Back to all topics

Mormon Culture

Recommended

Mischief and Ethnography Keith Norman. BUC: A Boy among the Saints

BUC: A Boy among the Saints spans a “year in the life of an unregenerate 10 year old”—the endearing young rascal Wilford Bushman. Wilf, like most in his rural Utah community of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, is “BUC”—“born…

The Dark Side of Devotion Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, The Contortionists

When a five-year-old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief-stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the new novel…

Mormonism and the Possibility of a Materialist Apostasy

The notion of apostasy is central to the identity of the Mormon people.[1] One might even say it is the raison d’être of Mormonism. It is the thing that explains why there needed to be…

Archive of the Covenant: Reflections on Mormon Interactions with State and Body

Dialogue 53.4 (Winter 2020): 79–107
In the logic of Mormon theology, an internal lack of faith is in part a result of the mismanagement of my mortal embodiment. Part of the reason that the “born this way” language of the marriage equality movement has had so little effect on the Mormon population compared to others is that it directly contradicts very recent and revered theological claims.

A Mormon Boy Meets a King

Post Mormon Past

Still You

What’s a Mormon Expert to Do?

“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma

On “Mormon” in Mormon Studies Publishing

All Content

Mischief and Ethnography Keith Norman. BUC: A Boy among the Saints

BUC: A Boy among the Saints spans a “year in the life of an unregenerate 10 year old”—the endearing young rascal Wilford Bushman. Wilf, like most in his rural Utah community of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, is “BUC”—“born…

The Dark Side of Devotion Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, The Contortionists

When a five-year-old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief-stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the new novel…

Mormonism and the Possibility of a Materialist Apostasy

The notion of apostasy is central to the identity of the Mormon people.[1] One might even say it is the raison d’être of Mormonism. It is the thing that explains why there needed to be…

Archive of the Covenant: Reflections on Mormon Interactions with State and Body

Dialogue 53.4 (Winter 2020): 79–107
In the logic of Mormon theology, an internal lack of faith is in part a result of the mismanagement of my mortal embodiment. Part of the reason that the “born this way” language of the marriage equality movement has had so little effect on the Mormon population compared to others is that it directly contradicts very recent and revered theological claims.

A Mormon Boy Meets a King

Post Mormon Past

Still You

What’s a Mormon Expert to Do?

“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma

On “Mormon” in Mormon Studies Publishing

Why I’m So Bad at Not Using “Mormon”

The Mormon Church and the Language of My Faith

Sweater

Ministering

Review: Can Faith Survive Choice and Circumstance? Jack Harrell. Caldera Ridge.

The Possessive Investment in Rightness: White Supremacy and the Mormon Movement

Brooks explains that “Mormons will have to choose to acknowledge the pivotal and pervasive role of white supremacy in the founding of LDS institutions and the growth of the Mormon movement.”

Review: The Empty Space between the Walls Joseph M. Spencer. The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record

Review: Not Alone Stephen Carter, ed. Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death

Review: Envisioning Mormon Art Laura Allred Hurtado. Immediate Present

Review: Horror Becomes Banal Under Scrutiny but Loss is Lasting in The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner Jennifer Quist. The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner

Review: Helping Us Think and Be in the World Linda Sillitoe. Owning the Moon

Review: The Gift of Language Heidi Naylor. Revolver

Review: A Life Worth Living George B. Handley. Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion

Review: Traveling “the undiscovered country” Stephen Carter, ed. Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death

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

There’s No Such Thing as a Gospel Culture

Can Mormons be White in America?

From the Pulpit: Why I Stay

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 209–213

“I was excommunicated from the Church in 1986. I am a gay man in a twenty-five-year-long relationship with my husband Göran Gustav-Wrathall. We were legally married in July 2008. Over the years, people have asked me how it is that I could consider myself Mormon if I’m not a member of the Church. What covenants are there for me to renew on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews, as I pass, without partaking, the sacrament tray to the person sitting next to me? To the extent that there is a relationship between me and God that has the Church as a context, real as it is to me, it is invisible to outside observers. That’s okay. I stay because I cannot deny what I know.”

To the Single Men of the Church

What the Church Means to People Like Me

A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham

Mormons in the Executive Suite

Art and the Church

Manhattan Faces

Mormons as City Planners

The Challenge of Secularism

Villa Mae

A Time of Transition

A Personal Commitment to Civil Equality

Reflections at Hopkins House

Mormons in the Urban Community

Mormons in the Secular City: An Introduction

Why the Coleville Tabernacle Had to be Razed: Principles Governing Mormon Architecture

Mormon World View and American Culture

The Gospel, Mormonism and American Culture

Among the Mormons

Phrenology Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of…

Mormonism in the Nineteen-Seventies: The Popular Perception

Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860

My Fifty Years in Journalism

From Antagonism to Acceptance: Mormons and the Silver Screen

Nostrums in the Newsroom

The Church as Broadcaster

The Church as Media Proprietor

Equality and Plain Living: Building the City of God, Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Gambit in the Throbs of a Ten-Year-Old Swamp: Confessions of a Dialogue Intern

The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal

Although Courage struck a responsive chord in quite a few hearts, its readers did not support it to the extent the editors had expected. Appealing only to a minority in a small church, and without either sufficient…

Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2

New Messenger and Advocate

Sunstone

A Wider Sisterhood

BYU Studies, How She Is

Gospel by the Month

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Contraceptive Use Among Mormons, 1965-75

“Among the Mormons”

Move Over, Fortune “500”: The Mormon Corporate Empire by John Heinerman and Anson Shupe

Jack-Mormons

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: East Meets West

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Through a Stained-Glass Window

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: “To Celebrate the Marriage Feast Which Has No End”

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Introductory Remarks

A Jew Among Mormons

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Ethnicity, Diversity, and Conflict

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: A Reorganized Church Perspective

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: An Australian Viewpoint

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Mormonism and the Challenge of the Mainline

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Viewing Mormonism as Mainline

Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah

Driggs shares the story of how in between the First and Second Manifestos, polygamy was still happening in secret.

In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise

Book of Mormon Stories That My Teachers Kept From Me

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

Selective Bibliography on African-American and Mormons 1830-1990

Bibliography of African Americans role in the church from 1830-1990.

Speaking for Themselves: LDS Ethnic Groups Oral History Project

An oral history project on ethnic wards and branches.

Ethnic Groups and the LDS Church

A history of ethnic wards and branches as the church struggled with integration vs. segregation of immigrant communities.

Living Histories: Selected Biographies from the Manhattan First Ward

Women Alone: The Economic and Emotional Plight of Early LDS Women

Latter-day Myths About Counseling and Psychotherapy

Before the Wall Fell: Mormons in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-89

A New Kind of Abuse: The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Male-Male Intimacy among Nineteenth-century Mormons: A Case Study

Dialogue 28.4 (Winter 1995): 105–119
This was a prelude to his book-length treatment Same-Sex Dynamics in 19th C. America: A Mormon Example, that looked at “intimacy” broadly defined, before the rise of homophobia in the post-WWII period. It is a fascinating study of changing norms and practices that once allowed for a huge range of bonding practices between people of the same-sex. Quinn himself had come out in the course of researching this article and the book a few years before, and this work remains influential.

Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?

Mormonism and Determinism

Social Forces that Imperil the Family

Was Jesus a Feminist?

Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons by Jan Shipps

Thoughts on Mormonism, Evolution, and Brigham Young University

Well, I was raised i n a rather unscientific environment , a little farming community.

The Long Honeymoon: Jan Shipps among the Mormons

You Can Count on the Fingers of Your One Hand the Reasons

The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement

Premortal Spirits: Implications for Cloning, Abortion, Evolution, and Extinction

Perhaps no other moral issue divides the American public more than abortion. In part, the controversy hinges on the question of when the spirit enters the body. If a spirit were predestined for a given…

Clyde Forsberg’s Equal Rites and the Exoticizing of Mormonism

Changing Faiths Gave My Sons Hope

My Mission Decision

More Musings on Motherhood

Once upon July

Trial of Faith

In 2007 there is an essay by John Gustav Wrathal, a man who was excommunicated in 1986 and remains in a relationship, now married to his long-time partner. But he is also deeply committed to…

Seeds of Faith in City Soil: Growing Up Mormon in New York City

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

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

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Preserves

Light in Darkness: Embracing the Opportunity of Climate Change

An Excuse I’ve Been Working on for a While

No Longer as Strangers

To the 78 Percent

Fierce Joy and Proof That It Happened

Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference: Overcoming Technology: The Grace of Stuff

“Shake Off the Dust of Thy Feet”: The Rise and Fall of Mormon Ritual Cursing

Why the True Church Cannot Be Perfect

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

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

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

Sinners Welcome Here (2002)

Manly Virtue: Defining Male Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

What Shall We Do with Thou? Modern Mormonism’s Unruly Usage of Archaic English Pronouns

The Postum Table

A company man on his day off

Denying, Leap, Someone I Used to Know

Review: E-mails with a Young Mormon about Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon Adam S. Miller. Letters to a Young Mormon

Bibliography Bring ‘Em Young

Developing Integrity in an Uncertain World: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Review: The Mormon Murder Mystery Grows Up Mette Ivie Harrison. The Bishop’s Wife Tim Wirkus. City of Brick and Shadow

Review: Mormons Are a Different Country Mette Ivie Harrison. The Bishop’s Wife

On the Existential Impossibility of a Religious Identity: I’m a Mormon

Fast Offering

Mischief and Ethnography Keith Norman. BUC: A Boy among the Saints

BUC: A Boy among the Saints spans a “year in the life of an unregenerate 10 year old”—the endearing young rascal Wilford Bushman. Wilf, like most in his rural Utah community of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, is “BUC”—“born…

The Dark Side of Devotion Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, The Contortionists

When a five-year-old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief-stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the new novel…

Mormonism and the Possibility of a Materialist Apostasy

The notion of apostasy is central to the identity of the Mormon people.[1] One might even say it is the raison d’être of Mormonism. It is the thing that explains why there needed to be…

Archive of the Covenant: Reflections on Mormon Interactions with State and Body

Dialogue 53.4 (Winter 2020): 79–107
In the logic of Mormon theology, an internal lack of faith is in part a result of the mismanagement of my mortal embodiment. Part of the reason that the “born this way” language of the marriage equality movement has had so little effect on the Mormon population compared to others is that it directly contradicts very recent and revered theological claims.

A Mormon Boy Meets a King

Post Mormon Past

Still You

What’s a Mormon Expert to Do?

“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma

On “Mormon” in Mormon Studies Publishing

Why I’m So Bad at Not Using “Mormon”

The Mormon Church and the Language of My Faith

Sweater

Ministering

Review: Can Faith Survive Choice and Circumstance? Jack Harrell. Caldera Ridge.

The Possessive Investment in Rightness: White Supremacy and the Mormon Movement

Brooks explains that “Mormons will have to choose to acknowledge the pivotal and pervasive role of white supremacy in the founding of LDS institutions and the growth of the Mormon movement.”

Review: The Empty Space between the Walls Joseph M. Spencer. The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record

Review: Not Alone Stephen Carter, ed. Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death

Review: Envisioning Mormon Art Laura Allred Hurtado. Immediate Present

Review: Horror Becomes Banal Under Scrutiny but Loss is Lasting in The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner Jennifer Quist. The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner

Review: Helping Us Think and Be in the World Linda Sillitoe. Owning the Moon

Review: The Gift of Language Heidi Naylor. Revolver

Review: A Life Worth Living George B. Handley. Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion

Review: Traveling “the undiscovered country” Stephen Carter, ed. Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death

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

There’s No Such Thing as a Gospel Culture

Can Mormons be White in America?

From the Pulpit: Why I Stay

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 209–213

“I was excommunicated from the Church in 1986. I am a gay man in a twenty-five-year-long relationship with my husband Göran Gustav-Wrathall. We were legally married in July 2008. Over the years, people have asked me how it is that I could consider myself Mormon if I’m not a member of the Church. What covenants are there for me to renew on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews, as I pass, without partaking, the sacrament tray to the person sitting next to me? To the extent that there is a relationship between me and God that has the Church as a context, real as it is to me, it is invisible to outside observers. That’s okay. I stay because I cannot deny what I know.”

To the Single Men of the Church

What the Church Means to People Like Me

A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham

Mormons in the Executive Suite

Art and the Church

Manhattan Faces

Mormons as City Planners

The Challenge of Secularism

Villa Mae

A Time of Transition

A Personal Commitment to Civil Equality

Reflections at Hopkins House

Mormons in the Urban Community

Mormons in the Secular City: An Introduction

Why the Coleville Tabernacle Had to be Razed: Principles Governing Mormon Architecture

Mormon World View and American Culture

The Gospel, Mormonism and American Culture

Among the Mormons

Phrenology Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of…

Mormonism in the Nineteen-Seventies: The Popular Perception

Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860

My Fifty Years in Journalism

From Antagonism to Acceptance: Mormons and the Silver Screen

Nostrums in the Newsroom

The Church as Broadcaster

The Church as Media Proprietor

Equality and Plain Living: Building the City of God, Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Gambit in the Throbs of a Ten-Year-Old Swamp: Confessions of a Dialogue Intern

The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal

Although Courage struck a responsive chord in quite a few hearts, its readers did not support it to the extent the editors had expected. Appealing only to a minority in a small church, and without either sufficient…

Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2

New Messenger and Advocate

Sunstone

A Wider Sisterhood

BYU Studies, How She Is

Gospel by the Month

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Among the Mormons

Contraceptive Use Among Mormons, 1965-75

“Among the Mormons”

Move Over, Fortune “500”: The Mormon Corporate Empire by John Heinerman and Anson Shupe

Jack-Mormons

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: East Meets West

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Through a Stained-Glass Window

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: “To Celebrate the Marriage Feast Which Has No End”

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Introductory Remarks

A Jew Among Mormons

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Ethnicity, Diversity, and Conflict

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: A Reorganized Church Perspective

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: An Australian Viewpoint

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Mormonism and the Challenge of the Mainline

Mormonism Becomes a Mainline Religion: The Challenges: Viewing Mormonism as Mainline

Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah

Driggs shares the story of how in between the First and Second Manifestos, polygamy was still happening in secret.

In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise

Book of Mormon Stories That My Teachers Kept From Me

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

Selective Bibliography on African-American and Mormons 1830-1990

Bibliography of African Americans role in the church from 1830-1990.

Speaking for Themselves: LDS Ethnic Groups Oral History Project

An oral history project on ethnic wards and branches.

Ethnic Groups and the LDS Church

A history of ethnic wards and branches as the church struggled with integration vs. segregation of immigrant communities.

Living Histories: Selected Biographies from the Manhattan First Ward

Women Alone: The Economic and Emotional Plight of Early LDS Women

Latter-day Myths About Counseling and Psychotherapy

Before the Wall Fell: Mormons in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-89

A New Kind of Abuse: The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Male-Male Intimacy among Nineteenth-century Mormons: A Case Study

Dialogue 28.4 (Winter 1995): 105–119
This was a prelude to his book-length treatment Same-Sex Dynamics in 19th C. America: A Mormon Example, that looked at “intimacy” broadly defined, before the rise of homophobia in the post-WWII period. It is a fascinating study of changing norms and practices that once allowed for a huge range of bonding practices between people of the same-sex. Quinn himself had come out in the course of researching this article and the book a few years before, and this work remains influential.

Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?

Mormonism and Determinism

Social Forces that Imperil the Family

Was Jesus a Feminist?

Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons by Jan Shipps

Thoughts on Mormonism, Evolution, and Brigham Young University

Well, I was raised i n a rather unscientific environment , a little farming community.

The Long Honeymoon: Jan Shipps among the Mormons

You Can Count on the Fingers of Your One Hand the Reasons

The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement

Premortal Spirits: Implications for Cloning, Abortion, Evolution, and Extinction

Perhaps no other moral issue divides the American public more than abortion. In part, the controversy hinges on the question of when the spirit enters the body. If a spirit were predestined for a given…

Clyde Forsberg’s Equal Rites and the Exoticizing of Mormonism

Changing Faiths Gave My Sons Hope

My Mission Decision

More Musings on Motherhood

Once upon July

Trial of Faith

In 2007 there is an essay by John Gustav Wrathal, a man who was excommunicated in 1986 and remains in a relationship, now married to his long-time partner. But he is also deeply committed to…

Seeds of Faith in City Soil: Growing Up Mormon in New York City

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

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

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Preserves

Light in Darkness: Embracing the Opportunity of Climate Change

An Excuse I’ve Been Working on for a While

No Longer as Strangers

To the 78 Percent

Fierce Joy and Proof That It Happened

Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference: Overcoming Technology: The Grace of Stuff

“Shake Off the Dust of Thy Feet”: The Rise and Fall of Mormon Ritual Cursing

Why the True Church Cannot Be Perfect

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

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

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

Sinners Welcome Here (2002)

Manly Virtue: Defining Male Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

What Shall We Do with Thou? Modern Mormonism’s Unruly Usage of Archaic English Pronouns

The Postum Table

A company man on his day off

Denying, Leap, Someone I Used to Know

Review: E-mails with a Young Mormon about Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon Adam S. Miller. Letters to a Young Mormon

Bibliography Bring ‘Em Young

Developing Integrity in an Uncertain World: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Review: The Mormon Murder Mystery Grows Up Mette Ivie Harrison. The Bishop’s Wife Tim Wirkus. City of Brick and Shadow

Review: Mormons Are a Different Country Mette Ivie Harrison. The Bishop’s Wife

On the Existential Impossibility of a Religious Identity: I’m a Mormon

Fast Offering