Clay L. Chandler

CLAY L. CHANDLER is an architect/developer living in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, with his wife, the Rev. Christie Chandler, their children, and a border collie.

The Truth, the Partial Truth, Something Like the Truth, So Help Me God

Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 3

In October of 1993 Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic and eldest grandson of former LDS president Ezra Taft Benson, had an argument in a public place. Their dispute centered on the role played by Apostle Boyd K. Packer in the September excommunication of Paul James Toscano. According to both men, this had been a subject of discussion between them during two “confidential” meetings.

Scrying for the Lord: Magic, Mysticism, and the Origins of the Book of Mormon

Articles/Essays – Volume 36, No. 4

Dialogue 36.4 (Winter 2004):109–128
JOSEPH SMITH GREW UP in a time and place where folk magic was an accepted part of the landscape. Before he was a prophet, he was a diviner, or more specifically, a scryer who used his peepstone to discover the location of buried treasure.