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Mormon Culture

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Elongated Time Phyllis Barber, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky

Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…

The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

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

The Great Zucchini War

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

All Content

Elongated Time Phyllis Barber, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky

Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…

The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

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

The Great Zucchini War

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

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 45–81
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

who sit singly, as I do, on unkempt 
beds in dingy small rooms among their own 
litter and cast-off clothes; who slump 
against walls watching late-nite TV instead 

What the Church Means to People Like Me

A natural reaction to my title—since this is not a testimony meeting in which each speaker is his own subject—might be, “Who cares?” For who in this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother,…

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…

Mormons in the Secular City: An Introduction

Mormons, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, have entered the Secular City. This term, coined by Harvey Cox, expresses (in “secular”) a “this worldness”—meaning that the work of the world must be done by man himself, and (in “city”) all historical and Utopian dreams for the model community. Dialogue magazine stands at that intersection between the religious and the secular worlds.

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

Mormonism has been subject to rapid renovation since its founding. The Prophet Joseph made it quite clear that God’s revelations were continual and that if things were withheld for the moment, it was because His…

Mormon World View and American Culture

Neither the scholars nor the Mormons themselves have been able to come to agreement about the relationship between the life of the LDS people in this country and American lifeways. The views of outside observers…

The Gospel, Mormonism and American Culture

This issue of Dialogue emphasizes the relationship between Mormonism and American culture. John Sorenson’s lead article on “Mormon World View and American Culture” sets the stage by attempting to make a distinction between the gospel…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Utah has achieved the dubious distinction of making the pages of the prestigious organ of America’s publication industry, Publishers’ Weekly. To some the publicity achieved in the article “Bookstore Perishes in Wake of Utah Obscenity Legislation” represents a disheartening step into further denial of free agency. To others it represents a heartening step in the direction of rooting out the devil all around us.

Phrenology Among the Mormons

On 2 July 1842 the Nauvoo Wasp contained a letter from A. Crane, M.S., professor of phrenology, alluding to the “large number of persons in different places” who wished to know “the phrenological development of…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

If we accept the value Ms. Arbuthnot places upon books, the Mormon community is indeed rich. The editor of this column never ceases to be amazed by the quantity (and increasingly the quality) of books and periodicals directed at the Mormon audience. Among the new entrants, of which most of Dialogue’s subscribers should have received a sample issue, is Exponent II, published by Mormon Sister, Inc. of Arlington, Massachusetts. Exponent II is “A quarterly newspaper concerning Mormon women, published by Mormon Women, and of interest to Mormon women and others.”

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

The materials reviewed in this bibliography are books—new and reprint—published since the last book list appeared in the Autumn/Winter 1973 issue of Dialogue. This is a selected listing excluding some of the publications well advertised in Church publications or available through ward “bookstores.” The selection is made solely upon the editor’s discretion and subject to his foibles. 

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Progress implies change and for this writer the call to explore new opportunities has become more insistent in recent years. It will soon be ten years since this column appeared in the first issue of Dialogue. Ten years seems sufficient to insure a sound beginning. If there are any among our readers who wish to take up the challenge of editing this column now is the time to step forward. 

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Just over ten years ago I was approached by four young Mormons who were affiliated with Stanford University in one capacity or another. They wanted to know if there was a library market for a…

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
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 having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

Mormonism in the Nineteen-Seventies: The Popular Perception

Perhaps more than the members of any other religious sect, Mormons are preoccupied with their public image. It may be argued that such preoccupation is a form of narcissism unworthy of the Restored Gospel, but…

Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860

Image history—how the Mormons were viewed by others—has been a fruitful approach used by several historians during the past decade.

My Fifty Years in Journalism

Can a Mormon boy from the cow country of the West reasonably aspire to a writing career in the mainstream of our national life? What roads are open to him? Must he sacrifice his faith…

From Antagonism to Acceptance: Mormons and the Silver Screen

Mormons have been involved in films ever since Hollywood became a magic word. Church members first tried to influence the Hollywood establishment, then went on to create their own film industries; finally, today a corps…

Nostrums in the Newsroom

Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Six was not a dull year for the 127-year-old Deseret News. Melvin Dummar, a Box Elder County service station operator, was named, along with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,…

The Church as Broadcaster

The Mormon Church is a formidable broadcast institution. Through subsidiary corporations and institutions it owns sixteen radio and television stations, a sophisticated international broadcast distribution system, a Washington news bureau, a cable TV system and production and consulting divisions.

The Church as Media Proprietor

Small wonder that churches use the mass media as a broad-based platform for information and persuasion. The communications marvels of our century make it possible for the LDS Church to reach a wide audience indeed,…

Equality and Plain Living | Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God, Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons

In 1831 Joseph Smith announced the Law of Consecration and Stewardship. This law was revealed, according to the Prophet, to establish the social and economic basis of the Restoration on the same scriptural foundations as…

Among the Mormons

Eleven years ago, Dialogue and Ralph W. Hansen began an association which would last a decade and produce nearly forty Among the Mormons columns. His painstaking contribution stands as a monument to dedication and diligence.…

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

How does an English graduate student who wants a visit to the East Coast, instruction in the American political system and an introduction into the Mormon publishing world satisfy these three ambitions in one two-month…

The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal

Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 115–119
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 subscribers or a financial “angel/  Courage died after its eleventh number (Winter/Spring 1973).

Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2

Jousting with windmills is a bit out of fashion nowadays, insanity even more so. But every now and then some glittering-eyed individual comes by with an idea most people do best to ignore. 

The New Messenger & Advocate

A magazine is supposed to be one of the easiest businesses to start. It requires no office, no equipment (printing and even mailing can be farmed out to local businesses), no staff as long as…

Sunstone

“Oh,” lamented Job, “that mine adversary had written a book.” Logic and syntax—even basic facts—which are unmistakably clear and irrefutable in manuscript form have a way of breaking down when committed to print. And when…

A Wider Sisterhood: Exponent II

Many readers were surprised and delighted when Exponent II burst upon the scene. “You have lifted my thoughts from the mundane and sweetened my dreams of fulfillment,” wrote one. Another commented, “A newspaper for Mormon…

BYU Studies, How She Is

People are always asking me how I like working at BYU Studies. I say . . .

Gospel by the Month: Ensign

In 1971, all official church magazines were literally swept away and replaced by three colorful, professional, slick publications, each aimed at a different age group—the Ensign for adults, the New Era for young people and…

Among the Mormons: A Selected Bibliography of Recent Works on Mormons and Mormonism

Mormonism throughout much of its rather brief, history has stirred emotional responses from a large portion of the American populace. What began in the 1830’s as persecution and a forced flight to the West has…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Biographies and family histories, have been by far the most popular subject of Mormon-related books during the past year. These works stem in large part from the ingenuity of family organizations and the ever increasing…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

The vast majority of the books considered in the accompanying compilation are of a biographical, fictional, doctrinal or inspirational nature. While the biographies and works on local history are generally intended for a rather limited…

Contraceptive Use Among Mormons, 1965-75

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 1984): 108–113
For some families, delaying birth control until after the arrival of the first or second child is undoubtedly consistent with a desire to begin a family soon after marriage. In other cases, however, failure to practice birth control during the first and/or second birth intervals may be based on a belief that to do so would be contrary to Church teachings.

“Among the Mormons”

Thoreau wrote in the beginning of Walden, “I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.” I can roughly paraphrase Thoreau and say, “I have lived some thirty years among the Mormons and have yet to record the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice about how I have managed to do it.”

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

When it comes to explaining economic matters, Americans have difficulty resisting conspiracy theories and are even more fascinated with their second cousin, the expose. Small wonder, then, that in a single week last July Fortune…

Jack-Mormons

Aunt Ella used to say that a man who doesn’t live his principles is a poor specimen. This observation, like her other nuggets of conventional wisdom, was ostensibly directed at me, but she always cast…

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

I have enthusiastically accepted the invitation to share my experiences as a “cultural Jew” married to a “cultural Mormon.” Kenneth and I have been married almost twenty-three years. I have lived in Salt Lake City since 1971 and before that for nine months when we were first married. 

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

Let me start by saying that I did not pick the title for this panel —I am not yet convinced that I have survived the experience intact. How ever, after more than fifteen years of…

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

Friends often ask me what it is like to be an active Lutheran layperson married to an active Latter-day Saint. I think I can best describe my marriage experience by addressing my comments to my…

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

Members of other religions, or persons with no religious affiliation, take on special challenges when they marry Latter-day Saints. In addition to the same problems any inter-faith marriage might encounter—conflicts over church attendance, child-rearing, value…

A Jew Among Mormons

In the fall of 1990, I was asked to speak to an undergraduate honors seminar at Utah State University about being a Jew among Mor mons. I warned the student assigned the task of recruiting…

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

When I was a child growing up in a Carbon County mining town in the 1920s, I would pass the Greek coffeehouses on Main Street after attending Greek school. Sitting inside were off-shift miners and…

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

There was a time when one could identify a sort of “mainline” religious configuration in the United States.

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

During a history of religion class I attended at Sydney University a few years ago, another student asked the lecturer when the Mormons first arrived in Australia. He didn’t know and, looking round, asked, “Does…

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

In some ways, Mormonism looks in 1991 very much mainline. Yet dis cussing the challenge of this new social status rests on two assumptions: that Mormonism actually is a mainline religion, and that as a…

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

Applying the term “mainline,” or “mainstream,” or “oldline” religion to Mormonism may raise a few eyebrows. After all, doesn’t “mainline” refer to the older, once dominant Protestant religions? Moreover, the term “mainline” lacks precision. How…

Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 44–58
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

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 75–96
IMMEDIATELY UPON THE PASSAGE of territorial legislation enfranchising Utah’s women in 1870, almost fifty years before the Nineteenth Amend￾ment extended the vote to American women, arguments erupted between the Mormon and non-Mormon community over the reasons behind this legislation.

Book of Mormon Stories That My Teachers Kept From Me

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1993):15–50
n fact, it may be no more than a kind of perversity that brings me to admit what I will tell you now, namely, that when it comes to the Book of Mormon, that most correct of books, whose pedigree we love passionately to debate and whose very namesakes we have, all of us, become, I stand mostly with Mark Twain.

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

An eight-year-old Mormon can tell you a lot about Zion. At least I could. In response to Sister Jensen’s questions in Targeteer class, I’d raise my hand to give my rote answer: “Zion is a…

Selective Bibliography on African-American and Mormons 1830-1990

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 113–131
Bibliography of African Americans role in the church from 1830-1990.

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.

Ethnic Groups and the LDS Church

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 81–96
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

Two years ago the Manhattan First Ward published a small collection of biographies chronicling the lives of nine senior ward members. Impetus for the project came when news reached Bill Cottam during his initial year as First Ward bishop that several older members had died.

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

Even under the best of circumstances, life in the mid-nineteenth century was not easy for Mormon women. Often repeatedly uprooted from their homes, they left behind family, friends, neighbors, and community to pursue their new…

Latter-day Myths About Counseling and Psychotherapy

John[1] was deeply depressed and believed there was no chance that he would get better. He felt worthless, unworthy, and vile and was certain that the world would be better off without him. Occasionally the…

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

On 9 November 1989 the world stood transfixed as television sets around the globe transmitted the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans streamed into Berlin to mount the wall or…

A New Kind of Abuse | David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church, and Ronald M. Enroth, Churches That Abuse

Considering the level of popular attention recently focused on physical, sexual, even ritual abuse, the discovery of “spiritual abuse” should come as no surprise. And yet it does.  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse is…

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

“Liberal spirituality” is the title and theme of this essay. A double entendre is intended—suggesting the interdependence of a free and abundant spiritual life. My aim is to explore the nature and possibilities of liberal spirituality by reflecting on some of the key experiences and major ideas that have shaped my philosophy. I am concerned here with the essential values at the core of religious experience, a state of mind and an approach to life. The Mormon church has been but one of the anvils against which I have forged my identity. 

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

Mine is the interesting challenge to comment on “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology/’ The bill of particulars that Lavina Fielding Anderson has presented is comprehensive and disturbing, her recommendations are…

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Dialogue 26.1 (Spring 1993): 23–82
The clash between obedience to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists.

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?

Amulek asks us a rhetorical question, “Now, if a man murdereth, be hold will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother?”(Alma 34:11). Obviously the answer is no, and Amulek says as much. We don’t think it is just to punish innocent people for crimes they did not commit. And we are right to think so. But Amulek concludes, “The law requireth the life of him who hath murdereth therefore there can be nothing short of an in finite atonement which will suffice for the sins of the world”(Alma 34:12).

Mormonism and Determinism

Mormons have historically rejected any form of universal causal determinism because it appears to conflict with its basic commitment to free agency. However, Rex Sears has recently argued that (1) free agency and causal determinism…

Social Forces that Imperil the Family

Since mid-century, dramatic changes in family demographics have characterized patterns of parenthood and sexual partnerships in America. As age at marriage has increased, the age at initiation of sexual inter course has decreased so that adolescents and young adults are spending several years sexually experienced but not married. Cohabitation is becoming a common experience during this stage of their lives. The age at which people start having children has not changed as much as has age at marriage so that an increasing proportion of children are born to single parents. At the same time, marriages have become much less stable so that adults are spending more time single after marriage, and children are more likely to live at least part of their lives with a single parent.

Was Jesus a Feminist?

The answer to the question, “Was Jesus a feminist?” depends on how you define feminism. Just as we have come to realize that there was not just one monolithic “Judaism” in Jesus’ time, but many…

A Travelogue Nonpareil | Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons

“Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history,” argues historian Jan Shipps in this outstanding collection of articles and essays (p. 165). Implicitly, the volume presents an argument for…

Thoughts on Mormonism, Evolution, and Brigham Young University

Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 1–18
Well, I was raised in a rather unscientific environment , a little farming community.

The Long Honeymoon: Jan Shipps among the Mormons

This essay had its origins in a projected review of Jan Shipps’s Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). I have expanded it into an assessment…

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

Whether you were driving in from the east or the west you got to our mother’s from Canal Street here in southern Ohio. There at the big Mc Donald’s in Nelsonville you took the crossroad…

The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement

1 have always wondered about the meaning of the atonement. Why was it necessary for Christ to suffer? What did his suffering accomplish? How did it work? Growing up as a Latter-day Saint, I was…

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

Dialogue 39.1 (Spring 2006): 1–18
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 mortalbody and that body is aborted before birth, the spirit would, technically,never be able to have a mortal existence.

Clyde Forsberg’s Equal Rites and the Exoticizing of Mormonism

Supposedly, now is an auspicious time to be doing scholarship on Mor monism. According to a 2002 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Mormon studies has received a “surge of scholarly interest” from specialists in various…

Changing Faiths Gave My Sons Hope

On this year’s Christmas letter to friends and family, I left out the fact that our two sons have joined another church. I prefer to avoid receiving sympathetic messages such as, “Don’t be upset. The…

My Mission Decision

October 1954. I am age nineteen and in Clark’s Barbershop with Lloyd for his weekly duck’s butt haircut. He’s reading the Salt Lake Tribune and 1 am turning magazine pages. A coupon says, “Play a guitar in six weeks.” I nudge Lloyd, “My convertible needs a guitar player.” 

More Musings on Motherhood

I was unprepared when my daughters became teenagers. In fact, I was blindsided by this phase of life. I never claimed to have native talent in mothering; but after years of study and practice, I thought I had gotten the hang of it a little. I have been proven sadly mistaken. 

As I expressed in my first essay on motherhood, written more than a decade ago, I found motherhood both exhilarating and overwhelming; but I never doubted that I would be a mother. As a good Mormon girl, I always had marriage and motherhood as my ultimate objectives. Even though I was also a returned missionary with a graduate degree, my life was not complete until I had children.

Once upon July

At home it was hot . . . days and days above a hundred. I could imagine the leaves of summer wilting in the afternoon heat. But that was so far away on the other side of the equator. 

Here it was cold. Although it was July, I had on my parka and a sweater as I walked down a rough, cobble-stoned street shaded by two-story, pastel-colored adobe walls. I listened to the sibilant clipping of Bolivian Spanish and the soft guttural rattle of Aymara as people negotiated prices and shared gossip in the small stores whose light rushed out, like warmth, into the narrow street.

Trial of Faith

On a recent visit to Utah, I was excited to attend church with my parents at their LDS ward. Regular attendance at my own ward in Minneapolis has become an important part of my life. But perhaps because of the unique role of family-centered piety in Mormonism, I always find special comfort in attending church with my parents. Furthermore, because of my many years of alienation from the LDS Church, my parents find it deeply gratifying that for the first time in twenty years, I want to go with them. Atten dance at church as a family is perhaps an affirmation of the bonds we hope will endure between us in the eternities. 

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

In June 2004, I found myself, late on a Saturday night, climbing underneath the dressing room doors of the Manhattan New York Temple. Audio/visual equipment for the next morning’s temple dedication blocked most of the dressing room doors, but my goal was to reach every locker in both the men’s and women’s dressing rooms. Each key needed to be labeled with the corresponding locker’s number, and then a spare key had to be placed in the temple’s facilities closet. 

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

The family had been in the dream house about three months. It was October, and they were gathered for Family Night. A box of See’s chocolates, wrapped in glossy white paper, sat like the fruit…

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

Welden Shumway wasn’t so much scandalized when Brother B left his wife and took up with a young gentile woman as he was confused. Why would a priesthood holder ignore his covenants like that? Welden…

Elongated Time Phyllis Barber, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky

Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…

The Garden Atonement and the Mormon Cross Taboo

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

The Great Zucchini War

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

Dialogue 51.3 (Fall 2018): 45–81
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

who sit singly, as I do, on unkempt 
beds in dingy small rooms among their own 
litter and cast-off clothes; who slump 
against walls watching late-nite TV instead 

What the Church Means to People Like Me

A natural reaction to my title—since this is not a testimony meeting in which each speaker is his own subject—might be, “Who cares?” For who in this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother,…

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…

Mormons in the Secular City: An Introduction

Mormons, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, have entered the Secular City. This term, coined by Harvey Cox, expresses (in “secular”) a “this worldness”—meaning that the work of the world must be done by man himself, and (in “city”) all historical and Utopian dreams for the model community. Dialogue magazine stands at that intersection between the religious and the secular worlds.

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

Mormonism has been subject to rapid renovation since its founding. The Prophet Joseph made it quite clear that God’s revelations were continual and that if things were withheld for the moment, it was because His…

Mormon World View and American Culture

Neither the scholars nor the Mormons themselves have been able to come to agreement about the relationship between the life of the LDS people in this country and American lifeways. The views of outside observers…

The Gospel, Mormonism and American Culture

This issue of Dialogue emphasizes the relationship between Mormonism and American culture. John Sorenson’s lead article on “Mormon World View and American Culture” sets the stage by attempting to make a distinction between the gospel…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Utah has achieved the dubious distinction of making the pages of the prestigious organ of America’s publication industry, Publishers’ Weekly. To some the publicity achieved in the article “Bookstore Perishes in Wake of Utah Obscenity Legislation” represents a disheartening step into further denial of free agency. To others it represents a heartening step in the direction of rooting out the devil all around us.

Phrenology Among the Mormons

On 2 July 1842 the Nauvoo Wasp contained a letter from A. Crane, M.S., professor of phrenology, alluding to the “large number of persons in different places” who wished to know “the phrenological development of…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

If we accept the value Ms. Arbuthnot places upon books, the Mormon community is indeed rich. The editor of this column never ceases to be amazed by the quantity (and increasingly the quality) of books and periodicals directed at the Mormon audience. Among the new entrants, of which most of Dialogue’s subscribers should have received a sample issue, is Exponent II, published by Mormon Sister, Inc. of Arlington, Massachusetts. Exponent II is “A quarterly newspaper concerning Mormon women, published by Mormon Women, and of interest to Mormon women and others.”

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

The materials reviewed in this bibliography are books—new and reprint—published since the last book list appeared in the Autumn/Winter 1973 issue of Dialogue. This is a selected listing excluding some of the publications well advertised in Church publications or available through ward “bookstores.” The selection is made solely upon the editor’s discretion and subject to his foibles. 

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Progress implies change and for this writer the call to explore new opportunities has become more insistent in recent years. It will soon be ten years since this column appeared in the first issue of Dialogue. Ten years seems sufficient to insure a sound beginning. If there are any among our readers who wish to take up the challenge of editing this column now is the time to step forward. 

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Just over ten years ago I was approached by four young Mormons who were affiliated with Stanford University in one capacity or another. They wanted to know if there was a library market for a…

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
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 having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

Mormonism in the Nineteen-Seventies: The Popular Perception

Perhaps more than the members of any other religious sect, Mormons are preoccupied with their public image. It may be argued that such preoccupation is a form of narcissism unworthy of the Restored Gospel, but…

Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860

Image history—how the Mormons were viewed by others—has been a fruitful approach used by several historians during the past decade.

My Fifty Years in Journalism

Can a Mormon boy from the cow country of the West reasonably aspire to a writing career in the mainstream of our national life? What roads are open to him? Must he sacrifice his faith…

From Antagonism to Acceptance: Mormons and the Silver Screen

Mormons have been involved in films ever since Hollywood became a magic word. Church members first tried to influence the Hollywood establishment, then went on to create their own film industries; finally, today a corps…

Nostrums in the Newsroom

Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Six was not a dull year for the 127-year-old Deseret News. Melvin Dummar, a Box Elder County service station operator, was named, along with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,…

The Church as Broadcaster

The Mormon Church is a formidable broadcast institution. Through subsidiary corporations and institutions it owns sixteen radio and television stations, a sophisticated international broadcast distribution system, a Washington news bureau, a cable TV system and production and consulting divisions.

The Church as Media Proprietor

Small wonder that churches use the mass media as a broad-based platform for information and persuasion. The communications marvels of our century make it possible for the LDS Church to reach a wide audience indeed,…

Equality and Plain Living | Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God, Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons

In 1831 Joseph Smith announced the Law of Consecration and Stewardship. This law was revealed, according to the Prophet, to establish the social and economic basis of the Restoration on the same scriptural foundations as…

Among the Mormons

Eleven years ago, Dialogue and Ralph W. Hansen began an association which would last a decade and produce nearly forty Among the Mormons columns. His painstaking contribution stands as a monument to dedication and diligence.…

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

How does an English graduate student who wants a visit to the East Coast, instruction in the American political system and an introduction into the Mormon publishing world satisfy these three ambitions in one two-month…

The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal

Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 115–119
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 subscribers or a financial “angel/  Courage died after its eleventh number (Winter/Spring 1973).

Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2

Jousting with windmills is a bit out of fashion nowadays, insanity even more so. But every now and then some glittering-eyed individual comes by with an idea most people do best to ignore. 

The New Messenger & Advocate

A magazine is supposed to be one of the easiest businesses to start. It requires no office, no equipment (printing and even mailing can be farmed out to local businesses), no staff as long as…

Sunstone

“Oh,” lamented Job, “that mine adversary had written a book.” Logic and syntax—even basic facts—which are unmistakably clear and irrefutable in manuscript form have a way of breaking down when committed to print. And when…

A Wider Sisterhood: Exponent II

Many readers were surprised and delighted when Exponent II burst upon the scene. “You have lifted my thoughts from the mundane and sweetened my dreams of fulfillment,” wrote one. Another commented, “A newspaper for Mormon…

BYU Studies, How She Is

People are always asking me how I like working at BYU Studies. I say . . .

Gospel by the Month: Ensign

In 1971, all official church magazines were literally swept away and replaced by three colorful, professional, slick publications, each aimed at a different age group—the Ensign for adults, the New Era for young people and…

Among the Mormons: A Selected Bibliography of Recent Works on Mormons and Mormonism

Mormonism throughout much of its rather brief, history has stirred emotional responses from a large portion of the American populace. What began in the 1830’s as persecution and a forced flight to the West has…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Biographies and family histories, have been by far the most popular subject of Mormon-related books during the past year. These works stem in large part from the ingenuity of family organizations and the ever increasing…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

The vast majority of the books considered in the accompanying compilation are of a biographical, fictional, doctrinal or inspirational nature. While the biographies and works on local history are generally intended for a rather limited…

Contraceptive Use Among Mormons, 1965-75

Dialogue 16.3 (Fall 1984): 108–113
For some families, delaying birth control until after the arrival of the first or second child is undoubtedly consistent with a desire to begin a family soon after marriage. In other cases, however, failure to practice birth control during the first and/or second birth intervals may be based on a belief that to do so would be contrary to Church teachings.

“Among the Mormons”

Thoreau wrote in the beginning of Walden, “I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.” I can roughly paraphrase Thoreau and say, “I have lived some thirty years among the Mormons and have yet to record the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice about how I have managed to do it.”

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

When it comes to explaining economic matters, Americans have difficulty resisting conspiracy theories and are even more fascinated with their second cousin, the expose. Small wonder, then, that in a single week last July Fortune…

Jack-Mormons

Aunt Ella used to say that a man who doesn’t live his principles is a poor specimen. This observation, like her other nuggets of conventional wisdom, was ostensibly directed at me, but she always cast…

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

I have enthusiastically accepted the invitation to share my experiences as a “cultural Jew” married to a “cultural Mormon.” Kenneth and I have been married almost twenty-three years. I have lived in Salt Lake City since 1971 and before that for nine months when we were first married. 

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

Let me start by saying that I did not pick the title for this panel —I am not yet convinced that I have survived the experience intact. How ever, after more than fifteen years of…

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

Friends often ask me what it is like to be an active Lutheran layperson married to an active Latter-day Saint. I think I can best describe my marriage experience by addressing my comments to my…

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

Members of other religions, or persons with no religious affiliation, take on special challenges when they marry Latter-day Saints. In addition to the same problems any inter-faith marriage might encounter—conflicts over church attendance, child-rearing, value…

A Jew Among Mormons

In the fall of 1990, I was asked to speak to an undergraduate honors seminar at Utah State University about being a Jew among Mor mons. I warned the student assigned the task of recruiting…

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

When I was a child growing up in a Carbon County mining town in the 1920s, I would pass the Greek coffeehouses on Main Street after attending Greek school. Sitting inside were off-shift miners and…

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

There was a time when one could identify a sort of “mainline” religious configuration in the United States.

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

During a history of religion class I attended at Sydney University a few years ago, another student asked the lecturer when the Mormons first arrived in Australia. He didn’t know and, looking round, asked, “Does…

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

In some ways, Mormonism looks in 1991 very much mainline. Yet dis cussing the challenge of this new social status rests on two assumptions: that Mormonism actually is a mainline religion, and that as a…

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

Applying the term “mainline,” or “mainstream,” or “oldline” religion to Mormonism may raise a few eyebrows. After all, doesn’t “mainline” refer to the older, once dominant Protestant religions? Moreover, the term “mainline” lacks precision. How…

Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 44–58
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

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 75–96
IMMEDIATELY UPON THE PASSAGE of territorial legislation enfranchising Utah’s women in 1870, almost fifty years before the Nineteenth Amend￾ment extended the vote to American women, arguments erupted between the Mormon and non-Mormon community over the reasons behind this legislation.

Book of Mormon Stories That My Teachers Kept From Me

Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1993):15–50
n fact, it may be no more than a kind of perversity that brings me to admit what I will tell you now, namely, that when it comes to the Book of Mormon, that most correct of books, whose pedigree we love passionately to debate and whose very namesakes we have, all of us, become, I stand mostly with Mark Twain.

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

An eight-year-old Mormon can tell you a lot about Zion. At least I could. In response to Sister Jensen’s questions in Targeteer class, I’d raise my hand to give my rote answer: “Zion is a…

Selective Bibliography on African-American and Mormons 1830-1990

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 113–131
Bibliography of African Americans role in the church from 1830-1990.

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.

Ethnic Groups and the LDS Church

Dialogue 25.4 (Winter 1992): 81–96
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

Two years ago the Manhattan First Ward published a small collection of biographies chronicling the lives of nine senior ward members. Impetus for the project came when news reached Bill Cottam during his initial year as First Ward bishop that several older members had died.

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

Even under the best of circumstances, life in the mid-nineteenth century was not easy for Mormon women. Often repeatedly uprooted from their homes, they left behind family, friends, neighbors, and community to pursue their new…

Latter-day Myths About Counseling and Psychotherapy

John[1] was deeply depressed and believed there was no chance that he would get better. He felt worthless, unworthy, and vile and was certain that the world would be better off without him. Occasionally the…

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

On 9 November 1989 the world stood transfixed as television sets around the globe transmitted the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans streamed into Berlin to mount the wall or…

A New Kind of Abuse | David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church, and Ronald M. Enroth, Churches That Abuse

Considering the level of popular attention recently focused on physical, sexual, even ritual abuse, the discovery of “spiritual abuse” should come as no surprise. And yet it does.  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse is…

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

“Liberal spirituality” is the title and theme of this essay. A double entendre is intended—suggesting the interdependence of a free and abundant spiritual life. My aim is to explore the nature and possibilities of liberal spirituality by reflecting on some of the key experiences and major ideas that have shaped my philosophy. I am concerned here with the essential values at the core of religious experience, a state of mind and an approach to life. The Mormon church has been but one of the anvils against which I have forged my identity. 

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

Mine is the interesting challenge to comment on “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology/’ The bill of particulars that Lavina Fielding Anderson has presented is comprehensive and disturbing, her recommendations are…

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Dialogue 26.1 (Spring 1993): 23–82
The clash between obedience to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists.

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?

Amulek asks us a rhetorical question, “Now, if a man murdereth, be hold will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother?”(Alma 34:11). Obviously the answer is no, and Amulek says as much. We don’t think it is just to punish innocent people for crimes they did not commit. And we are right to think so. But Amulek concludes, “The law requireth the life of him who hath murdereth therefore there can be nothing short of an in finite atonement which will suffice for the sins of the world”(Alma 34:12).

Mormonism and Determinism

Mormons have historically rejected any form of universal causal determinism because it appears to conflict with its basic commitment to free agency. However, Rex Sears has recently argued that (1) free agency and causal determinism…

Social Forces that Imperil the Family

Since mid-century, dramatic changes in family demographics have characterized patterns of parenthood and sexual partnerships in America. As age at marriage has increased, the age at initiation of sexual inter course has decreased so that adolescents and young adults are spending several years sexually experienced but not married. Cohabitation is becoming a common experience during this stage of their lives. The age at which people start having children has not changed as much as has age at marriage so that an increasing proportion of children are born to single parents. At the same time, marriages have become much less stable so that adults are spending more time single after marriage, and children are more likely to live at least part of their lives with a single parent.

Was Jesus a Feminist?

The answer to the question, “Was Jesus a feminist?” depends on how you define feminism. Just as we have come to realize that there was not just one monolithic “Judaism” in Jesus’ time, but many…

A Travelogue Nonpareil | Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons

“Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history,” argues historian Jan Shipps in this outstanding collection of articles and essays (p. 165). Implicitly, the volume presents an argument for…

Thoughts on Mormonism, Evolution, and Brigham Young University

Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 1–18
Well, I was raised in a rather unscientific environment , a little farming community.

The Long Honeymoon: Jan Shipps among the Mormons

This essay had its origins in a projected review of Jan Shipps’s Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). I have expanded it into an assessment…

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

Whether you were driving in from the east or the west you got to our mother’s from Canal Street here in southern Ohio. There at the big Mc Donald’s in Nelsonville you took the crossroad…

The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement

1 have always wondered about the meaning of the atonement. Why was it necessary for Christ to suffer? What did his suffering accomplish? How did it work? Growing up as a Latter-day Saint, I was…

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

Dialogue 39.1 (Spring 2006): 1–18
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 mortalbody and that body is aborted before birth, the spirit would, technically,never be able to have a mortal existence.

Clyde Forsberg’s Equal Rites and the Exoticizing of Mormonism

Supposedly, now is an auspicious time to be doing scholarship on Mor monism. According to a 2002 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Mormon studies has received a “surge of scholarly interest” from specialists in various…

Changing Faiths Gave My Sons Hope

On this year’s Christmas letter to friends and family, I left out the fact that our two sons have joined another church. I prefer to avoid receiving sympathetic messages such as, “Don’t be upset. The…

My Mission Decision

October 1954. I am age nineteen and in Clark’s Barbershop with Lloyd for his weekly duck’s butt haircut. He’s reading the Salt Lake Tribune and 1 am turning magazine pages. A coupon says, “Play a guitar in six weeks.” I nudge Lloyd, “My convertible needs a guitar player.” 

More Musings on Motherhood

I was unprepared when my daughters became teenagers. In fact, I was blindsided by this phase of life. I never claimed to have native talent in mothering; but after years of study and practice, I thought I had gotten the hang of it a little. I have been proven sadly mistaken. 

As I expressed in my first essay on motherhood, written more than a decade ago, I found motherhood both exhilarating and overwhelming; but I never doubted that I would be a mother. As a good Mormon girl, I always had marriage and motherhood as my ultimate objectives. Even though I was also a returned missionary with a graduate degree, my life was not complete until I had children.

Once upon July

At home it was hot . . . days and days above a hundred. I could imagine the leaves of summer wilting in the afternoon heat. But that was so far away on the other side of the equator. 

Here it was cold. Although it was July, I had on my parka and a sweater as I walked down a rough, cobble-stoned street shaded by two-story, pastel-colored adobe walls. I listened to the sibilant clipping of Bolivian Spanish and the soft guttural rattle of Aymara as people negotiated prices and shared gossip in the small stores whose light rushed out, like warmth, into the narrow street.

Trial of Faith

On a recent visit to Utah, I was excited to attend church with my parents at their LDS ward. Regular attendance at my own ward in Minneapolis has become an important part of my life. But perhaps because of the unique role of family-centered piety in Mormonism, I always find special comfort in attending church with my parents. Furthermore, because of my many years of alienation from the LDS Church, my parents find it deeply gratifying that for the first time in twenty years, I want to go with them. Atten dance at church as a family is perhaps an affirmation of the bonds we hope will endure between us in the eternities. 

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

In June 2004, I found myself, late on a Saturday night, climbing underneath the dressing room doors of the Manhattan New York Temple. Audio/visual equipment for the next morning’s temple dedication blocked most of the dressing room doors, but my goal was to reach every locker in both the men’s and women’s dressing rooms. Each key needed to be labeled with the corresponding locker’s number, and then a spare key had to be placed in the temple’s facilities closet. 

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

The family had been in the dream house about three months. It was October, and they were gathered for Family Night. A box of See’s chocolates, wrapped in glossy white paper, sat like the fruit…

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

Welden Shumway wasn’t so much scandalized when Brother B left his wife and took up with a young gentile woman as he was confused. Why would a priesthood holder ignore his covenants like that? Welden…