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Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel

Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…

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…

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion within Haiti’s Culture of Vodou

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. At first glance, it may be difficult to see a relationship between Haitian Vodou and Mormonism.[1] How could Mormonism, which established and upheld racist policies…

Understanding the Community of Christ’s Doctrine and Covenants Dale E. Luffman, Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants. Volume 2: The Reorganization—Community of Christ Era

Fitting Comfortably: Mormonism and the Narrative of National Violence

This is an important, accessible book that should be in the hands of everyone who thinks deeply about Mormonism’s place in the world. Writing for the Cambridge Element series on religion and violence, Patrick Mason…

Sweater

With Marbles for Eyes

As they crested the final hill into town, the speed limit dropped and the noise from the tires was quieter and less constant. Travis looked out Sarah’s window and she looked at him like he…

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

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Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel

Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…

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…

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion within Haiti’s Culture of Vodou

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. At first glance, it may be difficult to see a relationship between Haitian Vodou and Mormonism.[1] How could Mormonism, which established and upheld racist policies…

Understanding the Community of Christ’s Doctrine and Covenants Dale E. Luffman, Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants. Volume 2: The Reorganization—Community of Christ Era

Fitting Comfortably: Mormonism and the Narrative of National Violence

This is an important, accessible book that should be in the hands of everyone who thinks deeply about Mormonism’s place in the world. Writing for the Cambridge Element series on religion and violence, Patrick Mason…

Sweater

With Marbles for Eyes

As they crested the final hill into town, the speed limit dropped and the noise from the tires was quieter and less constant. Travis looked out Sarah’s window and she looked at him like he…

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

Review: A Philosophical Portrait in Pieces Steven L. Peck. Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Art

Review: Gender Structures within Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition Sandra Clark Jergensen and Shelah Mastny Miner, eds. Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition

From the Pulpit: The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

Review: On Apple Seeds, Rats, and the State of Mormon Literature Steven L. Peck. Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Review: Resisting Interpretation Lisa Bickmore. Ephemerist

Review: Problem Plays that Cultivate Compassion Melissa Leilani Larson. Third Wheel: Peculiar Stories of Mormon Women in Love

Review: Opening Invisible Doors: Considering Heavenly Mother Rachel Hunt Steenblik. Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother

Review: Judith Freeman: A Remarkable Memoir of an Unremarkable Life Judith Freeman. The Latter Days: A Memoir

Review: The Life of a Spiritualist Saint Scott H. Partridge, ed. Thirteenth Apostle: The Diaries of Amasa M. Lyman, 1832–1877

Review: Anything but Orthodox Matthew James Babcock. Heterodoxologies

Review: Thin Volume, Thick Questions Luisa Perkins. Prayers in Bath

Review: As the Savor: The Poetry of R. A. Christmas R. A. Christmas. Saviors on Mt. Disneyland: New and Collected Poems by R. A. Christmas

Review: Raw Hope and Kindness: The Burning Point Tracy McKay. The Burning Point: A Memoir of Addiction, Destruction, Love, Parenting, Survival, and Hope

Review: Our Artistic Potential The Mormon Arts Center. The Kimball Challenge at Fifty: Mormon Arts Center Essays

Duties of a Deacon

I never got to do it when I was a twelve-year-old Mormon boy even if it is, technically, as much a duty of a deacon as passing the sacrament—and I doubted anyone in my presidency…

The Pew

Helen realizes at church Sunday morning that still, after all these years, she does not have fond feelings for the chapel. She doesn’t want to hold on to any grudges against it—she doesn’t take it…

Review: The Making of a Hard, Then Softened Heart in The Book of Laman Mette Harrison. The Book of Laman

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

A Capacious Priesthood and a Life of Holiness

The Provo Tabernacle and Interfaith Collaboration

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

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

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

Review: A Book Full of Insights Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870

Review: Lapsing into Daredevilry Shawn Vestal. Daredevils

Review: The Fruit of Knowledge Thomas F. Rogers. Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty

Review: Just Saying Stanton Harris Hall. Just Seeing

Review: Asking the Questions Julie J. Nichols. Pigs When They Straddle the Air: A Novel in Seven Stories

Review: Faith, Family, and Art Jack Harrell. Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism

Review: Exploring the Unfamiliar Realm of Religion in Young Adult Literature Julie Berry. The Passion of Dolssa Jeff Zentner. The Serpent King

Review: The New Descartes and the Book of Mormon Earl M. Wunderli. An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself

Review: Past Second Base Joey Franklin. My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married

Review: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives: Ceaselessly into the Past Karen Rosenbaum. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives

Review: Quiet Stories, Complex Emotion Darin Cozzens. The Last Blessing of J. Guyman LeGrand and Other Stories

Review: Mormon Tradition and the Individual Talent Mary Lythgoe Bradford. Mr. Mustard Plaster and Other Mormon Essays

The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence

Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism

Scared Sacred: How the Horrifying Story of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Can Help Save Us

Dialogue 49.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Probably the most destabilizing piece of historical information most Mormons come across is Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

A View from the Inside: How Critical Ethnography Changed My Mind about Polygamy

Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Levirate Widow

The Celestial Law

Jesus Christ, Marriage, and Mormon Christianities: 2016 Smith-Pettit Lecture, Sunstone Symposium

Deus Mea Lux Est: A Mormon Among Catholics

Into a Foreign Land: A Catholic among Mormons

Abundant Grace: The Humanness of Catholics and Latter-day Saints as a Basis for Friendship and Collaboration

Ordination and Blessing

Mormon/Catholic Dialogue: Thinking About Ways Forward

Review: More than a Different Color W. Paul Reeve. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

Review: A Cluttering of Symbol and Metaphor David G. Pace. Dream House on Golan Drive

Review: Mormonism from Varied Fictional Perspectives William Morris. Dark Watch and Other Mormon-American Stories

Review: Walking the Narrow Path Patrick Q. Mason. Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

Review: Planted: An Earthy Approach to Faith and Doubt Patrick Q. Mason. Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

How Can a Religious Person Tolerate Other Religions?

When I was in my early twenties, a prominent American rabbi, Yitz Greenberg, once heard me lecture to a Jewish group. I was offering comparisons between Judaism and other religions. Afterward he complimented me on…

Why do Some Perceive the Church to be a Cult? Inside and Outside Perceptions versus Reality

The Golden Dream and the Nightmare: The Closet Crusade of A.C. Lambert

Pillars of My Family: A Brief Saga

Dissent and Schism in the Early Church: Explaining Mormon Fissiparousness

Dancing Through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism

Dialogue 28.3 (Fall 1995): 1–12
As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path.

Leaders and Members: Messages from the General Handbook of Instructions

The Book of Mormon as Great Literature | Richard Dilworth Rust, Feasting on the Word

A number of years ago when I was attending Bowling Green University as a graduate student, I was introduced to the writings of John Muir, the American naturalist. One of the approaches we used in…

Informed Scholarship | Donald W. Parry and Dana M. Pike, eds., LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Recent years have seen a revival of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) among Latter-day Saints, prompted in part by the appointment of several BYU faculty (Donald W. Parry, David R. Seely, Dana M.…

Wayward Saints: The Conflict of Opposing Visions | Ronald W. Walker, Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young

Roanld W. Walker’s study Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young is a valuable contribution to recent Mormon scholarship. Among other things, the book illuminates important questions and concerns of both past and present. Walker…

CAUTION: Men in Trees | Darrell Spencer, CAUTION: Men in Trees

CAUTION: Men in Trees. Hmmm, one might say. Are these men swaying from limb to limb like the perennial hero, Tarzan? Are these men going out on a limb or barking up the wrong tree?…

Mormonism and the Radical Religious Movement in Early Colonial New England

Mormons believe that forerunners prepared the way for the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. This paper examines a special set of those forerunners, namely, the progenitors of the early converts to the LDS church, whose religious experiences took them through a refiner’s fire so significant and revolutionary that it helped provide their descendants with the disposition to embrace a new, radical faith.

The Discovery of Native “Mormon” Communities in Russia

In early June 1998, Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mission, felt moved to place missionaries in a small village called Bogdanovka. This was an exciting change in policy. Early LDS missionary work in Russia had been concentrated in large urban areas where most missionaries could enjoy such civilized luxuries as paved roads, frequent public transportation, telephone lines, and running water. In recent years missions branched into smaller cities, but the Russian village was an altogether new frontier. Bogdanovka, although it is only 100 miles or so from the large regional capital city of Samara, is a world apart. 

Parallelomania and the Study of Latter-day Scripture: Confirmation, Coincidence, or the Collective Unconscious?

Dialogue 33.2 (Summer 2001):139–173
This article looks at some of the ways parallels have been used by Nibley in the exposition of latter-day scripture, the types of parallels employed, and some of the problems that arise from this comparative exercise.

Ritual as Theology and as Communication

Theology is usually considered an intellectual activity for philosophers and educated religionists. Actually, most humans discuss the same sub jects, but at a different level than do the pundits. Commoners too cogitate upon the nature of suprahuman power, the possibilities and limitations of humankind, the means by which we and the cosmos came into existence, and our ultimate fate.

Analyzing LDS Growth in Guatemala: Report from a Barrio

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (usually called Mormon or LDS church) is having enormous success in most parts of the world. Growth is particularly impressive in Latin America. In 1971 there were only 217,500 LDS members on this continent, accounting for no more than seven percent of the church’s total membership.

Making Miracles | Phyllis Barber, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination

When I was twelve, the youth in our ward did baptisms for the dead in the Los Angeles temple. To pique our interest, our leaders told tales of spirits appearing to the living and thanking…

Restless Grace | Terry Tempest Williams, Leap

I first met Terry Tempest Williams in January 1999 at a commemoration in Tucson, Arizona, for my uncle, United States Representative Morris Udall. The beautiful eulogies honoring his many accomplishments, particularly his record on the…

The Dangers of Missionary Work | Ken Driggs, Evil Among Us: The Texas Mormon Missionary Murders

On a quiet Monday evening in 1974, two Mormon missionaries visited a Texas trailer house—oddly situated behind a taxidermy shop—at the invitation of the occupant, Bob Klea son, an inactive member of the church. Instead…

Textual Tradition, the Evolution of Mormon Doctrine, and the Doctrine & Covenants | H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary

H. Michael Marquardt published his early monographs with anti-Mor mons Jerald and Sandra Tanner, but these works exhibited higher scholarly standards than the Tanners’ work. Marquardt co-authored Inventing Mor monism: Tradition and the Historical Record[1]…

The Idea of a University | Sterling M. McMurrin and L. Jackson Newell, Matters of Conscience: Conversations with Sterling M. McMurrin on Philosophy, Education, and Religion, and Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel, The Lord’s University: Freedom and Authority at BYU

Each of these books provides a thoughtful, intimate account of the uneasy co-existence of scholarly life and Mormon orthodoxies. Read together, the long journey of a prominent heretic and the recent conflicts over academic freedom…

Bird Island

It will come as news to all Latter-day Saints that after many years of deep scholarly research the Hill Cumorah has finally been located—at the north end of Bird Island in Utah Lake. Those familiar…

A Tentative Approach to the Book of Abraham

During the 1830’s John Whitmer wrote, in connection with the ancient Egyptian records purchased by the church in July 1835 from Michael H. Chandler,

The First Vision Controversy: A Critique and Reconciliation

Ever since Fawn Brodie wrote No Man Knows My History in 1946 and emphatically denied that there was any valid evidence that Joseph Smith experienced a visitation from the Father and the Son in 1820,…

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, defined thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

What the Church Means to People Like Me

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

The Challenge of Honesty

Both the Protestant and Catholic communities are being swept by a passion for honesty. They are scrutinizing centuries-old suppositions and re-examining current attitudes and goals. In the Protestant world, the writings of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, Tillich,…

About this Commemorative Issue

In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott McLemee fixes the onset of the abundantly energetic “field of Mormon Studies” with two debuts: the Mormon History Association was organized in 1965 and…

A Variety of Women’s Voices | Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, ed., Life Writings of Frontier Women Series, Vol. 1-5

This laudable and ambitious series presents a variety of life writing by Mormon women, ranging from diaries and letters to memoirs and more formal autobiography. Series editor Maureen Ursenbach Beecher begins each volume by advocating…

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

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

Ridiculously Sublime | Elouise Bell, Madame Ridiculous and Lady Sublime

Midway through her latest collection of humorous essays, former Brigham Young University professor Eloise Bell pleads for a calculated spontaneity in humorous writing. “I do in fact know that much humor is intentional and crafted.…

Inherit the Wind, Mormon Style | Stan Larson, ed., Can Science be Faith-Promoting by Sterling B. Talmage, and Trent D. Stephens, D. Jeffrey Meldrum, and Forrest B. Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism

In 1925, the town fathers of Dayton, Tennessee secured their place in history by trying John Scopes for teaching evolution in the public schools.[1] With William Jennings Bryan as prosecutor, Clarence Darrow for the defense,…

LDS “Headquarters Culture” and the Rest of Mormonism: Past and Present

In December 1830 the founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith Jr. announced a revelation which established the doctrine of “gathering” the new church’s members at a headquarters area: “And again, a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio. … ” (D&C 37: 3). Prior to that date, believers in The Book of Mormon were concentrated in three locations of western New York State: at Manchester /Palmyra (where the Smith family had lived a dozen years), also at Colesville, and at Fayette. Then from February 1831 to the end of 1837, the church was headquartered in Kirt land, Ohio (near Cleveland). 

Coyote Laughter

The flask lay under a loose plank on the back porch. To someone lifting the board there was only an empty space, but when Wayne knelt and reached to his elbow beneath the adjacent board,…

Antidote for Solitude: The Life of Bonnie Bobet

The death of a loved one may evoke anguish, regret, confusion, anger, shock, bitterness, despair, relief, gratitude, nostalgia, even joy. But the death of my friend Bonnie evoked in me, both on that Friday morning…

Why Mormons Should Celebrate Holy Week

Each spring the Christian world celebrates the most important week in history—Passion Week or Holy Week, the time between Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem and his atonement, death, and resurrection. Throughout the world the majority…

Where Can I Turn for Peace?

9/11. For seeming forever, a call for help. Since 2001 a blast of grief swallowed like debris from the heap of rubble and human remains on the streets of Manhattan, of the New York until…

Sexual Morality Revisited

It’s a boggy acre, surely. Is there any greater conundrum than human sexuality? Is there any aspect of our lives about which it is more difficult to generalize? Is there anything in our experience so…

Good News for Fiction Readers | Jack Harrell, Vernal Promises, and Douglas Thayer, The Conversion of Jeff Williams

In 2003, Signature Books hit 100 percent from the free-throw line when both of the novels it published that year won manuscript awards from the Association for Mormon Letters. Jack Harrell’s Vernal Promises and Douglas…

Reed Smoot and the Twentieth-Century Transformation of Mormonism | Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle

On June 23, 2004, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor that the United States can bestow, at a White House ceremony presided over by the…

Relations and Principles: The Mormon Dialectic | Douglas J. Davies, An Introduction to Mormonism

Douglas J. Davies offers novel thematic interpretations of LDS theology that are provocative in both academic and devotional contexts. He identifies two theological commitments present throughout the historical development of LDS cosmology, ritual, scripture and…

Singing the Differences to Sleep | Heidi Hart, Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice

A grace note is a musical term for a miniature note placed before a prominent note in a musical phrase. If music is the direct line to human emotion, as Heidi Hart claims in her…

A Maturing View of the Book of Mormon | Grant H. Palmer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins

This book is something of a watershed in the study of Mormon history and Mormon scripture. It is the first significant popularization of evidence by a writer within the Church indicating that Joseph Smith’s ancient…

Religion and Natasha McDonald

I AM NATASHA MCDONALD. THIS IS MY MOM AND DAD. I HAVE CEREBRAL PALSY. I THINK AND FEEL LIKE YOU DO BUT THE PART OF MY BRAIN THAT CONTROLS MY PHYSICAL SELF WAS DAMAGED WHEN…

Householding: A Quaker-Mormon Marriage

The scene: my house on any weekday evening. The table’s scattered with toy airplanes, homework, books, the orange-eyed cat that’s recently adopted us, and several chewed-up pencils. I’m hunting for my keys on my way…

Napoleon Dynamite, Priesthood Skills, and the Eschatology of the Non-Rational: A Nonwarranted Physiotheologic Analysis

Napoleon fever has struck. Thousands of young girls are adorning their walls with posters of the nerdy hero in the sweet brown suit and scrambling to learn the womanly art of weaving key chains from…

The Man Lying in the Grass

We’re in Ogden, Utah, on the second day of May, heading home to Orem after a Sunday afternoon with grandchildren. Carol is driving south on Washington Boulevard passing low business buildings whose shadows are covering the lawns and reaching out into the street. Up ahead, I spot a man lying in the grass maybe twenty feet back from the curb. A drunk sleeping himself sober? I wonder. Probably drunk . . . But what if he’s a diabetic whose sugar is low and he can’t get up? 

My Belief

In 1831 at the same time that Joseph Smith was receiving visions and establishing a new church because no contemporary religion was true—they had all become dead relics with no prophecy in them—Scottish writer Thomas…

An Interview with Darrell Spencer

In addition to many stories in quarterlies, Darrell Spencer has published four collections of stories, Bring Your Legs with You, Caution: Men in Trees, Our Secret’s Out, A Woman Packing a Pistol, and a novel,…

True to the Faith: A Snapshot of the Church in 2004

In July 2004, the LDS Church published True to the Faith, a handbook of doctrines and beliefs arranged alphabetically from A (“Aaronic Priesthood”) to Z (“Zion”): 190 pages of what Mormons are supposed to believe, know, and do. Arguably, in creed-free and catechism-free Mormonism, the appearance of this concise compendium represents a new development. Its closest parallels may be the missionary “white book,” which spells out behavioral rules, the pocket-sized handbooks for Latter-day Saints in the military, or the newest revision of “For the Strength of Youth,” which provides explanations of principles governing correct behavior but is also quite clear about what that correct behavior is. All of these works are contemporary and concise. 

Grant McMurray and the Succession Crisis in the Community of Christ

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 67–90
Members of the Community of Christ were shocked when our president, W. Grant McMurray, announced that he had resigned on November 29, 2004 , effective immediately.

King Benjamin and the Yeoman Farmer

Acccording to republican purists of the Revolutionary generation, the values of commerce, which “fostered a love of gain, ostentatious living, and a desire for luxuries,” could be contrasted with those of agriculture, which encouraged frugality, industry, and a desire for competence. The contrast was largely a fiction, of course, and de Crevecoeur’s recognition that self-interest was what held farming communities together should warn us against a naive reading of Jeffersonian texts. Nevertheless, as the income of most small farmers in North America in the late eighteenth century did not allow for conspicuous consumption, and rural neighbors were bound together by interlacing social obligations and debts, the farmer of the Revolutionary generation could legitimately be given iconic status as the antithesis of aggressive commercial individualism. But what if agriculture were itself to become (even more) commercialized? What if obligations to others were reduced to the honoring of debts, and benevolence was thought to lie, not in traditional acts of charity such as helping the needy, but rather in helping the bottom line—in inducing men “to pursue with increased energy, that business, or that course of conduct, to which their true interest directs them”? 

An Inside View of Polygamy in the Midwest | Vickie Cleverley Speek, “God Has Made Us a Kingdom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons

Vickie Speek is a fifth-generation Mormon whose progenitors were pioneers in Idaho. An award-winning journalist, she received the Award of Excellence from the Illinois Historical Society in 2001 for her research on the Civil War.…

Colonizing the Frontier between Faith and Doubt | Levi S. Peterson, A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography

It would be difficult for me to overstate the influence that Levi Peterson has had on both my spiritual and my intellectual development, “The Confessions of St. Augustine,” which I found by accident a few…

Where We Lay Our Scene

Her ticket is at will-call. She needs no help finding their seats, but Tom repeatedly cranes his neck to check the doors at the back of the hall. He likes it when she emerges from…

The Nature of Comets

We found the remains just below the embankment of an antediluvian oxbow. She had been lying there a long time, before the Cayuse and Lewis and Clark and the Grand Coulee Dam and long before…

An Old Mormon Writes to Harold Bloom

In the fall of 1990, I was retired and we were back in academia fulltime at BYU: Carol was studying anthropology and I was studying English. We went to the University of Utah to listen…

Writing: An Act of Responsibility

You’re a writer who loves these big, tough songs that pierce your heart and make you feel alive all over again. You believe in literature with a soul—the book that makes you think, that makes you feel as though you’ve been somewhere and experienced something, that you’re a different person for having read it. Writing just to entertain isn’t your goal. Writing to impress others with your cleverness or hoped-for-brilliance doesn’t matter as much as it once did. Your desire is something like Chekhov’s who spoke about writers describing situations so truthfully that readers could no longer avoid them. Or in your own words, to wrangle with the tough places in yourself and your subject. That’s what matters to you. 

Should Mormon Women Speak Out? Thoughts on Our Place in the World

I am happy to pay tribute to Gene England, a vivid and significant twentieth-century intellectual of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gene influenced many Mormons with his rigorous ethics, his lived religion, his human interactions, and his ability to record his life and get it all down. He certainly influenced me. 

What I Would Be If I Weren’t A Mormon

When I first asked myself the question in the title, I was wondering specifically what religion I would participate in if I weren’t Mormon. I soon tangled myself up in questions about what it means…

“A Climate Far and Fair”: Ecumenism and Abiding Faith

A Year of Dialogue: Thinking Myself into Mormonism

Straight Home

Six cars pulled through the intersection, one after the other over the course of an hour, but none of them was hers. Barefoot, Bart waited on the slat bench outside his front door, picking away…

Badge and Bryant, or, the Decline and Fall of the Dogfrey Club

Badge and Bryant Braunhil were first cousins, but they could have passed for fraternal twins, having—both of them—bright blue eyes, big grins, and unkempt blond hair. They lived in Linroth, a Mormon town in northern…

Scandals, Scapegoats, and the Cross: An Interview with René Girard

Eternal Misfit

For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.  Coldplay[1] Some of the functions in the celestial body will not appear in the terrestrial body, neither in the telestial body, and…

The Canyon That is Not a Canyon

This is Dagan on the day after a 4 a.m. porn binge. Another. The third in as many weeks. He drifts into the living room in late afternoon, sees Tam at his computer, freezes. He…

Ghost Towns

Reviews: Shield of Faith: The Power of Religion in the Lives of LDS Youth and Young Adults & Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults

Review: Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction

Review: Utah in the Twentieth Century

Review: Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide

Review: Raw Edges

Review: Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, Stage, and Screen

Review: Encouraging Heterosexuality: Helping Children Develop a Traditional Sexual Orientation

Review: Craig H. Harline Conversions: Two family stories from the Reformation and Modern America

Reviews: Therese Doucet. A Lost Argument: A Latter-Day Novel Robert Rees, ed. Why I Stay: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons Thomas Riskas. Deconstructing Mormonism:An Analysis and Assessment of the Mormon Faith

Abundant Events or Narrative Abundance: Robert Orsi and the Academic Study of Mormonism

The Revelations & Opinions of the Rev. Clive Japhta, D.D.

as extracted from a series of emails James Goldberg discovered in his junk folder  I am—without question—an American. If I’ve ever doubted that, it was clear the moment I walked into the humidity and human…

Review: Michael G. Reed. Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo

Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel

Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…

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…

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion within Haiti’s Culture of Vodou

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. At first glance, it may be difficult to see a relationship between Haitian Vodou and Mormonism.[1] How could Mormonism, which established and upheld racist policies…

Understanding the Community of Christ’s Doctrine and Covenants Dale E. Luffman, Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants. Volume 2: The Reorganization—Community of Christ Era

Fitting Comfortably: Mormonism and the Narrative of National Violence

This is an important, accessible book that should be in the hands of everyone who thinks deeply about Mormonism’s place in the world. Writing for the Cambridge Element series on religion and violence, Patrick Mason…

Sweater

With Marbles for Eyes

As they crested the final hill into town, the speed limit dropped and the noise from the tires was quieter and less constant. Travis looked out Sarah’s window and she looked at him like he…

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

Review: A Philosophical Portrait in Pieces Steven L. Peck. Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Art

Review: Gender Structures within Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition Sandra Clark Jergensen and Shelah Mastny Miner, eds. Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition

From the Pulpit: The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

Review: On Apple Seeds, Rats, and the State of Mormon Literature Steven L. Peck. Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

Review: Resisting Interpretation Lisa Bickmore. Ephemerist

Review: Problem Plays that Cultivate Compassion Melissa Leilani Larson. Third Wheel: Peculiar Stories of Mormon Women in Love

Review: Opening Invisible Doors: Considering Heavenly Mother Rachel Hunt Steenblik. Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother

Review: Judith Freeman: A Remarkable Memoir of an Unremarkable Life Judith Freeman. The Latter Days: A Memoir

Review: The Life of a Spiritualist Saint Scott H. Partridge, ed. Thirteenth Apostle: The Diaries of Amasa M. Lyman, 1832–1877

Review: Anything but Orthodox Matthew James Babcock. Heterodoxologies

Review: Thin Volume, Thick Questions Luisa Perkins. Prayers in Bath

Review: As the Savor: The Poetry of R. A. Christmas R. A. Christmas. Saviors on Mt. Disneyland: New and Collected Poems by R. A. Christmas

Review: Raw Hope and Kindness: The Burning Point Tracy McKay. The Burning Point: A Memoir of Addiction, Destruction, Love, Parenting, Survival, and Hope

Review: Our Artistic Potential The Mormon Arts Center. The Kimball Challenge at Fifty: Mormon Arts Center Essays

Duties of a Deacon

I never got to do it when I was a twelve-year-old Mormon boy even if it is, technically, as much a duty of a deacon as passing the sacrament—and I doubted anyone in my presidency…

The Pew

Helen realizes at church Sunday morning that still, after all these years, she does not have fond feelings for the chapel. She doesn’t want to hold on to any grudges against it—she doesn’t take it…

Review: The Making of a Hard, Then Softened Heart in The Book of Laman Mette Harrison. The Book of Laman

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

A Capacious Priesthood and a Life of Holiness

The Provo Tabernacle and Interfaith Collaboration

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

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

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

Review: A Book Full of Insights Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870

Review: Lapsing into Daredevilry Shawn Vestal. Daredevils

Review: The Fruit of Knowledge Thomas F. Rogers. Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty

Review: Just Saying Stanton Harris Hall. Just Seeing

Review: Asking the Questions Julie J. Nichols. Pigs When They Straddle the Air: A Novel in Seven Stories

Review: Faith, Family, and Art Jack Harrell. Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism

Review: Exploring the Unfamiliar Realm of Religion in Young Adult Literature Julie Berry. The Passion of Dolssa Jeff Zentner. The Serpent King

Review: The New Descartes and the Book of Mormon Earl M. Wunderli. An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself

Review: Past Second Base Joey Franklin. My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married

Review: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives: Ceaselessly into the Past Karen Rosenbaum. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives

Review: Quiet Stories, Complex Emotion Darin Cozzens. The Last Blessing of J. Guyman LeGrand and Other Stories

Review: Mormon Tradition and the Individual Talent Mary Lythgoe Bradford. Mr. Mustard Plaster and Other Mormon Essays

The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence

Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism

Scared Sacred: How the Horrifying Story of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Can Help Save Us

Dialogue 49.3 (Fall 2016): 75–88
Probably the most destabilizing piece of historical information most Mormons come across is Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

A View from the Inside: How Critical Ethnography Changed My Mind about Polygamy

Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Levirate Widow

The Celestial Law

Jesus Christ, Marriage, and Mormon Christianities: 2016 Smith-Pettit Lecture, Sunstone Symposium

Deus Mea Lux Est: A Mormon Among Catholics

Into a Foreign Land: A Catholic among Mormons

Abundant Grace: The Humanness of Catholics and Latter-day Saints as a Basis for Friendship and Collaboration

Ordination and Blessing

Mormon/Catholic Dialogue: Thinking About Ways Forward

Review: More than a Different Color W. Paul Reeve. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

Review: A Cluttering of Symbol and Metaphor David G. Pace. Dream House on Golan Drive

Review: Mormonism from Varied Fictional Perspectives William Morris. Dark Watch and Other Mormon-American Stories

Review: Walking the Narrow Path Patrick Q. Mason. Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

Review: Planted: An Earthy Approach to Faith and Doubt Patrick Q. Mason. Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

How Can a Religious Person Tolerate Other Religions?

When I was in my early twenties, a prominent American rabbi, Yitz Greenberg, once heard me lecture to a Jewish group. I was offering comparisons between Judaism and other religions. Afterward he complimented me on…

Why do Some Perceive the Church to be a Cult? Inside and Outside Perceptions versus Reality

The Golden Dream and the Nightmare: The Closet Crusade of A.C. Lambert

Pillars of My Family: A Brief Saga

Dissent and Schism in the Early Church: Explaining Mormon Fissiparousness

Dancing Through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism

Dialogue 28.3 (Fall 1995): 1–12
As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path.

Leaders and Members: Messages from the General Handbook of Instructions

The Book of Mormon as Great Literature | Richard Dilworth Rust, Feasting on the Word

A number of years ago when I was attending Bowling Green University as a graduate student, I was introduced to the writings of John Muir, the American naturalist. One of the approaches we used in…

Informed Scholarship | Donald W. Parry and Dana M. Pike, eds., LDS Perspectives on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Recent years have seen a revival of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) among Latter-day Saints, prompted in part by the appointment of several BYU faculty (Donald W. Parry, David R. Seely, Dana M.…

Wayward Saints: The Conflict of Opposing Visions | Ronald W. Walker, Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young

Roanld W. Walker’s study Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young is a valuable contribution to recent Mormon scholarship. Among other things, the book illuminates important questions and concerns of both past and present. Walker…

CAUTION: Men in Trees | Darrell Spencer, CAUTION: Men in Trees

CAUTION: Men in Trees. Hmmm, one might say. Are these men swaying from limb to limb like the perennial hero, Tarzan? Are these men going out on a limb or barking up the wrong tree?…

Mormonism and the Radical Religious Movement in Early Colonial New England

Mormons believe that forerunners prepared the way for the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. This paper examines a special set of those forerunners, namely, the progenitors of the early converts to the LDS church, whose religious experiences took them through a refiner’s fire so significant and revolutionary that it helped provide their descendants with the disposition to embrace a new, radical faith.

The Discovery of Native “Mormon” Communities in Russia

In early June 1998, Sheridan Gashler, president of the Russia Samara Mission, felt moved to place missionaries in a small village called Bogdanovka. This was an exciting change in policy. Early LDS missionary work in Russia had been concentrated in large urban areas where most missionaries could enjoy such civilized luxuries as paved roads, frequent public transportation, telephone lines, and running water. In recent years missions branched into smaller cities, but the Russian village was an altogether new frontier. Bogdanovka, although it is only 100 miles or so from the large regional capital city of Samara, is a world apart. 

Parallelomania and the Study of Latter-day Scripture: Confirmation, Coincidence, or the Collective Unconscious?

Dialogue 33.2 (Summer 2001):139–173
This article looks at some of the ways parallels have been used by Nibley in the exposition of latter-day scripture, the types of parallels employed, and some of the problems that arise from this comparative exercise.

Ritual as Theology and as Communication

Theology is usually considered an intellectual activity for philosophers and educated religionists. Actually, most humans discuss the same sub jects, but at a different level than do the pundits. Commoners too cogitate upon the nature of suprahuman power, the possibilities and limitations of humankind, the means by which we and the cosmos came into existence, and our ultimate fate.

Analyzing LDS Growth in Guatemala: Report from a Barrio

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (usually called Mormon or LDS church) is having enormous success in most parts of the world. Growth is particularly impressive in Latin America. In 1971 there were only 217,500 LDS members on this continent, accounting for no more than seven percent of the church’s total membership.

Making Miracles | Phyllis Barber, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination

When I was twelve, the youth in our ward did baptisms for the dead in the Los Angeles temple. To pique our interest, our leaders told tales of spirits appearing to the living and thanking…

Restless Grace | Terry Tempest Williams, Leap

I first met Terry Tempest Williams in January 1999 at a commemoration in Tucson, Arizona, for my uncle, United States Representative Morris Udall. The beautiful eulogies honoring his many accomplishments, particularly his record on the…

The Dangers of Missionary Work | Ken Driggs, Evil Among Us: The Texas Mormon Missionary Murders

On a quiet Monday evening in 1974, two Mormon missionaries visited a Texas trailer house—oddly situated behind a taxidermy shop—at the invitation of the occupant, Bob Klea son, an inactive member of the church. Instead…

Textual Tradition, the Evolution of Mormon Doctrine, and the Doctrine & Covenants | H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary

H. Michael Marquardt published his early monographs with anti-Mor mons Jerald and Sandra Tanner, but these works exhibited higher scholarly standards than the Tanners’ work. Marquardt co-authored Inventing Mor monism: Tradition and the Historical Record[1]…

The Idea of a University | Sterling M. McMurrin and L. Jackson Newell, Matters of Conscience: Conversations with Sterling M. McMurrin on Philosophy, Education, and Religion, and Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel, The Lord’s University: Freedom and Authority at BYU

Each of these books provides a thoughtful, intimate account of the uneasy co-existence of scholarly life and Mormon orthodoxies. Read together, the long journey of a prominent heretic and the recent conflicts over academic freedom…

Bird Island

It will come as news to all Latter-day Saints that after many years of deep scholarly research the Hill Cumorah has finally been located—at the north end of Bird Island in Utah Lake. Those familiar…

A Tentative Approach to the Book of Abraham

During the 1830’s John Whitmer wrote, in connection with the ancient Egyptian records purchased by the church in July 1835 from Michael H. Chandler,

The First Vision Controversy: A Critique and Reconciliation

Ever since Fawn Brodie wrote No Man Knows My History in 1946 and emphatically denied that there was any valid evidence that Joseph Smith experienced a visitation from the Father and the Son in 1820,…

The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History

The philosopher Plato, to whom dialogue was the highest expression of intellectuality, defined thought as “the dialogue of the soul with itself.” It is thus altogether fitting that the editors of Dialogue should encourage Mormon…

What the Church Means to People Like Me

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

The Challenge of Honesty

Both the Protestant and Catholic communities are being swept by a passion for honesty. They are scrutinizing centuries-old suppositions and re-examining current attitudes and goals. In the Protestant world, the writings of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, Tillich,…

About this Commemorative Issue

In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott McLemee fixes the onset of the abundantly energetic “field of Mormon Studies” with two debuts: the Mormon History Association was organized in 1965 and…

A Variety of Women’s Voices | Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, ed., Life Writings of Frontier Women Series, Vol. 1-5

This laudable and ambitious series presents a variety of life writing by Mormon women, ranging from diaries and letters to memoirs and more formal autobiography. Series editor Maureen Ursenbach Beecher begins each volume by advocating…

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

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

Ridiculously Sublime | Elouise Bell, Madame Ridiculous and Lady Sublime

Midway through her latest collection of humorous essays, former Brigham Young University professor Eloise Bell pleads for a calculated spontaneity in humorous writing. “I do in fact know that much humor is intentional and crafted.…

Inherit the Wind, Mormon Style | Stan Larson, ed., Can Science be Faith-Promoting by Sterling B. Talmage, and Trent D. Stephens, D. Jeffrey Meldrum, and Forrest B. Peterson, Evolution and Mormonism

In 1925, the town fathers of Dayton, Tennessee secured their place in history by trying John Scopes for teaching evolution in the public schools.[1] With William Jennings Bryan as prosecutor, Clarence Darrow for the defense,…

LDS “Headquarters Culture” and the Rest of Mormonism: Past and Present

In December 1830 the founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith Jr. announced a revelation which established the doctrine of “gathering” the new church’s members at a headquarters area: “And again, a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio. … ” (D&C 37: 3). Prior to that date, believers in The Book of Mormon were concentrated in three locations of western New York State: at Manchester /Palmyra (where the Smith family had lived a dozen years), also at Colesville, and at Fayette. Then from February 1831 to the end of 1837, the church was headquartered in Kirt land, Ohio (near Cleveland). 

Coyote Laughter

The flask lay under a loose plank on the back porch. To someone lifting the board there was only an empty space, but when Wayne knelt and reached to his elbow beneath the adjacent board,…

Antidote for Solitude: The Life of Bonnie Bobet

The death of a loved one may evoke anguish, regret, confusion, anger, shock, bitterness, despair, relief, gratitude, nostalgia, even joy. But the death of my friend Bonnie evoked in me, both on that Friday morning…

Why Mormons Should Celebrate Holy Week

Each spring the Christian world celebrates the most important week in history—Passion Week or Holy Week, the time between Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem and his atonement, death, and resurrection. Throughout the world the majority…

Where Can I Turn for Peace?

9/11. For seeming forever, a call for help. Since 2001 a blast of grief swallowed like debris from the heap of rubble and human remains on the streets of Manhattan, of the New York until…

Sexual Morality Revisited

It’s a boggy acre, surely. Is there any greater conundrum than human sexuality? Is there any aspect of our lives about which it is more difficult to generalize? Is there anything in our experience so…

Good News for Fiction Readers | Jack Harrell, Vernal Promises, and Douglas Thayer, The Conversion of Jeff Williams

In 2003, Signature Books hit 100 percent from the free-throw line when both of the novels it published that year won manuscript awards from the Association for Mormon Letters. Jack Harrell’s Vernal Promises and Douglas…

Reed Smoot and the Twentieth-Century Transformation of Mormonism | Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle

On June 23, 2004, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor that the United States can bestow, at a White House ceremony presided over by the…

Relations and Principles: The Mormon Dialectic | Douglas J. Davies, An Introduction to Mormonism

Douglas J. Davies offers novel thematic interpretations of LDS theology that are provocative in both academic and devotional contexts. He identifies two theological commitments present throughout the historical development of LDS cosmology, ritual, scripture and…

Singing the Differences to Sleep | Heidi Hart, Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice

A grace note is a musical term for a miniature note placed before a prominent note in a musical phrase. If music is the direct line to human emotion, as Heidi Hart claims in her…

A Maturing View of the Book of Mormon | Grant H. Palmer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins

This book is something of a watershed in the study of Mormon history and Mormon scripture. It is the first significant popularization of evidence by a writer within the Church indicating that Joseph Smith’s ancient…

Religion and Natasha McDonald

I AM NATASHA MCDONALD. THIS IS MY MOM AND DAD. I HAVE CEREBRAL PALSY. I THINK AND FEEL LIKE YOU DO BUT THE PART OF MY BRAIN THAT CONTROLS MY PHYSICAL SELF WAS DAMAGED WHEN…

Householding: A Quaker-Mormon Marriage

The scene: my house on any weekday evening. The table’s scattered with toy airplanes, homework, books, the orange-eyed cat that’s recently adopted us, and several chewed-up pencils. I’m hunting for my keys on my way…

Napoleon Dynamite, Priesthood Skills, and the Eschatology of the Non-Rational: A Nonwarranted Physiotheologic Analysis

Napoleon fever has struck. Thousands of young girls are adorning their walls with posters of the nerdy hero in the sweet brown suit and scrambling to learn the womanly art of weaving key chains from…

The Man Lying in the Grass

We’re in Ogden, Utah, on the second day of May, heading home to Orem after a Sunday afternoon with grandchildren. Carol is driving south on Washington Boulevard passing low business buildings whose shadows are covering the lawns and reaching out into the street. Up ahead, I spot a man lying in the grass maybe twenty feet back from the curb. A drunk sleeping himself sober? I wonder. Probably drunk . . . But what if he’s a diabetic whose sugar is low and he can’t get up? 

My Belief

In 1831 at the same time that Joseph Smith was receiving visions and establishing a new church because no contemporary religion was true—they had all become dead relics with no prophecy in them—Scottish writer Thomas…

An Interview with Darrell Spencer

In addition to many stories in quarterlies, Darrell Spencer has published four collections of stories, Bring Your Legs with You, Caution: Men in Trees, Our Secret’s Out, A Woman Packing a Pistol, and a novel,…

True to the Faith: A Snapshot of the Church in 2004

In July 2004, the LDS Church published True to the Faith, a handbook of doctrines and beliefs arranged alphabetically from A (“Aaronic Priesthood”) to Z (“Zion”): 190 pages of what Mormons are supposed to believe, know, and do. Arguably, in creed-free and catechism-free Mormonism, the appearance of this concise compendium represents a new development. Its closest parallels may be the missionary “white book,” which spells out behavioral rules, the pocket-sized handbooks for Latter-day Saints in the military, or the newest revision of “For the Strength of Youth,” which provides explanations of principles governing correct behavior but is also quite clear about what that correct behavior is. All of these works are contemporary and concise. 

Grant McMurray and the Succession Crisis in the Community of Christ

Dialogue 39.4 (Winter 2006): 67–90
Members of the Community of Christ were shocked when our president, W. Grant McMurray, announced that he had resigned on November 29, 2004 , effective immediately.

King Benjamin and the Yeoman Farmer

Acccording to republican purists of the Revolutionary generation, the values of commerce, which “fostered a love of gain, ostentatious living, and a desire for luxuries,” could be contrasted with those of agriculture, which encouraged frugality, industry, and a desire for competence. The contrast was largely a fiction, of course, and de Crevecoeur’s recognition that self-interest was what held farming communities together should warn us against a naive reading of Jeffersonian texts. Nevertheless, as the income of most small farmers in North America in the late eighteenth century did not allow for conspicuous consumption, and rural neighbors were bound together by interlacing social obligations and debts, the farmer of the Revolutionary generation could legitimately be given iconic status as the antithesis of aggressive commercial individualism. But what if agriculture were itself to become (even more) commercialized? What if obligations to others were reduced to the honoring of debts, and benevolence was thought to lie, not in traditional acts of charity such as helping the needy, but rather in helping the bottom line—in inducing men “to pursue with increased energy, that business, or that course of conduct, to which their true interest directs them”? 

An Inside View of Polygamy in the Midwest | Vickie Cleverley Speek, “God Has Made Us a Kingdom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons

Vickie Speek is a fifth-generation Mormon whose progenitors were pioneers in Idaho. An award-winning journalist, she received the Award of Excellence from the Illinois Historical Society in 2001 for her research on the Civil War.…

Colonizing the Frontier between Faith and Doubt | Levi S. Peterson, A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography

It would be difficult for me to overstate the influence that Levi Peterson has had on both my spiritual and my intellectual development, “The Confessions of St. Augustine,” which I found by accident a few…

Where We Lay Our Scene

Her ticket is at will-call. She needs no help finding their seats, but Tom repeatedly cranes his neck to check the doors at the back of the hall. He likes it when she emerges from…

The Nature of Comets

We found the remains just below the embankment of an antediluvian oxbow. She had been lying there a long time, before the Cayuse and Lewis and Clark and the Grand Coulee Dam and long before…

An Old Mormon Writes to Harold Bloom

In the fall of 1990, I was retired and we were back in academia fulltime at BYU: Carol was studying anthropology and I was studying English. We went to the University of Utah to listen…

Writing: An Act of Responsibility

You’re a writer who loves these big, tough songs that pierce your heart and make you feel alive all over again. You believe in literature with a soul—the book that makes you think, that makes you feel as though you’ve been somewhere and experienced something, that you’re a different person for having read it. Writing just to entertain isn’t your goal. Writing to impress others with your cleverness or hoped-for-brilliance doesn’t matter as much as it once did. Your desire is something like Chekhov’s who spoke about writers describing situations so truthfully that readers could no longer avoid them. Or in your own words, to wrangle with the tough places in yourself and your subject. That’s what matters to you. 

Should Mormon Women Speak Out? Thoughts on Our Place in the World

I am happy to pay tribute to Gene England, a vivid and significant twentieth-century intellectual of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gene influenced many Mormons with his rigorous ethics, his lived religion, his human interactions, and his ability to record his life and get it all down. He certainly influenced me. 

What I Would Be If I Weren’t A Mormon

When I first asked myself the question in the title, I was wondering specifically what religion I would participate in if I weren’t Mormon. I soon tangled myself up in questions about what it means…

“A Climate Far and Fair”: Ecumenism and Abiding Faith

A Year of Dialogue: Thinking Myself into Mormonism

Straight Home

Six cars pulled through the intersection, one after the other over the course of an hour, but none of them was hers. Barefoot, Bart waited on the slat bench outside his front door, picking away…

Badge and Bryant, or, the Decline and Fall of the Dogfrey Club

Badge and Bryant Braunhil were first cousins, but they could have passed for fraternal twins, having—both of them—bright blue eyes, big grins, and unkempt blond hair. They lived in Linroth, a Mormon town in northern…

Scandals, Scapegoats, and the Cross: An Interview with René Girard

Eternal Misfit

For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.  Coldplay[1] Some of the functions in the celestial body will not appear in the terrestrial body, neither in the telestial body, and…

The Canyon That is Not a Canyon

This is Dagan on the day after a 4 a.m. porn binge. Another. The third in as many weeks. He drifts into the living room in late afternoon, sees Tam at his computer, freezes. He…

Ghost Towns

Reviews: Shield of Faith: The Power of Religion in the Lives of LDS Youth and Young Adults & Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults

Review: Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction

Review: Utah in the Twentieth Century

Review: Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide

Review: Raw Edges

Review: Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, Stage, and Screen

Review: Encouraging Heterosexuality: Helping Children Develop a Traditional Sexual Orientation

Review: Craig H. Harline Conversions: Two family stories from the Reformation and Modern America

Reviews: Therese Doucet. A Lost Argument: A Latter-Day Novel Robert Rees, ed. Why I Stay: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons Thomas Riskas. Deconstructing Mormonism:An Analysis and Assessment of the Mormon Faith

Abundant Events or Narrative Abundance: Robert Orsi and the Academic Study of Mormonism

The Revelations & Opinions of the Rev. Clive Japhta, D.D.

as extracted from a series of emails James Goldberg discovered in his junk folder  I am—without question—an American. If I’ve ever doubted that, it was clear the moment I walked into the humidity and human…

Review: Michael G. Reed. Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo