With the developments in Utah this past week and the intense discussions on same-sex marriage swirling around, we decided to release Wilfried Decoo’s “As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”—Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage” from the new Fall 2013 issue for everyone to enjoy.
If I could only have one recording of Christmas music, this performance of Vaughan Williams’ Hodie would be it. Christmas for me is Milton in the voice of Janet Baker, and Hardy and Herbert in John Shirley-Quirk’s lugubrious baritone.
Three Mormon themed podcasts caught our ear this week, two of which featured Board Member Joanna Brooks.
Now that the Church has released its treatment of Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah, many of our people are going to be learning of the phenomenon of post-Manifesto polygamy for the first time.
“Bound Hand and Foot with Graveclothes” a perspective on the new Race and the Priesthood page by Editor Kristine Haglund cross-posted at ByCommonConsent
I had never noticed before last Easter that Lazarus comes out of the tomb still “bound hand and foot with graveclothes.” He is not radiantly restored to life; he must have been a terrifying spectre. Jesus leaves it to those who believe to finish the miracle–to unbind their brother and be the ones who “let him go” by bidding him come back to them. God’s healing work was finished, but Lazarus could not be restored to life until those witnesses who “believed on” Jesus caught a glimpse of the life He came to offer, overcame their squeamishness and even their religious conviction that having anything to do with the dead was taboo, and went to work bringing Lazarus fully back into their communal life, which would be transformed forever by his return.
There’s a danger, of course, in drawing the parallels too closely, but I think there might be something for us to learn from this story in figuring out how we ought to respond to the remarkable statement on race and priesthood posted at lds.org
Dear Friend of Dialogue:
The past year has been an outstanding one for Dialogue. I hope you have found articles that speak to you. I must admit that I often turn first to the book reviews—it is a way for me to obtain thoughtful insight into the best of the new Mormon-themed books that are published each year….
Dialogue is more than just a print journal. If you haven’t visited our website lately, please do. You can find all the past Dialogue articles there, as well as pieces on selected Mormon current affairs. You might want to take a moment to click on the “Contact Us” link and skim the biographies and photos of our Board of Directors to see who’s working behind the scenes.
Rachel Farmer guest posts at Feminist Mormon Housewives to discuss her new art exhibit in New York, and describes her encounters with the archives of Dialogue.
It’s funny to exhibit my little ceramic pioneers here on the east coast. People wonder who they are and what they are doing. Are they prairie moms? Eastern European peasants? Pilgrims? What are those carts they are lugging around? Are they peddlers? One thing is certain – these women know how to work!
This fascination with my ancestry — and questions about my own place in the Mormon narrative — led my young nerdy self on a quest to read all the back-issues of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (that my parents kept conveniently stacked in their study).
The women I met on these pages forever changed my worldview: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Lavina Fielding Anderson. Though they wrote about contemporary feminist issues, it was their insights into Mormon women’s more independent and expansive role in the early church that gave me some extra backbone.
Associate Editor Matthew Bowman takes a look at counter-cult movements, apologetics, and the ongoing question of whether or not Mormons are Christian. Cross-posted at the Mormon portal at Patheos.
In the nineteenth sixties and seventies, an “anti-cult” movement emerged in America, assailing religious movements like Krishna Consciousness and the Children of God and Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple with the word “cult.” The anti-cult movement was secular, and as such attacked these movements in secular language: it popularized concepts like ‘brainwashing’ and ‘deprogramming,’ warned that such religious movements were not really religious but rather elaborate means of self-gratification erected by charismatic leaders who wanted to exploit the young, and generally made the word ‘cult’ a symbol of a dangerous, suspect, clannish, and authoritarian pseudo-religions.
Back in 2011, six women came together around a virtual Round Table to discuss issues pertaining to Mormon women and womanhood in attempt to model ways women with very different opinions could positively and proactively dialogue. Due to the increased coverage of the issue surrounding women and the priesthood, the Round Table was again convened.
Join Emily W. Jensen, Chelsea Shields Strayer, Lisa Butterworth, Neylan McBaine, and Saren Eyre Loosli as they examine the Ordain Women movement and the myriad of ways women can work to become more visible.
Trouble, Right Here in Sal Tlay Ka Siti
“I always think there’s a band, kid.” —Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man
By the time that I figured out that I hated The Music Man, it had been my favorite musical for more than 20 years. When I was ten, my mother took me to see Tony Randall as Professor Harold Hill at the Tulsa Little Theatre, and I was hooked. I listened to the LP for hours at a time, and, when the Robert Preston/Shirley Jones movie came to HBO a few years later, I watched it almost every day for two months. I have seen five stage versions and two film versions of the play a total of probably 30 times. I probably have most of the lines by heart.
I was in my 30s before I figured out that the ultimate message of The Music Man—that exciting lies are better than boring old truths—is one that I find morally reprehensible. When Harold Hill comes into River City and convinces people that he is going to build a boys’ band, everybody gets excited. People are nicer, more confident, and happier than they were before. So the whole town more or less colludes with Marian Paroo to keep the deception alive. If you want to be happy, The Music Man insists, just find a good-looking lie and pretend hard enough until it comes sort of true.
Which brings me to The Book of Mormon, which I saw last week in Dallas.