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Volume 17, No. 1

Spring 1984

The Spring 1984 Issue eatures diverse perspectives in Mormon thought, history, and creative expression. Highlights include an interview with Sterling M. McMurrin by Blake Ostler, discussing theological insights. Cedric I. Dauern examines the contrasting views of evolution and creation, while Richard J. Cummings explores themes of fanaticism, doubt, and integrity in The Stone and the Star. Robert and Kay Atkinson King analyze how Mormon organizational boundaries affect group cohesion. A sermon by President Hugh B. Brown emphasizes intellectual freedom as part of spiritual growth. A unique report on celestial demographics humorously questions eternal familial relationships. In personal essays, Dian Saderup reflects on grace, while Irene M. Bates and Paul M. Edwards present contrasting LDS and RLDS perspectives on Mormon identity. And much more!

  • Topics
  • classic, history, theology

Contents

Articles/Essays

An Interview with Sterling M. McMurrin



Sterling M. McMurrin has been a leading philosopher and educator for many years. Among his publications pertaining to the philosophy of religion are Religion, Reason, and Truth (1982) and The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion (1965). He served as United States Commissioner of Education under President John F. Kennedy and is currently E. E. Ericksen Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah. The 7th East Press, then an independent student newspaper at Brigham Young University, published this interview on 11 January, 1983. The concluding comments on ritual and the temple were added by Ostler and McMurrin later. Some adjustment in the order of the questions and answers has been made in the interest of consolidating related comments. Paragraphing, punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected silently, when necessary. 



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Evolution and Creation: Two World Views



Dialogue 17.1 (Spring 1984): 44–50
The big question for me in this controversy is whether freedom of inquiry, with the agonizing ambiguity that accompanies it, will be sacrificed to the interests of those who demand certainty in the hope of salvation.



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Fiction

Roger Across the Looking Glass



The process is as invariable and explicable as the engineered logic of a machine. Yet for all its biological transparence, to Roger Talmage, educated, institutionally devout, and forty-two, the quite ordinary adjustment of his eyes…



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Letters to the Editor

Personal Voices

The Grace of the Court



The night before, I had felt a sudden need to read the scriptures, something I hadn’t done in nearly three months. I stayed up until 2:30 and was asleep when Lynn called from Oakland at…



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Being Mormon: An RLDS Response



Dialogue 17.1 (Spring 1984): 106–112
To be a Mormon — in the generic use of that term — is an attitude: an attitude of uniqueness — of peculiarity — • which makes itself known in behavior, in beliefs, in relationships, in inquiries and, most of all, in religious expression.



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Poetry

Another Birth



They dream of going hack. 
            The bars on their beds 
            are fingers before a face. 
Their knees rise up toward chins 



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Response

Being Mormon: An RLDS Response



Dialogue 17.1 (Spring 1984): 106–112
To be a Mormon — in the generic use of that term — is an attitude: an attitude of uniqueness — of peculiarity — • which makes itself known in behavior, in beliefs, in relationships, in inquiries and, most of all, in religious expression.



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Reviews

Brief Notices



In the fall 1983 column, we surmised that Merlo Pusey’s history of the George A. Smiths represented, by virtue of its flavor, a respectable and even successful attempt at “family-authorized” biography. Subsequently, a missive from…



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Sermon