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Remembering Dialogue 

I cannot remember exactly when I first tapped into the Dialogue phenomenon, but it was early on. I can remember sitting in a meeting room during the time of LDS general conference in the 1960s when Eugene England was speaking about this new publication. What he had to say resonated with me, and I subscribed immediately. 

At the time I was a young military officer stationed on the East Coast or, as it was called then, the mission field. My wife and I were members of a small branch; and while life was full with Church callings and the demands of a growing family, it lacked the spiritual and intellectual stimulation I had enjoyed as a student at BYU. Dialogue helped fill that void. 

The most influential article I read as a new subscriber, and perhaps still the most influential article for the past forty years, was Richard Poll’s, “What the Church Means to People Like Me” (2, no. 4 [Winter 1967]: 107–17). I had in my college days developed a passion for Church history, which is both inspiring and messy. There are few topics more exciting and inspiring than the story of the Mormon pioneers, but embedded in the same story are sometimes unsettling issues, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, polygamy, or blood atonement, just to name a few. 

I grew to suspect that many aspects of the gospel were not as straightforward as I had gathered from my years growing up in Mormon Utah. But living far away from the center stakes of Zion, I found few ways to work through issues and doubts. I found myself envious of those in my branches and wards who seemed so sure of everything and never doubted. The “Iron Rod/Liahona” construct proposed by Brother Poll provided me with the perspective I needed to mature more gracefully in the Church. Over the years, various articles in Dialogue addressed such subjects in a way that I could see them in a clearer light. For me, when Dialogue tackled ticklish subjects, it served to dispel doubt, not cause it. 

Over the last forty years I have gone on to hold multiple Church callings. My testimony has flourished and deepened. And for all those years, I have continued to enjoy Dialogue articles. They have enriched my life immeasurably. I own and have read every issue published. They are all lined up on my bookshelf and enjoy an honored place in our home and in my heart. It has been a great journey. I salute all the authors and editors who have labored so hard over the years to keep this vibrant and worthwhile publication going. It certainly has made a difference in my life. 

Steven Orton
Burke, Virginia 

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Thoughts on Dialogue 

My father-in-law introduced me to Dialogue, sort of. Actually, he gave me a copy of A Thoughtful Faith, edited by Philip L. Barlow (Centerville, Utah: Canon Press, 1986). Early in our relationship, my father-in-law recognized that I was a little different than your average woven-into-the-quilt Mormon but maybe not so different from himself. As I read the liner notes for the book, I noted that a number of the essays had been originally published in Dialogue. It wasn’t long afterward that I was buying Dialogue off the shelf where and when I could find it and eventually taking out and renewing my own subscription. 

Since the time my father-in-law gave me A Thoughtful Faith, I have recommended and lent the book out several times. I have lent and given out issues of Dialogue as many times. In fact, it is typically to the same people that I offer both. However, if you were to compare the number of times I have given out and recommended A Thoughtful Faith and Dialogue to the number of years I have been in the Church, you would be somewhat underwhelmed. 

But herein is my point: Dialogue is not for everyone. It is for people who (dare I say?) are not afraid to be thoughtful about their faith. Unfortunately, I have found that a lot of people are afraid to be thoughtful. Even more unfortunately, I have found that those same people often become (1) hopelessly neurotic, (2) racked with guilt, (3) nonmembers, (4) all of the above. 

So what has Dialogue meant to me over the years? Dialogue has given me a sense of community, a sense that I’m not the only one out there. Dialogue is the member I wish were in my ward. To be fair, sometimes people who emulate the spirit of Dialogue have been in my ward. But when I’m part of those wards in which such people do not exist, Dialogue has taken on paramount importance. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I hold on to every word printed in the journal. There are times that Dialogue and I have disagreements, times when I roll my eyes in exasperation and flip on to the next article, essay, or poem. But I think that is what a real dialogue is supposed to be like—a balance of agreements and disagreements. Too many agreements become a panegyric; too many disagreements become an argument. In the end, it’s not the dialogue but the discourse that matters. 

What I love most about Dialogue are the personal essays, the short fiction, and the poems. That’s where the voices reside. That’s where I feel the breath of life, where I find community. A confession: one of my favorite sections in the journal is the bios. Reading the bios is like having a look through someone’s refrigerator. I look for similarities and differences between their lives and my own. Finding someone with a similar background is like discovering a half-finished jar of English mustard in their fridge and realizing I’m not alone in my taste for potentially lethal condiments. (This should take care of being invited to dinners for a while—or at least being left alone in kitchens.) 

So that’s about it. What Dialogue means to me: Being mentally healthy, being part of a community, poking through refrigerators. 

Gary Hernandez 
Ascot, England 

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Scriptural Cosmology

As a life-long amateur astronomer, I found Kirk D. Hagen’s article, “Eternal Progression in a Multiverse: An Explorative Mormon Cosmology” (39, no. 2 [Summer 2006]: 1–45), to be an adept synopsis of the current principal scientific cosmologies. However, as a long-time convert to the LDS faith I found Hagen’s proficiency in scriptural cosmology wanting.

Hagen asks: “How can the universe spatially or temporarily accommodate [eternal beings]?” And “where is there space or time for the innumerable ‘intelligences’ or ‘spirits?’” (3). Revelatory cosmology answered Hagen’s query in 1832: “There are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or a lesser kingdom” (D&C 88:37).

John Stewart Bell, a theoretical physicist at the CERN accelerator in Geneva, developed Bell’s Theorem, which asserts that reality is nonlocal. In plainer terms, the three dimensions of space are illusory. Many scientists are understandably reluctant to accept the seeming absurdity of a nonlocal cosmos, although repeated accelerator experiments have confirmed some key elements of the hypothesis. If the nonlocal Mormon multiverse reflects scientific reality, then there is ample room for universes in one’s thumb, and ultimately our universe may be in someone else’s.

The scriptural Mormon multiverse is so vast that the Lord must prohibit Moses, in his exuberance, from seeing it all: “No man can behold all my works and afterwards remain in the flesh on the earth. . . . The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man” (Moses 1:5, 37). Given the distinctly parochial scientific and theological views of the universe that were contemporary with Joseph Smith, these scriptural cosmologies are shockingly expansive and will be for years to come.

As for the death of God at this universe’s demise, Hagen quotes philosophers Paul Copan and William Craig, who maintain that God would be “swallowed up and crushed into oblivion in the Big Crunch” (18). God instructs Moses on this issue as well: “As one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works” (Moses 1:38). Hebrews 1:10–12 illustrates the same concept: “Lord, the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest. And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up [think: “Big Crunch”], and they shall be changed [Big Bangs]; but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail.”

Neil Turok, Cambridge University, suggests: “The universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large.” He is quoted by Francis Reddy, who adds: “The scientists argue the universe is at least a trillion years old and underwent repeated Big Bangs” (Reddy, “Is the Big Bang an Encore”? Astronomy Magazine, October 2006, 26).

On the subject of innumerable “intelligences,” cosmologist Frank Tipler of Tulane University is the author of the Omega Point Theory, which stipulates that the ultimate product of universal evolution must necessarily be God. He concedes that a significant vulnerability of the theory is that the math appears to lead to a metaphysical absurdity: “an infinite number of gods” (Kip Thorne, Caltech, and Tipler, “A Cosmological Dialogue on the Physics of Immortality,” Skeptic 3, No. 4 [1995]: 64). Thorne rejoins: “So instead of verifying the tenets of Christian theology you [Tipler] have verified the tenets of polytheistic theology” (65).

Imagine: an infinite, nonlocal, polytheistic cosmos! It really does sound delightfully absurd and unabashedly Mormon, doesn’t it? Science will always lag behind revealed cosmology, naturally; but the empirical vindications of our faith are certainly welcome.

Michael E. McDonald
Chester, Idaho

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An Artist Declares His Independence

When initially contacted about the reproduction of my work for the cover of Dialogue in conjunction with an article by Glen Nelson (“The Mormon Artists Group: Adventures in Art Making,” 39, no. 3 [Fall 2006]: 115–24), I agreed without much thought. I recognize that Dialogue is a small publication with a highly specialized audience. However, the arrival of the journal and its contents have occasioned some introspection and concern.

In the development of my work, I have often included Mormon themes. I have done this for several reasons that are perhaps too elaborate for this note. The one that seems most relevant to this forum is as a process of psychological tension release. The process of making images has been, and remains, a way of sorting through my relationship to the world.

Anyone who becomes interested in the Sunstone/Dialogue forums has become aware of the tensions that exist in the Mormon world, and there are many. While I have never subscribed to either publication, the presence of both has always been something of interest. I am frequently amazed at the kind of organization and dedication that “the Mormon people” can exhibit. Glen Nelson is to be commended for his project.

However, upon opening this issue of Dialogue, the first I had held in a number of years, I was taken back to some of the issues that have ultimately informed my decision to leave the Church.

Specifically, it was the first letter to the editor, “Shall I Go or Shall I Stay?” by Name Withheld (v–vii). In it, the author vividly depicts the kind of contradictions that some Mormons face. Caught between what is feared, an empty secular world, and the warm embrace of the local Mormon community, this family chooses activity in the Church, but not without cost. It left me feeling sad. It saddens me that American culture seems to force people into this kind of bargain. It saddens me that this obviously thinking and caring person belongs to a Church where he is embarrassed to sign his name to a letter that expresses his true inner dialogue.

But I was also irritated and disgusted. Activity in the Mormon Church, and in particular financial support, facilitates a host of activities that are wrong. Left-leaning, practicing Mormons like to believe that the good of the Church outweighs the bad. But I’m not sure that’s true. Most big institutions are probably 50/50.

The Mormon Church has never, and probably will never, stay out of politics. Political developments in the last five years mandate a level of consciousness, advocacy, and action that is the moral duty of every citizen of this nation. That Utah is seemingly the last state in the Union that supports the administration of George W. Bush is an embarrassment.

In short, my work appearing on the cover of Dialogue felt somewhat like an endorsement of Mormonism. I do not endorse Mormonism.

Lane Twitchell
Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Filling Gaps and Responding to “Silences in Mormon History”

Editor’s note: On December 12, 2006, D. Michael Quinn sent Dialogue the final version of his article, “Joseph Smith’s Experience of a Methodist ‘Camp-Meeting’ in 1820.” Dialogue posted it several days later as the expanded, definitive version of E-Paper #3 on Dialogue Paperless. It may presently be viewed at http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/e3.pdf. Accompanying the article was the author’s cover letter, which he has kindly given us permission to quote.

I cannot thank you enough for suggesting last spring that I post this article on Dialogue’s website (a possibility I hadn’t known about). Its huge length has (alas!) made it unpublishable in print-form, but your innovative website has allowed me to distribute it without my paying to photocopy and ship it by Pony Express to interested readers.

I will always be grateful to you for this opportunity of internet publication, because this is the most important article I’ve ever written. It’s the supreme demonstration of my decades-long affirmation that it is ultimately faith-promoting to insist on rigorous scholarship that doesn’t flinch from challenging traditional LDS historians and revising official histories.

Far beyond my expectations when I began this project in June 2005 to write what I thought would be a ten-page research note about faithful “possibilities,” I have proved the accuracy of Joseph Smith’s statements that there was significant local revivalism in 1820—a claim that BYU religion professors and other LDS apologists had said (or implied) was unprovable for nearly forty years. It took me a year of research and writing in my spare time to do the preliminary version of July 2006, plus three months to produce this expanded revision that (I think) demonstrates Joseph Smith’s religious honesty beyond doubt concerning the circumstances leading to his First Vision of deity.

Naysayers will continue doubting the theophany itself, because no vision can be “proved” historically, but (if I am not being too arrogant) no one can honestly challenge Joseph’s account of the vision’s prelude after reading my article’s final version.

Why I was able to do this with such relative ease, while the traditional LDS apologists were not able to (or gave up trying) with the same sources available to them for decades, is something they will have to explain, because I can’t figure it out. Filling gaps and responding to “silences in Mormon history” have been my stock-in-trade as a social historian, but I never expected to do so with such a well-worn topic as Palmyra’s revivalism.

As an excommunicated historian, I offer this 1820 camp-meeting article as my gift to the people I’ve always loved, the believing Latter-day Saints. And if the feedback I’ve received from friendly skeptics is representative, even nonbelievers appreciate the historical context and lush descriptions I’ve provided for the Methodist revivalism that descended on Palmyra in the late spring of 1820.

If most Mormons choose to ignore what is written by someone they regard as a “disgusting homosexual apostate,” that’s their problem—not mine. I’ve been an ardent believer as long as I can remember, have defined myself as homosexual since the age of twelve, and am tired of trying to persuade naysayers that Mormonism has a loyal opposition—even of gay activists who are “uppity” when consigned to the back of the LDS bus. Now I’ve at least done my part to make a faith-promoting article about Mormon beginnings available to anyone who might be interested (or who should be).

I appreciate your patience, and thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me a way to distribute this article electronically to a worldwide audience!!

D. Michael Quinn
Rancho Cucamonga, California

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Erratum: The biographical statement about Henry Miles (“My Mission Decision,” Dialogue 40, no. 1 [Spring 2007]: 138–51) was inadvertently left out of the Contributors’ list in the spring issue. It is as follows:

HENRY L. MILES retired after a career in the Foreign Service. During his eleven years in Latin America, he served as counselor to three mission presidents while his wife, Carol, served on mission boards and as Relief Society president. After retiring, both took degrees at BYU. They have five children and twenty grandchildren, the oldest just returned from a mission. Henry spends his time writing family narratives and personal essays.