Fall 2003
The Fall 2003 Issue presents a series of essays that explore themes of justice, mercy, and the role of women within the context of Mormon theology and history. Janice Allred examines the relationship between justice and mercy, discussing concepts of retribution, punishment, and the importance of loving one's enemies. Karen Marguerite Moloney highlights Lavina Fielding Anderson's contributions, drawing parallels between her work and Bernard Shaw's portrayal of Joan of Arc, reflecting on the strength and complexity of female figures in religious narratives. Todd Compton's essay titled "Kingdom of Priests" investigates the roles of women in the Old Testament, particularly focusing on their connections to priesthood and temple practices. And much more!
I have always loved the parables and teachings of Jesus about forgive ness and mercy, and I have pondered their meaning for many years. We could say that in these parables, parables such as the…
In September of 1993 Lavina Fielding Anderson was excommunicated from the LDS church for documenting and publishing instances of the church’s punishing treatment of Mormon intellectuals and feminists, as well as other instances of ecclesiastical abuse.
Dialogue 36.3 (2003): 53-80
Compton considers priesthood as portrayed in Old Testament texts and how women are underrepresented in today’s discourse.
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 61–64
Over the past forty years the top leadership of the Community of Christ church (until recently the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter -Day Saints) has gone through significant changes in religious thought. I have contended elsewhere that the decisive changes occurred in the 1960s.
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 99–193
On November 17,1985, many RLDS (now Community of Christ) congregations witnessed the sacrament of ordination to priesthood office.
Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have engaged in missionary work since the year of the religion’s founding. But sociological research on the experience of these missionaries is still young and stands as a field white and ready to harvest.
I couldn’t sleep. I sat at the open window and watched the occasional person walk by. The sidewalk glowed florescent orange from the street lamp above. It was quiet in Montreal’s university district, and everyone…
I am, and probably always will be, a sisterhater. In fact, many church members are sisterhaters without even realizing it. A sisterhater is, sim ply put, someone who can’t abide sister missionaries. As a sister…
Mormon missionaries in Taiwan weren’t hard to spot, not only because of those white shirts and name tags. First of all, they were usually of European descent, and those white faces became luridly conspicuous among…
I turned 21 the summer of 1989 before my junior year at BYU. The missionary I’d written to had come home, and we had gone our separate ways. I started fall semester with no boyfriend,…
In 1991 I almost joined the Peace Corps. I graduated from college that year with the coveted Peace Corps job offer just as I had hoped for years. The glitch in my plan, however, was…
Like many baby-boomers, philosopher Roger Scruton as a young man accepted the sexual standards of his generation, eschewing marriage in favor of “experiments” with less binding relationships. Scruton finally did marry when he found that his “experiment had turned into a commitment instead,” but the marriage lasted only a few years. Reflecting on his painful and all-too-common experience, Scruton wrote, “Our years of cohabitation had disenchanted our first love, while offering no second love in place of it.”
I have taught from the Gospel Doctrine manuals for a total of sixteenyears, over a period of about twenty-five years. Not one of those manuals mentioned the Song of Solomon. In defiance, I read through…
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 159–175
In this paper I will explore official and unofficial messages that theLDS church has sent to girls and women about childbearing during the twentieth century and the effect those messages have had on women’sreproductive choices.
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 191–1933
Claudia Bushman and others reflect back on Exponent II.
“So you’re considering a pilgrimage,” I wrote to someone I’d recently met and liked, “nothing would delight me more. You’d have some time away, you’d make new friends, get more deeply acquainted with familiar ones,…
Midwest Pilgrims is the result of a charge given the women at the Nauvoo women’s retreat held in 1982. It was to go back to their various geo graphical locations and organize similar gatherings. It…
In the several decades in which I have heard LDS women discuss “women’s issues” as they pertain to the church, I have found it remark able how much fear there is among so many to…
Last weekend, I traveled to California to attend the graduation of my youngest child and only daughter, Megan, from UC Berkeley. She graduated with honors in sociology, a true personal triumph for her. Also graduating…
I have been a conscious Christian all my life, although defining what “Christian” means is problematic. You could say I was “born again,” but that comes on like too much evangelical bad breath. Let’s just…
In “Moving Zion Southward, Part II,” I noted that from 1985-2000, average LDS church cash donations to humanitarian aid were $20 million annually.[1] An “alert reader,” as Dave Barry would say, has pointed out that…
“Sally snores,” says Ed, and I sink into my shoulders and smile uncomfortably at Gemma and Frank on the couch. “I don’t snore,” I say defensively. “I don’t even sleep.” “Ho,” answers Ed. He leans…
My husband’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Hanks, live in Utah and come to visit our family in Michigan every summer. We all look forward to their visits, especially our children. Grandpa is pleasant and takes…
As I eased myself behind the wheel of my car in early spring 1994,1 was exhausted. I had been on campus all day teaching and consulting with students and had just finished teaching a three-hour…
I am part of the usual Gospel Doctrine “crowd,” and although I’m not one of those folks who can sleep upright in a metal chair, I have refrained from being an active participant in the…
The popular film My Big Fat Greek Wedding suggests that ethnic families will flood pell mell into any space provided by a family member who announces she or he is getting married. In the case…
And then, to show how it was done,
Mrs. Jackson, the Home Ec. teacher,
bent from the waist, the way you drink from a tap,
and demonstrated how to let the breasts
I wear her name
and a two carat diamond
which, like a heavy rock of salt,
falls to the side between my fingers.
I’m sitting on a pink velvet chair
The mothers have antlers of their own, the eldest
Mother shall lead the rest, show them
How to do with food first of all, house is next,
And training young the last. The Mothers train
In the interval after the mastectomy
before her head was a slick white egg,
she would color the gray roots of her dark
blanket-soft hair with drugstore dye.
The antler people have ways of finding
The womb people’s poles and knocking
Them to the ground, if only in the mind.
The womb people bare their breasts
There’s a foul wind blowing in from ten o’clock
Saying, You owe me. I check my balance books,
And they don’t look off, but the wind insists,
You owe me. What? I ask. You abandoned me.
After dawn we hike through fine rain,
but the light is good, only slight
cellophane distortion as we look through
at trees and stream, box canyon walls
Not one has made it.
Trout launch out of Snake Creek,
flipping through the air,
vaulting up the waterfall,
We couldn’t say
the yes that would loosen
our grip, tutoring us
in doing without.
Some things were simply snatched away.
On death, I have thoughts
That bread and water
Can not satisfy:
Because they are gone
Jack, John, Eugene, and Ruth. . .
My people were Mormon pioneers.
Is the blood still good?
They stood in awe as truth
Flew by like a dove
And dropped a feather in the West.
Where truth flies you follow
If you are a pioneer.
The usual iconography failed me.
My mother thumb-tacked
a cardboard print above my crib;
my age of reason came early.
Mrs. Robinson sang in the choir.
In the church, my face, my husband’s,
and one other white couple on the stage.
Will Bagley stands, metaphorically, on the shoulders of Juanita Brooks, peering into southwestern Utah’s landscape to witness a ghastly sight: the murder of over one hundred men, women, and children at the hands of Mormon…
One of the most intriguing ironies of life in Salt Lake City during the nineteenth century was the clash of the Mormons who were morally outraged to see the advent of prostitution in their valley…
For the last several years I have had the opportunity to serve on the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee. That assignment— in addition to my day job as Curator of Special Collections at Weber…
