International

This Girl Is On Fire: Strength, Faith, and Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops Allison Hong Merrill, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops: A Memoir

Shayla Frandsen

Review: An Excellent Historiography into  the Complexities of Mexican Mormondom Elisa Eastwood Pulido, The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878–1961

Brittany Romanello

Personal Voices: To Be Young, Mormon, and Tongan

Moana Uluave-Hafoka

Review Essay: Mormon Poetry, 2012 to the Present

Bert Fuller

Decolonizing the Blossoming: Indigenous People’s Faith in a Colonizing Church

Moroni Benally

There’s No Such Thing as a Gospel Culture

Gina Colvin

Can Mormons be White in America?

Robert A. Goldberg

Thoughts on Latino Mormons, Their Afterlife, and the Need for a New Historical Paradigm for Saints of Color

Ignacio M. Garcia

Le Train à Grande Vitesse

R. A. Christmas

. . . we are passengers on the train of the Church . . . the luxury of getting on and off the train as we please is fading. The speed of the train is…

Mexicans, Tourism, and Book of Mormon Geography

Colleen McDannell

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017):55–88
Maintaining a conviction of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon
is no easy task in the era of DNA studies, archaeological excavations, and
aggressive attacks by evangelical Protestants. Latter-day Saints cultivate
commitment to the veracity of the Book of Mormon in many different
ways.

LDS Prospects in Italy for the Twenty-first Century

Michael W. Homer

When Apostle Lorenzo Snow was called in 1849 to “establish a mission in Italy and wherever the spirit should direct,”[1] he was initially optimistic that the Waldensians, a Protestant group in the Kingdom of Sardinia…

The Dream of a Mormon Colony in the Near East

Rao H. Lindsay

For almost 130 years, Mormon missionaries have been going to foreign lands. Most of this activity has been in Western European countries where the culture and the political and social institutions were quite similar to…

Middle Buddha

Robert Morris

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?  Psalm 137:4 If anybody asks me where I’ve been, I say Utah and China. When I realized that “Southern Far East Mission” didn’t mean…

God and Man in History

Richard D. Poll

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 Reorganization in the Twentieth Century

Barbara Higdon Lyon

On April 15, 1972 the Mormon History Association held a notable convention at Independence, Missouri. Some 130 members and friends of the Association visited historic Mormon sites and heard discourses from scholars representing both the…

Revolution and Mormonism in Asia: What the Church Might Offer a Changing Society

Paul V. Hyer

Asia is a land of revolution, a land where a complex of revolutions are inter related in such a way that one phase is not understood independent of the others, nor of the traditions from which they stem. These revolutionary trends are creating rapid changes throughout Asian society, one of which is a search for a new stability, and this greatly influences the development of Mormonism in Asia, including the kinds of people it attracts and its relative success or failure in sustaining activity and building a strong organization. 

Three Myths About Mormons in Latin America

F. LaMond Tullis

For the most part, Mormons have been a socially homogeneous people. True, the initial Anglo-American stock was reinforced from time to time by immigrants from Western Europe, but these converts were quickly absorbed into the Church’s social and cultural mainstream. Although successful missions were established among the Indians and especially among the Polynesians, it was nevertheless the English-speaking white Americans who gave the Church its leadership and set the tone of its culture.

Mormons in the Third Reich: 1933-1945

Joseph M. Dixon

The experience of the Church in non-American countries has not always been easy. In Germany in the 1930’s, for example, the Hitler regime viewed the Mormon Church as an American institution and therefore open to…

Moderation in All Things: Political and Social Outlooks of Modern Urban Mormons

Armand L. Mauss

Perhaps the most difficult kind of analysis that scholars may presume to make is that of presenting attitudes of people toward various ideas. Any poll can be affected by weakness in the sampling technique, by…

Caridad

Margaret R. Munk

Typhoon rains were pounding the house for the fifth consecutive night. I was preparing for bed with a candle and a bowl of water when I heard urgent feet on the stairs. Belen Rivera, our…

The Church and la Politica Italiano

J. Michael Cleverley

We were seated in the chapel of the building serving both as mission headquarters and home of the West Milan (Italy) Branch. Our young gospel doctrine teacher was presenting a lesson on the role of…

The Church in Egypt

J. Donald Bowen

My family and I recently spent three years in Cairo where we were much in volved in cooperative education programs with Egyptian counterparts. We became aware of how serious the official attitude toward an outside…

First Indian Convert’s Testimony

S. Paul Thiruthuvadoss

My father was a Hindu. He was converted to Christianity by Brethren Missionaries from England about 100 years ago, and he suffered persecutions from his Hindu parents, relatives and villagers for his having accepted Jesus…

Three Cathedrals in Spain

Kathryn R. Ashworth

Toledo | Barcelona | León

How International is the Church in Japan?

Jiro Numano

Robert Mullen writes in The Mormons that “temples are, in a way, measurements of the acceleration”[1] of the rapid expansion of the LDS Church. The Church will have a temple in Tokyo in 1980. Does…

Russian Writers Look at Mormon Manners, 1857-72

Leland A. Fetzer

The early years of the reign of Alexander II were among the most stirring in Russian history. After the repressive tenure of his father, Alexander brought hopes for innovation and projects for reform which the…

The Church Moves Outside the United States

F. LaMond Tullis

Mormons of the present generation, with their legacy of tenacity and perseverance as both a guide and a challenge, are attempting to offer “every nation, kindred, tongue, and people” an opportunity to hear the gospel…

The Expansion of Mormonism in the South Pacific

R. Lanier Britsch

Since the first encounter between Latter-day Saint missionaries and the peoples of Polynesia 136 years ago, there have been inevitable changes in both the methods of missionary work and the adaptation of the island members…

Mormonism and Maoism: The Church and People’s China

Bill Heaton

In a recent address to a Regional Representatives Seminar, President Kimball stated— 

We asked last conference for all members to pray with increased sincerity for peace in all nations and especially China, and that we might make entry with our missionaries. Since then many people have been to China and much interest has been shown. Let us ask our Heavenly Father to grant our petition and permit this great neighbor, China, to join the great family of nations now bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Escape from Viet Nam: An Interview with Nguyen Van The

William S. Bradshaw

Nguyen Van The, a native of Vietnam, was converted to Mormonism in 1966: “I had no previous religion, although as the son in a Buddhist family, I was expected to worship my ancestors.” In 1968…

Expanding LDS Church Abroad: Old Realities Compounded

Garth N. Jones

In recent decades, the LDS Church has moved out of the security of the “ever lasting mountains” to fulfill its prophetic dream of becoming a worldwide organization. Each year 225 thousand or more Saints are added to the fold. Over seventy percent are converts, recruited by a veritable army of full- and part-time missionaries. As of 1979, the Church numbered over 4.2 million. At a 6.4 percent annual growth rate, it will double every eleven years or so.

Polynesian Origins: More Word on the Mormon Perspective

Russell T. Clement

In few cases is the Mormon Church at such odds with “the learning of men” as in its answers to the intriguing questions of Polynesian origins and migrations. Apostle Mark E. Petersen expressed the Mormon…

Friends of West Africa: An Opportunity for Service

Reed L. Clegg

The leadership of President Kimball was usually gentle but generated profound ripples for good. His enunciation in 1978 of the revelation granting the priesthood to the blacks may be characterized as a tidal wave. It has…

From “Zion’s Attic” | Brigham Y. Card, Herbert C. Northcott, John E. Foster, Howard Palmer, and George K. Jarvis, eds., The Mormon Presence in Canada

Marc A. Schindler

Latter-day Saints are an even smaller minority in Canada than they are in the United States. To put their numbers into perspective, if Canada were California (the populations are approximately equal), the Mormon community would…

Heloise and Abelard | Constance L. Lieber and John Sillito, eds., Letters from Exile, The Correspondence of Martha Hughes Cannon and Angus M. Cannon

Carol Cornwall Madsen

One of the by-products of the federal crusade against plural marriage in late nineteenth-century Utah is the correspondence of separated spouses which dramatically records the personal impact of this volatile period in Mormon history. Because…

The Rise of the Church in Great Britain | Richard L. Jensen and Malcolm R. Thorp, eds., Mormons in Early Victorian Britain

Richard W. Sadler

Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, volume 4 in the University of Utah’s Mormon Studies series, is a significant contribution to the understanding of Mormon history in both the United States and Great Britain. As the…

Humor and Pathos: Stories of the Mormon Diaspora | Neal Chandler, Benediction: A Book of Stories

William Mulder

A late review has the advantage of calling a good book to the attention of any one who may have missed it the first time around, and of reaffirming what time has already proved—its lasting…

My Ghosts

G. G. Vandagriff

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”?

Marc A. Schindler

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

Jeffery S. Tolk

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

David P. Vandagriff

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…

Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles

Armand L. Mauss

In recent years social scientists have found it theoretically useful to understand church growth or decline in the context of a “religious economy.”[1] In this conceptualization each society has a “religion industry” in the same…

Mormonism in Modern Japan

Jiro Numano

“Since Japan as a nation has made such remarkable economic and technological progress, why is the church in Japan not also making comparable progress, but in fact is stagnant?” For some years now such a…

Between Covenant and Treaty: The LDS Future in New Zealand

Ian G. Barber

For the earliest nineteenth-century LDS missionaries in the Pacific, a strong appeal of the British Crown colony of New Zealand was the high concentration of English-speaking settlers among whom they could proselyte. Elder Addison Pratt,…

Towards 2000: Mormonism in Australia

Marjorie Newton

In April 1994 some sixty LDS professionals and business people from around Australia were invited to meet with the Pacific Area presidency in a Sydney conference unique to the Mormon church in this country. Quite…

Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbinger of the Future?

Thomas W. Murphy

With the assistance of her family, Marta Angelica Solizo forms and paints incredibly detailed ceramic Nativity scenes. A standard set con sists of fourteen pieces: three sheep, a bull, four donkeys laden with corn, squash,…

Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century

David Clark Knowlton

From the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now taking part in a revolution that is radically transforming Latin America. As a result, the church…

Ethnization and Accommodation: Dutch Mormons in Twenty-first-century Europe

Walter E. A. Van Beek

Alongside Utrecht’s largest canal, the nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic Martinuschurch dominates the centuries-old waterfront houses. Far be neath its glistening spire, the little entrance square, with a statue of the warrior saint Martinus at the center, bristles…

Feeding the Fleeing Flock: Reflections on the Struggle to Retain Church Members in Europe

Wilfried Decoo

As a twenty-two-year-old convert of just a few years, I was called in June 1969 to preside over a small branch of the church in Belgium. In the tiny office of the old house serving…

Science and Mormonism: Past, Present, Future

David H. Bailey

Dialogue 29.1 (Spring 1996): 80–97
Will the church be able to retain the essence of its theology in the faceof challenges from science? Will the church’s discourse on scientific topicsbe marked by fundamentalism, isolationism, or progressivism? Will the church be able to retain its large contingent of professional scientists?

Thinking About the Word of God in the Twenty-First Century

Karl C. Sandberg

For those imbued with Mormonism, the most appropriate figure for talking about the word of God in the twenty-first century is Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, presider over doors and gateways, and…

Membership Growth, Church Activity, and Missionary Recruitment

Gary Shepherd

To comprehend the potential emergence of Mormonism as a major religious force in the twenty-first century, it is essential to comprehend the missionary ideology and practices of the LDS church. For rank-and-file Latter-day Saints, this proposition seems simply axiomatic of their foundational faith in the restoration of Christ’s gospel and their divine man date to convert the world in anticipation of his second advent.

The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020

Lawrence A. Young

More than ever before the LDS church seems to measure its milestones in terms of numbers. Almost every issue of the Church News and the En sign includes an article or a graphic that highlights…

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Armand L. Mauss

Who would have dared to predict in 1830 that a tiny, radical circle of religious seekers around the Joseph and Lucy Smith family would be a church of 10 million only a few generations later…

Cordoba

Sam Cannon

Mom moved up to Santa Barbara, and Dad started having girlfriends over. Ladyfriends, he called them. When I stayed home sick from school, I saw the ladyfriends leave for work. “How cute. Is this yours?”…

Evidence without Reconciliation | LaMar Petersen, The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry

Polly Stewart

One cannot read or write about the Book of Mormon without acknowledging a position with respect to its truth claims. Even to profess no stake in any such claims is to take a position. People…

Bringing Balance to Our Historical Writing | Valeen Tippetts Avery, From Mission to Madness: Last Son of the Mormon Prophet

William D. Russell

David Hyrum Smith was Joseph Smith’s last child, born several months after the assassination of his father. He followed his oldest brother, Joseph Smith III, and his mother, Emma, into the RLDS Church and became a…

Missionaries, Missions, Converts, Cultures | Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle

David Clark Knowlton

To social scientists, missionaries are a great unknown. Perhaps the most important agents of social change around the globe, they have competed with scholars whose goal is to understand and appreciate people rather than to…

Building Cultural Bridges | Jessie L. Embry, Asian American Mormons: Bridging Cultures, and Jessie L. Embry, “In His Own Language”: Mormon Spanish Speaking Congregations in the United States

Paul Guajardo

As a missionary in Denver, I served in a Spanish-speaking branch—a re warding and sometimes frustrating experience. Because of the limited size of the congregation, I wondered about the segregation and whether the Spanish speaking…

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

Glen M. Cooper

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…

The LDS Sound World and Global Mormonism

Warrick N. Kear

The expansion of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may be described from a broadly phenomenological perspective in terms of sound and silence. My observations here deal with the outer, open dimension of…

Dig

Holly Welker

I began to dream I 
was soil and you 
were a plant that grew 
in me, root hard 

The Dynamics of LDS Growth in Guatemala, 1948-1998

Henri Gooren

The U.S.-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is rapidly becoming a worldwide church, particularly since the 1950s. One major reason for this is the church’s ambitious evangelization program: In 2000 it had 60,000…

Gethsemane and Calvary in LDS Soteriology

Douglas J. Davies

In this paper I explore one of the key ways in which the idea of salvation as formulated within LDS thought differs from expressions of salvation in other religious groups. I will also raise the…

Place, Time, and Family in Mormonism

Christie Davies

Christianity claims to be a universal religion, but in its origins and development it is also a Mediterranean religion, a religion which began among the Jews of Israel at the joining point of the great…

Mormon Studies in a European Setting

Douglas J. Davies

I am particularly grateful for the invitation to edit this special edition of Dialogue, largely because it allows me to address readers in a relatively informal and conversational way on certain academic issues which often…

The Diverse Sheep of Israel: Should the Shepherds Resemble Their Flocks?

Devyn M. Smith

Recently, my wife and I became foster parents to two teenagers of Haitian ancestry, a fourteen-year-old girl and an eighteen-year-old boy. It is our first-time parenting experience, and “interesting” is not an adjective that does…

A Marvelous Work and a Possession: Book of Mormon Historicity as Postcolonialism

R. John Williams

Dialogue 38.4 (Winter 2006):45–82
the original text, unfortunately, no longer exists on this earth, and we are left only with the assurances of a “translator” that the testimony contained in the record is “true,” although we do not, in fact, have even the complete text as it left the hand of the translator/scribe.

Mormon Europeans or European Mormons? An “Afro-European” View on Religious Colonization

Walter E. A. Van Beek

Mormon history is part of the colonization history of the American West; and the LDS Church, as a major player in that process, still bears a colonization imprint in many ways. The colonizing days are over now, and the Church is part of a major political presence in the world, no longer the colonized, but rather the colonizer. In this article, I argue that the Utah-based modern Church has replicated the same colonization process on its membership abroad to which it was once subjected.

Thinking Globally: Explorations into a Truly International, Multi-Cultural Church

Levi S. Peterson

With this issue, Dialogue begins a special series which, rather than filling a single issue, will present a number of articles in successive issues. Under the supervision of guest editor Ethan Yorgason, this series will…

Yesterday’s People

Gary Huxford

It would take a detailed map of Ethiopia to help you locate the village of Lalibela more than four hundred miles north of Addis Ababa. Save for a lyrically beautiful name, there is little to distinguish this place except that it contains some of the world’s most amazing monuments to religious devotion—the “mysterious subterranean, monolithic rock hewn churches,” as one travel guide describes them.

Perseverance amid Paradox: The Struggle of the LDS Church in Japan Today

Jiro Numano

The growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has recently slowed in Japan, as elsewhere, adding to the decades-long challenge for the Church of a low activity rate within the country. Latter-day Saints often say that conversion is more of a process than a one-time event. The same is true with LDS enculturation, or acceptance of this American-based church by other cultures as a legitimate part of their societies. Both conversion and enculturation require that people get to know something new and accept it as part of their personal being or their society’s character. As such, both processes are types of internalization, one at the individual level and one at the societal level. 

How Missionaries Entered East Germany: The 1988 Monson-Honecker Meeting

Raymond M. Kuehne

On Thursday, March 30, 1989, eight missionaries and their new mission president, Wolfgang Paul, were driven from Hamburg, West Germany, to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They expected a delay of several hours at the border but were amazed when the guards waved them through without the usual search of the cars. President Paul said, “After we crossed the border our joy was beyond description. President Schütze could hardly contain himself. He honked the horn, blinked the headlights, shouted and cried for joy because after fifty years missionaries were again in his country.”

Latter-day Saints under Siege: The Unique Experience of Nicaraguan Mormons

Henri Gooren

The LDS Church is currently gaining many new members in Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America. Nowadays more than 35 percent of the worldwide membership is concentrated in Latin America, compared to about 45 percent in the United States and Canada. By 2020, the majority of Mormons in the world will be Latin Americans, if the current growth rates continue. Judging from current LDS growth rates, the future Mormon heartland will be the Andes and Central America, instead of the Wasatch Front. Rodney Stark is exaggerating, however, when he labels Mormonism the next world religion, since he ignores a drop-out rate for converts that generally exceeds 50 percent.

“The Other” in the Limelight: One Perspective on the Publicity Surrounding the New LDS Temple in Finland

Kim B. Ostman

Dialogue 40.4 (2007): 70–105
The purpose of this article is to begin filling that gap by discussing some of the publicity accompanying the recently built Helsinki FinlandTemple, located in the southern Finland city of Espoo.

Hands Raised Up: Corruption, Power, and Context in Bolivian Mormonism

David Clark Knowlton

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strong authority structure. Power seemingly originates at the center of the Church, with the prophet and apostles, and radiates outward from there. This system of authority developed in the context of the Church’s efforts to colonize the U.S. Intermountain West, in its struggles with the U.S. federal government, and in its shift from a village to a suburban faith. Now this system must take account of its growth in many countries. 

The Scholarly Study of Mormonism in Finland: An Overview of Literature, Research Ideas, and Sources

Kim B. Ostman

The study of churches and religious movements is especially prone to the issues of bias and selective presentation due to researcher position and organizational politics. Like many other religions, Mormonism as an object of study has not escaped this problem.

In Taiwan but Not of Taiwan: Challenges of the LDS Church in the Wake of the Indigenous Movement

Chiung Hwang Chen

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced stable growth in Taiwan since the first four missionaries arrived in 1956. Even in recent years, when the growth of the Church has slowed considerably in many countries including those in East Asia, LDS growth in Taiwan remains robust. Thus, something distinctive characterizes Mormonism in Taiwan compared to Mormonism in neighboring countries. Some scholars have used diminishing growth rates in the past decade or two to argue that Mormonism remains marginal in many countries.

In a Better Country

Michael Fillerup

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly home . . . Heb. 11:16 “You don’t have to go,” she whispered, the morning grogginess in her voice betraying an urgency that was…

Realissimo

Ryan McIlvain

At nineteen, a Mormon missionary in Brazil, I felt foreign in every part, torn from language.  “Boy, it’s cold out,” I’d quip to the natives.  “No, Elder, hot” they’d say. “The word is hot.”  At…

El Problema del Dolor/The Problem of Pain

Christian Anderson

“An American Enterprise”: An Interview with Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne

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

Erica Eastley

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

(author)

Review: Armand L. Mauss. Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic

Brayden King

Comparing Mormon and Adventist Growth Patterns in Latin America: The Chilean Case

Henri Gooren

What Does Kashi Have to Do With Salt Lake?: Academic Comparisons, Asian Religions, and Mormonism

David J. Howlett

Crossing the Planes: Gathering, Grafting, and Second Sight in the Hong Kong China International District

Stacilee Ford

Review: Confident Interpretations of Silence David Conley Nelson. Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany

Jonathan Green

The Righteous Road

Ryan Shoemaker

My mom held her hand over the phone. “It’s Reed,” she whispered. I took the phone and leaned against the countertop. “Hello,” I said. “Hello.” “What, Derrick? No call?” Reed asked. “I didn’t know you…