Prophets

In defense of Joseph Fielding Smith 1876 – 1972

Editor

The Secular Binary of Joseph Smith’s Translations

Michael Hubbard MacKay

Dialogue 54.3 (Fall 2021): 1–40
The debate about Joseph Smith’s translations have primarily assumed that the translation was commensurable and focuses upon theories of authorial involvement of Joseph Smith.

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

Russell Arben Fox

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

Christopher C. Smith

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

Roger Terry

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

Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development

Roger Terry

Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
The issue of authority in Mormonism became painfully public with the rise of the Ordain Women movement.

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Fiona Givens

Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.

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

Lorraine Pearl

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

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

Scott Cameron

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

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

Mona Jo Ellsworth

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

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

Sterling M. McMurrin

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

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

Joseph C. Muren

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

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

Myra Thulin

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

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

Lafi Toelupe

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

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

Lowell Bennion

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

Willard Young: The Prophet’s Son at West Point

Leonard J. Arrington

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

Spiritual Problems in the Teaching of Modern Literature

Stephen L. Tanner

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

God and Man in History

Richard D. Poll

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

The Reorganization in the Twentieth Century

Barbara Higdon Lyon

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

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

Paul V. Hyer

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

Three Myths About Mormons in Latin America

F. LaMond Tullis

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

Mormons in the Third Reich: 1933-1945

Joseph M. Dixon

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

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

Armand L. Mauss

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

Reed Smoot, The L.D.S. Church and Progressive Legislation, 1903-1933

Thomas G. Alexander

If J. Reuben Clark, Jr., will be remembered largely for his involvement in international affairs, another Mormon leader, Reed Smoot, is notable for his contribution both to international relations and domestic American affairs. In 1902,…

J. Reuben Clark, Jr.: Political Isolationism Revisited

Ray C. Hillam

Modern Mormonism takes just pride in having produced many men and women of distinction in politics, education, science and the arts. One of these was J. Reuben Clark, Jr., international lawyer, career diplomat, and from…

The Twentieth Century: Challenge for Mormon Historians

Richard O. Cowan

This year (1972), the Mormon Church is 142 years old, which means that 71 years of its history, or fully half its life, has taken place in the twentieth century. Its written history, on the…

Joseph Fielding Smith: Faithful Historian

Leonard J. Arrington

“To record as truth that which is false, and to palm off as facts that which is fiction degrades [the writer], insults his readers, and outrages his profession.”—Joseph Fielding Smith Joseph Fielding Smith began his service in the…

From Someone Who Did Not Know Him Well

Mary Lythgoe Bradford

Throughout my life images of Joseph Fielding Smith come and go, connected somehow with that of my grandfather who, stern before I was born, gradually mellowed until he ended up raising a grandchild with a…

The Discomforter: Some Personal Memories of Joseph Fielding Smith

Richard Cracroft

I was about twelve when I first met President and Sister Smith. They had come to visit the Thirty-Third Ward, Bonneville Stake, and the family of my pal, Doug Myers, my bishop’s son and President…

A Tribute to President Joseph Fielding Smith

Henry Eyring

As many people have remarked, President Joseph Fielding Smith was a man without guile. He presented every question exactly as he saw it and accepted the consequences of his position whether they were pleasant or…

Joseph Fielding Smith—The Kindly, Helpful Scholar

G. Homer Durham

Many published works of Church history and doctrine testify to the scholarship and direct literary style of the late, tenth President of the Church, President Joseph Fielding Smith. Those who were privileged to use the…

A Convert Discovers a Prophet

Denise St. Sauveur

When I encountered missionaries from the Church two years ago, they questioned me as to the need for prophets, both ancient and modern. At that time I was a student in a Catholic College preparing…

The Love of a Prophet

Hoyt W. Brewster Jr

Joseph Fielding Smith is a name that has been known to the Latter-day Saints for well over sixty years. His leadership and counsel have been manifest in the leading councils of the Church since his…

The Passing of a Prophet

Barnett Seymour Salzman

The ancients of light radiating wisdom on wings of eagles break through the sky in a surge of compassion: 

In the Milestones section of Time 
Magazine a few cramped words: “Died, Harold B. Lee,
President of the Church 
of Jesus Christ 
of Latter-day Saints”

Harold B. Lee: An Appreciation, Both Historical and Personal

James B. Allen

When I was asked by Dialogue to write something in memory of President Harold B. Lee, my thought immediately went in two directions: the impact President Lee had upon the Church, and the influence he…

A Prophet Is Dead: A Prophet Lives

Arthur Henry King

A man of men to 
thee, a seer of thine to men 
lived here; lives; shall live. 

Apostle Extraordinary: Hugh B. Brown (1883-1975)

Richard D. Poll

When Elder Hugh B. Brown (the B also stands for Brown) passed from this stage of his eternal existence on December 2, 1975, the Church lost a remarkable leader. For a generation of Latter-day Saints…

A Mormon and a Prophet | Sidney Hyman, Marriner S. Eccles: Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant

Bruce D. Blumell

“Marriner Eccles was American economic history,” says G. L. Bach in the foreword to this enlightening biography. Eccles’ life was an “extraordinary encapsulation in one man of the explosive changes” in business and government from…

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

Karen Lynn

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

The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement

Thomas G. Alexander

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

Did the Word of Wisdom Become a Commandment in 1851?

Robert J. McCue

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

The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth-Century Perspective

Lester E. Bush Jr.

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

Spreading the Gospel in Indonesia: Organizational Obstacles and Opportunities

Garth N. Jones

On 26 October 1969, Indonesia was “dedicated for the preaching of the Gospel by Elder Ezra Taft Benson.” The Church initiated its standard missionary program. Door-to-door tracting began in Jakarta on 20 January 1970.[1] Plans…

Battling the Bureaucracy: Building a Mormon Chapel

Dennis L. Lythgoe

Excessive multiplication of bureaus results in a bureaucracy, which we may define as any administration in which the need to follow complex procedures impedes effective action. A bureaucrat usually works by fixed routine without exercising…

Home from the North

Linda Sillitoe

only from the nesting hollow 
            of our bed 
will I say how cold it’s been 
            so cold 

Grain Storage: The Balance of Power Between Priesthood Authority and Relief Society Autonomy

Jessie L. Embry

The developmental history of the Church shows most conspicuously, perhaps, not in purposes and theology but in details. A twentieth-century visitor to the nineteenth-century might be most struck not by the pioneer conditions as by…

“To Maintain Harmony”: Adjusting to External and Internal Stress, 1890-1930

Thomas G. Alexander

In his landmark organizational study, Max Weber outlined three forms of authority: traditional, charismatic, and legal. Originally charismatic under Joseph Smith and to some extent under Brigham Young, by the late nineteenth century, leadership in…

Outside the Mormon Hierarchy: Alternative Aspects of Institutional Power

C. Brooklyn Derr

By 1900, the general leadership of the Relief Society, the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, and the Primary Association had together made plans for a woman’s building for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day…

An Introduction to Mormon Administrative History

David J. Whittaker

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

The Uncommon Touch: Brief Moments with N. Eldon Tanner

Maureen Ursenbach Beecher

I was a sophomore at BYU in 1953 when my parents called one Sunday from Calgary to tell me what we had already anticipated: that a new stake had been formed there. My father had…

N. Eldon Tanner, Man of Integrity

Leonard J. Arrington

He was tall, thin, and taciturn; but he had a clear head and a big heart. He played many roles in the First Presidency and played them all dependably, admirably. 

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

Michael Hicks

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

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

William P. MacKinnon

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…

Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57

Thomas G. Alexander

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

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

Rebecca Chandler

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

A Strange Phenomena: Ernest L. Wilkinson, the LDS Church, and Utah Politics

Gary James Bergera

For Ernest Leroy Wilkinson, successful Washington, D.C., lawyer and seventh president of Brigham Young University, campaign politics was a game he could never master. From his rowdy youth in Ogden, Utah’s notorious Hell’s Half-Acre district, where blind eyes turned to cock-fighting and bootlegging, he had been fascinated by the nature and use of power. By the time he was fifty, he had secured a string of hard-won national victories as a tenacious and intimidating legalist. But the lure of politics remained the one attraction, despite other professional and personal accomplishments, he could not resist.

Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts

D. Michael Quinn

From the 1950s to the 1980s Ezra Taft Benson was at the center of a series of political conflicts within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1943 he became a member of…

Free Expression: The LDS Church and Brigham Young University

Omar M. Kader

Patriarchal Blessings and the Routinization of Charisma

Irene M. Bates

Leaders and Members: Messages from the General Handbook of Instructions

Lavina Fielding Anderson

A Prophet, Seer, and Revelator | Bryan Waterman, ed., The Prophet Puzzle: Interpretive Essays on Joseph Smith

Bradley D. Woodworth

What does it mean that Joseph Smith was “a seer, a translator, a prophet” (D&C 21:1)? This is the question addressed by the fifteen essays in this book, the eighth in Signature Books’s Essays on…

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Lester E. Bush Jr.

There once was a time, albeit brief, when a “Negro problem” did not exist for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During those early months in New York and Ohio no mention was even made of Church attitudes towards blacks. The Gospel was for “all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples,” and no exceptions were made. A Negro, “Black Pete,” was among the first converts in Ohio, and his story was prominently reported in the local press. W. W. Phelps opened a mission to Missouri in July, 1831, and preached to “all the families of the earth,” specifically mentioning Negroes among his first audience. The following year another black, Elijah Abel, was baptized in Mary land.

Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface

Duane E. Jeffery

Ever since his great synthesis, Darwin’s name has been a source of discomfort to the religious world. Too sweeping to be fully fathomed, too revolutionary to be easily accepted, but too well documented to be…

The Making of a Mormon Myth: The 1844 Transfiguration of Brigham Young

Richard Van Wagoner

The brethren testify that brother Brigham Young is brother Joseph’s legal successor. You never heard me say so. I say that I am a good hand to keep the dogs and wolves out of the…

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

George D. Smith

Polygamy, marriage to more than one spouse at a time, cannot be seen in the fossil record of our primitive ancestor, Homo erectus, and no one knows if Lucy of the African Rift, reputed to…

The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony

David John Buerger

Dialogue 34.1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 87

However, the temple has maintained its central role in the lives of
Latter-day Saints by being able to create a point of intersection between
human desires for righteousness and the divine willingness to be bound
by covenant. This point has remained constant, even though emphases
in the church have changed over time, also bringing change to the en￾dowment ceremony itself

Critique of a Limited Geography for Book of Mormon Events

Earl M. Wunderli

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

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

Mark D. Thomas

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

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

Stephen Taysom

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

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

Robert A. Rees

Dialogue 35.3 (Fall 2003):9a–128
I am a literary critic who has spent a professional lifetime reading, teaching, and writing about literary texts. Much of my interest in and approach to the Book of Mormon lies with the text—though not just as a field for scholarly exploration.

Prophecy and Palimpsest

Robert M. Price

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

The Earliest Eternal Sealing for Civilly Married Couples Living and Dead

Gary James Bergera

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

Martin Harris: The Kirtland Years, 1831-1870

H. Michael Marquardt

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

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

Samuel M. Brown

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

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

Mark T. Decker

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

Manly Virtue: Defining Male Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

Russell Stevenson

The Last Memory: Joseph F. Smith and Lieux de Mémoire in Late Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

Stephen Taysom

Personal Voices: Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection

Michael Hicks