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Mormon Studies

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The September Six and the Lost Generation of Mormon Studies

I was a high school senior in September 1993, when Lavina Fielding Anderson, Avraham Gileadi, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides were disfellowshipped or excommunicated from the Church of Jesus…

ROUNDTABLE: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON THETHIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SEPTEMBER SIX

In September 1993, six people were excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The events were widely covered in news media. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks,…

Letter to the Editor: Another Perspective on Levi Peterson

Dear Editor, After reading Melissa Leilani Larson’s review of Levi Peterson’s short story collection, Losing a Bit of Eden (“The Promise and Limitations of Working-Class Male Protagonists,” Dialogue, Summer 2022), I would like to offer…

Wickies for the Lord | Ronald V. Huggins, Lighthouse: Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism

Growing up in the 1990s in a strong Mormon household, I learned that my religion had its own Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was not published for the faithful to see but transmitted orally, through hushed…

The Correct [Domain] Name of the Church: Technology, Naming, and Legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition

Of all the changes made in response to the 2018 decision to emphasize the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, those made to the official Latter-day Saint web and digital…

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…

E. Marshall Brooks, Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints

Rebranding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chinese-Speaking Regions

The Things We Make True Michael William Palmer. Baptizing the Dead and Other Jobs

As a kid growing up near the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, I spent most of my time plotting my escape—from childhood itself, but more specifically from a Mormon childhood in Utah. I…

A Barometer for Mormon Social Science Jana Riess. The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.

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The September Six and the Lost Generation of Mormon Studies

I was a high school senior in September 1993, when Lavina Fielding Anderson, Avraham Gileadi, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides were disfellowshipped or excommunicated from the Church of Jesus…

ROUNDTABLE: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON THETHIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SEPTEMBER SIX

In September 1993, six people were excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The events were widely covered in news media. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks,…

Letter to the Editor: Another Perspective on Levi Peterson

Dear Editor, After reading Melissa Leilani Larson’s review of Levi Peterson’s short story collection, Losing a Bit of Eden (“The Promise and Limitations of Working-Class Male Protagonists,” Dialogue, Summer 2022), I would like to offer…

Wickies for the Lord | Ronald V. Huggins, Lighthouse: Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism

Growing up in the 1990s in a strong Mormon household, I learned that my religion had its own Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was not published for the faithful to see but transmitted orally, through hushed…

The Correct [Domain] Name of the Church: Technology, Naming, and Legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition

Of all the changes made in response to the 2018 decision to emphasize the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, those made to the official Latter-day Saint web and digital…

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…

E. Marshall Brooks, Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints

Rebranding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chinese-Speaking Regions

The Things We Make True Michael William Palmer. Baptizing the Dead and Other Jobs

As a kid growing up near the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, I spent most of my time plotting my escape—from childhood itself, but more specifically from a Mormon childhood in Utah. I…

A Barometer for Mormon Social Science Jana Riess. The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.

“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma

Sweater

What Would Jesus Do in Cyberspace? A Comparison of Online Authority Appeals on Two LDS Websites Targeting Believers and Non-Members

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

“A Portion of God’s Light”: Mormonism and Religious Pluralism

Community of Christ: An American Progressive Christianity, with Mormonism as an Option

Dialogue 50.3 (Fall 2017): 89–115
I thus argue that Mormonism exists wherever there is belief in the Book of Mormon, even though many adherents reject the term “Mormonism” to distance themselves from the LDS Church headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Mormon-Catholic Relations in Utah History: A Sketch

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

“Infected With Doubt”: An Empirical Overview of Belief and Non-Belief in Contemporary American Mormonism

Mormonism and the Problem of Heterodoxy

Juanita Brooks and Fawn Brodie — Sisters in Mormon Dissent

Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917-45

Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 83–153
Believing that a more
efficient approach could be used to the church’s advantage, he proposed
that the Relief Society organize a social service department where these
new techniques could be tested and implemented.

Translating Mormon Thought

Most of our distinctly Mormon heritage, scriptural and otherwise, has been first spoken, recorded, or translated in the English language. In declaring that this heritage has worth for people of cultures and languages different from…

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

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

The Reorganized Church in Illinois, 1852-82: Search for Identity

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (here after referred to as the RLDS Church) was headquartered in the State of Illinois until 1882. To a greater degree than that of any…

The Historians and Mormon Nauvoo

Were a nineteenth-century Mormon to assess the current scholarly literature on the Mormons in Illinois, or on Mormon history in general for that matter, he would probably be perplexed. While compelled to admit that the…

The Missouri & Illinois Mormons in Ante Bellum Fiction

Our understanding of the American past has been greatly enriched in recent years by studies which have made use of literary sources. Few works, for example, surpass the challenging insights and interpretations of Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land (1950), William R. Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee (1961), Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore (1962), and Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden (1964). Such studies have proved to be so useful that some historians now concede that a review of the contemporary fiction is a fruitful, if not an indispensable, preliminary to the search for historical truth in any period. 

The Kingdom of God in Illinois: Politics in Utopia

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine, in a political frame of reference, the persistent question as to why the Mormons were so ferociously constrained from their attempt to establish at Nauvoo a society…

The Current Restoration of Nauvoo, Illinois

Approximately 250 miles southwest of Chicago and 150 miles north of St. Louis lies Nauvoo, Illinois. At this place the Mississippi River rather abruptly pushes itself into Iowa and then returns again to its generally…

The Mormons in Early Illinois: An Introduction

The Illinois period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commenced eight years after the founding of the Church in Fayette, New York on April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith. From New York…

Are Mormons Christian?

One day last fall as I was getting acquainted with a student who was particularly interested in my Mormon background, the student told of being informed by a religion professor that Mormons weren’t Christians. This…

Some Thoughts on a Rational Approach to Mormonism

As an exercise in empathy, it would be well for us Mormons to project ourselves into the thoughts and feelings of those who may be quite different from us. For one thing, our missionary program…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Theses and Dissertations

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

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

Scholarly as well as popular interest in Mormonism continues at an almost unprecedented rate. The Saints remain, as they always have, a peculiar people. Their history, as Winfred E. Garrison aptly observed, “bristles” with controversial…

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

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

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

The tenth Article of Faith states the Mormon belief that “Christ will reign personally upon the earth.” This is usually taken to mean that Christ will literally return to the earth at the Second Coming…

Religious Tolerance: Mormons in the American Mainstream

The transformation of the Mormon Church from a radical nineteenth century socio-religious movement into a respectable denomination in the twentieth century raises sociological questions on whether or how distinctive Mormon elements can survive in our…

The “Lectures on Faith”: A Case Study in Decanonization

The “Lectures on Faith,” seven 1834-35 lessons on theology and doctrine prepared for the “School of the Elders” in Kirtland, Ohio, were canonized in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants by official vote…

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

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

Mormon Gravestones: A Folk Expression of Identity and Belief

For years cultural geographers, folklorists, and other researchers have identified and delineated the Mormon region of the American West by charting characteristic elements of its cultural landscape. In his 1952 work The Mormon Village, Lowry…

Of Truth and Passion: Mormonism and Existential Thought

In the first century A.D., Pontius Pilate, confounded by Jesus Christ’s forceful witness to his mission to “bear witness unto the truth,” asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) This was neither the first nor the…

Materialism and the Mormon Faith

In his landmark study of early Mormon economic life, Great Basin Kingdom, Leonard J. Arrington observed:  Joseph Smith and other early Mormon leaders seem to have seen every part of life, and every problem put…

Honoring Leonard Arrington

How does one capture Leonard Arrington? It is a pleasure to attempt, but certainly no easy task. I see Leonard as scientists see nature: in four dimensions. But just as scientists are now discovering and…

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

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

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

Dialogue 23.2 (1990): 61–83

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

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

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

The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953

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

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.

WardAmerica

My humble plan for the financial salvation and exaltation of every soul who has the sense to sign up  I have seen a vision. I have become a new man. And boy, am I excited! Not…

On Spectral Evidence

October 3, 1992, the first day of the 162d semiannual LDS general conference, was the 300th anniversary of the action that finally stopped the Salem witch trials. Those trials, perhaps the greatest blot on American religious devotion, had resulted in the deaths of twenty people, all of whom vigorously proclaimed their innocence to the end. 

Dissent in the Church: Toward a Workable Definition

There are many in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believe we need a workable definition of religious dissent in order to help make way for more serious debate over its legitimacy…

A Response to Paul Toscano’s “A Plea to the Leadership of the Church: Choose Love Not Power”

When I first read Paul Toscano’s jeremiad I thought it was too harsh and angry. But on revisiting it three years later I say, “Yes!” to many of his points; for the ones I quibble…

A Plea to the Leadership of the Church: Choose Love Not Power

One of the ironies of my life is that I decided in 1963 to leave the Catholic church as it was becoming more open to join the Mormon church as it was becoming more closed.…

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.

“In Obedience There Is Peace and Joy Unspotted” | B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage

The prophet Joseph Smith once told Nancy Rigdon, whom he was attempting to persuade to become his plural wife, that whatever God required was right, no matter what it was (374). Smith went on to…

Women’s Place in the Encyclopedia | Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Doctrine, and Procedure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

When the Encyclopedia of Mormonism project was first announced with its all male board of editors, I developed a keen interest in how women’s issues would be handled and was delighted when two women were…

Toward Intellectual Anarchy | Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism provides a great wealth of information on the history and social character of Mormonism and the structure and administration of the LDS church and its institutions, but, on the whole, as…

The Coyote Hunter

The “Moral” Atonement As a Mormon Interpretation

Spiritualism and Mormonism: Some Thoughts on the Similarities and Differences

The Devil Makers: Contemporary Evangelical Fundamentalist Anti-Mormonism

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

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

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

Intellect and Faith: The Controversy Over Revisionist Mormon History

Personality and Motivation in Utah Historiography

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

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

Messages from the Manuals: Twelve Years Later

Familial, Socioeconomic, and Religious Behavior: A Comparison of LDS and Non-LDS Women

The Sweetness of Cherry Coke

Sometimes instead of walking the four blocks home after Sunday school I’d walk the block and a half downtown to the Millard County Courthouse in Fillmore, Utah, where my father worked as the county clerk. I loved the symmetrical purple brick building in the center of Fillmore’s Main Street. 

I Must Speak Up

Mama

In Search of Women’s Language and Feminist Expression Among Nauvoo Wives in A Little Lower Than the Angels

“Seizing Sacred Space”: Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism

Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 69–82
Zina, like many other early converts to Mormonism, was a child of the Second Great Awakening.

Mormon Angels in America: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

For Mormons, the co-option of our most sacred story for the purposes of theater might at first seem blasphemous. In fact, Eugene England in his regular This People round-up of recent LDS-related books and plays…

The Divine Transmutation | John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844

Joseph Smith’s place in western religious history is on the verge of creative reevaluation. Two years ago American literary critic Harold Bloom’s casting of Smith as a Gnostic prophet linked by vision to the occult…

A Reply

There are significant differences between historical investigation of controversial issues and the polemical use of history. Jeff D. Blake’s essay is a textbook example of polemics impersonating as history.  First, he employs the classic “straw…

Ernest L. Wilkinson and the 1966 BYU Spy Ring: A Response to D. Michael Quinn

The summer 1993 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought featured D. Michael Quinn’s near-definitive discussion of Ezra Taft Benson’s political activities during the 1960s and 1970s.[1] Despite Quinn’s thorough documentation, in the section…

Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles

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

Mormonism in Modern Japan

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

Between Covenant and Treaty: The LDS Future in New Zealand

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

Towards 2000: Mormonism in Australia

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

Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbinger of the Future?

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

Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century

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

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

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

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

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

Science and Mormonism: Past, Present, Future

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

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

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

Membership Growth, Church Activity, and Missionary Recruitment

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

The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020

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

Guest Editor’s Introduction

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

Lavina Fielding Anderson and the Power of a Church in Exile

Over the years Lavina Fielding Anderson’s friendship and approval have helped me understand I am a real, if irregular, Mormon. It is therefore ironic that she, who believes so devoutly, has been excommunicated while I…

Prolegomena to Any Future Mormon Studies

In a spiritual crisis of the individual, the truth and authenticity of the person’s spiritual identity are called into question. He is placed in confrontation with reality and judged by his ability to bring himself…

What You Walk Away From

Jesus said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” In fact, that statement shows up in the New Testament three times: in Mat thew 12:39, in Matthew 16:4, and again in Luke 11:29.…

Researching Mormonism: General Conference as Artifactual Gold Mine

From its beginnings in the spring of 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown to more than 9 million members and now adds a million new converts worldwide every three years.…

Celebrating Utah’s Centennial | Jean Bickmore White, Charter for Statehood: The Story of Utah’s State Constitution

Charter for Statehood chronicles Utah’s constitutional history from its territorial days through the present. Dr. White, emeritus professor of political science at Weber State University, employs her vast skills in state and local history and…

A Test Case for Heresy and Gender Discourse | Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, and Joan Smyth Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy in U.S. Women’s Movements, 1880-1925: A Debate on the American Home

The nineteenth century saw the rise and fall of many “crusades” that have been painstakingly examined by scholars, including abolition, temperance, and nativism. Yet the equally important campaigns to eradicate polygamy and stem the tide…

Wandering Souls in a Familiar Valley | Susan Palmer, The Tabernacle Bar

In prose that can hum alternately with the wry empathy of Barbara Kingsolver and the lyricism of Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Palmer’s The Tabernacle Bar explores the spiritual dilemmas of the citizens both in and…

Through a Glass Darkly: Mormons as Perceived by Critics’ Reviews of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

Membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly. As the church passes the ten-million member milestone, social science researchers have raised a number of important questions about the rapid growth of Mormonism. Issues include changing Mormon demographics, cultural tensions of church globalization, and the evolution of Mormon identity and assimilation. Another topic of research focuses on mass media use and the role it plays in the ways Mormons accommodate the larger society. What has not been examined, however, are the ways mass media, such as movies, television, newspapers, etc., tend to describe Mormons. 

“Those Amazing Mormons”: The Media’s Construction of Latter-day Saints as a Model Minority

The August 4, 1997, issue of Time featured on its cover a shot of the Angel Moroni atop the Salt Lake City Temple, illuminated against a night sky; the cover’s caption read “Mormons, Inc.: The…

Coupé

In winter, you get onto the train to Moscow at dusk or at first dark. From the Tallinn train station, you can almost see the lights of the harbor. The train station, though, smells nothing…

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

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

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

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

Plain and Simple

It could have been an impossible day. 

And then the wind 
helping the Gardener’s Eden keep its promise:
the outdoor ornaments

Another Perspective | David Trobish, Mormonen—die Heiligen der letzten Zeit? [Mormons—Saints of the Latter Times?]

When one reviews a book on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a language other than English—regardless of the content of the book—the question of the significance of non-English books about Mor…

An Excellent Survey of the Headlines, But Not of the Heart | Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

Mormon America is a comprehensive and instructive overview of Mor monism “for non-Mormons and Mor mons alike” (xi). Its scope, tone and readability reveal the best of Richard and Joan Ostling’s background in journalism. They…

“A Happy, Go-Ahead People” | Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

The general public’s knowledge of Mormonism tends to be thinly mediated through certain stereotypical images: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, well-scrubbed young missionaries, polygamy, large families, genealogy, sacred underwear, sentimental television commercials, upright (if not prudish)…

Henry William Bigler: Mormon Chronicler of Great Events | M. Guy Bishop, Henry William Bigler: Soldier, Gold Miner, Missionary, Chronicler, 1815–1900

M. Guy Bishop has moved away from famous Mormon church leaders to delve into the life of a minor member who had a major appointment with American history. Henry William Bigler’s life is one that…

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

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

The Life of an LDS Apostle | Richard D. Poll, Working the Divine Miracle: The Life of Apostle Henry D. Moyle

Henry Dinwoodey Moyle (1889-1963) lived a full life that has been well recounted by the late historian Richard D. Poll. Professor Poll achieved a solid reputation as a Mormon historian. He taught several years at…

Pluralism, Mormonism, and World Religion | Eric Eliason, ed., Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion

This collection of eleven articles from a wide range of fields surveys current and historical Mor monism. It is targeted at an educated audience both inside and outside the traditional readership community in Mormon studies.…

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

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

Defending Magic: Explaining the Necessity of Ordinances

In this paper I want to deal with a large gap in Christian theology, in general, and in LDS theology, in particular. The gap is the lack of explanation of the moral necessity of religious…

Lions, Brothers, and the Idea of an Indian Nation: The Mexican Revolution in the Minds of Anthony W. Ivins and Rey L. Pratt, 1910-1917

In 1915 Mormon apostle James E. Talmadge published Jesus the Christ. Speculating on what Pontius Pilate must have been thinking when Christ stood before him, Talmadge concluded it “was clear to the Roman governor that…

Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal

Statisticians predict that by 2012 native Spanish speakers will surpass native English speakers as the LDS church’s largest language group.[1] Clearly, the church is about to reach a dramatic turning point in its international growth.…

Hugh Nibley | Boyd Jay Petersen, Hugh Nibley: “A Consecrated Life”

This authorized biography of one of Mormonism’s greatest minds and most prolific scholars is a wonderfully accessible entry point to the life and work of Hugh Nibley. Boyd Jay Petersen, married to Nibley’s youngest daughter,…

A Landmark in Mormon Thought | Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 1: The Attitudes of God

It is difficult to make comparisons between previous works in LDS philosophy and theology and Blake Ostler’s Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God. This is the first volume in a projected trilogy that will include…

Mormon Polygamy and the American Constitution | Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth Century America

The Mormon Question is a good book: smart, amusing and yet sensitive to pathos, full of new insights about an old subject—the clash of Mormon polygamy and American law. Sarah Barringer Gordon has taken the…

Mormonism, Death, Salvation, and Exaltation | Douglas J. Davies, The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Force, Grace and Glory

Douglas Davies “gets” Mormonism, as demonstrated by his latest book. This book is not his first. Mormon Spirituality: Latter-day Saints in Wales and Zion was published in 1987 and is also a must for scholars…

No Other Way? | Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

When Charles the Hammer conquered Friesland in 692 C.E., he generously offered baptism into the Christian religion to the defeated Frisian chief Radbod. Just as he was stepping into the font, Radbod hesitated, wondering aloud…

Dissent Without Definition | John Sillito and Susan Staker, eds., Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters

All good history is as much about the present as it is about the past. Sillito and Staker’s volume, which includes biographical sketches of dissenters ranging widely across the 180-year history of the LDS church,…

Reaching toward Heaven, Rooted on Earth | John Bennion, Falling toward Heaven

One afternoon while eating my sandwich in the faculty lounge of the English Department at the University of Houston, I couldn’t help but notice a 1989 dissertation that was nearly a foot thick: Court of…

Sinnamon Twist | Linda Hoffman Kimball, The Marketing of “Sister B”

Mild-mannered Mormon housewife uses her background in chemistry and family science to whip up a batch of tantalizing cinnamon fragrance as a last-minute party favor for a visiting teaching luncheon. Little did Donna Brooks realize…

“Gender Troubles” and Mormon Women’s Voices | Laura L. Bush, Faithful Transgressions in the American West: Six Twentieth Century Mormon Women’s Autobiographical Acts

“Faithful transgression,” a concept developed by Laura L. Bush in this thought-provoking study of Mormon women’s autobiographies, is a concept worth keeping. It’s not “loyal opposition” because it doesn’t openly or politically oppose; faithful transgressions…

Murder, with a Side of Philosophy | Paul M. Edwards, The Angel Acronym

Paul Edwards’s first mystery novel, The Angel Acronym, is not exactly a religious novel, but it is a novel in which the characters spend a great deal of time talking about religion. And the religion…

A Stark Contrast | Duwayne R. Anderson, Farewell to Eden: Coming to Terms with Mormonism and Science

Duwayne R. Anderson, a highly accomplished and acclaimed physicist specializing in fiber optics, offers readers a thorough examination of the role of science in his disillusionment from Mormonism. The book provides compelling evidence that Latter-day…

The Making of Grave Community Sin

Few articles published in Dialogue disturbed my intellectual comfort as Dr. Bradley Walker’s three-part series on the deplorable condition of Latin American Saints.[1] For some three decades, I lived off and on in Third World…

The Maturing of the Oak: The Dynamics of LDS Growth in Latin America

In 1926 just before leaving Argentina after a six-month mission and few baptisms, Elder Melvin J. Ballard of the Council of the Twelve Apostles drew on natural images to suggest the future growth of the…

How Many Members Are There Really? Two Censuses and the Meaning of LDS Membership in Chile and Mexico

How many members are there and what does it mean to be a member? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regularly publishes figures representing Church membership. If nowhere else they appear in the…

The Psalms

The Psalms were prayed by David and Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus, Matthew and Paul, Jerome and Augustine, Ibn Ezra and Rashi, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa—in short, by…

Keywords: Joseph Smith, Language Change, and Theological Innovation, 1829-44

In a June 1843 public meeting, Joseph Smith was asked why “gathering . . . the people of God” was such an important principle. He responded with this lively bit of wisdom: “A man never…

Seeing Post-Zion Salt Lake City | Alan Barnett, Seeing Salt Lake City: The Legacy of the Shipler Photographers

Those of us who study material culture frequently use “rootedness,” which is the quality of an object or a structure when it is fixed in association with a geographical place. For example, a group of…

Peer-Reviewed Genealogy | Val D. Rust, Radical Origins: Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors

I have a distant relative who is an avid genealogist. She is fond of joking that, whenever two people talk about genealogy, one of them is bored. If this quip has any truth to it,…

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

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

Possibilities, Problems and Pitfalls | Newell G. Bringhurst and Lavina Fielding Anderson, eds., Excavating Mormon Pasts: The New Historiography of the Last Half Century

More than thirty years ago, I made a decision that seemed simple enough at the time but that would have a far-reaching impact on my professional career. I became an archivist at the LDS Church…

Patriarchy or Gender Equality? The Letter to the Ephesians on Submission, Headship, and Slavery

Without Purse or Scrip in Scotland

Eternal Progression in a Multiverse: An Explorative Mormon Cosmology

A Touching Remembrance | Helen Elizabeth Nebeker, Bittersweet: A Candid Love Story

Extracting one’s memoirs from correspondence can be emotionally hazardous. This is especially true if the subject is romance and the sources are love letters. But if the settings, both global and personal, are unusually profound,…

Heartfelt Theater | Thom Duncan, Matters of the Heart

You might say that Thom Duncan is the founding grandfather of The Nauvoo Theatrical Society. In 1983 Duncan owned Theatre-in-the-Square in Provo, Utah, the first theater dedicated to the production of LDS-themed dramatic works. This…

Safe Haven for a Time | Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) and its currently jailed leader, Warren Jeffs, recently established the 1700-acre Yearn for Zion Ranch in dry country northwest of San Antonio, amid alfalfa fields, oil…

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

Over the past forty years, Robert Christmas has been one of the best and most consistent poets writing about Mormon life and culture. His distinctive style and voice are readily recognizable. What makes Christmas’s poetry…

Analyzing Spiritual Things from a Sociological Perspective | Rodney Stark and Reid Neilson, The Rise of Mormonism

The name Rodney Stark is very familiar to LDS readers. His interest in Mor monism began with his long-time friendship with fellow sociologist Armand Mauss, also a familiar name and a member of the Church. Stark…

Big Wonderful, Little Masterpiece: Big Wonderful: Notes from Wyoming by Kevin Holdsworth

Getting at the Marrow: The Marrow of Human Experience: Essays on Folklore bu William A. Wilson

A Plurality of Competing Selves: My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony by Wayne C. Booth

The Gospel in Communication: A Conversation with Communication Theorist John Durham Peters

A Defense of the Authority of Church Doctrine

A Playwright with a Passion for Unvarnished Depictions: An Interview with Tom Rogers

Shadows on the Sun Dial: John E. Page and the Strangites

Can Deconstruction Save the Day? “”Faithful Scholarship”” and the Uses of Postmodernism

Fighting over “Mormon”: Media Coverage of the FLDS and LDS

“Who’s in charge here?”: Utah Expedition Command Ambiguity

Becoming a “Messenger of Peace”: Jacob Hamblin in Tooele

The Long-Distance Mormon

Time Tabled by Mormon History

Between Silver Linings and Clouds

In The Nephite Courtroom

The Plan of Stagnation: A Review of Elna Baker, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance

The World According to Golden: A Review of Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist

Terryl Givens and the Shape of Mormon Studies: A Review of Terryl Givens, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction

The Fabulous Jesus: A Heresy of Reconciliation

As a student of history, I have to admit, however reluctantly, that Jesus didn’t wear pashmina ascots or Armani sunglasses—but neither did he wear white shirts, dark suits, and a bicycle helmet. Jesus wasn’t fabulous…

Future Prospects in the Comparison of Religions

Charles Taylor: Catholic Mentor to the Mormon Scholar

Alma’s Experiment in Faith: A Broader Context

The Midrashic Imagination and the Book of Mormon

A Retrospective on the Scholarship of Richard Bushman

A Community of Abundance

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

Review: Tom Mould. Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition

Review: A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman, eds. Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision

Review: Quincy D. Newell and Eric F. Mason, eds. New Perspectives in Mormon Studies: Creating and Crossing Boundaries

Ex-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics

Early Mormon Priesthood Revelation: Text, Impact, and Evolution

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

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

Roundtable: As Presently Constituted: Mormon Studies in the Field of Religion: Religious Studies as Comparative Religion

Knowing Brother Joseph Again: The Book of Abraham, and Joseph Smith as Translator

Dialogue 22.4 (Winter 1989): 17 – 38
“The problem took another turn when Joseph Smith’s papyri, which had been missing and presumed lost for eighty to ninety years, resurfaced in 1967 and were examined and translated by Egyptologists. One fragment of papyrus was identified as the ostensible source of the Book of Abraham, but it bore no relationship to the Book of Abraham either in content or subject matter.”

The September Six and the Lost Generation of Mormon Studies

I was a high school senior in September 1993, when Lavina Fielding Anderson, Avraham Gileadi, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides were disfellowshipped or excommunicated from the Church of Jesus…

ROUNDTABLE: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON THETHIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SEPTEMBER SIX

In September 1993, six people were excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The events were widely covered in news media. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks,…

Letter to the Editor: Another Perspective on Levi Peterson

Dear Editor, After reading Melissa Leilani Larson’s review of Levi Peterson’s short story collection, Losing a Bit of Eden (“The Promise and Limitations of Working-Class Male Protagonists,” Dialogue, Summer 2022), I would like to offer…

Wickies for the Lord | Ronald V. Huggins, Lighthouse: Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism

Growing up in the 1990s in a strong Mormon household, I learned that my religion had its own Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was not published for the faithful to see but transmitted orally, through hushed…

The Correct [Domain] Name of the Church: Technology, Naming, and Legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition

Of all the changes made in response to the 2018 decision to emphasize the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, those made to the official Latter-day Saint web and digital…

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…

E. Marshall Brooks, Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints

Rebranding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chinese-Speaking Regions

The Things We Make True Michael William Palmer. Baptizing the Dead and Other Jobs

As a kid growing up near the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, I spent most of my time plotting my escape—from childhood itself, but more specifically from a Mormon childhood in Utah. I…

A Barometer for Mormon Social Science Jana Riess. The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.

“Mormon”: A Journalist’s Dilemma

Sweater

What Would Jesus Do in Cyberspace? A Comparison of Online Authority Appeals on Two LDS Websites Targeting Believers and Non-Members

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

“A Portion of God’s Light”: Mormonism and Religious Pluralism

Community of Christ: An American Progressive Christianity, with Mormonism as an Option

Dialogue 50.3 (Fall 2017): 89–115
I thus argue that Mormonism exists wherever there is belief in the Book of Mormon, even though many adherents reject the term “Mormonism” to distance themselves from the LDS Church headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Mormon-Catholic Relations in Utah History: A Sketch

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

“Infected With Doubt”: An Empirical Overview of Belief and Non-Belief in Contemporary American Mormonism

Mormonism and the Problem of Heterodoxy

Juanita Brooks and Fawn Brodie — Sisters in Mormon Dissent

Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917-45

Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 83–153
Believing that a more
efficient approach could be used to the church’s advantage, he proposed
that the Relief Society organize a social service department where these
new techniques could be tested and implemented.

Translating Mormon Thought

Most of our distinctly Mormon heritage, scriptural and otherwise, has been first spoken, recorded, or translated in the English language. In declaring that this heritage has worth for people of cultures and languages different from…

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

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

The Reorganized Church in Illinois, 1852-82: Search for Identity

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (here after referred to as the RLDS Church) was headquartered in the State of Illinois until 1882. To a greater degree than that of any…

The Historians and Mormon Nauvoo

Were a nineteenth-century Mormon to assess the current scholarly literature on the Mormons in Illinois, or on Mormon history in general for that matter, he would probably be perplexed. While compelled to admit that the…

The Missouri & Illinois Mormons in Ante Bellum Fiction

Our understanding of the American past has been greatly enriched in recent years by studies which have made use of literary sources. Few works, for example, surpass the challenging insights and interpretations of Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land (1950), William R. Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee (1961), Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore (1962), and Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden (1964). Such studies have proved to be so useful that some historians now concede that a review of the contemporary fiction is a fruitful, if not an indispensable, preliminary to the search for historical truth in any period. 

The Kingdom of God in Illinois: Politics in Utopia

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine, in a political frame of reference, the persistent question as to why the Mormons were so ferociously constrained from their attempt to establish at Nauvoo a society…

The Current Restoration of Nauvoo, Illinois

Approximately 250 miles southwest of Chicago and 150 miles north of St. Louis lies Nauvoo, Illinois. At this place the Mississippi River rather abruptly pushes itself into Iowa and then returns again to its generally…

The Mormons in Early Illinois: An Introduction

The Illinois period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commenced eight years after the founding of the Church in Fayette, New York on April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith. From New York…

Are Mormons Christian?

One day last fall as I was getting acquainted with a student who was particularly interested in my Mormon background, the student told of being informed by a religion professor that Mormons weren’t Christians. This…

Some Thoughts on a Rational Approach to Mormonism

As an exercise in empathy, it would be well for us Mormons to project ourselves into the thoughts and feelings of those who may be quite different from us. For one thing, our missionary program…

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Theses and Dissertations

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

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

Scholarly as well as popular interest in Mormonism continues at an almost unprecedented rate. The Saints remain, as they always have, a peculiar people. Their history, as Winfred E. Garrison aptly observed, “bristles” with controversial…

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

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

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

The tenth Article of Faith states the Mormon belief that “Christ will reign personally upon the earth.” This is usually taken to mean that Christ will literally return to the earth at the Second Coming…

Religious Tolerance: Mormons in the American Mainstream

The transformation of the Mormon Church from a radical nineteenth century socio-religious movement into a respectable denomination in the twentieth century raises sociological questions on whether or how distinctive Mormon elements can survive in our…

The “Lectures on Faith”: A Case Study in Decanonization

The “Lectures on Faith,” seven 1834-35 lessons on theology and doctrine prepared for the “School of the Elders” in Kirtland, Ohio, were canonized in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants by official vote…

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

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

Mormon Gravestones: A Folk Expression of Identity and Belief

For years cultural geographers, folklorists, and other researchers have identified and delineated the Mormon region of the American West by charting characteristic elements of its cultural landscape. In his 1952 work The Mormon Village, Lowry…

Of Truth and Passion: Mormonism and Existential Thought

In the first century A.D., Pontius Pilate, confounded by Jesus Christ’s forceful witness to his mission to “bear witness unto the truth,” asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) This was neither the first nor the…

Materialism and the Mormon Faith

In his landmark study of early Mormon economic life, Great Basin Kingdom, Leonard J. Arrington observed:  Joseph Smith and other early Mormon leaders seem to have seen every part of life, and every problem put…

Honoring Leonard Arrington

How does one capture Leonard Arrington? It is a pleasure to attempt, but certainly no easy task. I see Leonard as scientists see nature: in four dimensions. But just as scientists are now discovering and…

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

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

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

Dialogue 23.2 (1990): 61–83

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

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

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

The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953

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

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.

WardAmerica

My humble plan for the financial salvation and exaltation of every soul who has the sense to sign up  I have seen a vision. I have become a new man. And boy, am I excited! Not…

On Spectral Evidence

October 3, 1992, the first day of the 162d semiannual LDS general conference, was the 300th anniversary of the action that finally stopped the Salem witch trials. Those trials, perhaps the greatest blot on American religious devotion, had resulted in the deaths of twenty people, all of whom vigorously proclaimed their innocence to the end. 

Dissent in the Church: Toward a Workable Definition

There are many in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believe we need a workable definition of religious dissent in order to help make way for more serious debate over its legitimacy…

A Response to Paul Toscano’s “A Plea to the Leadership of the Church: Choose Love Not Power”

When I first read Paul Toscano’s jeremiad I thought it was too harsh and angry. But on revisiting it three years later I say, “Yes!” to many of his points; for the ones I quibble…

A Plea to the Leadership of the Church: Choose Love Not Power

One of the ironies of my life is that I decided in 1963 to leave the Catholic church as it was becoming more open to join the Mormon church as it was becoming more closed.…

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.

“In Obedience There Is Peace and Joy Unspotted” | B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage

The prophet Joseph Smith once told Nancy Rigdon, whom he was attempting to persuade to become his plural wife, that whatever God required was right, no matter what it was (374). Smith went on to…

Women’s Place in the Encyclopedia | Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Doctrine, and Procedure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

When the Encyclopedia of Mormonism project was first announced with its all male board of editors, I developed a keen interest in how women’s issues would be handled and was delighted when two women were…

Toward Intellectual Anarchy | Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism provides a great wealth of information on the history and social character of Mormonism and the structure and administration of the LDS church and its institutions, but, on the whole, as…

The Coyote Hunter

The “Moral” Atonement As a Mormon Interpretation

Spiritualism and Mormonism: Some Thoughts on the Similarities and Differences

The Devil Makers: Contemporary Evangelical Fundamentalist Anti-Mormonism

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

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

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

Intellect and Faith: The Controversy Over Revisionist Mormon History

Personality and Motivation in Utah Historiography

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

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

Messages from the Manuals: Twelve Years Later

Familial, Socioeconomic, and Religious Behavior: A Comparison of LDS and Non-LDS Women

The Sweetness of Cherry Coke

Sometimes instead of walking the four blocks home after Sunday school I’d walk the block and a half downtown to the Millard County Courthouse in Fillmore, Utah, where my father worked as the county clerk. I loved the symmetrical purple brick building in the center of Fillmore’s Main Street. 

I Must Speak Up

Mama

In Search of Women’s Language and Feminist Expression Among Nauvoo Wives in A Little Lower Than the Angels

“Seizing Sacred Space”: Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism

Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 69–82
Zina, like many other early converts to Mormonism, was a child of the Second Great Awakening.

Mormon Angels in America: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

For Mormons, the co-option of our most sacred story for the purposes of theater might at first seem blasphemous. In fact, Eugene England in his regular This People round-up of recent LDS-related books and plays…

The Divine Transmutation | John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844

Joseph Smith’s place in western religious history is on the verge of creative reevaluation. Two years ago American literary critic Harold Bloom’s casting of Smith as a Gnostic prophet linked by vision to the occult…

A Reply

There are significant differences between historical investigation of controversial issues and the polemical use of history. Jeff D. Blake’s essay is a textbook example of polemics impersonating as history.  First, he employs the classic “straw…

Ernest L. Wilkinson and the 1966 BYU Spy Ring: A Response to D. Michael Quinn

The summer 1993 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought featured D. Michael Quinn’s near-definitive discussion of Ezra Taft Benson’s political activities during the 1960s and 1970s.[1] Despite Quinn’s thorough documentation, in the section…

Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles

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

Mormonism in Modern Japan

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

Between Covenant and Treaty: The LDS Future in New Zealand

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

Towards 2000: Mormonism in Australia

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

Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbinger of the Future?

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

Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century

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

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

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

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

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

Science and Mormonism: Past, Present, Future

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

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

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

Membership Growth, Church Activity, and Missionary Recruitment

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

The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020

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

Guest Editor’s Introduction

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

Lavina Fielding Anderson and the Power of a Church in Exile

Over the years Lavina Fielding Anderson’s friendship and approval have helped me understand I am a real, if irregular, Mormon. It is therefore ironic that she, who believes so devoutly, has been excommunicated while I…

Prolegomena to Any Future Mormon Studies

In a spiritual crisis of the individual, the truth and authenticity of the person’s spiritual identity are called into question. He is placed in confrontation with reality and judged by his ability to bring himself…

What You Walk Away From

Jesus said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” In fact, that statement shows up in the New Testament three times: in Mat thew 12:39, in Matthew 16:4, and again in Luke 11:29.…

Researching Mormonism: General Conference as Artifactual Gold Mine

From its beginnings in the spring of 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown to more than 9 million members and now adds a million new converts worldwide every three years.…

Celebrating Utah’s Centennial | Jean Bickmore White, Charter for Statehood: The Story of Utah’s State Constitution

Charter for Statehood chronicles Utah’s constitutional history from its territorial days through the present. Dr. White, emeritus professor of political science at Weber State University, employs her vast skills in state and local history and…

A Test Case for Heresy and Gender Discourse | Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, and Joan Smyth Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy in U.S. Women’s Movements, 1880-1925: A Debate on the American Home

The nineteenth century saw the rise and fall of many “crusades” that have been painstakingly examined by scholars, including abolition, temperance, and nativism. Yet the equally important campaigns to eradicate polygamy and stem the tide…

Wandering Souls in a Familiar Valley | Susan Palmer, The Tabernacle Bar

In prose that can hum alternately with the wry empathy of Barbara Kingsolver and the lyricism of Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Palmer’s The Tabernacle Bar explores the spiritual dilemmas of the citizens both in and…

Through a Glass Darkly: Mormons as Perceived by Critics’ Reviews of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

Membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly. As the church passes the ten-million member milestone, social science researchers have raised a number of important questions about the rapid growth of Mormonism. Issues include changing Mormon demographics, cultural tensions of church globalization, and the evolution of Mormon identity and assimilation. Another topic of research focuses on mass media use and the role it plays in the ways Mormons accommodate the larger society. What has not been examined, however, are the ways mass media, such as movies, television, newspapers, etc., tend to describe Mormons. 

“Those Amazing Mormons”: The Media’s Construction of Latter-day Saints as a Model Minority

The August 4, 1997, issue of Time featured on its cover a shot of the Angel Moroni atop the Salt Lake City Temple, illuminated against a night sky; the cover’s caption read “Mormons, Inc.: The…

Coupé

In winter, you get onto the train to Moscow at dusk or at first dark. From the Tallinn train station, you can almost see the lights of the harbor. The train station, though, smells nothing…

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

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

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

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

Plain and Simple

It could have been an impossible day. 

And then the wind 
helping the Gardener’s Eden keep its promise:
the outdoor ornaments

Another Perspective | David Trobish, Mormonen—die Heiligen der letzten Zeit? [Mormons—Saints of the Latter Times?]

When one reviews a book on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a language other than English—regardless of the content of the book—the question of the significance of non-English books about Mor…

An Excellent Survey of the Headlines, But Not of the Heart | Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

Mormon America is a comprehensive and instructive overview of Mor monism “for non-Mormons and Mor mons alike” (xi). Its scope, tone and readability reveal the best of Richard and Joan Ostling’s background in journalism. They…

“A Happy, Go-Ahead People” | Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise

The general public’s knowledge of Mormonism tends to be thinly mediated through certain stereotypical images: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, well-scrubbed young missionaries, polygamy, large families, genealogy, sacred underwear, sentimental television commercials, upright (if not prudish)…

Henry William Bigler: Mormon Chronicler of Great Events | M. Guy Bishop, Henry William Bigler: Soldier, Gold Miner, Missionary, Chronicler, 1815–1900

M. Guy Bishop has moved away from famous Mormon church leaders to delve into the life of a minor member who had a major appointment with American history. Henry William Bigler’s life is one that…

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

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

The Life of an LDS Apostle | Richard D. Poll, Working the Divine Miracle: The Life of Apostle Henry D. Moyle

Henry Dinwoodey Moyle (1889-1963) lived a full life that has been well recounted by the late historian Richard D. Poll. Professor Poll achieved a solid reputation as a Mormon historian. He taught several years at…

Pluralism, Mormonism, and World Religion | Eric Eliason, ed., Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion

This collection of eleven articles from a wide range of fields surveys current and historical Mor monism. It is targeted at an educated audience both inside and outside the traditional readership community in Mormon studies.…

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

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

Defending Magic: Explaining the Necessity of Ordinances

In this paper I want to deal with a large gap in Christian theology, in general, and in LDS theology, in particular. The gap is the lack of explanation of the moral necessity of religious…

Lions, Brothers, and the Idea of an Indian Nation: The Mexican Revolution in the Minds of Anthony W. Ivins and Rey L. Pratt, 1910-1917

In 1915 Mormon apostle James E. Talmadge published Jesus the Christ. Speculating on what Pontius Pilate must have been thinking when Christ stood before him, Talmadge concluded it “was clear to the Roman governor that…

Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal

Statisticians predict that by 2012 native Spanish speakers will surpass native English speakers as the LDS church’s largest language group.[1] Clearly, the church is about to reach a dramatic turning point in its international growth.…

Hugh Nibley | Boyd Jay Petersen, Hugh Nibley: “A Consecrated Life”

This authorized biography of one of Mormonism’s greatest minds and most prolific scholars is a wonderfully accessible entry point to the life and work of Hugh Nibley. Boyd Jay Petersen, married to Nibley’s youngest daughter,…

A Landmark in Mormon Thought | Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 1: The Attitudes of God

It is difficult to make comparisons between previous works in LDS philosophy and theology and Blake Ostler’s Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God. This is the first volume in a projected trilogy that will include…

Mormon Polygamy and the American Constitution | Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth Century America

The Mormon Question is a good book: smart, amusing and yet sensitive to pathos, full of new insights about an old subject—the clash of Mormon polygamy and American law. Sarah Barringer Gordon has taken the…

Mormonism, Death, Salvation, and Exaltation | Douglas J. Davies, The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Force, Grace and Glory

Douglas Davies “gets” Mormonism, as demonstrated by his latest book. This book is not his first. Mormon Spirituality: Latter-day Saints in Wales and Zion was published in 1987 and is also a must for scholars…

No Other Way? | Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

When Charles the Hammer conquered Friesland in 692 C.E., he generously offered baptism into the Christian religion to the defeated Frisian chief Radbod. Just as he was stepping into the font, Radbod hesitated, wondering aloud…

Dissent Without Definition | John Sillito and Susan Staker, eds., Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters

All good history is as much about the present as it is about the past. Sillito and Staker’s volume, which includes biographical sketches of dissenters ranging widely across the 180-year history of the LDS church,…

Reaching toward Heaven, Rooted on Earth | John Bennion, Falling toward Heaven

One afternoon while eating my sandwich in the faculty lounge of the English Department at the University of Houston, I couldn’t help but notice a 1989 dissertation that was nearly a foot thick: Court of…

Sinnamon Twist | Linda Hoffman Kimball, The Marketing of “Sister B”

Mild-mannered Mormon housewife uses her background in chemistry and family science to whip up a batch of tantalizing cinnamon fragrance as a last-minute party favor for a visiting teaching luncheon. Little did Donna Brooks realize…

“Gender Troubles” and Mormon Women’s Voices | Laura L. Bush, Faithful Transgressions in the American West: Six Twentieth Century Mormon Women’s Autobiographical Acts

“Faithful transgression,” a concept developed by Laura L. Bush in this thought-provoking study of Mormon women’s autobiographies, is a concept worth keeping. It’s not “loyal opposition” because it doesn’t openly or politically oppose; faithful transgressions…

Murder, with a Side of Philosophy | Paul M. Edwards, The Angel Acronym

Paul Edwards’s first mystery novel, The Angel Acronym, is not exactly a religious novel, but it is a novel in which the characters spend a great deal of time talking about religion. And the religion…

A Stark Contrast | Duwayne R. Anderson, Farewell to Eden: Coming to Terms with Mormonism and Science

Duwayne R. Anderson, a highly accomplished and acclaimed physicist specializing in fiber optics, offers readers a thorough examination of the role of science in his disillusionment from Mormonism. The book provides compelling evidence that Latter-day…

The Making of Grave Community Sin

Few articles published in Dialogue disturbed my intellectual comfort as Dr. Bradley Walker’s three-part series on the deplorable condition of Latin American Saints.[1] For some three decades, I lived off and on in Third World…

The Maturing of the Oak: The Dynamics of LDS Growth in Latin America

In 1926 just before leaving Argentina after a six-month mission and few baptisms, Elder Melvin J. Ballard of the Council of the Twelve Apostles drew on natural images to suggest the future growth of the…

How Many Members Are There Really? Two Censuses and the Meaning of LDS Membership in Chile and Mexico

How many members are there and what does it mean to be a member? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regularly publishes figures representing Church membership. If nowhere else they appear in the…

The Psalms

The Psalms were prayed by David and Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus, Matthew and Paul, Jerome and Augustine, Ibn Ezra and Rashi, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa—in short, by…

Keywords: Joseph Smith, Language Change, and Theological Innovation, 1829-44

In a June 1843 public meeting, Joseph Smith was asked why “gathering . . . the people of God” was such an important principle. He responded with this lively bit of wisdom: “A man never…

Seeing Post-Zion Salt Lake City | Alan Barnett, Seeing Salt Lake City: The Legacy of the Shipler Photographers

Those of us who study material culture frequently use “rootedness,” which is the quality of an object or a structure when it is fixed in association with a geographical place. For example, a group of…

Peer-Reviewed Genealogy | Val D. Rust, Radical Origins: Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors

I have a distant relative who is an avid genealogist. She is fond of joking that, whenever two people talk about genealogy, one of them is bored. If this quip has any truth to it,…

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

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

Possibilities, Problems and Pitfalls | Newell G. Bringhurst and Lavina Fielding Anderson, eds., Excavating Mormon Pasts: The New Historiography of the Last Half Century

More than thirty years ago, I made a decision that seemed simple enough at the time but that would have a far-reaching impact on my professional career. I became an archivist at the LDS Church…

Patriarchy or Gender Equality? The Letter to the Ephesians on Submission, Headship, and Slavery

Without Purse or Scrip in Scotland

Eternal Progression in a Multiverse: An Explorative Mormon Cosmology

A Touching Remembrance | Helen Elizabeth Nebeker, Bittersweet: A Candid Love Story

Extracting one’s memoirs from correspondence can be emotionally hazardous. This is especially true if the subject is romance and the sources are love letters. But if the settings, both global and personal, are unusually profound,…

Heartfelt Theater | Thom Duncan, Matters of the Heart

You might say that Thom Duncan is the founding grandfather of The Nauvoo Theatrical Society. In 1983 Duncan owned Theatre-in-the-Square in Provo, Utah, the first theater dedicated to the production of LDS-themed dramatic works. This…

Safe Haven for a Time | Thomas Cottam Romney, The Mormon Colonies in Mexico

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) and its currently jailed leader, Warren Jeffs, recently established the 1700-acre Yearn for Zion Ranch in dry country northwest of San Antonio, amid alfalfa fields, oil…

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

Over the past forty years, Robert Christmas has been one of the best and most consistent poets writing about Mormon life and culture. His distinctive style and voice are readily recognizable. What makes Christmas’s poetry…

Analyzing Spiritual Things from a Sociological Perspective | Rodney Stark and Reid Neilson, The Rise of Mormonism

The name Rodney Stark is very familiar to LDS readers. His interest in Mor monism began with his long-time friendship with fellow sociologist Armand Mauss, also a familiar name and a member of the Church. Stark…

Big Wonderful, Little Masterpiece: Big Wonderful: Notes from Wyoming by Kevin Holdsworth

Getting at the Marrow: The Marrow of Human Experience: Essays on Folklore bu William A. Wilson

A Plurality of Competing Selves: My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony by Wayne C. Booth

The Gospel in Communication: A Conversation with Communication Theorist John Durham Peters

A Defense of the Authority of Church Doctrine

A Playwright with a Passion for Unvarnished Depictions: An Interview with Tom Rogers

Shadows on the Sun Dial: John E. Page and the Strangites

Can Deconstruction Save the Day? “”Faithful Scholarship”” and the Uses of Postmodernism

Fighting over “Mormon”: Media Coverage of the FLDS and LDS

“Who’s in charge here?”: Utah Expedition Command Ambiguity

Becoming a “Messenger of Peace”: Jacob Hamblin in Tooele

The Long-Distance Mormon

Time Tabled by Mormon History

Between Silver Linings and Clouds

In The Nephite Courtroom

The Plan of Stagnation: A Review of Elna Baker, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance

The World According to Golden: A Review of Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist

Terryl Givens and the Shape of Mormon Studies: A Review of Terryl Givens, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction

The Fabulous Jesus: A Heresy of Reconciliation

As a student of history, I have to admit, however reluctantly, that Jesus didn’t wear pashmina ascots or Armani sunglasses—but neither did he wear white shirts, dark suits, and a bicycle helmet. Jesus wasn’t fabulous…

Future Prospects in the Comparison of Religions

Charles Taylor: Catholic Mentor to the Mormon Scholar

Alma’s Experiment in Faith: A Broader Context

The Midrashic Imagination and the Book of Mormon

A Retrospective on the Scholarship of Richard Bushman

A Community of Abundance

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

Review: Tom Mould. Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition

Review: A. Scott Howe and Richard L. Bushman, eds. Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision

Review: Quincy D. Newell and Eric F. Mason, eds. New Perspectives in Mormon Studies: Creating and Crossing Boundaries

Ex-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics

Early Mormon Priesthood Revelation: Text, Impact, and Evolution

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

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

Roundtable: As Presently Constituted: Mormon Studies in the Field of Religion: Religious Studies as Comparative Religion

Knowing Brother Joseph Again: The Book of Abraham, and Joseph Smith as Translator

Dialogue 22.4 (Winter 1989): 17 – 38
“The problem took another turn when Joseph Smith’s papyri, which had been missing and presumed lost for eighty to ninety years, resurfaced in 1967 and were examined and translated by Egyptologists. One fragment of papyrus was identified as the ostensible source of the Book of Abraham, but it bore no relationship to the Book of Abraham either in content or subject matter.”