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Theology

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Got Wheat? Christopher James Blythe, Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse

Growing up in the LDS faith, my parents always dutifully had large quantities of wheat, rice, beans, and all other manner of food stored—food we never ate in our daily lives. While they rarely discussed…

Ceci n’est pas une Mormon Studies Book Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism

When I first sidled up to Make Yourselves Gods, I did so in the spirit of the Mormon Creed: “Mind your own business and let everybody else do likewise” (Trademark: 1842). Yes, I was suspicious.…

The Casting Out of Spirits

I don’t know why they’ve asked someone else to play the organ. I’ve been playing the organ in this ward for forty-eight years. When I first learned to play, I had to pump the air…

Getting the Cosmology Right

Sporadically over the past few years I have been writing a personal document titled “What I Believe.” The reason for this is twofold. First, as I have learned more, my beliefs have shifted. This is…

The Words and Worlds of Smith and Brown Samuel Morris Brown, Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…

Spirit of Pentecost

Instead of unremitting lucha libre, I desired détente between my sexuality and birth faith. A gap between graduation from law school and starting work opened a unique space for spiritual odyssey. I resumed attending church…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

Review: “Babbling on toward Ephemeral Patterns” Patrick Madden, Disparates

Alphabetize yourkarma, sever your qigong,jinx your wifi code. Disparates, 134 I want to suggest that Disparates is less disparate than it claims to be, that there is a running theme or a coherent message that…

Rubik’s Palimpsest: Searching for My Indigeneity

From my youth I was blessed with a God-shaped hole in my identity. I knew I came from somewhere, that my ancestors were whole and bore a cultural armor that it was my right to…

Confession

All Content

Got Wheat? Christopher James Blythe, Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse

Growing up in the LDS faith, my parents always dutifully had large quantities of wheat, rice, beans, and all other manner of food stored—food we never ate in our daily lives. While they rarely discussed…

Ceci n’est pas une Mormon Studies Book Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism

When I first sidled up to Make Yourselves Gods, I did so in the spirit of the Mormon Creed: “Mind your own business and let everybody else do likewise” (Trademark: 1842). Yes, I was suspicious.…

The Casting Out of Spirits

I don’t know why they’ve asked someone else to play the organ. I’ve been playing the organ in this ward for forty-eight years. When I first learned to play, I had to pump the air…

Getting the Cosmology Right

Sporadically over the past few years I have been writing a personal document titled “What I Believe.” The reason for this is twofold. First, as I have learned more, my beliefs have shifted. This is…

The Words and Worlds of Smith and Brown Samuel Morris Brown, Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…

Spirit of Pentecost

Instead of unremitting lucha libre, I desired détente between my sexuality and birth faith. A gap between graduation from law school and starting work opened a unique space for spiritual odyssey. I resumed attending church…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

Review: “Babbling on toward Ephemeral Patterns” Patrick Madden, Disparates

Alphabetize yourkarma, sever your qigong,jinx your wifi code. Disparates, 134 I want to suggest that Disparates is less disparate than it claims to be, that there is a running theme or a coherent message that…

Rubik’s Palimpsest: Searching for My Indigeneity

From my youth I was blessed with a God-shaped hole in my identity. I knew I came from somewhere, that my ancestors were whole and bore a cultural armor that it was my right to…

Confession

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

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

Pray Without Ceasing

The scriptures often admonish us to pray continuously. Note that I said “continuously,” not “continually.” “Continually” means repeated with interruptions, but “continuously” means without interruptions. Paul tells the saints in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing”…

Elegy for the Eaten

To the Ones whoAwakened the Universe with a wordAnd set the Cosmos afire. God-Mom and God-Dad— Stretching forth our hands,We pluck from the Tree of Life.For our mortal lives to be sustained,creaturely blood must be…

A Blessing for Starting Over

First, bless the burst of anger; its force will get you free. Then, bless the tears that follow; they will provide new sight. Bless your bare feet as you put them on the earth. Run.…

Three Dogs in the Afterlife

that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there ª waits while ● gets her bearings. It always takes a little while, he says. ● lifts her spirit nose, trying and…

Performative Theology: Not Such a New Thing

A movement called “scriptural theology” has been part of academic theology for some time now, since the 1980s or earlier.[1] In spite of that, with some exceptions I will note, it has had little impact on…

What the Second Coming Means to People Like Me

Certain Places

Listen to the audio version here.

The Nape of the Neck

The Blessing I Took

Dealing with Difficult Questions

Being, A Household World

Bodies Material and Bodies Textual: Conflation of Woman and Animal in the Wilderness

The Earth and the Inhabitants Thereof (Non-)Humans in the Divine Household

Reading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd

“To Restore the Physical World”: The Body of Christ, the Redemption of the Natural World, and Mormonism’s Environmental Dilemma

Dominion in the Anthropocene

Review: Crossings Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye. Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures through Life, Death, Cancer & Motherhood (Not Necessarily in that Order).

The Sacrifice

What Shall We See?

Reasonably Good Tidings of Greater- than-Average Joy Grant Hardy, ed. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition.

Sweater

Timo’s Blessing

A Personal Conversion David C. Dollahite. God’s Tender Mercies: Sacred Experiences of a Mormon Convert.

Excerpts from Before Us Like a Land of Dreams

Queer Polygamy

Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 33–43
Ostler addresses the problems with what she terms the “Standard Model of Polygamy.” She discusses how these problems might be resolved if it is put into a new type of model that she terms “Queer Polygamy.”

The Mother Tree: Understanding the Spiritual Root of Our Ecological Crisis

Well-Red

Heavenly Mother: The Mother of All Women

Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 171-174
Heavenly Mother is a cherished doctrine among many Latter-day Saints.
Her unique esthetic of feminine deity offers Latter-day Saint women a
trajectory for godhood—the ultimate goal of Mormon theology.

Heretics in Truth: Love, Faith, and Hope as the Foundation for Theology, Community, and Destiny

On Solace

From the Pulpit: Creating a Zion Church

Review: Priesthood Power Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology download

Roundtable: The Black Cain in White Garments

Jackson explains “The Church refused to grant the Black body whole recognition and divinity. To Nephi, I was not fair and delightsome. To Joseph, I was a violator of the most sacred principles of society,…

Roundtable: Shifting Tides: A Clarion Call for Inclusion and Social Justice

“What can we do to help and make a difference in the fight for racial and social justice?” McCoy responds to the BYU students who asked these questions which he brought up in an annual…

Review: Lost in Translation Adam S. Miller. The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs

From the Pulpit: I’ve Got a Feeling

Review: “Twisted Apples”: Lance Larsen Takes on Prose Poetry Lance Larsen. What the Body Knows

Review: Nothing by Itself George B. Handley. American Fork

Review: Expertly Built: Stories within Stories Tim Wirkus. The Infinite Future

Personal Voices: Cry for the Gods: Grief and Return

Personal Voices: Three Sealings

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

From the Pulpit: Why I Stay

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 209–213

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

Review: Fresh Honesty in Authentic Mormon Identity Jamie Zvirzdin, ed. Fresh Courage Take: New Directions by Mormon Women

Review: Old Words, New Work: Reclamation and Remembrance

Review: Baring Imperfect Human Truths Holly Welker, ed. Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage

Review: The Dean of Mormon History”: One Viewpoint Gregory A. Prince. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

Review: Laughter, Depth, and Insight: Enid Rocks Them All Scott Hales. The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Parts One and Two

Review: An Honorable Testament to a Legacy Gregory A. Prince. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

Review: The Garden of Enid: By a Mormonand For Mormons Scott Hales. The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Parts One and Two

Review: A Candid and Dazzling Conversation Patrick Madden. Sublime Physick: Essays

Review: The History that Dares Speak Its Name J. Seth Anderson. LGBT Salt Lake

Seth Anderson’s slim book, part of Arcadia Publishing’s multi-volume Images of Modern America photographic series, is much more than an important new contribution to Utah and LDS history. It is a revelation— a surprising, unexpected…

Review: Attempts to Be Whole Scott Abbott. Immortal for Quite Some Time

Review: The Truth is in the Middle Stephen Carter and Jett Atwood. Mormonism for Beginners

Review: Speaking for Herself Ashley Mae Hoiland. One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God

Review: Invisible Men / Invincible Women Eric Freeze. Invisible Men: Stories

Bishop Johansen Rescues a Lost Soul: A Tale of Pleasant Grove

New Voices: Flaming

How to Build a Paradox: Making the New Jerusalem

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

Leveling the Earth, Expanding the Circle

Review: Conversation Begins Stephen H. Webb and Alonzo L. Gaskill. Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation

Review: Peck’s Peak Steven L. Peck.Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. PeckSteven L. Peck.Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist

Review: Finding Mormon Theology Again Terryl L. Givens.Wrestling the Angel: TheFoundations of Mormon Thought:Cosmos, God, Humanity

Review: A Not-So-Innocent Abroad Craig Harline.Way Lower than theAngels: The Pretty Clearly TroubledBut Not Even Close to Tragic Confessionsof a Real Live Mormon Missionary

Theology for a New Age

Free Agency and Freedom — Some Misconceptions

An Honorable Surrender: The Experience of Conversion

“Man” and the Telefinalist Trap

The Moral Dimensions of Man: A Scriptural View

A Mormon Concept of Man

Boy Diving Through Moss — Poetry

Mental Gas — Poetry

The Church in Latin American: Progress and Challenge

A New Look at Repentance: The Gift of Repentance

A New Look at Repentance: The Miracle of Forgiveness

A New Look at Repentance: Some Thoughts on Repentance

A New Look at Repentance: Guilt: A Psychiatrist’s Viewpoint

A New Look at Repentance: Encounter

Wanted: Additional Outlets for Idealism

New Acts of Poetry: Space in the Sage ; What You Feel, I Share ; Speak to Me

Responses and Perspectives: Lester Bush’s Historical Overview: Other Perspectives

Responding to Bush, Thomasson wrote in response to Lester Bush’s Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Review which that article caused him to reflect on what he believes and so it became to be very valuable…

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Lester Bush’s landmark article tells the most comprehensive history of the church’s teachings on race and priesthood, destabilizing the idea that it originated with Joseph Smith or had been consistently taught.

On the Precipice: Three Mormon Poets: Barbed Wire: Poetry and Photographs of the West

Sacrament of Terror: Violence in the Poetry of Clinton F. Larsen

Personal Conscience and Priesthood Authority

A Mighty Change of Heart

LDS Approaches to the Holy Bible

Discussion Continued: The Sequel to the Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair

The Idea of Pre-Existence in the Development of Mormon Thought

The Adam-God Doctrine

“Moonbeams From a Larger Lunacy”: Poetry in the Reorganization

This study addresses poetry within the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and defines an RLDS poet as someone who belongs to the RLDS church and who has published poetry in some…

The New Mormon Poetry: The Seventh Day by Lewis Home

The High Price of Poetry

The Ward Teacher

God of Our Fathers

Three Generations of Mormon Poetry: A zipper of haze; Tinder; Christmas Voices

Inadvertent Disclosure: Autobiography in the Poetry of Eliza R. Snow

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Same Religion, Different Churches

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Two Faiths, Two Baptisms

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: From Here to Eternity?

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: One View of Interfaith Marriage

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Eternity with a Dry-Land Mormon

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Introductory Remarks

Baptism for the Dead: Comparing RLDS and LDS Perspectives

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 99–105
Underwood discusses why two religions who share the same exact upbringing have different opinions about the temple rituals.

The Concept of Grace in Christian Thought

Heart of the Fathers

A Teenager’s Mormon Battalion Journal: The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith edited by David L. Bigler

A New Synthesis: Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 by Kenneth H. Winn

Mormonism’s First Theologian: The Essential Parley P. Pratt foreword by Peter L. Crawley

Utah’s Original “”Mr. Republican””: Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics by Milton R. Merrill

A Poetic Legacy: The Owl on the Aerial by Clarice Short

Clawson and the Mormon Experience: The Making of a Mormon Apostle: The Story of Rudger Clawson

Delusion as an Exceedingly Fine Art: Bones by Franklin Fisher

Two Covenant Systems: Promises Made to the Father: Mormon Covenant Organization by Rex Eugene Cooper

A Song Worth Singing: Mormonism and Music: A History by Michael Hicks

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

Being Mormon: The Elkton Branch, 1976-81

A Closer Focus: Challenges in Doing Local History

AIDS: The Twentieth-Century Leprosy

Judaism and Mormonism: Paradigm and Supersession

Heavenly Father or Chairman of the Board?: How Organizational Metaphors Can Define and Confine Religious Experience

On Spectral Evidence

Dissent in the Church: Toward a Workable Definition

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

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

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Faith, Hope, and Charity

Easter Service

Epiphany

The Unexpected Choice

“I Do Remember How It Smelled Heavenly”: Mormon Aspects of May Swenson’s Poetry

W.H. Chamberlin and the Quest for a Mormon Theology

Zion-building: Pondering a Paradigm: Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World

The Celestial Kingdom

Luke 7:37

Give Me That Old Time Testimony Meeting

Hosanna

Stealing the Reaper’s Grim: The Challenge of Dying Well

An Expanded Definition of Priesthood? Some Present and Future Consequences

Mormon Women and Priesthood

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface

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

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

The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony

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

Selling the Chevrolet: A Moral Exercise (vol. 16, no. 3, Fall 1983)

Two Trains and a Dream

The Weeping God of Mormonism

Out in the Shop: In Memory of Grandpa

On Fidelity, Polygamy, and Celestial Marriage (vol. 20, no. 4, Winter 1987)

Blessing the Chevrolet (vol. 9, no. 3, Fall 1975)

Eugene England: Our Brother in Christ

A Dining Room Table

A Brief Tour of England: My Year with Gene

Blood Sports

Song of Shiblon

Last Supper

God, Man, and Satan in The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Without Mercy: Neil LaBute as Mormon Artist

Righteousness Express: Riding the PG&R

Alive in Mormon Poetry

Poetry Matters in Mormon Culture

Wicks, Modems, and the Winds of War

A Tribute for Service Well Rendered

A Motherless Son Sings the Blues

Not a Coveyesque Self-Help Book

The Province of the Extreme

Salvation

At Bay

An Interview with David Sjodahl King

Death to the Death of Poetry!: The Art is Alive and Kicking in Mormon Circles — and in Mainstream American Culture

Without Number

Roses

Like the Lilies of the Field

poetry on the ‘fridge door

The 1948 Secret Marriage of Louis J. Barlow: Origins of FLDS Placement Marriage

Watson explains how the secret marriage of Louis J. Barlow to a 15-year-old girl caused a major rift among fundamentalists. Today’s fundamentalist members are still experiencing the effects of that marriage.

Loose in the Stacks: A Half-Century with the Utah War and Its Legacy

The Theology of Desire

Especially the Friends

My Personal Brand of Weirdness

Homeless Memories; So Many Firsts

Spiritually Housed; In a Magical Place

Wonderful Small Things

Holding a Master Key

Treasures

Anchored with Meaning

So Glad, So Sad …; My Spiritual Home

Falling in Immediate Love; Training Sessions

Always Sacred; Not Your Typical Mormon Space

We Should Do A Study

Hermeneutic Adventures in Home Teaching: Mary and Richard Rorty

Divine Darwinism, Comprehensible Christianity, and the Atheist’s Wager: Richard Rorty on Mormonism—an Interview with Mary V. Rorty and Patricia Rorty

Hidden Treasures

Review: Too Long Ignored

Review: Characters to Care About

Review: Re-Creating the Bible

Review: The Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

El Problema del Dolor/The Problem of Pain

In Lieu of History: Mormon Monuments and the Shaping of Memory

Wives and Other Women: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Lives of John Q. Cannon, Frank J. Cannon, and Abraham H. Cannon

Joseph Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail as an Epistolary Rhetoric

The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr

Dialogue 43.4 (Winter 2010): 1–42
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a robust methodology that eliminates the guesswork in determining winding locations by visual inspection of crease marks or lacunae features, and to determine whether the missing interior section of the Hôr scroll could have been long enough to accommodate the Book of Abraham. Fortunately, this is a question that can be definitively answered by examining the physical characteristics of the extant portions of the scroll. The haste and greed of Michael Chandler provide the key to unlocking this mystery.

A Sacrament of Stewardship

“Take No Thought”

Immortal for Quite Some Time (an excerpt)

The Discursive Construct of Virtual Angels, Temples, and Religious Worship: Mormon Theology and Culture in Second Life

Mormon and Queer at the Crossroads

Dialogue 44.1 (Spring 2011): 53–84
This essay explores conflicting messages within LDS teaching on LGBT rights, when it both opposed same-sex marriage and in the wake of Prop 8 also came out in support of other LGBT rights that display both wrath and mercy. It explores a theory of LDS teachings on homosexuality along these lines, as well as the context of shifting norms around sexual identity.

The Early Mormon Chain of Belonging

Scry Me a River

Not Just Buchanan’s Blunder

Image and Reality in the Utah Zion

To Bless and Sanctify: Three Meditations on the Sacrament

Of Vital Questions: Robert L. Millet, ed. By What Authority? The Vital Question of Religious Authority in Christianity

Harrell’s Mettle: Jack Harrell. A Sense of Order and Other Stories

Pomp, Circumstance, and Controversy: Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Donald Q. Cannon. The Nauvoo Legion in Illinois: A History of the Mormon Militia, 1841–1846

Immortal for Quite Some Time

“Wholesome, Hallowed, and Gracious”: Confronting the Winter’s Night

Philip Lindholm, ed., Latter-day Dissent: At the Crossroads of Intellectual Inquiry and Ecclesiastical Authority

Charles Harrell, “This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology

David F. Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America

Scaling Never

from “A Paris Journal”

Mormonism in Western Society: Three Futures

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

Dialogue 44.4 (Winter 2011): 106–141
From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed tens of thousands of times.⁠ To this day I still receive notes of appreciation for this article. 

On “Praying with Your Feet”

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

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

Personal Revelation Narratives: An Interview with Tom Mould

America and the One True Church: What My Church Taught Me about My Country

“Questions at the Veil”

Review: Adam S. Miller. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology

The Gift of Tongues

An Interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner

What Kind of Truth Is Beauty?: A Meditation on Keats, Job, and Scriptural Poetry

Deep Cheer

Divertissement

Bo Knows Heaven

Dialoguing Online: The Best of 10+ Years of Mormons Blogging

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

Response

Rethinking Retrenchment: Course Corrections in the Ongoing Quest for Respectability

From the Pulpit: For All His Creations of Which I’m a Part: Buddha Nature, Neo-Animism, and Postmodern Mormonism

From the Pulpit: Charity on the Rocks

From the Pulpit: Of Cups and Councils

Review: Liberalism and the American Mormon: Three Takes David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson. Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics Richard Davis. The Liberal Soul: Applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Politics Terryl

What Kind of Monster

On Virtue: What Bathsheba Taught Me about My Maligned Sisters

The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Tradition

Adam Had an Eden

By the Mouth of Two or Three

Personal Voices: Living and Dying in the Realm of Forgetful People

“After the Body of My Spirit”: Embodiment, Empathy, and Mormon Aesthetics

& the day that i believe is known as pentecost to some

Got Wheat? Christopher James Blythe, Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse

Growing up in the LDS faith, my parents always dutifully had large quantities of wheat, rice, beans, and all other manner of food stored—food we never ate in our daily lives. While they rarely discussed…

Ceci n’est pas une Mormon Studies Book Peter Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism

When I first sidled up to Make Yourselves Gods, I did so in the spirit of the Mormon Creed: “Mind your own business and let everybody else do likewise” (Trademark: 1842). Yes, I was suspicious.…

The Casting Out of Spirits

I don’t know why they’ve asked someone else to play the organ. I’ve been playing the organ in this ward for forty-eight years. When I first learned to play, I had to pump the air…

Getting the Cosmology Right

Sporadically over the past few years I have been writing a personal document titled “What I Believe.” The reason for this is twofold. First, as I have learned more, my beliefs have shifted. This is…

The Words and Worlds of Smith and Brown Samuel Morris Brown, Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism

In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed what was intended to be the crowning accomplishment of physics—an experiment to determine how movement through the luminiferous ether changed the speed of light. What they found…

Spirit of Pentecost

Instead of unremitting lucha libre, I desired détente between my sexuality and birth faith. A gap between graduation from law school and starting work opened a unique space for spiritual odyssey. I resumed attending church…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

Review: “Babbling on toward Ephemeral Patterns” Patrick Madden, Disparates

Alphabetize yourkarma, sever your qigong,jinx your wifi code. Disparates, 134 I want to suggest that Disparates is less disparate than it claims to be, that there is a running theme or a coherent message that…

Rubik’s Palimpsest: Searching for My Indigeneity

From my youth I was blessed with a God-shaped hole in my identity. I knew I came from somewhere, that my ancestors were whole and bore a cultural armor that it was my right to…

Confession

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

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

Pray Without Ceasing

The scriptures often admonish us to pray continuously. Note that I said “continuously,” not “continually.” “Continually” means repeated with interruptions, but “continuously” means without interruptions. Paul tells the saints in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing”…

Elegy for the Eaten

To the Ones whoAwakened the Universe with a wordAnd set the Cosmos afire. God-Mom and God-Dad— Stretching forth our hands,We pluck from the Tree of Life.For our mortal lives to be sustained,creaturely blood must be…

A Blessing for Starting Over

First, bless the burst of anger; its force will get you free. Then, bless the tears that follow; they will provide new sight. Bless your bare feet as you put them on the earth. Run.…

Three Dogs in the Afterlife

that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there ª waits while ● gets her bearings. It always takes a little while, he says. ● lifts her spirit nose, trying and…

Performative Theology: Not Such a New Thing

A movement called “scriptural theology” has been part of academic theology for some time now, since the 1980s or earlier.[1] In spite of that, with some exceptions I will note, it has had little impact on…

What the Second Coming Means to People Like Me

Certain Places

Listen to the audio version here.

The Nape of the Neck

The Blessing I Took

Dealing with Difficult Questions

Being, A Household World

Bodies Material and Bodies Textual: Conflation of Woman and Animal in the Wilderness

The Earth and the Inhabitants Thereof (Non-)Humans in the Divine Household

Reading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd

“To Restore the Physical World”: The Body of Christ, the Redemption of the Natural World, and Mormonism’s Environmental Dilemma

Dominion in the Anthropocene

Review: Crossings Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye. Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures through Life, Death, Cancer & Motherhood (Not Necessarily in that Order).

The Sacrifice

What Shall We See?

Reasonably Good Tidings of Greater- than-Average Joy Grant Hardy, ed. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition.

Sweater

Timo’s Blessing

A Personal Conversion David C. Dollahite. God’s Tender Mercies: Sacred Experiences of a Mormon Convert.

Excerpts from Before Us Like a Land of Dreams

Queer Polygamy

Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 33–43
Ostler addresses the problems with what she terms the “Standard Model of Polygamy.” She discusses how these problems might be resolved if it is put into a new type of model that she terms “Queer Polygamy.”

The Mother Tree: Understanding the Spiritual Root of Our Ecological Crisis

Well-Red

Heavenly Mother: The Mother of All Women

Dialogue 51.4 (Winter 2018): 171-174
Heavenly Mother is a cherished doctrine among many Latter-day Saints.
Her unique esthetic of feminine deity offers Latter-day Saint women a
trajectory for godhood—the ultimate goal of Mormon theology.

Heretics in Truth: Love, Faith, and Hope as the Foundation for Theology, Community, and Destiny

On Solace

From the Pulpit: Creating a Zion Church

Review: Priesthood Power Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology download

Roundtable: The Black Cain in White Garments

Jackson explains “The Church refused to grant the Black body whole recognition and divinity. To Nephi, I was not fair and delightsome. To Joseph, I was a violator of the most sacred principles of society,…

Roundtable: Shifting Tides: A Clarion Call for Inclusion and Social Justice

“What can we do to help and make a difference in the fight for racial and social justice?” McCoy responds to the BYU students who asked these questions which he brought up in an annual…

Review: Lost in Translation Adam S. Miller. The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs

From the Pulpit: I’ve Got a Feeling

Review: “Twisted Apples”: Lance Larsen Takes on Prose Poetry Lance Larsen. What the Body Knows

Review: Nothing by Itself George B. Handley. American Fork

Review: Expertly Built: Stories within Stories Tim Wirkus. The Infinite Future

Personal Voices: Cry for the Gods: Grief and Return

Personal Voices: Three Sealings

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

From the Pulpit: Why I Stay

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 209–213

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

Review: Fresh Honesty in Authentic Mormon Identity Jamie Zvirzdin, ed. Fresh Courage Take: New Directions by Mormon Women

Review: Old Words, New Work: Reclamation and Remembrance

Review: Baring Imperfect Human Truths Holly Welker, ed. Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage

Review: The Dean of Mormon History”: One Viewpoint Gregory A. Prince. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

Review: Laughter, Depth, and Insight: Enid Rocks Them All Scott Hales. The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Parts One and Two

Review: An Honorable Testament to a Legacy Gregory A. Prince. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

Review: The Garden of Enid: By a Mormonand For Mormons Scott Hales. The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Parts One and Two

Review: A Candid and Dazzling Conversation Patrick Madden. Sublime Physick: Essays

Review: The History that Dares Speak Its Name J. Seth Anderson. LGBT Salt Lake

Seth Anderson’s slim book, part of Arcadia Publishing’s multi-volume Images of Modern America photographic series, is much more than an important new contribution to Utah and LDS history. It is a revelation— a surprising, unexpected…

Review: Attempts to Be Whole Scott Abbott. Immortal for Quite Some Time

Review: The Truth is in the Middle Stephen Carter and Jett Atwood. Mormonism for Beginners

Review: Speaking for Herself Ashley Mae Hoiland. One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God

Review: Invisible Men / Invincible Women Eric Freeze. Invisible Men: Stories

Bishop Johansen Rescues a Lost Soul: A Tale of Pleasant Grove

New Voices: Flaming

How to Build a Paradox: Making the New Jerusalem

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

Leveling the Earth, Expanding the Circle

Review: Conversation Begins Stephen H. Webb and Alonzo L. Gaskill. Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation

Review: Peck’s Peak Steven L. Peck.Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. PeckSteven L. Peck.Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist

Review: Finding Mormon Theology Again Terryl L. Givens.Wrestling the Angel: TheFoundations of Mormon Thought:Cosmos, God, Humanity

Review: A Not-So-Innocent Abroad Craig Harline.Way Lower than theAngels: The Pretty Clearly TroubledBut Not Even Close to Tragic Confessionsof a Real Live Mormon Missionary

Theology for a New Age

Free Agency and Freedom — Some Misconceptions

An Honorable Surrender: The Experience of Conversion

“Man” and the Telefinalist Trap

The Moral Dimensions of Man: A Scriptural View

A Mormon Concept of Man

Boy Diving Through Moss — Poetry

Mental Gas — Poetry

The Church in Latin American: Progress and Challenge

A New Look at Repentance: The Gift of Repentance

A New Look at Repentance: The Miracle of Forgiveness

A New Look at Repentance: Some Thoughts on Repentance

A New Look at Repentance: Guilt: A Psychiatrist’s Viewpoint

A New Look at Repentance: Encounter

Wanted: Additional Outlets for Idealism

New Acts of Poetry: Space in the Sage ; What You Feel, I Share ; Speak to Me

Responses and Perspectives: Lester Bush’s Historical Overview: Other Perspectives

Responding to Bush, Thomasson wrote in response to Lester Bush’s Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Review which that article caused him to reflect on what he believes and so it became to be very valuable…

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Lester Bush’s landmark article tells the most comprehensive history of the church’s teachings on race and priesthood, destabilizing the idea that it originated with Joseph Smith or had been consistently taught.

On the Precipice: Three Mormon Poets: Barbed Wire: Poetry and Photographs of the West

Sacrament of Terror: Violence in the Poetry of Clinton F. Larsen

Personal Conscience and Priesthood Authority

A Mighty Change of Heart

LDS Approaches to the Holy Bible

Discussion Continued: The Sequel to the Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair

The Idea of Pre-Existence in the Development of Mormon Thought

The Adam-God Doctrine

“Moonbeams From a Larger Lunacy”: Poetry in the Reorganization

This study addresses poetry within the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and defines an RLDS poet as someone who belongs to the RLDS church and who has published poetry in some…

The New Mormon Poetry: The Seventh Day by Lewis Home

The High Price of Poetry

The Ward Teacher

God of Our Fathers

Three Generations of Mormon Poetry: A zipper of haze; Tinder; Christmas Voices

Inadvertent Disclosure: Autobiography in the Poetry of Eliza R. Snow

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Same Religion, Different Churches

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Two Faiths, Two Baptisms

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: From Here to Eternity?

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: One View of Interfaith Marriage

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Eternity with a Dry-Land Mormon

Eternity Be Damned? The Impact of Interfaith Vows: Introductory Remarks

Baptism for the Dead: Comparing RLDS and LDS Perspectives

Dialogue 23.2 (Summer 1990): 99–105
Underwood discusses why two religions who share the same exact upbringing have different opinions about the temple rituals.

The Concept of Grace in Christian Thought

Heart of the Fathers

A Teenager’s Mormon Battalion Journal: The Gold Rush Diary of Azariah Smith edited by David L. Bigler

A New Synthesis: Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 by Kenneth H. Winn

Mormonism’s First Theologian: The Essential Parley P. Pratt foreword by Peter L. Crawley

Utah’s Original “”Mr. Republican””: Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics by Milton R. Merrill

A Poetic Legacy: The Owl on the Aerial by Clarice Short

Clawson and the Mormon Experience: The Making of a Mormon Apostle: The Story of Rudger Clawson

Delusion as an Exceedingly Fine Art: Bones by Franklin Fisher

Two Covenant Systems: Promises Made to the Father: Mormon Covenant Organization by Rex Eugene Cooper

A Song Worth Singing: Mormonism and Music: A History by Michael Hicks

Glimmers and Glitches in Zion

Being Mormon: The Elkton Branch, 1976-81

A Closer Focus: Challenges in Doing Local History

AIDS: The Twentieth-Century Leprosy

Judaism and Mormonism: Paradigm and Supersession

Heavenly Father or Chairman of the Board?: How Organizational Metaphors Can Define and Confine Religious Experience

On Spectral Evidence

Dissent in the Church: Toward a Workable Definition

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

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

Liberal Spirituality: A Personal Odyssey

Dialogue Toward Forgiveness: A Supporting View

The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology

Faith, Hope, and Charity

Easter Service

Epiphany

The Unexpected Choice

“I Do Remember How It Smelled Heavenly”: Mormon Aspects of May Swenson’s Poetry

W.H. Chamberlin and the Quest for a Mormon Theology

Zion-building: Pondering a Paradigm: Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World

The Celestial Kingdom

Luke 7:37

Give Me That Old Time Testimony Meeting

Hosanna

Stealing the Reaper’s Grim: The Challenge of Dying Well

An Expanded Definition of Priesthood? Some Present and Future Consequences

Mormon Women and Priesthood

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface

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

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

The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony

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

Selling the Chevrolet: A Moral Exercise (vol. 16, no. 3, Fall 1983)

Two Trains and a Dream

The Weeping God of Mormonism

Out in the Shop: In Memory of Grandpa

On Fidelity, Polygamy, and Celestial Marriage (vol. 20, no. 4, Winter 1987)

Blessing the Chevrolet (vol. 9, no. 3, Fall 1975)

Eugene England: Our Brother in Christ

A Dining Room Table

A Brief Tour of England: My Year with Gene

Blood Sports

Song of Shiblon

Last Supper

God, Man, and Satan in The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Without Mercy: Neil LaBute as Mormon Artist

Righteousness Express: Riding the PG&R

Alive in Mormon Poetry

Poetry Matters in Mormon Culture

Wicks, Modems, and the Winds of War

A Tribute for Service Well Rendered

A Motherless Son Sings the Blues

Not a Coveyesque Self-Help Book

The Province of the Extreme

Salvation

At Bay

An Interview with David Sjodahl King

Death to the Death of Poetry!: The Art is Alive and Kicking in Mormon Circles — and in Mainstream American Culture

Without Number

Roses

Like the Lilies of the Field

poetry on the ‘fridge door

The 1948 Secret Marriage of Louis J. Barlow: Origins of FLDS Placement Marriage

Watson explains how the secret marriage of Louis J. Barlow to a 15-year-old girl caused a major rift among fundamentalists. Today’s fundamentalist members are still experiencing the effects of that marriage.

Loose in the Stacks: A Half-Century with the Utah War and Its Legacy

The Theology of Desire

Especially the Friends

My Personal Brand of Weirdness

Homeless Memories; So Many Firsts

Spiritually Housed; In a Magical Place

Wonderful Small Things

Holding a Master Key

Treasures

Anchored with Meaning

So Glad, So Sad …; My Spiritual Home

Falling in Immediate Love; Training Sessions

Always Sacred; Not Your Typical Mormon Space

We Should Do A Study

Hermeneutic Adventures in Home Teaching: Mary and Richard Rorty

Divine Darwinism, Comprehensible Christianity, and the Atheist’s Wager: Richard Rorty on Mormonism—an Interview with Mary V. Rorty and Patricia Rorty

Hidden Treasures

Review: Too Long Ignored

Review: Characters to Care About

Review: Re-Creating the Bible

Review: The Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

El Problema del Dolor/The Problem of Pain

In Lieu of History: Mormon Monuments and the Shaping of Memory

Wives and Other Women: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Lives of John Q. Cannon, Frank J. Cannon, and Abraham H. Cannon

Joseph Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail as an Epistolary Rhetoric

The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr

Dialogue 43.4 (Winter 2010): 1–42
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a robust methodology that eliminates the guesswork in determining winding locations by visual inspection of crease marks or lacunae features, and to determine whether the missing interior section of the Hôr scroll could have been long enough to accommodate the Book of Abraham. Fortunately, this is a question that can be definitively answered by examining the physical characteristics of the extant portions of the scroll. The haste and greed of Michael Chandler provide the key to unlocking this mystery.

A Sacrament of Stewardship

“Take No Thought”

Immortal for Quite Some Time (an excerpt)

The Discursive Construct of Virtual Angels, Temples, and Religious Worship: Mormon Theology and Culture in Second Life

Mormon and Queer at the Crossroads

Dialogue 44.1 (Spring 2011): 53–84
This essay explores conflicting messages within LDS teaching on LGBT rights, when it both opposed same-sex marriage and in the wake of Prop 8 also came out in support of other LGBT rights that display both wrath and mercy. It explores a theory of LDS teachings on homosexuality along these lines, as well as the context of shifting norms around sexual identity.

The Early Mormon Chain of Belonging

Scry Me a River

Not Just Buchanan’s Blunder

Image and Reality in the Utah Zion

To Bless and Sanctify: Three Meditations on the Sacrament

Of Vital Questions: Robert L. Millet, ed. By What Authority? The Vital Question of Religious Authority in Christianity

Harrell’s Mettle: Jack Harrell. A Sense of Order and Other Stories

Pomp, Circumstance, and Controversy: Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Donald Q. Cannon. The Nauvoo Legion in Illinois: A History of the Mormon Militia, 1841–1846

Immortal for Quite Some Time

“Wholesome, Hallowed, and Gracious”: Confronting the Winter’s Night

Philip Lindholm, ed., Latter-day Dissent: At the Crossroads of Intellectual Inquiry and Ecclesiastical Authority

Charles Harrell, “This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology

David F. Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America

Scaling Never

from “A Paris Journal”

Mormonism in Western Society: Three Futures

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

Dialogue 44.4 (Winter 2011): 106–141
From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed tens of thousands of times.⁠ To this day I still receive notes of appreciation for this article. 

On “Praying with Your Feet”

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

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

Personal Revelation Narratives: An Interview with Tom Mould

America and the One True Church: What My Church Taught Me about My Country

“Questions at the Veil”

Review: Adam S. Miller. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology

The Gift of Tongues

An Interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner

What Kind of Truth Is Beauty?: A Meditation on Keats, Job, and Scriptural Poetry

Deep Cheer

Divertissement

Bo Knows Heaven

Dialoguing Online: The Best of 10+ Years of Mormons Blogging

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

Response

Rethinking Retrenchment: Course Corrections in the Ongoing Quest for Respectability

From the Pulpit: For All His Creations of Which I’m a Part: Buddha Nature, Neo-Animism, and Postmodern Mormonism

From the Pulpit: Charity on the Rocks

From the Pulpit: Of Cups and Councils

Review: Liberalism and the American Mormon: Three Takes David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson. Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics Richard Davis. The Liberal Soul: Applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Politics Terryl

What Kind of Monster

On Virtue: What Bathsheba Taught Me about My Maligned Sisters

The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Tradition

Adam Had an Eden

By the Mouth of Two or Three

Personal Voices: Living and Dying in the Realm of Forgetful People

“After the Body of My Spirit”: Embodiment, Empathy, and Mormon Aesthetics

& the day that i believe is known as pentecost to some