Fall 1995
The Fall 1995 Issue covers personal, historical, and cultural reflections within the Mormon experience, intersecting with themes of feminism, family, hymnody, and personal identity. Cecilia Konchar Farr discusses the relationship between religion and feminism, highlighting tensions and insights. Danny L. Jorgensen examines early dissent and schisms within the Church, exploring reasons behind Mormon fissiparousness. Lydia Nibley’s piece is a family narrative, “Pillars of My Family,” capturing her heritage. Samuel W. Taylor reflects on the hidden ambitions and struggles of A.C. Lambert in “The Golden Dream and the Nightmare.” Rosalynde Frandsen offers a heartfelt narrative set at a children’s hospital, and Douglas Campbell explores changes in LDS hymns, suggesting new possibilities for worship. Paul A. Tenney’s “The Angel Tree” and Karin Anderson England’s humorous account, “Near-Sex Experiences (Confessions of a Mormon Girl),” offer personal and reflective storytelling. Together, these pieces provide a rich look at the intersection of tradition, personal faith, and modern challenges within the LDS community. And much more!
Dialogue 28.3 (Fall 1995): 1–12
As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path.
I leaned against the glass door, struggling to open it against the air current that held it closed. With both hands now I pushed until finally I forced it open and found myself in the…
The request to work a second year in the Salvation Army’s annual “Angel Tree” booth, a thoughtful community Christmas project enjoyed by church members, came during a thunderous downpour one Monday morning in December. A…
We had been up there for two months when the clouds came in. It hap pened overnight. When I crawled into my sleeping bag the night before, the air was dry and clear. The mountain…
“The earth turns, the sun rises. It’s quite simple.” We turned towards the high peaks to the east—cold, and still smooth and clean with snow, the half-circle of rising sun warming our faces. I squinted…
The cupping hand cradles the winds
that whir like crickets
beneath the swoop of traffic lamps.
The legs like stumps of pillars
In the hayfields are loaves
to be lined along barns.
Like monuments to a lost art
they have browned in the summer heat,
Thirty-six years after his baptism,
nobody was converted.
His grown kids were apostates, and his exes
were either nudists or inactives
Day rolls over,
pulling at the covers of dusk.
Lights come on in sequence
and before they go off
An angel came to me and said, O Pitiable Fools!
O Foolish Mortals! O Everlasting Damnation!
I said, Perhaps you will be willing to shew me
their eternal lot, and my own. He said, Come.
Carol Cornwall Maden’s In Their Own Words: Women and the Story of Nauvoo brings together accounts of life in Nauvoo, Illinois, by about two dozen LDS women, some well known, some relatively obscure. Professor Madsen’s…
John B. Wright’s Rocky Mountain Divide: Selling and Saving the West contains a unique examination of Mormon attitudes toward land conservation. In spite of some inaccurate statements about Mormon history, doc trine, and practice, the…
