Spring 1997
The Spring 1997 Issue begins with an introduction by Bryan Waterman and Joanna Brooks, exploring new perspectives in Mormon scholarship as the millennium approaches. John M. Armstrong offers theological insights into divine reasoning, while Michael Austin discusses how theology is evolving to meet new challenges, drawing connections to the themes of activism and American religious identity within Angels in America. Juan de Santiago delves into the identity of "New Jack Mormons," examining shifting symbols in the faith, while Tona J. Hangen studies the Mormon Indian Placement Program as a cultural phenomenon. In scriptural studies, Jana K. Riess examines Proverbs 31:10-31, offering reflections on the "woman of worth" and its implications within a contemporary Mormon context. And much more!
We borrow the title for this issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. In this play Harper Pitt, an agoraphobic Mormon…
Mormonism seems to have adopted a position on the relation between reason and revelation. The two concepts frequently appear alongside each other in publications and talks by church apostles, officials of Brigham Young University, and others on topics concerning education, academic freedom, and the like. In most of these appearances, reason and revelation are intended to mark a division between two modes of learning. The position is for the most part uniform: one can learn things by reason or by revelation, but when the content of a revelation conflicts with what is supported only by reason, reason must give way to revelation.
Since its New York debut three years ago, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America—the most sustained treatment of Mormonism to play on the Broadway stage since Jerome Kern’s The Girl from Utah in 1914—has earned a…
If you haven’t been living in a cultural bomb-shelter (or serving a mission) over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed a strange media obsession with my generation. Twenty-somethings, they call us. Sometimes slackers. Or Generation X. Even Generation X-cess. None of which I had any say in, nor from which I can escape. Fortunately, I am Mormon and accustomed to being called names.
Late morning heat shimmers off the hood of my battered Honda. Nothing in sight ahead but more parched fields stretching under an opal sky. A box of cassette tapes in the back seat rattles a…
Legend has it that in the year 988 A.D., Prince Vladimir, ruler of ancient Kievan Rus’, brought Christianity to the Slavs. The apparent catalyst for his own conversion was a plea from Emperor Basil II of Constantinople. A renegade general had gathered an army to march on the Christian capital, and the emperor begged Prince Vladimir for an army to buttress the defense of his throne.
My grandma died three years ago. What I have of her now is a collection of odds and ends of memories. I have a few physical reminders: her senior class ring from Jordan High School, an old can full of buttons, and a photo of the two of us at my college graduation. The memories are gradually turning into anecdotes that I tell myself over and over.
As religions often do, Mormonism promises salvation to its faithful participants. It also speaks of those who are not its participants, who are in some way outside the religion. Under this second heading, there are…
Jesus said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” In fact, that statement shows up in the New Testament three times: in Mat thew 12:39, in Matthew 16:4, and again in Luke 11:29.…
In a spiritual crisis of the individual, the truth and authenticity of the person’s spiritual identity are called into question. He is placed in confrontation with reality and judged by his ability to bring himself…
I am neither a scholar of the Hebrew Bible nor a theologian, yet very occasionally some unsuspecting soul asks me to preach or speak about the Bible. In 1994 I substituted one Sunday for a…
Mom moved up to Santa Barbara, and Dad started having girlfriends over. Ladyfriends, he called them. When I stayed home sick from school, I saw the ladyfriends leave for work. “How cute. Is this yours?”…
I told Darcy I’d meet her here. Right here. I can’t say where here is. I’ve made promises. We’re going to grab a bite to eat. You wouldn’t know to eat here. It’s on the…
Custom/culture; sacred/profane; vision/imagination; literal/figurative—call them borderlands, call them crossroads—we catch glimpses of possibility and more fully understand the limits of our faith in these places. And the place where “Mormon” crosses “literature” looks like the…
In a 1991 New York Times Book Review article, African-American literary theorist and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., used the bizarre case of The Education of Little Tree to reexamine the issues of “identity” and “authenticity” in literary studies.
One day we were healed
by a man in a tent.
You remember. We had driven
streets of Four Castle,
Halfway between here and Oregon, the Lighthouse Bookstore
opens along some residential street we browse unwittingly
when reading after dark, where the words and road signs
blur and the sky clouds up and thunders.
Not their felon, not their lackey, you.
After the sclerosis of your tissues,
the emulsifying of your fluids,
reprieve
In a monthly cycle,
women gather to play cards,
to not talk of the children
they have or don’t.
You poor sad, dead little girls
Tonight I am crying for you.
I have walked gingerly in your blue shoes,
Your small shoes, your worn shoes,
It’s Christmas
and our mothers, weary in their memories,
in their good for others (those holiday chores)
keep their feet under them like birds.
Locking the door to the bath,
opens the collar of the shirt,
raises chin, fingers buttons
from their holes, lengthens torso,
molts like a snake.
I hear the fist-sized heart
cannon in the fog of rhythm
death and future.
From it I take the few things
for Shelley Turley
When trouble—an earthquake, a heart—
Comes to town, breaking dams,
Leveling shops, clubs
