Spring 1988
The Spring 1988 issue delves into themes of faith, personal growth, and societal structures within Mormonism. F. Ross and Mary Kay Peterson discuss Dialogue's ongoing impact, and Eugene England reflects on Easter’s significance. Margaret Toscano explores moving beyond traditional gender roles, while Paul Toscano critiques power dynamics in faith. Mark Gustavson examines the portrayal of divine will in scripture, and Richard and Mary Van Wagoner profile Orson Pratt, Jr., a complex figure shaped by family ties. Michael Homer and Kenneth Driggs analyze Utah's judicial history and legal definitions of cohabitation. Personal reflections include experiences at the Missionary Training Center, navigating doubt, and mother-daughter bonds. Poetry poignantly captures themes of loss, rebellion, and spiritual growth. And more!
Once again the editorial mantle of DIALOGUE has passed to a new leadership. The journal is in excellent shape and bears a positive impact from each editorial team. For twenty years numerous individuals have tirelessly…
It might have been 1986, because Easter came in March and I was on my way to Montreal. But I went to see Dustin Hoffman in The Death of a Salesman (bought a ticket at…
Dialogue 21.1 (Spring 1988): 34–59
BECAUSE MORMONS don’t yet have a strong tradition of speculative theology, I want to explain some of my objectives and methods in writing this essay. My chief purpose is to make symbolic connections, to evoke families of images, and to explore theological possibilities.
My honeymoon with the Church lasted for five years, between 1961 when I was converted and 1966 when I went on my mission. During that period, I had had inklings that there was trouble in…
Since the appearance of higher biblical criticism, scholars have attempted to examine the Christian canon using contemporary standards of ethical analysis. From Russell to Bultmann, the critics have sought to make sense of the scriptural…
The distinction of being the firstborn of Apostle Orson Pratt’s forty five children belonged to his namesake, Orson Pratt, Jr. Unlike Joseph Smith III, Brigham Young, Jr., Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, John Henry…
In August 1851, David Adams, a physician residing in Wayne County, Illinois, wrote a letter to Brigham Young in which he expressed his dismay at the persecutions the Mormons had suffered in Missouri and Illinois…
The prosecution of George Reynolds in the mid-1870s and the United States Supreme Court’s 1879 affirmation of that conviction are usually viewed as the key legal events leading to mass prosecution of Mormon polygamists in…
Minerva Bernetta Kohlhepp Teichert may be the most widely reproduced and least-known woman artist in the LDS Church. Her paintings have appeared more than fifty times in Church publications since the mid-1970s. Her Queen Esther…
Not Faceless I have read with interest R. Jan Stout’s article on homosexuality (Summer 1987), and I have tried to admire him for addressing what liberal Mormons call an “agonizing” issue. He is closer to…
Even now, nearly eleven years later, I can still see his face—shocked, fearful, and deeply pained. I’d been working for almost four months at the newly constructed, multi-million dollar Language Training Mission, as the Missionary…
An unwavering testimony of the unique and utter truthfulness of the Church is a prized possession among Mormons. I often hear members declare in testimony meetings that they have “always known the Church is true.”…
No husband summoned me to Koshi. BYU, Washington, D.C., and a mission president in Tokyo summoned me long before a husband. And even when it was a husband, he summoned me no farther than California. But I too was my mother’s prize, her only daughter. And I suspect each time I left, my mother’s feelings were no different than Lady Otomo’s. For Mother ex pressed her longing and loneliness not in a poem or a letter, but in carefully selected personal stories shared over a sink of peach pits, skins, and sterile quart jars.
Don’t try to drop little nuggets.
Please, Sir, I mean.
Or give me too much of a sign.
I don’t want a sign now—
To watch a daughter die —
One could practice a lifetime
And never do it well.
The labored hell
I have always been a flowering vine,
Seeking new trellises to trail on,
Climbing ladders to the sky,
Lusting over neighbor fences
Levi Peterson’s first novel is an event eagerly awaited by all those who have come to appreciate such masterful, prize winning short stories as his “The Confessions of Saint Augustine” and “The Road to Damascus,”…
Few states in the union had a longer or more bitterly contested statehood struggle than did Utah. Edward Leo Lyman has searched out and chronicled the detail, factors, and individuals which make up the drama in…
My acquaintance with this information packed, attractively printed, and modestly priced volume began in manuscript as a member of the Ensign editorial staff in 1975 when Sorenson, at the invitation of managing editor Jay M.…
