Fall 1996
The Fall 1996 Issue offers an intimate and varied perspective on Mormon history, theology, personal journeys, and cultural expressions. Kent Walgren explores Gisbert Bossard's 1911 photographs of the Salt Lake Temple, providing rare historical insight. Teresa Whiting reflects on God’s grace, and Lawrence Foster proposes new frameworks for interpreting Mormonism and its history. Cheryl L. White weaves together multigenerational narratives in “Laying Our Stories Side by Side.” Jessie L. Embry’s piece, “Without Purse or Scrip,” and Anita Tanner’s “Learning from the Land” highlight themes of faith and self-discovery. Massimo Introvigne examines near-death experiences through the lens of Betty Eadie’s work and its reception in Mormonism. Phyllis Barber reflects on the challenges of stepping away from Mormonism, while Heather Hardy contemplates the concept of agency within the faith. Susan Elizabeth Howe explores Mormon elements in the poetry of May Swenson, offering insight into the intersection of art and faith
Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 68–97
For faithful Mormons, the thought that someone had violated the sacred confines of the eighteen-year-old Salt Lake temple, which he desecrated by photographing, was “considered as impossible as profaning the sacred Kaaba at Mecca.”
My first inklings of the possibilities of God’s grace in my life came through two personal experiences. The first occurred during a family Christmas dinner. My youngest sister had brought her boyfriend. They were leaving…
Within historically-oriented religious faiths, such as those deriving from Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, any effort to develop new paradigms for understanding their historical development, especially in their formative stages, is inextricably intertwined with efforts to…
I turned from the calendar to find the diary in my bookcase. It was hard to miss; the orange and red cover stood out like a sister at a priest hood meeting. I started to reach for it but stopped and just looked at it. A voice in my head rose above the confusion, “The prophets have said to keep a journal.” Yet I could not pick up the journal and write.
[1]Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints see pro claiming the gospel to all people as an important part of the church’s responsibility. Many elements of their missionary efforts have not changed…
Long after my father’s kindeys failed, I keep in a willow box under my bed the two letters he wrote to me in the thirty years since I left home. Mother did practically all the…
In 1975 psychiatrist Raymond A. Moody introduced the expression “near-death experience” (NDE) in his bestselling book Life After Life. By 1988 more than 3 million copies of the book had been sold (not including foreign…
In April 1995, just before I left for a month-long trip to Slovenia, I had a brief telephone conversation with Linda King Newell. I had been invited to speak at the annual Pilgrimage Retreat. She…
Let me begin with two statements from a man who 350 years ago struggled to live a life of faith. An eminent mathematician, Blaise Pascal was also a philosopher and religious thinker who knew both the value of rigorous analysis and the limitations of reason. The first quotation, from his Pensees, is his famous theistic wager:
Any discussion of Mormon culture or doctrine in the work of nationally prominent American poet May Swenson must begin with the caveat that Swenson, for virtually all of her adult life, was not a believing…
The portion of 1 John 5:7-8 highlighted in bold has long given biblical scholars pause for thought. Not just modern, “secular,” or “liberal” scholars, either. A physics professor of mine once told his students that Sir Isaac Newton, whose formulation of the laws of gravity still form the fundamentals of physics, actually wrote four times as many books on theology as he did on science.
On 15 June 1844 Joseph Smith recorded in his journal that “[the steam boat] Maid of Iowa come [sic] down the river about 2 or 3 o’clock While I was examining Benj[amin] Wests painting of…
Dialogue 27.3 (Fall 1994): 68–97
For faithful Mormons, the thought that someone had violated the sacred confines of the eighteen-year-old Salt Lake temple, which he desecrated by photographing, was “considered as impossible as profaning the sacred Kaaba at Mecca.”
He disengaged the gear, ground the key forward. The motor clicked. The steerage went heavy in his hands. He pushed the signal bar upward with his palm, crossed lanes. “What is it?” she asked. “Nothing,”…
The corridors buzzed with all the chatter and anticipation of a courtroom before a major trial. At five after eleven, packs of people scurried to their seats looking greedily toward the stand. The chapel bulged.…
I release my pretty doves
and they ascend like sparks
to disappear. And look
how restless I am,
Pluck them out one by one
Melancholy, dearth, unableness
Squeeze out the poisons
Scratch away the sting
Ahumming stillness. In the orchards up and down the valley
the pith of summer turns slowly to juices. Ripeness:
what my grandmother knows, hunched in her silence.
He blisters his hand on the iron she forgot to unplug,
investigates every outlet, detects exactly three more
potential fire hazards, bandages himself
in the prescribed method. She is not a cautious woman.
As earth began to shed the snowy clouds of
death and slumber,
as darkness ebbed within the solstice,
you slept in my dark womb,
In Lewis Horne’s short story, “The People Who Were Not There,” the young Mormon protagonist looks at the notebook of Clifford Wellington, an Indian boy from a local reservation, and declares, “The pages gave off…
