Spring 1993
The Spring 1993 Issue delves into the dynamics between the LDS intellectual community and church leadership, exploring themes of forgiveness, spirituality, and dissent within the faith. Lavina Fielding Anderson introduces the complex relationship between intellectuals and church authority. Richard D. Poll discusses the importance of dialogue in fostering forgiveness, while L. Jackson Newell shares his personal journey toward liberal spirituality. Paul James Toscano appeals to church leaders to prioritize love over power, prompting a response from Elbert Eugene Peck that further examines this theme. James E. Chapman addresses dissent within the church, proposing a workable definition of it. Eugene England presents a critical look at the concept of spectral evidence, adding depth to the discourse. The collection is accompanied by artwork from Trevor Southey. And much more!
Dialogue 26.1 (Spring 1993): 23–82
The clash between obedience to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists.
Mine is the interesting challenge to comment on “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology/’ The bill of particulars that Lavina Fielding Anderson has presented is comprehensive and disturbing, her recommendations are…
“Liberal spirituality” is the title and theme of this essay. A double entendre is intended—suggesting the interdependence of a free and abundant spiritual life. My aim is to explore the nature and possibilities of liberal spirituality by reflecting on some of the key experiences and major ideas that have shaped my philosophy. I am concerned here with the essential values at the core of religious experience, a state of mind and an approach to life. The Mormon church has been but one of the anvils against which I have forged my identity.
One of the ironies of my life is that I decided in 1963 to leave the Catholic church as it was becoming more open to join the Mormon church as it was becoming more closed.…
When I first read Paul Toscano’s jeremiad I thought it was too harsh and angry. But on revisiting it three years later I say, “Yes!” to many of his points; for the ones I quibble…
There are many in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believe we need a workable definition of religious dissent in order to help make way for more serious debate over its legitimacy…
October 3, 1992, the first day of the 162d semiannual LDS general conference, was the 300th anniversary of the action that finally stopped the Salem witch trials. Those trials, perhaps the greatest blot on American religious devotion, had resulted in the deaths of twenty people, all of whom vigorously proclaimed their innocence to the end.
Scattered across the countryside one may observe certain wild animals , male and female, dark, livid and burnt by the sun, attached to the earth which they dig and turn over with invincible stubbornness. However,…
Paula had the aisle seat. Her younger brother Tony was in the middle, next to Sugar, and the two of them pressed against the window and each other and pointed at cloud formations. Down below…
The fairytales were wrong:
to identify big feet
with wicked stepsisters, ugly with unloved,
princes and frogs with anything
Early on, in class, the smooth new pencils,
the ice-white paper, copper-bladed rulers,
all spoke order, a progression of lines.
Whose poem this is, I think I know—
New England bard of spring and snow,
But eighth-grade teachers don’t explain
The depths to which the poets go.
Often when entering sleep
I start awake, your form having drifted
into vision, your name embedded
in the thickness of my tongue.
Sleepless with fever,
under one small lamp you stared
at a cherry wood cabinet, dark whorls
spiraled like galaxies and polished
Jacob and Rachel
But a little way to come to Beth-lehem,
and the pains came hard upon her. She heard,
“Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.”
an iguana in our empty pool
his eyes jumping wild
a metal fence around the yard
where naked boys waited outside for food
Few teeth remain in her mouth,
And the mouth exhales rottenness.
I turn my back, my nose.
Still she presses in.
In fall, I try to understand the dying
of so many innocent leaves. The changes
happen imperceptibly, till the once-verdant is carmine
or golden, but such pulsing color is only
prelude to their silent fall to the dark flesh
of life that decayed before them. A nectarine
Considering the level of popular attention recently focused on physical, sexual, even ritual abuse, the discovery of “spiritual abuse” should come as no surprise. And yet it does. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse is…
