Fall 1987
The Fall 1987 Issue delves into the Mormon experience from various perspectives. Mary L. Bradford reflects on institutional shifts, while Warner P. Woodworth critiques the growing bureaucracy within the Church. Robert and Sharyn Larsen discuss their stake’s experience with refugee converts, and Jeffrey Ogden Johnson explores complex definitions of marriage in Brigham Young’s households. A study by Richard S. Van Wagoner and colleagues addresses the decanonization of the "Lectures on Faith." Essays by Irene M. Bates and others examine religious tolerance and the global nature of Christ’s teachings. Personal reflections and fiction highlight individual faith journeys and identity, while poetry offers contemplative insights on family and tradition.
Recently I finished my first book, a brief journey on the road to self-definition. I called it Leaving Home[1] because my life has been a series of comings and goings to and from various homes…
Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and Vonnegut’s Player Piano all envision a world where the system—big bureaucracy, big government, corporations, changing technology, or a mix of these—achieves total, albeit benign, control. The individual is…
Situated on a prominent knoll in the Oakland hills, the Oakland Temple is the most visible symbol of the Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. The temple is located within the boundaries of the…
Utah satirist Al Church, among other suggestions on how to survive as a gentile in Utah, offered this tip: “Ask guides at the Beehive House how many wives Brigham Young had. (Of my last four…
The “Lectures on Faith,” seven 1834-35 lessons on theology and doctrine prepared for the “School of the Elders” in Kirtland, Ohio, were canonized in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants by official vote…
John Smith, brother of Joseph Smith, Sr., and uncle of the Prophet Joseph Smith, was an unspectacular, though far from ordinary man. Amid the troubles and uncertainties following the June 1844 martyrdom of the Prophet…
The transformation of the Mormon Church from a radical nineteenth century socio-religious movement into a respectable denomination in the twentieth century raises sociological questions on whether or how distinctive Mormon elements can survive in our…
The tenth Article of Faith states the Mormon belief that “Christ will reign personally upon the earth.” This is usually taken to mean that Christ will literally return to the earth at the Second Coming…
It is alive, the Colorado, its heavy brown waters pulsing through limestone and sandstone layers gouged out before it learned manners from the government and Glen Canyon Dam. “She don’t give a hot sheep shit,”…
Near the beginning of my professional career at Brigham Young University, a community sage (who had observed a continuing struggle to merge the intellectual with the spiritual at the institution) asked me: “Harold, are you…
The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives signs (Heraclitus). Three steps. A terrace. Five steps. A terrace. Seven steps. A terrace. Nine steps. A final broad terrace. Stone sphinxes (one…
One of the popular bumper stickers of the fifties and sixties told us, “I’d rather be dead than red.” An even more succinct version declared, “Better dead than red.” I remember these slogans because they…
Brigham Young: American Moses makes several important contributions. First, it relies on and quotes extensively from primary sources. Readers will glean a number of new insights. Particularly helpful is Arrington’s chapter on Brigham’s youthful life…
The only major LDS science-fiction writer, Orson Scott Card recently won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America for Ender’s Game (1985) and nominations for the Hugo Award. Speaker for the Dead…
Lowry Nelson was one of Utah’s greatest intellectual products. At age ninety-three, this, the final volume of an autobiographical trilogy rounds off Boyhood in a Mormon Village and Eighty: One Man’s Way There. Nelson’s new…
As a teenager I read my dad’s old priest hood manual written by T. Edgar Lyon. Later I found even older manuals for MIA and Sunday School by other Mormon authors such as E. E.…
