Lester E. Bush Jr.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine” 45 Years Later

It has been forty-five years since Dialogue published Bush’s essay entitled “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview”2 and forty years since Official Declaration 2 ended the priesthood/temple ban.

Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism

A Commentary of Stephen G. Taggart’s Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins

Dialogue 4.4 (Winter 1969): 86–103
Lester E Bush wrote in response to Stephen G Taggart’s book which the author tried to show that the Church came from abololonist ideas because the Church was orginially founded in New York, but when they encountered pro slavery settlers in Missouri and faced the hostiltiy from the settlers early church leaders apparently changed their mind, even though Joseph Smith eventually did a turnabout from what records have shown regarding African Americans.

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview

Dialogue 8.1 (Spring 1973): 11–68
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.

Mormon Elders’ Wafers: Images on Mormon Virility in Patent Medicine Ads

Some may be surprised to learn that the stereotypical image of the hyper-virile nineteenth century Mormon male had a special appeal to the “lost manhood” sector of a thriving American patent medicine industry. There was…

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

The Spalding Theory Then and Now

Late in the summer of 1833 one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, recently excommunicated from the Mormon church for “unchristianlike” conduct toward some of the sisters,[1] learned of a manuscript written some twenty years before by the late Reverend Solomon Spalding which was similar to the Book of Mormon. His interest piqued, he set out to investigate this story, principally through interviews with former residents of Conneaut, Ohio, where Spalding once had lived. 

Introduction

Friday, June 9, 1978. A day not to be forgotten. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the assassination of President Kennedy, most Mormons will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing…

Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.

A Peculiar People: The Physiological Aspects of Mormonism, 1850-1875

It was nearly sunset when young Dr. Roberts Bartholow passed through Salt Lake City. Having the “good—or ill—fortune to be one of the expeditionary corps, dispatched in the summer of 1857 to Utah,” Bartholow had…

On Mormonism, Moral Epidemics, Homeopathy and Death from Natural Causes

These three brief reprints provide interesting insights into early Mormon medicine. The first piece, from an essay entitled “Millerism” in The American Journal of Insanity (January 1845), although not directed at Mormons is relevant to…

Excommunication and Church Courts: A Note From the General Handbook of Instructions

Among the things Mormon brought into the spotlight by the Sonia Johnson affair, perhaps the least well understood was the LDS notion of “excommunication.” To non-Mormons the process seemed, in Phil Donahue’s widely heard characterization, a “medieval”, anachronism. On the Mormon side, while the notion was hardly a surprise, a remarkable ignorance of the criteria and mechanics was generally evident whenever the faithful tried to “explain” what was going on.

The Word of Wisdom in Early Nineteenth-Century Perspective

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

Valedictory

We consider the conductor of a religious periodical under as much stronger obligations to seek after and publish the truth, as eternity is longer than any portion of time of which we have any connection,…

Ethical Issues in Reproductive Medicine: A Mormon Perspective

Dialogue 18.2 (Summer 1985): 42
For this reason, I would suggest that in theory—and sometimes even in practice—”Mormonism” typically sees frontiers in medicine such as those we have discussed as opportunities for expanding its perspective rather than as occasions for making official judgments. 

Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview