This week marked the ignition of the new online journal Religion & Politics with some familiar Dialogue faces participating. Board Member Max Mueller serves as associate editor and Dialogue Associate Editor Matt Bowman contributes a thought-provoking essay.
Within this inaugural issue, there are two Mormon-related pieces.
In light of recent politically ignited articles on “Why Ann (Romney) Stayed Home” and “The rise of the Mormon feminist housewife” we bring back from the archives articles and essays discussing the role of motherhood in the Mormon Church:
Begin with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s significant survey of “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism” from 2010 that includes a handy timeline as well as important analysis: “Mormon women did not become feminists because they read The Feminine Mystique or subscribed to Ms magazine. They became feminists as new ideas, filtered through a wide range of personal associations, helped them make sense of their lives. Discovering history, they also discovered themselves.”
A blog by members of Dialogue’s editorial team and friends that’s spirited, spiritual, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking.
Recent offerings:
Watch Laurie Maffly-Kipp, a professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, present a lecture entitled, “The Long Approach to the Mormon Moment: The Building of an American Church” in St. Louis. Click in to view.
Editor Kristine Haglund was tapped for quotes on Mormon motherhood in light of the remarks on Ann Romney’s motherhood in both Buzzfeed and Slate:
“The strong prescription that women should not work seemed more jarring in a social context in which women’s right to participate more fully in the economy was starting to seem well-established,” said Kristine Haglund, a feminist and editor at liberal Mormon journal Dialogue.
Editor’s note: In light of the Washington Post piece on “The Genesis of a church’s stand on race” we bring back from the archives the famous article cited therein. This essay originally appeared in Dialogue 8 (Spring 1973).[p.54]
by Lester E. Bush, Jr.
There once was a time, albeit brief, when a “Negro problem” did not exist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints During those early months in New York and Ohio no mention was even made of Church attitudes towards blacks.
I’ll be blogging conference live at Dialogue’s affiliated blog, By Common Consent, with real-time coverage from the Conference Center, photos, and lots of discussion, both serious and silly, in the comment section. Will President Monson arrive late? Will Elder Oaks talk about Religious Freedom? Will someone reference an April Fool’s Joke? You’ll find somebody talking about it at BCC. Twitter updates also available throughout the weekend at https://twitter.com/DialogueJournal and http://twitter.com/ByCommonConsent. Join us!
Yesterday, at a news conference to which Dialogue was invited, the editors of the newly released Histories, Volume 1 teased that there would be a plethora of resources to be uploaded soon to the Joseph Smith Papers website. A day later the heavens were opened! Among the releases, find a previously unavailable copy of an early version of Joseph Smith’s 1838-1839 history that is important because, as scholar Robin Jensen explains “the text has been available, but this version has not .” Also included is what Jensen calls “the best scanned images I’ve seen online of one of the most important books (the 1833 Book of Commandments) published in Mormon history.”And find 50 1839 documents, updated reference material, the second volume of the manuscript history and various 1840 documents.
Editor Kristine Haglund is one of a panel of experts–also including Boston College Professor of Political Science and media commenter Alan Wolfe, Boston University Professor of Religion Stephen Prothero (according to Sally Quinn— best religious scholar in the country ) and moderator Mark Massa, dean of the School of Theology and Ministry– who discussed “Are Mormons the New Catholics and Jews? Mitt Romney and the State of the Union” at Boston College on March 13.
You can watch the C-SPAN video (aired March 15th) of the discussion here.