Gender, and the Tangled Nature of History Gregory A. Prince. Gay Rights and the Mormon Church

Few topics have dominated modern Mormon discourse as much as those related to homosexuality. Especially following the contentious and engrossing debates surrounding Proposition 8—the electoral battle in California in 2008 over the legality of same-sex…

Latter-Day Screens: Mormonism in Popular Culture Brenda R. Weber. Latter-Day Screens: Gender, Sexuality & Mediated Mormonism

Latter-day Screens is a fascinating, compelling, and, at times, frustrating look at a wide range of Mormon-related media. This is largely due to the central conceit of the book—essentially working with Mormonism as a meme and…

History Written in Celluloid Randy Astle. Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952

In March of 1895, in Paris, Auguste and Louis Lumière screened ten short, single-shot films for an audience of two hundred, and the movies were born. Less than ten months later, after years of petitioning,…

A Commentary on Joseph Smith’s Revision of First Corinthians

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 57–106
Although Smith desired to publish the new translation, circumstances were such that publication at that time was not possible.

What Size of City, and What Sort of City, Could (or Should) the City of Zion Be?

Why the Prophet is a Puzzle: The Challenges of Using Psychological Perspectives to Understand the Character and Motivation of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 1–35
This article will explore how one of the most open-ended psychological interpretations of Smith’s prophetic leadership and motivation might contribute to better understanding the trajectory of this extraordinarily talented and conflicted individual whose life has so deeply impacted the religious movement he founded and, increasingly, the larger world.

A 1945 Perspective

This 1945 ward teachers’ message on the obedience apparently required of Church members, the response it sparked from a concerned Salt Lake City Unitarian minister, and the response of Church President George Albert Smith to…

“For the Power is In Them”: Leonard Arrington and the Founders of Exponent II

The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah

Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47
In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology.

Worthy of Their Hire? Mormon Leaders’ Relationship with Wealth D. Michael Quinn. The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.

Proving Subcontraries: In memoriam G. Eugene England, 1933–2001

“There Is No Equality”: William E. Berrett, BYU, and Healing the Wounds of Racism in the Latter-day Saint Past and Present

Dialogue 52.3 (Fall 2019): 62–83
De Schweintiz documents how students at BYU still hear racist reasons for the priesthood/temple ban in classes, missions, Gospel Doctrine, sacrament meeting talks and even in books published by the Church.

Feminism, Polygamy, and Murder John Bennion. An Unarmed Woman.

John Bennion’s work is set in the late 1880s and focuses on plural marriage through the lens of a murder mystery.

British Latter Day Saint Conscientious Objectors in World War I

Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 49–76
What of the Latter Day Saint movement that claimed to prophetically discern the times and seasons of these latter days and also boldly proclaimed that they were the restoration church?

The Restoration of Conscientious Objection

Letter to the Editor

Review: Priesthood Power Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology download

Review: An Essential Conversation Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, eds. The Mormon Church & Blacks: A Documentary History

The Pioneer Woman, St. George

Martin Luther King Jr. and Mormonism: Dialogue, Race, and Pluralism

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 131–153
This essay provides an outline for how to have a more robust intrafaith dialogue about race among members of the LDS church. Using principles from Martin Luther King, Jr. about dialogue on race, Whitaker argues for the need for greater dialogue to overcome the past.

Mormons & Lineage: The Complicated History of Blacks & Patriarchal Blessings, 1830–2018

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 83–129
The priesthood revelation of 1978 eased some of the tension when the apostles affirmed that Blacks could now be “adopted into the House of Israel” as full participants in Mormon liturgical rites. But this doctrinal shift did not resolve the vexing question of whether or not Black people derived from the “seed of Cain.”

Looking Back, Looking Forward: “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine” 45 Years Later

It has been forty-five years since Dialogue published Bush’s essay entitled “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview”2 and forty years since Official Declaration 2 ended the priesthood/temple ban.

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Thomas Aquinas Meets Joseph Smith: Toward a Mormon Ethics of Natural Law

The Word of Wisdom in Contemporary American Mormonism: Perceptions and Practice

Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, Quorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans

Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
In the prequel to this article, I discussed in general contours the dual nature of authority—individual and institutional—and how the modern LDS concept of priesthood differs significantly from the ancient version in that it has become an abstract form of authority that can be “held” (or withheld, as the case might be).

The Darkest Abyss in America

Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must…

Yearning for Notoriety: Questionable and False Claimants to America’s Worst Emigrant Massacre

A History of Two Stories: Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society

Preparation for the Kingdom | Milton V. Backman, American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism

This book will satisfy an intellectual need which has long existed in the L.D.S. Church and among all those who wish to investigate the “apostasy” from the Early Christian Church and the course of religious…

Joseph Smith and the Sources of Love

My brothers and sisters, today we reach into a realm that is subtle and intricate, all intertwined with feeling. More than usual I pray that you will be forgiving if my own feelings are apparent.…

The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism

If there is to be any honest dialogue whatsoever between educated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and outsiders, the question of the historical origins of Mormonism must ever remain…

The Faith of a Psychologist: A Personal Document

In 1933 James Leuba[1] conducted a survey of the beliefs in deity held by scientific and professional men. He found that only ten per cent of the psychologists surveyed admitted to a belief in God.…

The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Some Literary, Historical, and Critical Reflections

I suppose by this time the reader has either forgotten the circumstances in which he took leave of myself, or else is somewhat weary with the winding of the narrative and impatient for it to…

Scholarly Studies of Mormonism in the Twentieth Century

Although reared in a Mormon home in Idaho and although my family were devout members of the Mormon faith, I was first introduced to Mormon studies as a graduate student in economics at the University…

The Church and the Law | Dallin H. Oaks, “The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor,” and Orma Linford, “The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases”

Throughout the nineteenth century, the Church and its leaders were regularly involved with federal and state law. The recent article by Professor Dallin H. Oaks[1] is a prudent, well researched attempt to deal with one…

Mormonism and American Religion | Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, and Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America

In a sense this review can be termed an attempt to make much of fairly little, for the amount of space devoted to Mormonism in each of these works is very small — six pages…

Brigham Young and the American Economy | Jonathan Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists

Jonathan Hughes has written a spritely book about those men, the vital few in American history, who have had a major impact on our economic growth. Brigham Young is selected as one of them. Hughes,…

Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism: A Response

Whenever a young Mormon intellectual attempts to discuss anti-intellectualism within his Church, especially in the broad, 166-year historical context attempted by Professor Bitton, it seems to me that he is faced with at least three…

Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History

Almost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…

The Life of Brigham Young: A Biography Which Will Not Be Written

On Sunday morning, October 5, 1856, Brigham Young stood before thousands of Mormons in Salt Lake City, to open the semi annual conference of the Church. During the morning he spoke twice. His very first…

Federal Authority Versus Polygamic Theocracy: James B. McKean and the Mormons, 1870-1875

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1966): 85–100
During the years of the Utah Territory, outsiders got appointed to the terrority to serve in various positions. For the most part, these Gentiles weren’t sympathetic towards the church, and one of the more famous outsiders is Chief Justice James B. McKean who tried to crack down on plural marriage.

The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward a Reinterpretation of Mormon History

Polygamy, contrary to popular opinion, probably seduced few men into the seraglio that was Mormonism in the mind of a prurient, Victorian America. Yet it lured several generations of historians — not to speak of…

Writing the Mormon Past

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 47–62
Understanding Mormon history involves appreciating some of the formidable obstacles which confront throse who seek to write it. There is still sensitivity among Mormons to probing that might bring embarrassment to cherished offical views of Latter-day Saint orgins, martyrs, or heroes. 

The Significance of Joseph Smith’s “First Vision” in Mormon Thought

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 29–46
In this early article, Allen shows that the First Vision was not well known during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It became well known after the Prophet’s death, which is when missionaries started to teach about it for the first time.

Introduction: The Future of Mormonism

Preface  The articles in this section reveal the strength and vibrancy of current Mormon historiography. In December, 1965, in connection with the meetings of the American Historical Association at San Francisco, approximately 100 Mormon historians,…

Early Mormon Churches in Utah: A Photographic Essay

The following photographs are geographically and, I believe, architecturally representative of early Mormon churches in Utah. I have concerned myself only with existing churches that were built between 1861 and 1905. A truly representative selection…

The Legend of Porter Rockwell | Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder

The history of Mormonism and of early Utah as the two merge after 1847 has customarily featured ecclesiastical and political leaders, leaving others who played significant roles on the fighting front of westward expansion to…

“’I Never Knew a Time When I Did Not Know Joseph Smith”: A Son’s Record Of The Life And Testimony Of Sidney Rigdon

Dialogue 1.4 (Spring 1966): 15–42
Not very long after the death of Sidney Rigdon, the influential preacher and compatriate to Joseph Smith in the first years of the Church, his son, John Wickliffe Rigdon, wrote an apology for his father.

The “Legend” and the “Case” of Joe Hill | Philip S. Foner, The Case of Joe Hill

Legends often live on simply because believers like them. Some people like them so much they want to prove them. Legends may have their origins in real situations and may have relationships to some facts,…

Christ Without the Church: The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On August 24, 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began an address at the International Youth Conference in Glad, Switzerland, with the words, “The Church is Dead.”[1] Today, 1966, Bonhoeffer is dead, yet the church lives. However, a…

Strange People in a Strange Land | Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History

Howard R. Lamar, professor of history at Yale University and author of Dakota Territory, 1861-1899: A Study of Frontier Politics (1956), has extended his investigations to the Far Southwest and produced a scholarly, highly readable,…

A Kingdom to Come | Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History

In January, 1863, when Union fortunes were low in the Civil War, the governor of the self-proclaimed State of Deseret (Utah) sent these words to the legislature of that quasi-government:  This body of men will…

The Facsimile Found: The Recovery of Joseph Smith’s Papyrus Manuscripts: An Interview with Dr. Fischer

DIALOGUE: On Monday, November 27, 1967, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented a number of documents to President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, who accepted them on behalf of…

The Facsimile Found: The Recovery of Joseph Smith’s Papyrus Manuscripts: A Conversation with Professor Atiya

Dialogue 2.4 (Winter 1967)51– 54.
Although not a member of the Church, Dr. Atiya for many years had cherished his Latter-day Saint friends and is well informed about Church beliefs. He is aware of the history of the papyri and their relationship to the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price and is acquainted with the three facsimiles.

Some Reflections on the Kingdom and the Gathering in Early Mormon History

Dialogue 9.1 (Spring 1976): 34–42
Historical studies embrace the most extensive, intensive, and well-matured of the scholarly endeavors which have the Restoration as their subject. The paucity of critical writings in the various fields of theology and philosophy is by comparison especially striking.

Learning to Lead | Kent Lloyd, Kendall Price, V. Dallas Merrell, and Ellsworth Johnson, The Church Executive, and Paul H. Dunn, The Ten Most Wanted Men

The Church Executive is a report (also summarized in the Winter 1967 issue of Dialogue) of a seminar (workshop training program) conducted by three weeks, they hoped to see the stake presidents achieve the following:…

On the Mormon Trail | Alma P. Burton, Mormon Trail from Vermon to Utah, and R. Don Oscarson and Stanley B. Kimball, The Travelers’ Guide to Historic Mormon America

Dr. Alma P. Burton, currently Assistant Administrator of Seminaries and Institutes for the L.D.S. Department of Education, first published his guide in 1952 to satisfy a long-felt want of many people who desired to trace…

Storybook Grandmothers | Don Cecil Corbett, Mary Fielding Smith: Daughter of Britain, and Olive Kimball B. Mitchell, Life Is a Fulfilling

Mormon history is full of tales about formidable women, bearing the stamp of true matriarchs despite petticoats and plural marriage. The present biography of Mary Fielding Smith is written by one of her descendants and…

The Divinity in Humanity | Erich Fromm, You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition

Erich Fromm has a large international reputation as a psychologist and social critic; his numerous writings treat various aspects of psychology (particularly psychotherapy), sociology, politics, philosophy, and religion. Some may feel that his wide ranging…

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: Phase One

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968)101 – 105
Even a casual reading of the Book of Abraham shows that the story refers not so much to unique historic events as to ritual forms and traditions—all these must be checked. So far we have heard what is wrong or at least suspect about the Book of Abraham, but as yet nobody has cared to report on the other side of the picture. It is for that we are saving our footnotes.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Book of Breathings

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968)98
THE BOOK OF BREATHINGS (FRAGMENT I, THE “SENSEN” TEXT, WITH RESTORATIONS FROM LOUVRE PAPYRUS 3284) translated by Richard A. Parker

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Source of the Book of Abraham Identified

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 92–97
A description of the alleged Egyptain papyri used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Abraham

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: A Tentative Approach to the Book of Abraham

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):89 – 92
It appears that in time the mystery of the Book of Abraham will be unveiled. Meanwhile, it is significant for the Reorganized Church that undue haste and overzealous faith did not move it in the nineteenth century to canonize this work of Joseph Smith, Jr., primarily on the basis that it was accomplished by Joseph Smith, Jr.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: The Joseph Smith Papyri: A Preliminary Report

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):86 – 88
The papyri need to be carefully cleaned and straightened and then rephotographed with care to illuminate the under side somewhat to eliminate all shadows in cracks and breaks, which can frequently look just like writing.

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: Translations and Interpretations: A Summary Report

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968):67 – 85
The Joseph Smith Egyptian papyri once consisted of at least six separate documents, possibly eight or more.

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, denned thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew

Dialogue 3.2 (Summer 1968): 41–55
Zucker describes the efforts that Joseph Smith went through to study Hebrew. Joseph Smith’s personal behavior was apparently not changed, but in other aspects in later years there is evidence that Joseph Smith was using Hebrew language structure

Mrs. Brodie and Joseph Smith | F. L. Stewart, Exploding the Myth about Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet

Dialogue 3.3 (Fall 1968): 142–145
In response to Fawn Brodies’s biography of Joseph Smith, F.L. Stewart published a book called Exploding the Myth About Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.

A Mirror for Mormon’s | Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints

A superlative is an automatic challenge, and when Mrs. Brodie calls City of the Saints “the best book on the Mormons published during the nineteenth century,” my impulse is to disprove it. At surface glance…

One Man’s Utah | Wayne Stout, History of Utah

The writing of history is fraught with difficulties because the historian has no direct access to the past. Through newspapers, diaries, journals, and public documents prior events may be glimpsed as shadows, but even then…

Whose Victory? | W. Cleon Skousen, Fantastic Victory: Israel’s Rendezvous with Destiny

Fantastic Victory is without a doubt the most ambitious attempt by any “Mormon scholar” to set the recent Arab—Israeli conflict into some perspec tive. Cleon Skousen, in the amazingly short period of less than three…

A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham

The speed with which photographs of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri were published once they came into the possession of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a gratifying contrast to the secrecy with which their previous custodians surrounded them. The definitive edition of the documents will take time, but in the meantime the Egyptologist can show his appreciation by taking advantage of the opportunity to make preliminary studies.

Mormons in the Executive Suite

Only in a city can a full cast of characters for the human drama be assembled; hence only in the city is there sufficient diversity and competition to enliven the plot and bring the performers up to the highest pitch…

Art and the Church

It is through the performance of creative arts, in art, in thought in personal relationships that the city can be identified as something more than a purely functional organization . . .  Lewis Mumford Perhaps it is presumptuous to…

Manhattan Faces

If you like fresh air, 25¢ hamburgers, and security, New York may not be the place for you. If you want a Rinso-clean wash you can hang in the backyard, where crickets sound at night, and neighbors who are people much like you, the city probably isn’t your bag.

Mormons as City Planners

. . . one key to urban development should be plain—it lies in the widening of the circle of those capable of participating in it, till in the end all men will take part in the conversation.  Lewis Mumford…

The Challenge of Secularism

Belief in the eternal and the infinite, the omniscient and the omnipotent succeeded, over the milleniums, in exalting the very possibilities of human existence . . .  Lewis Mumford One of the most pressing theological questions of our time…

Villa Mae

When I saw Villa Mae Ferguson for the first time, standing gaunt and forlorn in the wind, my impulse was to keep on driving. I recognized her from Louise’s description: tall, plain, grayheaded. But she…

A Time of Transition

Our home is in the Alexandria (Va.) Ward and we live within eight blocks of the chapel. The school district was recently redistricted to dip into the “close to downtown” areas and therefore includes many…

A Personal Commitment to Civil Equality

We call upon all men, everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God’s children. Anything less than this defeats our high ideal…

Reflections at Hopkins House

“What’s your name?”

“Are you coming back?”

“I love you.”

These are the words of a Hopkins House child. Being young, very young, living in a poverty-ridden neighborhood . . .

Mormons in the Urban Community

Unless you consult particulars, you cannot see.  William Blake The average L.D.S. Church member finds many societal forces buffered or muted for him by the Church. Among other factors, our focus on the eternal nature of…

Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform: The Political Legacy of Joseph Smith

There is a game popular among Mormons which any number can play; it is easy to learn and it requires very little equipment: it is called, “Quoting the Prophet.” To play the game all one…

Joseph Smith’s Presidential Platform: Joseph Smith and the Presidency, 1844

At a meeting in the mayor’s office in Nauvoo, Illinois, on January 29, 1844, it was moved and voted unanimously that “we will have an independent electoral ticket, and that Joseph Smith be a candidate…

The Changing Image of Mormonism

The ultimate fate of American minorities is to become tourist attractions. . . . But the tourist boom means the same thing in Utah that it means in Vermont, the same thing it means wherever the past has been piously “restored,” roped off, and put on display—not the vitality but the decadence of a way of life.
Such is the devastating indictment of Mormonism by Christopher Lasch in the January 26, 1967, New York Review of Books

B.H. Roberts as an Historian

In 1930, when B. H. Roberts published his six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, learned journals were silent. But he himself, with pardonable pride, had described his work as “monumental.” One Mormon, answering Bernard De Voto’s contemptuous description of Utah as an intellectual desert, hailed Roberts as “another Gibbon.” Although hyperbolic, the favorable judgment was in general well deserved….

Mormons and Psychiatry

Among many Mormons there exists a genuine distrust of psychiatry. Apprehensions arise partly from misconceptions about psychotherapy and partly from a stigma that many attach to anything associated with emotional disorders. Many believe “If you live your religion, you won’t need a psychiatrist.” For many, to visit a psychiatrist would be to admit emotional and spiritual failure. Mormons might enter psychotherapy with not only the usual fears and anxieties concerning an unknown experience that lies ahead…

Income and Membership Projections for the Church Through the Year 2000

It is currently fashionable to look ahead to see what the future is likely to be, and, if what is seen is unsatisfactory, to consider alternative futures and means necessary to achieve them. This is…

Concern for the Urban Condition

The urban age—with all its complexities, opportunities, and monstrous problems—is upon us. How are Christians—and Mormons—responding to this new environment? This article will present exploratory research com paring Mormons and non-Mormons and will be followed…

The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints

In one of the earliest books of imaginative literature about the Ameri can West (published in 1826), novelist-editor-missionary-biographer Timothy Flint reveals a common impression of the time that “in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing…

The Joseph Smith Papyri

Of the subject of my study, only fragments and copies of fragments are left. These are “Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Papyri” numbers 1, 10 and 11, and the three Facsimiles of the Pearl of Great Price. But these are enough. I have glued them to a roll of paper 10×150 centimeters long (according to Doctor Baer’s indications), and I have a pretty good idea of what PJS (as I shall call this document) must have looked like before it broke into pieces over a century ago. 

Toward a History of Ancient America

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 65–68
If there is no history of ancient Antarctica, there is a valid reason for it. Stone Age man penetrated every continent except Antarctica, and until mod￾ern times, Antarctica was unexplored

Governor Thomas Ford and the Murderers of Joseph Smith

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1969): 41–52
Member and non members have criticized Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois for his inability to save Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Huntress was arguing that Governor Ford had a lot of difficulties that he had to deal with at that time.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Mormon Dilemma?

The power struggle inherent in the Arab-Israeli confrontation is taking place in a deep chasm of conflicting goals and aspirations. The visible issues that separate the Arabs and Israelis may not seem overly complex to…

The Reliability of the Early History of Lucy and Joseph Smith

Dialogue 4.2 (Summer 1971): 13–28
Mormon history is a part of this magnificent proliferation of data and research techniques. Its own archives are in the midst of classification by professionally competent standards. There is hope for a new era, in which Mormon and non-Mormon may meet on the common ground of objective fact.

Literature in the History of the Church: The Importance of Involvement

Against my better judgment, I have been persuaded to discuss the place of literature in the history of the Mormon Church in the context of this special issue of Dialogue. That the topic is too…

A Commentary of Stephen G. Taggart’s Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins

Dialogue 4.4 (Winter 1969): 86–103
Lester E Bush wrote in response to Stephen G Taggart’s book which the author tried to show that the Church came from abololonist ideas because the Church was orginially founded in New York, but when they encountered pro slavery settlers in Missouri and faced the hostiltiy from the settlers early church leaders apparently changed their mind, even though Joseph Smith eventually did a turnabout from what records have shown regarding African Americans.

The Secular Relevance of the Gospel | Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah

What message has the Book of Mormon for our world? Does it speak to those who sense their own involvement in the greatness and the misery of secular existence? Hugh Nibley, in a portion of…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: President McKay As a Neighbor

My grandfather used to say “There’s lots and lots of ‘man-ism’ in Mor monism.” Often we see President McKay and we think and talk of him as the prophet. I grew up in the same little valley in Northern Utah where he was from, and we saw him and thought of him as a man, of the real things he did as our neighbor. 

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: On Shaking Hands with David O. McKay

There were advantages and disadvantages to living across the street from Brother and Sister McKay. On Sunday we couldn’t play football in the street because there was always the possibility that President David O. McKay…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: The Prophet is Dead

The prophet is dead. Feeling a special quiet in the chapel this morning I sensed others were experiencing his going too. What did this mean to me? Why my tears and sorrow? Surely he was…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: Reflections on the Ministry of President David O. McKay

It is not difficult to identify the large difference that President McKay has made in the character and historical movement of the Church. I refer to the obvious fact that especially during the period of…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: “When Spirit Speaks to Spirit”

The deep sense of sorrow that I felt upon hearing of the passing of the prophet was incurred not because of any direct relationship I’ve had with him, nor was it the type of remorse…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: A Man of Love and Personal Concern

I have had but few opportunities to come close to David O. McKay, but each time has proved to be personal, memorable, and cherished deeply. I have sensed that I have had a rare opportunity in…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: Tribute to President David O. McKay

I do not hesitate and without reservation repeat from this remote end of the big wide world the very often heard expression from the lips of about three million people who have accepted the message…

President David O. McKay: 1873-1970: My Memories of President David O. McKay

My first recollection of David O. McKay is a sermon he gave in a Sacrament Meeting which led me as a teenager to engage in critical self-examination and to leave the meeting with high resolve. …

Willard Young: The Prophet’s Son at West Point

A common object of humor among visitors to Mormon Country in the nineteenth century was the large number of children. Many travellers’ accounts contain a version of the story of Brigham Young’s encounter with a…

Spiritual Problems in the Teaching of Modern Literature

There are certain problems which a Mormon must cope with in teaching any secular literature. What does he do, for example, with a literary work which expresses ideas and attitudes in opposition to his theology?…

Faithful History

Written history rarely survives the three score and ten years allotted to the men who write it. Countless histories of the French Revolution have moved on to the library shelves since 1789, and no end…

Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1832-48, and A Bibliographic Note

“Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1839-48” at Southern Illinois University, is a collection of documents (most of which are on microfilm), which was assembled by Stanley B. Kimball, who also published an annotated catalog…

The Church and the Orient | Spencer J. Palmer, The Church Encounters Asia

The motion picture Mondo Cane taught us that the chronicler’s job is to assemble his collectanea in straightforward reportage. Dr. Palmer’s book is a lucid chronicle (from 1851 to 1969) of some missionarying Mormons turning…

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

The Mormons is the second in the Freedom to Worship series designed to tell stories of “outstanding Americans of the nineteenth century and their different religious beliefs.” The series is intended to fit into the…

Dialogue East | Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action

In the spring of 1970, with the biennial world conference of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints approaching, an acute polarization of theological positions and emotional sets seemed to have occurred in the movement over the identity, the character, and the mission of the (RLDS) church.

The Manipulation of History | Can We Manipulate the Past? By Fawn Brodie

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1970): 96–99
Marvin S Hill was responding to Fawn Brodie’s lecture at the Hotel Utah in 1970 called “Can We Manipulate the Past?” Her point in giving it was she was claiming that the people in charge only emphasize the points of history that fit their gains. She then compared that to Church Leaders only focusing on Joseph Smith’s early attitudes towards slavery, but then she claimed that Church Leaders didn’t focus on the fact that in the future he changed his mind regarding Slavery and became more against it, kind of like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson. Marvin S Hill kept mentioning that she overlooked certain aspects.

The Coming of the Manifesto

Dialogue 5.3 (Fall 1970): 11–25
Godfrey describes the steps leading to Wilford Woodruff issuing the First Manifesto.

The Lesson of Coalville

As suggested in the preceding discussions, the confrontations surrounding the destruction of the Coalville Tabernacle were so devisive and frustrating that those involved on any side of the issue must have vowed to avoid similar…

The Last Days of the Coalville Tabernacle

Surely if it be worthwhile troubling ourselves about the works of art of today, of which any amount almost can be done, since we are yet alive, it is worthwhile spending a little care, forethought,…

A Comment on Joseph Smith’s Account of His First Vision and the 1820 Revival

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 106–107
Ever since people first heard of the First Vision, the events surrounding it has been clouded by controversy. Crawley comments with historical references that help to clarify this controversy.

Joseph Smith, An American Muhammad? An Essay On the Perils of Historical Analogy

Dialogue 6.1 (Spring 1971): 46–58
Since around the time as the martyrdom, Joseph Smith has been compared to Muhammad who was the founder of Islam. Green and Goldrup presents evidence for how Islam and the church are different.

Blessed Damozels: Women in Mormon History

Historians have long recognized the role of women in the development of Western civilization and culture, but for some reason the role of women in Mormon history has been overlooked. Among both Mormon and non-Mormon…

God and Man in History

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sees both God and man in a temporal, that i§^ historical,’ context, but it has developed no authoritative, systematic statement of the philosophical implications of historical relationships. It has no official philosophy of history. What follows, therefore, are simply reflections on some problems which relate to the religious affirmations of the L.D.S. people and a tentative approach to my personal philosophy of history. 

The Sterling M. McMurring Papers

Dr. Sterling Moss McMurrin needs no introduction to Dialogue readers. He is one of the Church’s most outstanding scholars, and is a nationally recognized administrator, educator, and philosopher. He has been a member of the…

Modern Biblical Scholarship | P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, eds., The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. I: From the Beginnings to Jerome

With the publication of this volume, the three-part Cambridge History of the Bible is now complete. That this volume, the first in the chronological sequence, should be the final number published is a testimony both…

From Gadfly to Watchdog | O. N. Malmquist, The First 100 Years: A History of the Salt Lake Tribune, 1871–1971

For every serious student of Utah’s history, there is a first time to visit the dusty archives or the microfilm files of the Salt Lake Tribune of half a century or more ago.  Two impressions…

A Prophet’s Goodly Grandparents | Richard Lloyd Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage: Influences of Grandfathers Solomon Mack and Asael Smith

Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage by Dr. Richard L. Anderson is an important contribution to an understanding of Joseph Smith’s immediate ancestry and the domestic environment in which he was raised. Since Joseph attributed dominant…

Brodie Revisited: A Reappraisal | Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet

For more than a quarter century Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History has been recognized by most professional American historians as the standard work on the life of Joseph Smith and perhaps the most…

Mormonism as an Eddy in American Religious History | Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People

For the past one hundred and thirty years various historians have attempted to write a panoramic history of religion in the United States. The 1960s saw the publication of three major surveys: Clifton E. Olmstead’s…

James E. Talmage: A Personal History | John R. Talmage, The Talmage Story: Life of James E. Talmage—Educator, Scientist, Apostle

James E. Talmage was one of the most significant Mormon leaders in the early twentieth century. Internationally known scientist, outstanding educator, Apostle, and author of some of the most enduring theological works in the Church,…

New Essays on Mormon History | F. Mark McKiernan, Alma R. Blair, and Paul Edwards, eds., The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History

“It is still surprising,” state the editors of this volume, “how little good material is available in many areas of Mormon history.” To help correct this deficiency, F. Mark McKiernan of the Restoration Trails Foundation,…

J. Golden Kimball: Apostle and Folk Hero | Thomas E. Cheney, The Golden Legacy: A Folk History of J. Golden Kimball

Even before his death in 1938 at the age of eighty-five, J. Golden Kimball had become the most talked about of all Mormon churchmen. He was himself cognizant of his reputation, and when a nephew…

Judah Among the Ephriamites | Juanita Brooks, History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho

This might well be the most difficult book Juanita Brooks ever undertook. Consider the formidable problems: Though Mrs. Brooks is the scholar’s scholar of Mormonism, what can she do about the fact that the Jews…

Some Reflections on the New Mormon History

In the last quarter-century a significantly different understanding of the Latter day Saint past has begun to emerge in a series of books, journal articles, oral ad dresses at various conferences, and more informally, in…

Riding Herd: A Conversation with Juanita Brooks

Elsewhere in this issue Robert Flanders speaks of the New Mormon History as having begun in 1945 with the publication of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History. While Brodie’s book is certainly pivotal, an…

“No Continuing City””: Reading a Local History | Marilyn McMeen Miller and John Clifton Moffitt, Provo: A Story of People in Motion

In its almost-square format, in its design and layout, its good-sized type and sepia toned pictures on stiff, just about grocery-bag-brown paper, Miller and Moffitt’s Provo is easily the most attractive and readable work of local history I have come across.

A Hint of an Explanation | Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: an Egyptian Endowment

Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 74–75
Review of An Egyptian Endowment by Hugh Nibley, which discusses the papyri that Joseph Smith allegedly used to help translate the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley decided to state his case, but allow readers to form their own conclusions after reading it.

A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842

Dialogue 9.4 (Winter 1974): 21–34
Foster points out that in 1842 an unpublished pamphlet was written called “The Peace Maker” that expressed its support for polygamy. It is the first-known defense of polygamy before 1852.

The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith

Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’

Photography as History: Through Camera Eyes, Nelson B. Wadsworth

Mormonism and Labor | J. Kenneth Davies, Deseret’s Sons of Toil, A History of the Worker Movements of Territorial Utah, 1852–1896

J. Kenneth Davies, a long-time student of Utah labor history, has been interested in the relationship between the labor movement in Utah and the Mormon Church. Deseret’s Sons of Toil is intended to be a…

Robert Leroy Parker on Family History | Lulu Parker Betenson, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, and Larry Pointer, In Search of Butch Cassidy

What interest can two books about an outlaw have for Dialogue readers? An obvious answer is that Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was a Mormon boy who went bad, but another is that these…

An Enduring History | Charles S. Peterson, Utah: A Bicentennial History

The States and the Nation Series is a set of histories of each state and the District of Columbia “designed to assist the American people in a serious look at the ideals they have espoused…

Fate and the Persecutors of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth

Dialogue 11.4 (1977): 63-70
In the 1950s there was a book published call Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith, which contains stories that have been part of folklore that have been passed down discussing what happened to the people who helped kill Joseph Smith.

Generalized Hatred | Marilyn French, The Women’s Room

Mira, the protagonist of Marilyn French’s best-selling novel, did not usually buy women’s magazines, but she pored over them at the dentist’s office: “Rate yourself: are you a good wife? Are you still attractive? Are…

Fishing for Emma | Roy A. Cheville, Joseph and Emma Companions, and Erwin E. Wirkus, Judge Me Dear Reader

Accounts of Emma Hale Smith and her relationship with her husband Joseph are scattered, sketchy and superficial. In 1973 Irwin E. Wirkus published Judge Me Dear Reader, a little twenty-five-page booklet about Emma. This past…

Two Venturesome Women | Juanita Brooks, ed., Not By Bread Alone: The Journal of Martha Spence Heywood, 1850–56

The study of early Utah history has been notably enriched by the recent publication of two contemporary accounts from the 1850s. The Journal of Martha Spence Hey wood, 1850 to 1856 includes Martha’s accounts of…

The Cost of Living in Kirtland | Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, and Larry T. Wimmer, The Kirtland Economy Revisited: A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics

Most readers of Mormon fiction would quickly agree that the genre still awaits a writer of the stature of Chaim Potok or James Michener, to say nothing of a Joyce or a Faulkner. Perhaps one…

Faith and History: The Snell Controversy

In early March, 1937, Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, of the Council of the Twelve, sent a strongly worded letter to church Commissioner of Education Franklin West. The subject of Elder Smith’s criticism was a pair…

State-of-the-Art Mormon History | Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints

For years Latter-day Saints yearned for a one-volume history of the Church which could be recommended to members and non-members alike as factually sound and not so fervently partisan as to “turn off” the critical…

A Priestly Role for a Prophetic Church: The RLDS Church and Black Americans

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 37–50
In recent years many RLDS Church members have been proud of the fact that the church has been ordaining blacks into the priesthood since early in its history. Sometimes they have made unfavorable comparisons between RLDS policy and that of their cousins in Utah who denied holy orders to black men and women until last year when half of the restriction was lifted.

Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks Within Mormonism

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 22–36
Elijah Abel, a black man ordained to the priesthood, was restricted in his church participation starting in 1843, even though he was well respected by both members and leaders. Newell G. Bringhurst discusses why the priesthood and temple ban might have occured. One of the reasons was when the pioneers were crossing the plains, a man by the name of William McCary, who had Native American and African American ancestry, caused a lot of grief and trouble for both saints and the leaders of the Church.

Saint Without Priesthood: The Collected Testimonies of Ex-Slave Samuel D. Chambers

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 13–21
The editors of Dialogue in 1979 compiled the testimonies of a former slave, Samuel Chambers, who was a member of the church.

Introduction

Friday, June 9, 1978. A day not to be forgotten. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of President Kennedy, most Mormons will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing…

Utah in One Volume | Richard D. Poll, Thomas G. Alexander, Eugene E. Campbell, and David E. Miller, eds., Utah’s History

This recent publication is the best one volume history of Utah available, but it is not as good as it could or should be. The ideal volume would present a clear narrative, be integrated by…

Peripheral Mormondom: The Frenetic Frontier

A concept called the “center periphery dichotomy” is sometimes used by social scientists to illustrate and analyze regional disparities.[1] Center or core usually refers to those areas so richly endowed in population and resources that…

The Orson Pratt-Brigham Young Controversies: Conflict Within the Quorums, 1853 to 1868

Brigham Young and Orson Pratt are both regarded as valiant leaders during the first generation of the restored Church. Both worked mightily in the missionary field and showed themselves stalwart defenders of the faith. Yet…

Joseph Smith and Thomas Paine? | Robert N. Hullinger, Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon

Thirteen years ago a heavily publicized and startling book called The Passover Plot, by Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield, daringly asserted that Jesus Christ planned his own arrest, crucifixion and resurrection; that he had beforehand arranged…

Mormonism: From Its New York Beginnings

That the handful of early Mormon converts decided to migrate from New York only nine months after their church was organized has led some scholars to suppose that the basic influence on Latter-day Saint doctrines…

An Hour in the Grove

I have visited this spot before—in my youth, in art, in my thoughts—so often that it has become cliche. The grove, a ripe symbol extending back through time and myth, has become too ripe in…

Fawn McKay Brodie: An Oral History Interview

The following is excerpted from a longer interview conducted by Shirley E. Stephenson as part of the Oral History Program at California State University at Fullerton, November 30, 1975.

Local History, Well Done | Brigham D. Madsen, Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah

According to a myth which circulated in Utah during the 1870s, Brigham Young had placed a curse on the town of Corinne and prophesied that the community’s ungodly existence would be short-lived. In Corinne: The…

The Writing of Latter-day Saints History: Problems, Accomplishments and Admonitions

The challenge of writing religious history is an old one.[1] The ancient Hebrews incorporated history into their scriptures, and Luke the physician is but one of the historians whose writings were canonized in the Christian…

Sensational Virtue: Nineteenth-Century Mormon Fiction and American Popular Taste

Before 1900, novels about Mormons ranged from the amateurish to the slick, from the scurrilous to the rather even-handed, from the realistic to the wildly imaginary. Their one common thread was that almost all of…

Joseph Smith and the Structure of Mormon Identity

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 89–100
Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision has taken priority in structuring Mormon identity, despite the existence of different versions. This article explores why that version is so meaningful to Latter-day Saints, reflecting on the symbolic strucutre of the account.

The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement

The status of the Word of Wisdom at the turn of the century is evident from contemporary sources. At a meeting on May 5,1898, the First Presidency and Twelve discussed the Word of Wisdom. One…

Did the Word of Wisdom Become a Commandment in 1851?

Joseph Fielding Smith, Apostle and Church Historian, once published an answer to an inquiry about when the Word of Wisdom became a commandment. His response, widely accepted as definitive both then and subsequently, was included…

The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth-Century Perspective

The success of Mormonism’s “Word of Wisdom,” especially its prohibition of tobacco—in promoting Mormon health is now widely acknowledged. Mor mons have shown that they experience what medical science would predict from their lifestyle: a longevity several years greater than non-Mormons, with much less cancer and heart disease.

The Fading of the Pharaoh’s Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban Against Blacks

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 11–45
Mauss situates the 1978 revelation on the priesthood in modern American historical context. Everything changed for the Church during the Civil Rights Movement when people both inside and outside the Church were harshly critcizing the priesthood ban. When the world was changing, it looked like the Church was still adherring to the past.

An “Inside-Outsider” in Zion

At the invitation of Sunstone, I sat down a couple of years ago to write a book review of Samuel Woolley Taylor’s Rocky Mountain Empire. As did Topsy, that review just grew and grew until…

Joseph Smith III’s 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah

Members of the Mormon Church headquartered in Salt Lake City may have reacted anywhere along the spectrum from sublime indifference to temporary discomfiture to cold terror at the recently discovered blessing by Joseph Smith, Jr.,…

Joseph Smith: “The Gift of Seeing”

Dialogue 15.2 (Summer 1982): 48–68
Van Wagoner and Walker focus on the seer stones that Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon translation process.

Thoughts on the Mormon Scriptures: An Outsider’s View of the Inspiration of Joseph Smith

How is the Mormon Church viewed by those who are not members? One view is that Mormons are successful and prosperous, that they “take care of their own,” that they live good lives, and that…

An Introduction to Mormon Administrative History

Institutional vitality has characterized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from its organization with six members in 1830 to over five million by 1982. Its capacity to govern and manage an ever-enlarging…

The Millennial Hymns of Parley P. Pratt

Born in 1807 in Burlington, New York, Parley P. Pratt was baptized by Oliver Cowdery in Seneca Lake on 1 September 1830, less than five months after the Church’s founding. Among the first to be…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Theses and Dissertations

Despite the marked decline in the number of students seeking advanced degrees, which is sending shock waves throughout American academia, interest in Mormon-related programs remains remarkably high. This trend becomes considerably more understandable when we…

A Bluestocking in Zion: The Literary Life of Emmeline B. Wells

In the afternoon of 1 July 1895, Emmeline Wells and thirteen other Mormon literary lights and friends met in the parlor of Julia C. Howe’s home in memory of a deceased colleague, poet Hannah King.…

Forgotten Relief Societies, 1844-67

Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint women showed a remarkable propensity for organizing. To engage in benevolent service, to share useful information, to fill social and spiritual needs, they met together in the humid summers of Nauvoo, Illinois,…

From Apostle to Apostate: The Personal Struggle of Amasa Mason Lyman

The principles of the gospel are perfect,” President Brigham Young admonished his audience early in the summer of 1867, “but are the Apostles who teach it perfect?” Even though he provided an answer (“No, they…

The Seventies in the 1880s: Revelations and Reorganizing

“These 76 quorums were all torn to pieces.” That disturbing report card for seventies quorums came from Joseph Young, senior president of all seventies in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in January…

Allegiance and Stewardship: Holy War, Just War, and the Mormon Tradition in the Nuclear Age

The present escalation in nuclear weapons technology between the United States and the Soviet Union has progressed beyond the point where any increase in such weaponry necessarily results in increased national security. It has become, in fact, the ultimate act of idolatry, a reliance upon technology, a false god which cannot save us but which will insure our destruction.

“The Fullness of the Priesthood”: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice

There is no exaltation in the kingdom of God without the fulness of the priesthood. . . . Every man who is faithful and will receive these [temple] ordinances and blessings obtains a fulness of…

Voices from the Dust: Women in Zion | Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr, Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints 1830-1900

The subtitle of this book indicates its primary shortcoming. This is, indeed, one more history of the Mormons. The chapter headings could be those of any similar work giving a general overview of the growth…

A Personal Odyssey: My Encounter with Mormon History

For nearly a decade, the greater part of my waking hours has been spent in the study of Mormon history. In writing a dissertation at the University of Chicago and then a book dealing in…

Swarming Progeny of the Restoration | Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration: A History of the Latter Day Saint Movement

Did you know that James Brighouse has been, among others, Adam, Enoch, Michael, George Washington, and Joseph Smith? Did you know that Max E. Powers was in attendance at the grand council in heaven before…

Saints You Can Sink Your Teeth Into | William G. Hartley, Kindred Saints: The Mormon Immigrant Heritage of Alvin and Kathryn Christensen

With us, someone else’s genealogy ranks right up there with reading the tele phone directory or watching someone else’s home movies. Most Mormon family histories are about as much fun as funerals. Thus, it was…

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

“If there is anything virtuous, lovely . . . we seek after these things.” Granted. But loveliness by what criteria? We in the Church often presume a common aesthetic; or when conflicts in judgment arise—whether…

Faithful History/Secular Faith

I readily admit that the topic of “faithful history” may gain more by praying for the demise of the debate than by trying to provide life-extending arguments or by seeking to resurrect it. However, I…

Rx With a Historical Slant | Robert T. Divett, Medicine and the Mormons: An Introduction to the History of Latter-day Saint Health Care

It is easy for me to be enthusiastic about this relatively short, readable volume, which in many ways breaks new ground in Mormon historiography. It is a book for all fascinated with Mormon health attitudes…

Moving Swiftly Upon the Waters | Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration 1830-1890

After the Latter-day Saints began building Zion in the Great Basin it was natural to celebrate crossing the plains as pioneers. Succeeding generations of land lubbers have been less inclined to remember a similarly pivotal…

A Physician’s Reflections on Old Testament Medicine

Latter-day Saints demonstrate a perennial interest in health issues of all kinds, from the dietary role of meats to the therapeutic use of herb teas. At least some of this interest can be attributed to…

Refracted Visions and Future Worlds: Mormonism and Science Fiction

Although science fiction and religion both attempt to define possible or J probable future states, they often seem incompatible. Critics of science fiction frequently argue that including religion in science fiction vitiates the power of…

Emma Smith Through Her Writings

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Emma Hale Smith’s adult life spanned more than a half century from the 1820s to 1879.

The Emma Smith Lore Reconsidered

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 1984): 69-76
Emma spent her remaining years far removed from the associates who had helped shape the events of that first decade of the Nauvoo period. Like those around her, she did not always react rationally nor did she always make decisions in those trying years that others would have wished her to make.

Joseph Smith and Process Theology

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints.

Book of Mormon Usage in Early LDS Theology

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 37–75
As one step in that direction, this article explores Book of Mormon usage in the pre-Utah period (1830—46), and seeks answers to the following questions: Which passages from the Book of Mormon were cited and with what frequency? How were they understood?

Religious Accommodation in the Land of Racial Democracy

Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 23–34
Brazil, with a high concentration of African heritage, was a difficult place for the Church (because of the Church’s racial policy) to make headway among native members. Due to the high risk of Brazilians potentially having African ancestry, the Church came to the point where they eventually discouraged missionaries in Brazil from baptizing anyone who is known to have African ancestry.

A Shaded View | Leonard J. Arrington and Susan Arrington Madsen, Sunbonnet Sisters: True Stories of Mormon Women and Frontier Life

Another “sisters” book—enough for a quartet. Where Mormon Sisters is a topical approach to pioneer women’s history, Sister Saints a compilation of biographical essays, and Women’s Voices a selection of diary excerpts with historical commentary,…

Bleaker by the Dozen? | H. M. Bahr, S. J. Condie, and K. Goodman, Life in Large Families: Views of Mormon Women

“Today,” said the teacher, “we have a special activity. We’re going to have a survey and find out how many brothers and sisters we all have.” One little girl from an LDS family of six…

Paul: Early-Day Saint | Richard Lloyd Anderson, Understanding Paul

As  a protestant minister who has taught a college course on the letters of Paul, I admittedly approached this book with some skepticism. Having read it, I found the book to be unquestionably thorough. Following presentations…

Emigrant Guides | Stanley B. Kimball, ed., The Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide by W. Clayton

The story of the western movement runs deep in American and Mormon history. The rolling of wagons west toward Oregon, California, and Utah is as basic to our national experience as Plymouth Rock and Independence…

“The Same Organization?” | Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians

In an 1842 description of Latter-day Saint beliefs written for John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat, Joseph Smith said: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, viz. apostles, prophets, pastors,…

Meet the Author of The Prophet of Palmyra | John E. Hallwas, Thomas Gregg: Early Illinois Journalist and Author

I was anxious to review this biography of the founder of eight nineteenth-century newspapers in and near western Illinois (including the Warsaw Message), the author of The History of Hancock County, and, especially, the author of…

Genealogical Blockbuster | Arlene H. Eakle and Johni Cerny, eds., The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy

You don’t have to be consumed with genealogical passion to profit from this new work of far-reaching and fundamental importance, though those who are will buy it as a matter of course and use it…

Sister Sense and Hard Facts | Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith

Samuel Johnson coined the phrase, and Virginia Woolf gave it its place in the language: the “common reader.” That per son, Doctor Johnson wrote, by whose common sense, “uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the…

Missionary to the Mind | Eugene England, Dialogues with Myself: Personal Essays on Mormon Experience

John Roche published a very thick book of essays a number of years ago. He was, he lamented, an essayist in an age when the essay was not flourishing. Fortunately this did not prevent publication.…

Fast and Loose Freemasonry | Mervin B. Hogan, Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode, and Mervin B. Hogan, The Involvement of Freemasonry with Mormonism on the American Midwestern Frontier

Mervin B. Hogan, a prolific expositor on the subject of Mormonism and Freemasonry, is apparently gaining some reputation among Mormons and Freemasons alike for “impeccable” and “peerless” scholar ship. (See Jerry Marsengill, Introduction, The Official…

Faithful History | Milton V. Backman, Jr., The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1839

Milton Backman, a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, has written a history of Mormon ism in Ohio in the 1830s. He appears to have consulted virtually all of the primary…

In Silence She Speaks | Susan Evans McCloud, Not in Vain

Dr. Ellis Reynolds Shipp closed her un published autobiography with the words, “Great minds are they who suffered not in vain. . . . I do not feel my spirit great, but oh, I have…

Exiles for the Principle: LDS Polygamy in Canada

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 108–116
Embry describes the role that polygamy played in the forming of Cardston Canada, both Pre-Manifesto and Post Manifesto.

Mothers and Daughters in Polygamy

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 99–107
An analysis of what the individual wives’ roles are in the 19th century among plural marriages. Embry and Bradley make the argument that the daughters in a polygamous relationship pay attention to how their own mom is doing, which determines whether or not when they are older they enter into a polygamous relationship.

Women’s Response to Plural Marriage

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 84–98
Mehr shares stories of polygamy in late 19th century and early 20th century. He especially focused on LDS women’s opinions of polygamy when they entered into polygamous relationsips.

Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 67–83
Van Wagoner defines polyandry as having two or more husbands at the same time. He identifies women who ended up marrying members of the Twelve or Joseph Smith while they were were already married to their own husband

Government-Sponsored Prayer in the Classroom

During its 1984 session the United States Senate fell eleven votes short of the two-thirds majority required to endorse a constitutional amendment allowing government-sponsored prayers in public schools (S. J. Res. 1983). This was the…

LDS Women and Priesthood: An Expanded Definition of Priesthood: Some Present and Future Consequences

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 35–42
In seeking to predict what might occur in the Church if priesthood were extended to women, it is helpful to focus attention on some of these organizational dynamics.

LDS Women and Priesthood: The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 21–32
While an examination of that history leaves unanswered the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood, the historical overview of LDS women’s relationship to priesthood suggests a more expansive view than many members now hold.

LDS Women and Priesthood: Scriptural Precedents for Priesthood

Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 15–20
I have heard many LDS women approach the issue of women and the priesthood by protesting that they do not want to hold the priesthood because they have no interest in passing the sacrament or performing some other ecclesiastical duty. I will venture a guess that many men who have the priesthood do not particularly want to hold it either, and that some of them also have no interest in passing the sacrament. But the reluctance of some men would hardly be a good reason to prevent all men from holding the priesthood.

The Ultimate Stegner Interview | Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature

With the possible exception of Louis L’Amour, Wallace Stegner has probably been interviewed more frequently than any other living Western writer. This is an impressive tribute to Stegner’s accessibility to representatives of both scholarly and…

The Benefits of Partisanship | Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism

During the 1970s a comprehensive history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in sixteen volumes was contemplated as one of the projects of the Historical Department of the Church, with Leonard J.…

Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures

Dialogue 18.4 (Winter 1984): 65–80
Shortly after the church was organized, one of Joseph Smith’s main priorities during his lifetime was preaching to the Native Americans, who he believed to be the descendants of the Lamanites.

Joseph Smith, Sr., Dreams of His Namesake

Vermont, Autumn 1805 

And the boy, the milky angel said, 
will be like the wild rain 
that shatters the crops and spins the brittle stalks 
end upon end.

In loco parentis — Alive and Well in Provo | Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith

David Riesman, in his landmark study of American higher education entitled The Academic Revolution (1969), was fascinated by BYU and insightfully observes: “Despite academic upgrading, Brigham Young has not lost its sectarian character nor even…

The United Order of Joseph Smith’s Times

Section 82 of the Doctrine and Covenants, dated 26 April 1832, guided the formation of a united order in the Joseph Smith era. Until recently, code names were shown for the nine participants: Ahashdah (Newel…

The Restoration and History: New Testament Christianity

The Restoration movements have tended to elevate historical claims to the level of theological dogma. But in our defense of historical beliefs we have often denied the reality of historical process by asserting that ideas,…

Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea

Joseph Smith was not the first person to use the plurality of worlds concept. In the early seventeenth century, natural philosophers began speculating on the idea of multiple world systems. By the eighteenth century, Protestant…

A Survey of Current Dissertations

“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age,” Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1747, but “if we do not plant it while young it will give us no…

Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective

Seventeen years ago, Moses Rischin, Fulbright Professor of History at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, in a review essay first used the phrase, “the New Mormon History.” By it, he meant to categorize the…

Eastward to Eden: The Nauvoo Rescue Missions

These were the words of Brigham Young to his Mormon followers at the first Sunday services held at Winter Quarters on a wind-swept rise of land on the west side of the city’s proposed Main Street. Daniel H. Wells and William Cutler had brought the sobering news into camp just two days before that Nauvoo had been overrun in the skirmish known as the Nauvoo Battle. The subsequent sufferings of the dispossessed and starving citizens of Nauvoo spurred Brigham and his fellow apostles into even greater relief action than that already underway. “Let the fire of the covenant which you made in the House of the Lord, burn in your hearts, like flame unquenchable,” he re minded the Saints, “till you, by yourselves or delegates . . . [can] rise up with his team and go straightway and bring a load of the poor from Nauvoo . . . [for] this is a day of action and not of argument” (Journal History, 28 Sept. 1846). 

Objectivity and History

In the early 1960s, a crisis occurred in the academic field of the philosophy of science, spilling over into the philosophy of history and the philosophy of social sciences. The crisis emerged from research in…

Leadership and the Ethics of Prophecy

Dialogue 19.4 (Winter 1986): 77–85
The role of leadership within the Mormon community is vastly interrelated, and thus often confused , with management.

Document Dealing: A Dealer’s Response

I believe that a response to the point of view represented on the panel by Jeffery O. Johnson is appropriate. I also believe that what I say here would fairly represent most rare book and manuscript dealers as well as some archivists and librarians who acquire and manage rare books and manuscripts for large institutions. However, this is a personal statement and I alone am responsible for its content. 

The Document Diggers and Their Discoveries: A Panel

Mormon history has always been a hot topic. From the earliest days of Church history over a century and a half ago, vastly divergent accounts of the origins and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been penned and published. In many cases, controversies about LDS historical topics have spilled over into the national press. In the last generation, for example, disputes about the accuracy of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Juanita Brooks’s Mountain Meadows Massacre have been avidly covered in national newspapers and magazines. 

Martin Harris: Mormonism’s Early Convert

It began in the autumn of 1874 with a knock that interrupted Pilkingtons’ evening devotions. The stranger at the door explained that he wished to hire a boy to do chores and promised room, board,…

Dale Morgan’s Unfinished Mormon History | John Philip Walker, ed., Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History

It would be difficult to say too much in praise of John Phillip Walker’s new contribution to Mormon historiography, a field that is bursting with recent major studies. Walker’s book deserves a place on the…

Polygamy Examined | Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History

In his introduction to Mormon Polygamy: A History, Richard S. Van Wagoner correctly reminds us that even though “many Mormons are descendants of polygamists, most Church members are often no better informed on the critical…

Determining and Defining “Wife”: The Brigham Young Households

Utah satirist Al Church, among other suggestions on how to survive as a gentile in Utah, offered this tip: “Ask guides at the Beehive House how many wives Brigham Young had. (Of my last four…

Refugee Converts: One Stake’s Experience

Situated on a prominent knoll in the Oakland hills, the Oakland Temple is the most visible symbol of the Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. The temple is located within the boundaries of the…

Brave New Bureaucracy

Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and Vonnegut’s Player Piano all envision a world where the system—big bureaucracy, big government, corporations, changing technology, or a mix of these—achieves total, albeit benign, control. The individual is…

BIG D/little d: The View from the Basement

Recently I finished my first book, a brief journey on the road to self-definition. I called it Leaving Home[1] because my life has been a series of comings and goings to and from various homes…

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

Thousands of Latter-day Saints were first introduced to William E. Berrett and the Church’s history when they were assigned in seminary to read his book The Restored Church (1940). Initially written in the late 1930s,…

“The Truth Is the Most Important Thing”: The New Mormon History According to Mark Hofmann

On 23 January 1987, an unemotional Mark W. Hofmann entered the Utah State Prison after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of theft by deception before third District Judge Kenneth Rigtrup.…

God’s Hand in Mormon History | Richard O. Cowan, The Church in the Twentieth Century: The Impressive Story of the Advancing Kingdom

For Richard O. Cowan, a professor of LDS history at Brigham Young University specializing in twentieth-century Mormon ism, the history of the Mormon kingdom is not only the religious success story of the last 2,000…

Who Came in Second?

My late father-in-law, Anchor Luke Clegg, often told the following story at family gatherings: “My direct relative, and yours too, was the second convert in the British Isles. He would have been first, but he…

Why Were Scholars Misled? What Can We Learn From This?

In the May 1986 Mormon History Association meetings, a panel of historians and archivists explored the impact of the Mark Hofmann documents on the LDS and RLDS churches and views of their common origin. Soon…

The “New Mormon History” Reassessed in Light of Recent Book on Joseph Smith and Mormon Origins

In 1959, while a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I wrote a review of the historiography of Mormonism for Church History which incorporated the major books and articles from 1832 to 1959 in…

The Need for a New Mormon Heaven

Dialogue 21.3 (Fall 1988): 73–85
I used to love this description because my Mormon heaven seemed far superior to this standard Christian heaven that Twain’s Satan describes. Sexual intercourse does have a place in Mormon heaven, though not as an end in itself. Heavenly residents are busy with activities. Those righteous individuals who become gods in Mormon heaven will certainly be using their intellects as they create worlds and keep them running, and they will undoubtedly be learning continuously. Mormonism never suggested there would be continual music, nor continual church or Sabbath days in heaven.

Voyage of the Brooklyn

On 8 November 1845 Saints in the eastern states gathered together in conference at American Hall in New York City and listened to Apostle Orson Pratt deliver an impassioned call to exodus: “Brethren Awake !!…

The Trial of the French Mission

Short, solid, bull-necked Elder William Tucker, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would grip your hand firmly and ask earnestly, “How are you, Brother?” (Harvey, April 1986) Elder Loftin Harvey, Jr., several months senior…

Freeways, Parking Lots, and Ice Cream Stands: The Three Nephites in Contemporary Society

In the 1892–93 issue of The Folk-Lorist, a publication of the old Chicago Folk-Lore Society, the Reverend David Utter, from Salt Lake City, published a short piece entitled “Mormon Superstition.” He recounted Mormon beliefs about…

Honoring Arrington | Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, eds., New Views of Mormon History: Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington

Leonard Arrington deserves to be honored. Nineteen of his professional associates, former employees, and friends have each contributed to this book a previously unpublished essay to thank a man who fostered their individual careers. Although Arrington’s…

The Case for the New Mormon History: Thomas G. Alexander and His Critics

My overwhelming first impression of Thomas G. Alexander’s “Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective” published in DIALOGUE (Fall 1986) is that the author, in the words of a character in a recent…

History of Historians | Davis Bitton and Leonard Arrington, Mormons and Their Historians

That such a volume as this could be written at all is happy testimony to the development of a Mormon historiographical tradition. Its appearance at this late date, however—over a century and a half after…

History for the People | Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History

Dean L. May has tackled a difficult problem in this brief survey of Utah’s history. First of all, his book came after the successful media presentation of the same material instead of vice versa, as…

On the Edge of Solipsism | Larry E. Morris, The Edge of the Reservoir

Comparisons, they say, are odious, yet I find it difficult to comment on Larry E. Morris’s new novel, The Edge of the Reservoir, without referring to Anne Tyler’s latest novel, Breathing Lessons (New York: Alfred…

A Double Dose of Revisionism | Stephen C. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri

Each year first-class presses add to the growing number of excellent Mormon monographs. Twenty-nine major studies appeared in 1988 alone. These two volumes from the University of Missouri Press and the University of Oklahoma Press…

Latter-day Saints, Lawyers, and the Legal Process | Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900

The attitude of nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints toward lawyers and the legal process is well documented and has been widely discussed ever since Joseph Smith studied law hoping to be admitted to the bar. What has…

Twin Contributions | Eugene E. Campbell, Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847-1869

While Gene Campbell lived through much of the twentieth century (1915-86), the focus of much of his historical research and interest was the nineteenth century. His earlier research and writing on Brig ham Young, Fort…

Mormondom’s Second Greatest King: King of Beaver Island: The Life and Assassination of James Jesse Strang by Roger Van Noord

Living the Principle | Jessie L. Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle

Unfortunately but undeniably, the practice of polygamy is closely associated in the popular mind with the Mormons, fascinating both scholars and casual readers, generating a plethora of anecdotal studies, and resulting in many oversimplifications and…

Reply to “Forever Tentative”

I wish to thank Charles Boyd for bringing to light some additional material relevant to the topics discussed in my article on science and Mormonism. I will briefly respond to some of the issues he…

Forever Tentative

I was stimulated, concerned, and saddened simultaneously as I read David Bailey’s article in DIALOGUE (Summer 1988) and reread Richard Pearson Smith’s Spring 1986 article, both discussing science and the LDS Church.  I was stimulated…

Jews in the Columns of Joseph’s Times and Seasons

On 21 May 1839, Joseph Smith introduced an unusual entry in his journal history, writing, “To show the feelings of that long scattered branch of the house of Israel, the Jews, I here quote a…

Hearkening Unto Other Voices | Robert L. Millet, ed., “To Be Learned Is Good If…”

When I first picked up a copy of To Be Learned Is Good If . . . I assumed that the implied remainder of the title would be a continuation of Jacob’s famous statement about hearkening…

Passion Poems | Emma Lou Thayne, How Much for the Earth?

One might suspect that a book of poems published by Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race might possess as interesting a history as the poems that comprise it. How Much for the Earth? by…

New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century St. George | Larry M. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert: Belief and Behavior in Early St. George, Utah

A Sermon in the Desert should be taken seriously by those interested in early St. George and in the workings of polygamy and family life in a small nineteenth-century Utah community. It offers to local…

Mormon Splinter Groups | Hans A. Baer, Recreating Utopia in the Desert: A Sectarian Challenge to Modern Mormonism

In this ethnography of a Mormon splinter group, Hans Baer postulates that Mormonism’s capacity to produce schisms is a two-fold reflection of itself. As Mor monism entered the mainstream in this century, it abandoned its…

“What Has Become of Our Fathers?” Baptism for the Dead at Nauvoo

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 85–97
Chronicling the history  of baptizing for the dead during the Nauvoo Period, this article introduces the practice from the first baptizers to how it was altered after Joseph Smith’s death.

An Ambivalent Rejection: Baptism for the Dead and the Reorganized Church Experience

Dialogue 23.2 (1990): 61–83

Launius shares how the Reorganized Church has changed their stance on baptisms for the dead.

Fundamentalist Attitudes Toward the Church: The Sermons of Leroy S. Johnson

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 39–60
Driggs shares what an early fundamentalist leader by the name of Leory S. Johnson taught about the church and polygamy.

The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 15–38
Bradley describes how even after the Short Creek Raids happened, the women there still believed in plural marriage.

Nothing New Under the Sun | Mary Farrell Bednarowski, New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America

While it is beyond the capability of any book to demonstrate the infinite capacity of human belief, there seems nevertheless to be little reason to doubt the existence of such infinitude, and Mary Farrell Bednarowski…

Religious Themes in American Culture | Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestantism in America, 1630–1875, and Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity

The writers of these books, with painstaking research, have produced studies that may help the present generation understand American history and culture just as Perry Miller and Henry Nash Smith aided understanding a generation ago. …

Plight and Promise | Linda Sillitoe, Windows on the Sea and Other Stories

Linda Sillitoe is a powerful wielder of the story writer’s craft. In the stories at hand, her plots are organic, her sentences are flexible and lucid, and her metaphors convey a kinetic motion. Over and…

Kimball’s Diaries | Stanley B. Kimball, ed., On the Potter’s Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball

A clergyman visiting Salt Lake City was invited to the Tabernacle where Heber C. Kimball addressed the congregation. The minister was so disturbed by Kimball’s impish and impious ways that had his own family been…

Strange Love | Phyllis Barber, The School of Love

Disparate voices of contemporary short story writers, among them Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, and even Mormon author Linda Sillitoe, all use external situations to probe the inner life of characters. All…

A Reasonable Approach to History and Faith | Richard D. Poll, History and Faith: Reflections of a Mormon Historian

Richard Poll’s to the study of Mormon history is significant. As a scholar and teacher, he has influenced many for decades. In this collection of ten essays, he reflects on his personal experience as a…

“A Profound Sense of Community”: Mormon Values in Wallace Stegner’s Recapitulation

In his carefully crafted and distinguished novel Recapitulation (1979), Wallace Stegner, Iowa-born, Saskatchewan-reared, but Utah-formed, joins his protagonist Bruce Mason on a brief visit to Salt Lake City some forty-five years after leaving home. The seventy-ish Mason, now a successful lawyer, distinguished internationalist and former ambassador, returns to the city of his youth and young manhood to arrange for the burial of his Aunt Margaret. To his surprise, his Gentile return to Zion releases—through an outpouring of nostalgia, memories, dreams and fantasies—the ghosts of unresolved conflicts which have haunted him, consciously and subconsciously, from those early years.

The Temple in Zion: A Reorganized Perspective on a Latter Day Saint Institution

Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 86–98
In preparation for the Independence Temple that was dedicated in 1994, an RLDS member shares ideas about temples in general.

The Development of the Mormon Concept of Grace

Latter-day Saints may be surprised to discover that Joseph Smith did not reject the importance of grace. Indeed, he developed a profound and novel view resolving many problems presented by the grace freedom dichotomy in…

“All Alone and None to Cheer Me”: The Soughern States Mission Diary of J. Golden Kimball

If you had been a guest in Chattanooga’s Florentine Hotel on the evening of 14 April 1883, your sleep might have been disturbed, particularly if your room were near one of those occupied by the…

Speaking in Tongues in the Restoration Churches

Dialogue 24.1 (Spring 1991): 13–35
However, during the mid-1800s, speaking in tongues was so commonplace in the LDS and RLDS churches that a person who had not spoken  in tongues, or who had not heard others do so, was a rarity.

The Paradox of Paradox | Margaret Toscano and Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology

Recently I was asked to review Margaret and Paul Toscano’s Strangers in Paradox for a local newspaper. While I tried in that review to be as honest and true as I know how, I realize…

Affidavits Revisited | Roger I. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined

In Another Part of the Twenties (1977), Paul A. Carter upended all of the stereo types advanced by historians about the 1920s. The jazz age was really more of a waltz than most people thought;…

Scripture in the Reorganization: Exegesis, Authority, and the “Prophetic Mantle”

From the earliest days of Mormonism, Latter Day Saints have held distinctive views about scripture. Particular, even peculiar, Latter Day Saint understandings of scripture surface at the very foundations of the movement. Historian Jan Shipps…

Dale Morgan, Writer’s Project, and Mormon History as a Regional Study

At the 1968 annual meeting of the Utah Historical Society, Juanita Brooks read a paper about the Southern Utah Records Survey of the early and mid-1930s that had been a forerunner to the Federal Writers’…

The Eastern Edge: LDS Missionary Work in Hungarian Lands

On the periphery of his thoughts, iron wheels clanked, March winds scratched past windows, a swaying passenger wagon groaned, and a steam engine chugged rhythmically. The tracks traversed the massive Iron Gate gorge, a slit…

A Teenager’s Mormon Battalion Journal | David L. Bigler, ed., The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith

Since the publication of the Hosea Stout Journals in 1964, the University of Utah Press has made a significant contribution to the study of western history by publishing a number of important diaries, journals, and letter collections. The Gold…

A New Synthesis | Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846

Exiles in a Land of Liberty is part of the University of North Carolina’s “Studies in Religion” series. The author, Kenneth H. Winn, is a relative newcomer to Mormon studies and, if this book is…

Mormonism’s First Theologian | The Essential Parley P. Pratt with foreword by Peter L. Crawley

At least one Latter-day Saint in the early days of the Church truly understood what it means to have the heavens open and God speak after centuries of silence. Par ley Parker Pratt, one of…

Utah’s Original “Mr. Republican” | Milton R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics

I first encountered Reed Smoot more than two decades ago while researching the life and political career of Parley P. Christensen, a Utah political maverick who became the Farmer-Labor party nominee for president in 1920.…

A Poetic Legacy | Clarice Short, The Owl on the Aerial

If Clarice Short had not chosen to become a great educator, she might have developed into a major poet. Her poetic output, excellent in quality but admittedly limited, reveals her as a woman dedicated to her…

Clawson and the Mormon Experience | David S. Hoopes and Ray Hoopes, The Making of a Mormon Apostle: The Story of Rudger Clawson

In 1879 a young Mormon missionary named Rudger Clawson watched as an anti-Mormon mob in Georgia killed his companion. Through bluff and bravado Clawson survived the assault and brought his companion’s body back to church…

Delusion as an Exceedingly Fine Art | Franklin Fisher, Bones

About fifteen years ago, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher invited Franklin Fisher, a young and aesthetically bearded professor of English at the University of Utah, to read from his novel in progress at a gathering of the…

Two Covenant Systems | Rex Eugene Cooper, Promises Made to the Father: Mormon Covenant Organization

Historians of American religion often see a connection between Mormons and Puritans, if only because most early Saints came from New England. However, many studies which have mentioned similarities between these religions have done so…

A Song Worth Singing | Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History

Anyone who has worked with Mormon music has likely experienced the frustration of being unable to learn much about its past —such things as composers, per formers, and institutional policy and practice. Collections of folk…

Why Ane Wept: A Family History Fragment

Ane PEdersdatter of Sjaelland, Denmark, entered Bear River Valley in northern Utah much as if she were going to jail. Her granddaughter Elvina told the story long afterwards:  About April 15th [of 1866] Ane left…

The New Zealand Mission During the Great Depression: Reflections of a Former Acting President

The time was 21 April 1932; the place, New Zealand. I had served as a Mormon missionary for nearly two and one-half years, the normal period according to Church practice for a foreign assignment at…

A Mormon View of Life

There are many vantage points from which to view a religion. In distinguishing one Christian religion from another, we might study its concept of God, the mission of Jesus Christ, or the role of the…

Self-Blame and the Manifesto

Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 43–57
Before the Manifesto was first read in conference, members and church leaders fully believed in plural marriage as being a commandment from God. Once the Manifesto was read, over time members started wondering if it was because of their own actions that polygamy was no longer a commandment.

The Political Background of the Woodruff Manifesto

Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 21–39
Lyman discusses the political pressures from the United Government which led to the church issuing the First Manifesto.

“Almost Like Us”: The American Socialization of Australian Converts

A few years ago I listened to a group of American missionaries who had just eaten an enormous meal at our table and were showing their appreciation by telling us how backward Australia is in…

My Ghosts

When I was twenty and dewy-eyed, I visited Auschwitz. I found ghosts there. The red bricks of the camp were gritty with the black soot which was all that remained of four million people, gassed…

Is There Such a Thing as a “Moral War”?

As anti-war demonstrations gained in size and frequency throughout the Western world during the Gulf War, it is doubtful that many Latter-day Saints took part, if experience during earlier conflicts is anything to judge by.…

The Moral Failures of Operation Desert Storm

The successes of Operation Desert Storm hardly need to be mentioned. The media have joined forces with politicians to praise the superior fighting ability of the United States military, the diverse international coalition that was…

The Thoughtful Patriot — 1991

During the first few weeks of January this past year, I suspect the thoughts of most Americans seldom moved for very long from the subject of war. Most of us felt hopeful and fearful, stimulated…

The Building of Mormon History in Italy | Massimo Introvigne, Le nuove religioni; Massimo Introvigne, Le sette cristiane: Dai Testimoni di Geova al Reverendo Moon; Massimo Introvigne, “Il canone aperto: rivelazione e nuove rivelazioni nella teologia e nella storia dei Mormoni”; and Michele Straniero, I Mormoni. Leggenda e storia, liturgia e teologia dei Santi degli Ultimi Giorni

Since 1844 numerous books have been published in Italy containing the observations of travelers who have visited Nauvoo or Salt Lake City. While some of these travel accounts have been remark ably objective, most have been…

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: Sexuality and Contemporary Mormonism

Several years ago, I presented a series of guest lectures on sexuality to undergraduate nursing classes at Brigham Young University’s Salt Lake Center. My presentations were aimed at preparing students for their work with patients…

Comments on the Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Christianity

Historical Christianity is a remarkable composite of diverse religious cultures, a mixture that even today, after two millennia, is still mixing, blending things that often will not blend and fusing the unfusible. Sometimes severe, chaste,…

On Becoming a Universal Church: Some Historical Perspectives

Dialogue 25.1 (Spring 1992): 13–36
A historical analysis of the globalization of the Church. Under President David O McKay, the Church was able to reach out to more people beyond North America and Europe, which led to an increase in membership, temples and missionaries.

Unnatural History | Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Sometimes when I go to readings given by Nature writers, that new and popular set exploring their private, half-mystical genre, I think for a moment that I’m listening to LDS general conference talks—the histrionic intoning…

Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57

For about two years after the Mormon pioneers first began to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, they devoted themselves to the dual jobs of developing the territory and promoting the interests of the…

The Wake of a Media Crisis: Guilt by Association or Innocence by Proclamation?

On 4 January 1990, police following a tip dug a family of five from a common grave in a barn in Kirtland, Ohio. Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three young daughters, hands, feet, and…

A Closer Focus: Challenges in Doing Local History

The sweep of wide-angle Mormon history is impressive, offering a comprehensive panorama of the Church’s worldwide workings, progress, and achievements. But to see Mormon history only through this wide-angle lens is to miss the rich…

Seeking the Past: Nobel Quest of Fool’s Errand | George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History

This anthology is designed for people with a professional interest in Mormon historiography as well as for the much larger number of men and women who have been intrigued or alarmed by the rhetoric about…

Is There a New Mormon History? | D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past

D. Michael Quinn, one of the foremost practitioners of the type of work distinguished as the “New Mormon History,” certainly thinks so. He has assembled in this volume a set of fifteen previously published essays…

Speaking for Themselves: LDS Ethnic Groups Oral History Project

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 99–110
An oral history project on ethnic wards and branches.

Great Basin Kingdom Revisited

Telling It Slant: Aiming for Truth in Contemporary Mormon Literature

How Common the Principle? Women as Plural Wives in 1860

Dialogue 26.2 (Summer 1993): 139–153
A study done to see how many polygamous wives there were at the peak of polygamy in the church.

Each in Her Own Time: Four Zinas

B.H. Roberts’s Autobiography

The B.H. Roberts Papers at the University of Utah

In the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought appeared Leonard Arrington’s article, ‘The Intellectual Traditions of the Latter-day Saints,” based partly on a questionnaire he had sent to “50 prominent LDS…

Intellectuals in Mormon History: An Update

More than twenty-four years ago, Leonard Arrington asked some fifty prominent Mormons to identify the most important intellectuals in Mormon history. He published his findings in the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of…

Apologetic and Critical Assumptions About Book of Mormon Historicity

Dialogue 26.3 (Summer 1995):163–180
FOR TRADITION-MINDED MEMBERS of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter￾day Saints the Book of Mormon’s historicity is a given: Book of Mormon events actually occurred and its ancient participants existed in ancient history

Watching

You Are Not Alone: A Plea for Understanding the Homosexual Condition

Dialogue 26.3 (Fall 1993): 119–140
In fall 1993, TJ O’Brian wrote, “You are Not Alone: A Please for Understanding the Homosexual Condition.” O’Brian was a gay man and this esay addresses how church members should treat LGBT members. He points to Jan Stout’s article among other influential pieces that were beginning to soften LDS attitudes and change practices in the early 90s. But he also notes several examples of terrible things that LDS members were still saying and doing, not including an imfamous homophobic rant from Orson Scott Card in Sunstone magazine in 1990.

Hannah Grover Hegsted and Post-Manifesto Plural Marriage

The Ordeal of Lowry Nelson and the Mis-spoken Word

B.H. Roberts’s Studies of the Book of Mormon

Remembering B. H. Roberts

In my early years, I had occasional personal contact with B. H. Roberts. He was a friend of both of my grandfathers, and one of his daughters was married to my mother’s brother, with whose…

Does Paying Tithing Make You a Voting Shareholder? BYU’s Worldwide Board of Trustees

Free Expression: The LDS Church and Brigham Young University

Patriarchal Blessings and the Routinization of Charisma

Telling the Tales and Telling the Truth: Writing the History of Widtsoe

The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation and Identity: Trends and Developments Since Midcentury

The “New Social History” and the “New Mormon History”: Reflections on Recent Trends

Dialogue 27.1 (Spring 1994): 109–123
My own analysis of the state of Mormon history suggests that the field, while other factors have also been at work, suffers from some of the exclusiveness and intellectual imperialism that were nurtured during the glory days of the “New Mormon History ” in the 1970s.

Intellect and Faith: The Controversy Over Revisionist Mormon History

Personality and Motivation in Utah Historiography

Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841-46: A Preliminary Demographic Report

Dialogue 27.1(Spring 1994): 1–72
Smith discusses the importance of plural marriage in Nauvoo to church history. He shows that after Joseph Smith passed away, Nauvoo polygamy numbers rose.

Memory and Familiarity | Thomas Edward Cheney, Voices from the Bottom of the Bowl: A Folk History of Teton Valley, Idaho, from 1823-1952

This collection of reminiscences about life in a tiny southern Idaho com munity has such an authentic flavor of small-town Mormon country, a flavor which I did not experience first-hand but at a second-generation level…

From Temple to Anti-Mormon: The Ambivalent Odyssey of Increase Van Dusen

Toward an Introduction to a Psychobiography of Joseph Smith

One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 233–247
Snow puts Joseph Smith squarely within Joseph Campbell’s famous work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is also known as the heroes journey.

The Locations of Joseph Smith’s Early Treasure Quests

Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 197–231

Vogel uses firsthand accounts of people’s reactions to Joseph Smith’s treasure digging.

Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection

“Critical” Book of Mormon Scholarship: New Approaches to the Book of Mormon

Welfare as Warfare | Garth L. Mangum and Bruce D. Blumell, The Mormons’ War on Poverty: A History of LDS Welfare, 1830-1990

Although this book has an overly dramatic title, it is a magnificent and sensitive history of the efforts by church members and leaders to respond meaningfully to economic need, not only in LDS communities but…

“My Father’s Business”: Thomas Taylor and Mormon Frontier Economic Enterprise

Shortly after Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah in July 1847 Brigham Young planned for an anticipated population explosion by exploring the region and locating sites which could support new settlements and industries. Parley P. Pratt…

A Granddaughter Remembers

I was a blessed child. I had a grandmother who loved me and who showed it. Her name was Ruth Alice Bird Harper Lewis, and as grand mothers go, she was a rare and wonderful…

The Noon of Life: Mid-Life Transition in the Married LDS Priesthood Holder

The ancient Chinese curse has plainly caught up with the LDS church over the past decade—never have the Saints lived in more interesting times. The recent whirlwind of world political changes has opened up mission fields undreamed of only a few years ago, faster almost than we can respond. It has also made us the target of anti-American sentiment and violence. Yet, in spite of all, church membership has now reached nine million. 

“Come Ye Disconsolate”: Is There a Mercy Seat in Mormon Theology and Practice?

At age sixty-eight I have lived long enough to know some of the sorrows of this life. More than once I have cried out with the Psalmist: “Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!”

The Law That Brings Life

In writing these thoughts, I am documenting the abandonment of a theological philosophy that has been a central, if somewhat beleaguered, feature of my faith. The decision to abandon the traditions of my heritage was…

Wallace Stegner: The Unwritten Letter

I remember well the first time I met Wallace Stegner because I wanted so much to prove him wrong. 

The Education of a BYU Professor

In the fall of 1948 I began my career as a teacher of history at Brigham Young University and continued there until I resigned in the spring of 1954. During those six years I was…

Sterling Moss McMurrin: A Philosopher in Action

Sterling M. McMurrin, a man of letters, has spent most of his life in the world of affairs. A distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Utah for four decades, he held key academic…

“The Strange Mixture of Emotion and Intellect”: A Social History of Dale L. Morgan 1933-42

Mormon Static | Roger D. Launius and Linda Tatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History

In their introductory essay editors Roger Launius and Linda Thatcher provide an informative overview of the nature of religious dissent, particularly in the history of Mormon ism. They note that Joseph Smith, Jr., was himself…

New Paradigms for Understanding Mormonism and Mormon History

Within historically-oriented religious faiths, such as those deriving from Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, any effort to develop new paradigms for understanding their historical development, especially in their formative stages, is inextricably intertwined with efforts to…

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

Participants

Todd Compton: Ph.D., classics, University of California, Los Angeles. Dean, Graduate Studies, Park College, Independence, Missouri; Director, Temple School Center, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri. 

Steven Epperson: Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, specializing in American religious history and history of Christian doctrine. 

Mark D. Thomas: Scriptural Studies Editor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 

Margaret Toscano: Ph.D. candidate, comparative literature, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 

David P. Wright: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

How the History Is Told | William G. Hartley, My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler, A Mormon Frontiersman

“Whatever you do, do not prettify me!” This declaration by Walt Whitman to his friend and biographer, Horace Traubel, might have also been in William Hartley’s mind as he finished writing an in-depth history of…

Editing William Clayton and the Politics of Mormon History

Editing William Clayton, James B. Allen
A Response: The Politics of Mormon History, George D. Smith
A Reply, James B. Allen
A Rejoinder, George D. Smith

Reflections on LDS Disbelief in the Book of Mormon as History

Dialogue 30.3 (Fall 1999):90–103
To average LDS church members in 1909, Roberts’s New Witnesses for God substantiated their beliefs and further embellished his stature for them as a historian and defender of the Book of Mormon. But only thirteen years later Roberts was to change his mind and that dramatically.

History

Small things: 
the smell of 

blocks he cut 
from pine light

Quilts as Women’s History | Mary Bywater Cross, Quilts and Women of the Mormon Migrations: Treasures of Transition, and Kate Covington, ed., Gathered in Time: Utah Quilts and Their Makers, Settlement to 1950

Women’s history got short shrift when the telling of the past focused entirely on wars and laws, but increasingly, as attention is being paid to the domestic history of day-to-day lives, historians are recovering women’s…

More Than Just a Battle for the Ballot | Carol Cornwall Madsen, ed., Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870-1896

Among the great political battles in American history is the heroic struggle of women to gain a voice in government and to overthrow the state and federal barriers which prevented the exercise of women’s rights.…

New York City Rain

WEDNESDAY—ALL MY LUGGAGE IS SOAKED and I tore the sleeve of my brand new overcoat in the subway station. Elder Sessions told me not to look away if I noticed someone staring. “Just stare them…

Madeline McQuown, Dale Morgan, and the Great Unfinished Brigham Young Biography

Shortly after completing The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton in 1967, Fawn M. Brodie wrote to her friend Dale Morgan confessing that she had “been periodically haunted by the desire to do…

Similar yet Different | Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson, How Wide the Divide?

How Wide the Divide? Is a nice change from the typical literature published by evangelical publishing houses concerning the subject of Mor monism. This book attempts to enter into an open dialogue on the basic…

Issues of Individual Freedoms | Linda Sillitoe, Friendly Fire: The ACLU in Utah

At first, the title of this book seems a bit misleading and confusing. “Friendly fire” became popular during the Gulf War as a description of how American troops were killed by their comrades during desert…

A Part of History Overlooked | Leslie G. Kelen and Eileen Hallet Stone, Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah

How do non-Mormons feel about living in Utah? Missing Stories answers many such questions. These are the people’s words and not interpretation. As Helen Papanikolas explains in the introduction, “This is not a book of…

Reflections on Mormon History: Zion and the Anti-Legal Tradition

Sir Henry Maine, our first great modern legal historian of the English language and law, in describing the paradigmatic shift from early feudal European society to a world of secular, territorial nation-states and market economy, observed that we had moved “from status to contract.” “Status” assumes an immutable condition not changeable by individual choice and action. “Contract” assumes that one can change existing conditions by choice and action. No statement describes with more insight the nineteenth-century Mormon concept of Zion. 

Leonard J. Arrington: Reflections on a Humble Walk

History itself—and historians in particular—will for years to come continue to assess the importance of Leonard J. Arrington to Mormon and western thought. From 1972, when he was appointed Church Historian, to his retirement as…

Mormon Psychohistory: Psychological Insights into the Latter-day Saint Past, Present, and Future

Several years ago, I was speaking with a fellow Saint and convert at the Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City. We described ourselves to each other as “Joseph Smith converts.” By that, we meant that…

A History of Dialogue, Part One: The Early Years, 1965-1971

For nearly thirty-four years, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought has occupied a place, defined by former co-editor Allen Roberts, as the “pa triarch (or matriarch)” of independent Mormon scholarship.[1] And notwithstanding an increase of…

Mission Complexities in Asia | R. Lanier Britsch, From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851-1996

As a missionary in Taiwan many years ago, I often reflected on the historical significance of our work. President Hyer numbly reminded us that we were only the most recent phase of an historical process…

Plural Marriage, Singular Lives | Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith’s polygamous relationships have been a topic of great interest and controversy among Mormons and non-Mormons alike. The reactions of the women whom Joseph Smith took as plural wives and the way in which…

A Welcome Arrival, A Promising Standard | Will Bagley, ed., The Pioneer Camp of the Saints: The 1846 and 1847 Moron Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock

The 150th anniversary celebrations of the exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Rocky Mountains saw the publication of several significant new works in Mormon history. Surely one of the most significant contributions of these is…

Making the Mormon Trek Come Alive | Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846-1848

Author Richard E. Bennet describes his book as: 

. .. not so much a study of the train or of the trek, but of a religious exodus of one of the 19th century’s most persecuted and despised groups of religionists—the Latter day Saints—who were bound neither for Oregon nor for California but either for survival or extinction. This was not just another march westward “across the wide Missouri” in fulfillment of America’s Manifest Destiny; rather, it was a destiny in motion yet to be mani fest, for it was not at all certain that this enterprise of Joseph Smith, Jr.—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—would ever survive to live a new day. The story of the Mormon exodus is that of a religion in torment, desperately seeking to save itself from persecution, to rid itself of its own detractors and obstructionists, and to find it self in some unknown valley, “far away in the west.” It was Mor monism in the raw and on the move—forging a new identity while seeking a safe refuge in the tops of “the everlasting hills” (xiv).

Mormonism and the Radical Religious Movement in Early Colonial New England

Mormons believe that forerunners prepared the way for the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. This paper examines a special set of those forerunners, namely, the progenitors of the early converts to the LDS church, whose religious experiences took them through a refiner’s fire so significant and revolutionary that it helped provide their descendants with the disposition to embrace a new, radical faith.

The Discovery of Native “Mormon” Communities in Russia

In early June 1998, Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mission, felt moved to place missionaries in a small village called Bogdanovka. This was an exciting change in policy. Early LDS missionary work in Russia had been concentrated in large urban areas where most missionaries could enjoy such civilized luxuries as paved roads, frequent public transportation, telephone lines, and running water. In recent years missions branched into smaller cities, but the Russian village was an altogether new frontier. Bogdanovka, although it is only 100 miles or so from the large regional capital city of Samara, is a world apart. 

Busing to Kolob | James W. Ure, Leaving the Fold: Candid Conversations with Inactive Mormons

Years ago, I visit-taught a single mother of three young boys whose grasp of Mormon doctrine seemed patchy, at best. Our so-called “les sons”—punctuated by frequent smoking breaks—were seldom more than lively recitations regarding her…

Good Book about the Good Book | Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880

Paul Gutjahr, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Indiana University, has written an elegant and engaging study of “The Good Book” in America. Readers of An American Bible: A History of the Good…

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

Scott R. Christensen has made an auspicious entry into the realm of Mormon history with his book Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887. Already the volume has won the 1999 Evans Handcart Prize and the…

Missionary Roots of Change | San Larson and Patricia Larson, eds., What E’er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part: The Missionary Diaries of David O. McKay

In the century since twenty-five year-old David Oman McKay made his last formal entry in his missionary diary in Glasgow, Scotland, Mor monism has metamorphosed from a small religious group centered in Utah’s Wasatch Front…

The Life of a Controversial Biographer | Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life

Winner of the 1999 “Best Biography Award” from the Mormon History Association, Fawn McKay Brodie measures up to the honor. A biographer commonly finds varied reasons for selecting his or her subject. Newell Bringhurst candidly…

Being Joseph Smith | William D. Morain, The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Dissociated Mind, and Robert D. Anderson, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon

New York Times reviewer Christopher Lasch, reviewing Erik Erikson’s psychobiography of Mahatma Gandhi in 1969, wrote: “Erikson understands that to reduce illustrious men to their symptoms explains everything except the one thing that most needs…

A History of Dialogue, Part Two: Struggle toward Maturity, 1971-1982

After Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was founded by Mormons at Stanford University in 1966, it attracted Latter-day Saint scholars from all over the United States, and soon its success surpassed the expectations of…

Protocols of the (Other) Elders of Zion | Andrew F. Smith, ed., The History of the Saints, 3d edition, by John C. Bennett

One may impute two possible rationales to the decision by the University of Illinois Press to reprint an 1842 expose of Joseph Smith and Mor monism. Its re-publication may represent an appreciation for its value…

Finitism and the Problem of Evil

According to traditional theism, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If God were omnibenevolent, he would want to eliminate evil. If God were omnipotent, he would be able to eliminate evil. So why should there be any evil? This problem is, by far, the most discussed subject in the philosophy of religion. In this paper, I argue that rejecting the traditional notion of God is the best way to deal with this problem.

Mormonism and the Idea of Progress

Robert Nisbet defines the idea of progress as the notion that mankind has advanced in the past from barbarism and ignorance, is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. It is arguably the central motivating philosophy that has led men and women throughout history to forge ahead to a brighter future. 

Mormon Membership Trends in Europe Among People of Color: Present and Future Assessment

I hope I’m not extending the metaphor too far, but it seems apparent the field is less white and more colorful as the church moves into the twenty first century. Most church members are aware (although some along the Wasatch Front have a hard time visualizing it) that rapid growth rates in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines are essentially among people of color. However, it is my contention that future growth of the church even in the bastions of Nordic, Teutonic, British, and Celtic Europe—a region which supplied membership and leadership during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—will increasingly be among people of color not native to the European continent. 

Preaching the Gospel of Church and Sex: Mormon Women’s Fiction in the Young Woman’s Journal, 1889-1910

In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…

Edward W. Tullidge and The Women of Mormondom

In this paper, I sing the virtues of Edward W. Tullidge, English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cultural enthusiast, and serious journalist and author. Tullidge, who was mercurial, changeable, and…

History of the Church — Part One

I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented 
oil poured over me in the upper room on 
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of 
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull 

David O. McKay and the “Twin Sisters” Free Agency and Tolerance

On a spring day in 1955, a group of distinguished gentlemen gathered at a White House dinner at the request of President Dwight Eisenhower. The guests included founding partners of three law firms, the President of the Teamsters’ Union, three Army Generals, a Cabinet Secretary, the publisher of the Boston Globe, the Vice President of ABC, the Chairman of CBS, the President of MIT, four CEO’s and one clergyman—David O. McKay, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, defined thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

Mormonism’s Worldwide Aspirations and its Changing Conceptions of Race and Lineage

Mormon history contains its fair share of ironies and unintended consequences. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began with a mission to restore the ancient church, but not for everyone at the same time. In its earliest days, the church was preoccupied with its mission to seek out the descendants of Abraham through Jacob or Israel; these Israelites, in turn, would prepare the world for the millennial reign of the Messiah.

Root and Branch: An Abstract of the Structuralist Analysis of the Allegoryof the Olive Tree

The Allegory of the Olive Tree, as found in Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon, is one of the most complicated and enigmatic of texts. These com plications, however, can be resolved when the…

History, Memory and Imagination in Virginia Eggertsen Sorensen’s Kingdom Come

Many years ago Virginia Sorensen wrote me a prophetic letter. She had just read my article, “Through Immigrant Eyes: Utah History at the Grass Roots.” She sounded breathless: “For years and years/’ she wrote, “I have believed—for what reason, I wonder, since I never really lived in the houses where the true tradition was but could only visit a while, and listen, and pause always by the gate where I could hear and see it?—that I was the one to tell this story you speak of. Almost I have heard The Call!”

An Other Mormon History | Jorge Iber, Hispanics in the Mormon Zion, 1912-1999

Jorge Iber’s debut, Hispanics in the Mormon Zion, earned the impressive honor of the Mormon History As sociation’s 2001 Best First Book Award. Iber brings the intellectual tools and fresh insight of ethnic studies into…

A History of Dialogue, Part Three: “Coming of Age” in Utah, 1982-1989

By 1982 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought had been publishing for sixteen years and had operated at both ends of the U.S. under three different editorships. It was born, flourished for several years, then…

Lucy’s Own Voice | Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir

In the winter after the martyrdom of her sons, Joseph and Hyrum, Lucy Mack Smith dictated a history of her family to Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, a sympathetic schoolteacher in Nauvoo. Two copies were made…

Book of Mormon Stories | Mark D. Thomas, Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives, and Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New Religion

After decades of neglect by scholars, theologians, and even rank and-file Latter-day Saints, the Book of Mormon may be finally getting its due. Recently, several books have under scored the importance of this controversial work…

Friendly History | Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise

Glen Leonard’s long-awaited history of Nauvoo is friendly history at its finest. It gently questions some deeply held beliefs about the Saints’ tumultuous sojourn at the fringes of western Illinois. The writing is read able…

Critique of a Limited Geography for Book of Mormon Events

Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):127–168
DURING THE PAST FEW DECADES, a number of LDS scholars have developed various “limited geography” models of where the events of the Book of Mormon occurred. These models contrast with the traditional western hemisphere model, which is still the most familiar to Book of Mormon readers.

Form Criticism of Joseph Smith’s 1823 Vision of the Angel Moroni

This paper will examine the vision or purported vision of the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith on the night of 21-22 September 1823, announcing the location of the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon. The 1839 history of Joseph Smith contains by far the most detailed description of the vision, but there are details in this account which could not have occurred prior to 1834. The process used here (as in New Testament “form criticism”) will be to distinguish the original historic core of the visionary narrative and experience from later anachronistic redactions. Finally, if Joseph Smith did see what he claimed to see on that night, what does that represent—a dream, a representation of a being actually in his room, an altered state of sight, etc.? 

A Uniform and Common Recollection: Joseph Smith’s Legacy, Polygamy, and the Creation of Mormon Public Memory, 1852-2002

Historians have long believed that history does not consist simply of recounting the past according to the Rankean ideal of telling it “as it really was.” The process of researching, selecting, and emplotting historical evidence within a narrative structure is often idiosyncratic, and may be employed to further a host of goals. Within communities, history represents a way of appropriating the past in order to serve the needs of the present. Maurice Halbwachs’s work emphasizes the role history plays as the “collective memory” of a community. Halbwachs argues that “no memory is possible outside frameworks used by the people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections.” This process involves the retention of useful historical emplotment points coupled with the suppression of those “facts” which threaten to undermine a community’s structures. 

Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance

Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):9a–128
I am a literary critic who has 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.

Prophecy and Palimpsest

In 2 Kings 22, the priest Hilkiah sends word to Josiah the King: “I have found a book.” Hilkiah had been busy locating funds to compensate the work crews refurbishing the temple, when suddenly the…

The Earliest Eternal Sealing for Civilly Married Couples Living and Dead

During the early 1840S, founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith introduced members of his young church to the ordinances of baptism for the dead (1840), eternal marriage (1841), and eternal proxy marriage (1842). These ordinances, and the doctrine underpinning them, united Smith’s beliefs in obedience to divine law, the importance of mortality, and the eternal nature of the family.

Martin Harris: The Kirtland Years, 1831-1870

Martin Harris is known for being a Book of Mormon scribe, witness, and financier. However, little is known about his activities while living in Kirtland, Ohio, for over thirty-five years. This article will present what…

A Patchwork Biography | Margaret K. Brady, Mormon Healer and Folk Poet: Mary Susannah Fowler’s Life of “Unselfish Usefulness”

“. . .I cut out my patch work & you rested from shoveling snow.” (105) 

In pioneer times, women salvaged and collected whatever scraps of fabric they could find and created quilts that were often colorful, dynamic, and artistic.

Navigating the Difficult Terrain of the Mormon Experience | James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker, Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1897, and Ronald W. Walker, David J. Whittaker, and James B. Allen, Mormon History

For the last several years I have had the opportunity to serve on the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee. That assignment— in addition to my day job as Curator of Special Collections at Weber…

The Local Politics of Vice and Virtue | Jeffrey Nichols, Prostitution, Polygamy and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918

One of the most intriguing ironies of life in Salt Lake City during the nineteenth century was the clash of the Mormons who were morally outraged to see the advent of prostitution in their valley…

A Bloody and Diabolical Deed | Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Will Bagley stands, metaphorically, on the shoulders of Juanita Brooks, peering into southwestern Utah’s landscape to witness a ghastly sight: the murder of over one hundred men, women, and children at the hands of Mormon…

“Not Invited, But Welcome”: The History and Impact of Church Policy on Sister Missionaries

Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have engaged in missionary work since the year of the religion’s founding. But sociological research on the experience of these missionaries is still young and stands as a field white and ready to harvest.

A Frank Analysis of a Troubling Legacy | Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage

Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of Sociology and Religious Studies at Washington State University, has produced the authoritative and definitive study of the evolution of Mormon conceptions of race and lineage. As a practicing Latter-day Saint,…

Charismatic Leader and Organizing Genius | Robert V. Reminin, Joseph Smith

In this biography of Joseph Smith by a non-Mormon historian, we have a short, readable, mostly chronological narrative that presents Joseph Smith and Mormonism as the products of a particular historical period. A professor emeritus…

Identifying the Sites at Mountain Meadows | A New Look at Old Sites on Mountain Meadows: Historical Topography, by Morris A. Shirts and Frances Anne Smeath

This slim volume is intended by its publisher to inaugurate a series of monographs devoted to the study of the infamous 1857 massacre of over 100 emigrants by misguided Mormons and their Indian allies in southern Utah. The massacre was initially treated…

Power and Powerlessness: A Personal Perspective

In his book Power and Innocence, Rollo May defines power as “the ability to cause or prevent change.” May identifies five kinds of power: exploitative, “the simplest and, humanly speaking, most destructive kind of power”; manipulative, which is “power over another person”; competitive, “power against another”; nutrient, “power for the other”; and integrative, “power with another person.”

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.

On Being Adopted: Julia Murdock Smith

Julia Murdock Smith was one of the infant twins adopted by Joseph and Emma Smith. She was raised as the oldest child in the Smith household. In recent years, biographers have claimed Julia as primary…

Sidney Rigdon’s 1820 Ministry: Preparing the Way for Mormonism in Ohio

One month after Sidney Rigdon’s  conversion to Mormonism, he visited Joseph Smith in New York, occasioning the following revelation: 

I say unto my servant Sidney, I have looked upon thee and thy works. I have heard thy prayers, and prepared thee for a greater work. Thou art blessed, for thou shalt do great things. Behold, thou wast sent forth, even as John, to prepare the way before me. . .and thou knewest it not. (Doctrine and Covenants, hereafter D&C, 35:3-5)

The Search for the Seed of Lehi: How Defining Alternative Models Helps in the Interpretation of Genetic Data

A culture’s level of scientific understanding significantly influences how its religious texts are interpreted. The interplay between scientific discovery and scriptural understanding has been controversial throughout history. For example, the Catholic church’s response to scholars…

Simply Implausible: DNA and a Mesoamerican Setting for the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):129–167
Instead of lending support to an Israelite origin as posited by Mormon scripture, genetic data have confirmed already existing archaeological, cultural, linguistic, and biological data, pointing to migrations from Asia as “the primary source of American In￾dian origins

A Biographer’s Burden: Evaluating Robert Remini’s Joseph Smith and Will Bagley’s Brigham Young

[1]During the past year, I have had the opportunity to read and review two significant books Robert Remini’s Joseph Smith (New York: Viking Press, 2003) and Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and…

Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):109–128
DID JOSEPH SMITH WRITE the Book of Mormon? To this over-familiar question the orthodox Latter-day Saint answer is a resounding “No” because the official belief is that a series of men with quasi-biblical names wrote the book over many centuries.

“There Really is a God and He Dwells in the Temporal Parietal Lobe of Joseph Smith’s Brain”

In a recent issue of Dialogue, Robert M. Price offers his perspective on the origin of the Book of Mormon and a recommendation for how Latter-day Saints should understand the significance of that book.[1] Dr.…

Scrying for the Lord: Magic, Mysticism, and the Origins of the Book of Mormon

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):109–128
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 specif￾ically, a scryer who used his peepstone to discover the location of buried trea￾sure.

From Captain Kidd’s Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism

One day in late March 1697, a ship named the Adventure Galley arrived at the Island of Mohilla, one of the Comoro Islands. Its fever-stricken crew careened the vessel for cleaning and then proceeded to…

The Prophet’s Fall: A Note in Response to Lawrence Foster’s “The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma”

As is Usual and to be expected, Lawrence Foster’s article is excellent. Let me simply share a few additional thoughts about how my understanding of the charismatic prophet’s regress and demise has changed since my…

The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma: New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership

The issue of Charismatic Leadership—whether in religious, political, or other types of groups—has been the focus of widespread popular and scholarly attention. The word “charismatic” derives from the name of the Greek goddess Charis and…

Editor’s Introduction: Wicks, Modems, and the Winds of War

Standing as we still do on the brink of a new millennium, Latter-day Saints share with their neighbors and friends across the globe a profound interest in the fortunes of twenty-first-century war and peace. Not only do we wish to live our lives and raise our children under a quiet sky in safety and peace, far from the addictive savagery to which humankind sinks in time of war, but as an increasingly international church committed to sending missionaries into all the countries of the world, who could dispute the advantages if all those countries were at peace?

A Tribute for Service Well Rendered

The Bishop in Neal Chandler’s story “The Call” counsels a young man: “It’s not easy to be a real writer. . . .” How true, especially when you want, as did the bishop in Neal’s…

The Freiberg Temple: An Unexpected Legacy of a Communist State and a Faithful People

On April 23, 1983, a groundbreaking ceremony for the only temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built behind the Iron Curtain was held in the city of Freiberg, in the German…

The Red Peril, the Candy Maker, and the Apostle: David O. McKay’s Confrontation with Communism

Throughout his long tenure as a General Authority, David O. McKay was consistently opposed to Communism, as were his fellow General Authorities. Ironically, once he had become president of the Church, opposition to Communism became…

Living and Dying with Fallout

Last summer, while I was reading the Salt Lake Tribune, I stumbled across the obituary of a beautiful woman who looked uncannily like my older sister, Ann. That’s why I read her obituary. Only when I saw the list of Lisa McPhie’s survivors did I realize she was Lisa Lundberg, who had grown up with me on a quiet tree-lined street in Salt Lake City. Her older sisters were my best friends in junior high school. We were inseparable then. Thirty years later, Lisa, who watched our teenage escapades with a hint of boredom, was dead of a rare blood disorder that had defied diagnosis since she first became ill in 1985. 

Utah Historians | Gary Topping, Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History

Bernard DeVoto gave an impromptu lecture about the process of writing nonfiction at the 1955 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Conference Director Theodore Morrison described the lecture as “an exacting intellectual test for his audience. .…

Relief Society’s Golden Years: The Magazine

My mother was an enthusiastic, devoted member of the Relief Society—the old Relief Society, the pre-block-meeting-schedule, pre-Correlation Relief Society. She belonged to a Relief Society that LDS women chose to join by paying a small…

“Changing Times Bring Changing Conditions”: Relief Society, 1960 to the Present

The 1960s marked for Latter-day Saints the commencement of a new era of consolidation and growth that have led to multiple changes in the Relief Society. The organization experienced the automatic enrollment of women in…

What Does God Write in His Franklin Planner? The Paradoxes of Providence, Prophecy, and Petitionary Prayer

The doctrine of divine providence states that God is the supreme governor of the world—past, present, and future. Different versions of the doctrine depend on different interpretations of governance. The strongest version of this doctrine comes from the Calvinists who assert that each and every event in the history of the world is planned by God and happens only because God wills it, including anything that humans do.

Mormons and the Omnis: The Dangers of Theological Speculation

Engaging in doctrinal speculation, and then later adopting these speculations as religious dogmas, is as old as recorded history. One example is the adoption of the traditional geocentric, flat-earth cosmology of antiquity into the doctrinal…

Imprisonment, Defiance, and Division: The History of Mormon Fundamentalism in the 1940s and 1950s

The modern Fundamentalist Mormon community consists of a number of groups and many independent family clusters. The two largest are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) centered in Colorado City, Arizona,…

Saving the Germans from Themselves? | Alan Keele, In Search of the Supernal: Pre-Existence, Eternal Marriage, and Apotheosis in German Literary, Operatic and Cinematic Texts

This engaging labor-of-love book is a pleasure to read even if one does not always agree with its arguments. In it, BYU German professor Alan Keele mines German literature and drama for what he calls…

Triptych-History of the Church

I feel grace descend like whiskey-scented 
oil poured over me in the upper room on 
my way to heaven. I dance in the heat of 
a fire, like ghosts following Sitting Bull 

Women in a Time Warp | Sheree Maxwell Bench and Susan Elizabeth Howe, eds., Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women

Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women is a slim publication attempting to represent two hundred years of poetry by Mormon women. The anthology is divided into sections that portray the stages of a…

The Open Canon and Innovation | Gary JAmes Bergera, Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith

Gary James Bergera’s book, Conflict in the Quorum, is a well written and fascinating account of Orson Pratt, one of Joseph Smith’s original Twelve Apostles, that highlights some of his disagreements with Church leaders (including…

Belief, Respect, and an Elbow to the Ribs | Richard Lyman Bushman, Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essaysm

I had a very strange experience once in which Richard Bushman was indirectly involved. This experience took place when I was in an interview with the chairman of a graduate program at a well-respected university.…

“He Was ‘Game'” | Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet

Dan Vogel has written an extensive volume on the controversial Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, focusing on his creation of the Book of Mormon as “the making of a prophet.”[1] Vogel has done impressive research, not…

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

When teaching argumentative writing, a wise instructor will often introduce her students to what is called the principle of charity, or the realization that problematic arguments were composed by intelligent people who faced rhetorical constraints…

The Weight of Priesthood

I was eight years old one March Sunday. The chapel curtains were bright with the springtime sun, as if angels were standing outside. The church itself was new, built only a year or two before…

The Remnant Church: An RLDS Schismatic Group Finds a Prophet of Joseph’s Seed

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 26–54
When the 1984 conference approved Section 156 , which also indicated that the soon-to-be-built temple in Independence would be dedicated to the pursuit of peace, it became clear that the largest “schism”—separation from the unity of the Church—in the history of the RLDS Church was in the making.

Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841-1844

Dialogue 38.3 (Spring 2004): 1–74
Bergera uses evidence from plural wives to show who some of the first polygamists were in the church.

Tending the Desert | Alan K. Parish, John A. Widtsoe: A Biography

We have waited five decades for a biography of one of our most prominent apostles, and I am grateful to Alan Parish for bringing the volume into existence. He is to be congratulated for returning…

The Un-Hagiography | Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

The term “hagiography” refers to writings indicating that an individual is worthy of sainthood. Chiefly produced by Catholics during the Middle Ages, hagiography takes many forms. The most common is the vitae—biographies that document the…

A Scholarly Tribute to Leonard Arrington | Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University Libraries, The Collected Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lectures

Contained in this informative volume are ten essays originally delivered as annual lectures from 1995 through 2004 honoring Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of Utah-Mormon history, former LDS Church Historian, and one-time Utah State University…

A Trader and His Friends | Susan E. Woods and Robert S. McPherson, eds., Along Navajo Trails: Recollections of a Trader by Will Evans

“Imagine.” Will Evans’s evocative text begins with an invitation to the reader to enter the Welsh immigrant’s bull pen, roll a smoke with free tobacco plugged on the nailed-down lid of a lard can, and…

A National Conspiracy? | Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius & Joseph: presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet

Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister selected the title Junius & Joseph to emphasize their thesis that Joseph Smith’s death was a political assassination. The authors point out that the Junius tracts were “issued…

A Forty-Year View: Dialogue and the Sober Lessons of History

I well remember the spring and summer of 1965 when Gene England, Wesley Johnson, Paul Salisbury, Joseph Jeppson, and I got together to explore the idea of an unofficial Mormon publication. There were lively conversations culminating in a meeting at the Johnson home on July 11, where we voted to incorporate as a non-profit under the laws of Utah. The History Department at Stanford allowed us to use a portion of Wes’s office as our base—no rent, no utilities to pay. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought was the result. A lot has been written about that early history. However, there are a couple of things I see now that I didn’t clearly grasp then. First, I, for one, was a thoroughly pre-correlation Mormon. Second, the Church is not immune from the sober lessons of history. 

The Death and Resurrection of the RLDS Zion: A Case Study in “Failed Prophecy” 1930-70

On Resurrection Sunday, April 1930, Bishop J. A. Koehler of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints attended a priesthood prayer meeting at the Stone Church RLDS congregation in Independence, Missouri. After a week of solemn and joyful conference services remembering the past century of the denomination’s history, men from across the world sat seeking the Lord’s further direction before Easter services.

A Novel with a Lot of Way-Out-There Ideas : D. Michael Martindale, Brother Brigham

Balancing Faith and Honesty : Segullah: Writings by Latter-day Saint Women

A Must-Read on Gender Politics : Martha Sonntag Bradley, Pedestals, Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights

Building “as Great a Temple as Ever Solomon Did” : Matthew McBrid A House for the Most High: The Story of the Original Nauvoo Temple

The Kind of Woman Future Historians Will Study : Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Innocent Hooligan : Douglas Thayer, Hooligan: A Morman Boyhood

Good Stories Told Well : A Survey of Mainstream Children’s Books by LDS Authors

Polygamy, Mormonism, and Me

Dialogue 41.2 (Summer 2009): 85–101
Hardy describes the long, difficult process of researching polygamy during a time that the church wasn’t open about polygamy.

“A New Future Requires a New Past”

My Madness

The Scholar as Celebrant : Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture

A History of Dialogue, Part Four: A Tale in Two Cities, 1987-92

Tribute to Levi S. Peterson

A Most Amazing Gift

Revelations from a Silent Angel

Not Your Parents’ Mormonism

The Remembering and Forgetting of Utah County’s Landmarks

Dixie Heart of Darkness

Mountain Meadows: Not Yet Gone

A Missive on Mountain Meadows

Roundtable on Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Time Tabled by Mormon History

The Beginnings of Latter-day Plurality Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage.” by George D. Smith

Nauvoo Polygamy: The Latest Word Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage.” by George D. Smith

Complete History of the Church

A Small History of Joseph Smith; Biography of Eugene England

Mordred Had a Good Point Gary Topping, Leonard J. Arrington: A Historian’s Life

Prophet, Seer, Revelator, American Icon Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens, eds., Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries

Formulas and Facts: A Response to John Gee

Dialogue 45.3 (Fall 2012): 1–10
In Winter 2010, Chris Smith and I published an article in Dialogue demonstrating that no more than ~56 cm of papyrus can be missing from the interior of the scroll of Hôr—the papyrus Joseph Smith identified as the Book of Abraham. John Gee has responded by claiming that our method is “anything but accurate” and that it “glaringly underestimates the length of the scroll.” He states that “Two different formulas have been published for estimating the original length of a scroll,” then attempts to show that “Hoffmann’s formula approximates the actual length of the papyrus,” whereas “Cook and Smith’s formula predicts a highly inaccurate length.” The fact is, the two formulas are completely equivalent. They are both exact expressions of an Archimedean spiral and they yield precisely the same results, if correctly applied.

Mormon Pulp with a Reading Group Guide David Ebershoff. The 19th Wife: A Novel

Twilight and Dawn: Turn-of-the-Century Mormonism Lu Ann Faylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder, eds. Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899–1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff

Response to Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899–1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff that contains letter correspondence between Apostle Owen Woodruff and his wives after Woodruff’s father issued the Manifesto.

Loving Truthfully Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate

Legacy of a Lesser-Known Apostle Edward Leo Lyman. Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate: A Study in Dedication

Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism

Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63
Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.

In Lieu of History: Mormon Monuments and the Shaping of Memory

Finding the Presence in Mormon History: An Interview with Susanna Morrill, Richard Lyman Bushman,and Robert Orsi

Reid L. Neilson, Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901–1924

Patrick Q. Mason, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South

The Persistence of Mormon Plural Marriage

Review: Edward Leo Lyman, Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889–1895

Review: The Truth Will Set You Free Errol Morris, Tabloid

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

The Richard D. Poll and J. Kenneth Davies Cases: Politics and Religion at BYU during the Wilkinson Years

Mapping Manifest Destiny: Lucile Cannon Bennion (1891–1966)

Home and Adventure: An LDS Contribution to the Virtues and Vices Tradition

Dear Diary: Joseph F. Smith’s Mission Journals Nathaniel R. Ricks, ed. “My Candid Opinion”: The Sandwich Island Diaries of Joseph F. Smith, 1856–1857

Errand Out of the Wilderness Matthew Bowman. The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

Making Visible the Hand of Ritual: Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842–1845: A Documentary History; Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845–1846: A Docu

Mormon Authoritarianism and American Pluralism

Review: Terryl L. Givens, Matthew J. Grow Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism

Mormon History Association Conference: Comment on “Conversion in 19th Century Mormonism: Identities and Associations in the Atlantic World”

Mormon History Association Conference: The Theology of a Career Convert: Edward Tullidge’s Evolving Identities

Mormon History Association Conference: To Forsake Thy Father and Mother: Mary Fielding Smith and the Familial Politics of Conversion

UVU Mormon Studies Conference: Mormon Blogs, Mormon Studies, and the Mormon Mind

Conference Report: Editor’s Introduction

Review: Hugh J. Cannon. To the Peripheries of Mormondom. Edited by Reid Neilson

Review: Kim Östman. The Introduction of Mormonism to Finnish Society, 1840–1900

Reviews: Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds. Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds. Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843

“And Now It Is the Mormons”: The Magazine Crusade against the Mormon Church, 1910–1911

Our Bickering Founding Fathers and Their Messy, Flawed, Divinely Inspired Constitution

Review: Reid L. Neilson, ed. In the Whirlpool: The Pre-Manifesto Letters of President Wilford Woodruff to the William Atkin Family, 1885–1890

Review: Brock Cheney. Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers

Review: J. Spencer Fluhman. “A Peculiar People”:Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

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

“My Principality on Earth Began”: Millennialism and the Celestial Kingdom in the Development of Mormon Doctrine

“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: Patrick Q. Mason, J. David Pulsipher, and Richard L. Bushman, eds. War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives

Review: Robert S. McPherson, Jim Dandy, and Sarah E. Burak. Navajo Tradition, Mormon Life: The Autobiography and Teachings of Jim Dandy

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

The Kirtland Temple as a Shared Space: A Conversation with David J. Howlett

Dialogue 47.1 (Spring 2014): 104–123
An oral interview between an LDS Member and a Community of Christ member regarding the history of the Kirtland Temple. They explain that despite differences in religious beliefs, people can still form friendships and cooperate.

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

Dialoguing Online: The Best of 10+ Years of Mormons Blogging

A Swelling Tide: Nineteen-Year-Old Sister Missionaries in the Twenty-First Century

“It was not a self-consistent ideology but a movement—a tremor in the earth, a lift in the wind, a swelling tide . . . an exhilarating sense of discovery, a utopian hope that women might…

Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years

Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 167–180
Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.

Review: Full Lives but Not Fulfilling Paula Kelly Harline. The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women

The Present, Past, and Future of LDS Financial Transparency

Review: Confident Interpretations of Silence David Conley Nelson. Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

The Last Memory: Joseph F. Smith and Lieux de Mémoire in Late Nineteenth-Century Mormonism