Spring 1999
The Spring 1999 Issue features essays that delve into historical reflections, scriptural interpretations, academic assessments, personal journeys, and literary discussions within Mormonism. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher offers insights into Leonard J. Arrington’s life and legacy, portraying him as a humble figure whose work profoundly shaped Mormon historiography. B.W. Jorgensen examines lessons of chastity and moral conflict through scriptural stories, specifically focusing on Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and Corianton and Isabel, which illustrate enduring themes of temptation and repentance. Kathryn J. Abajian recounts the life of Ella Smyth Peacock, a woman who sought to carve out her own identity in the American West. Eugene England advocates for high-quality literature as essential for a “chosen people,” arguing that rich literary engagement can elevate and refine the faith community’s values and worldview. And more!
History itself—and historians in particular—will for years to come continue to assess the importance of Leonard J. Arrington to Mormon and western thought. From 1972, when he was appointed Church Historian, to his retirement as…
I’m going to risk starting with an impression I will not try to document but suspect many Mormons would share: that in the church, when we attempt to teach chastity to youth (say in Sunday…
On June 5th, 1996, Assistant Professor Gail Houston of the Brigham Young University English Department was denied tenure and promotion at BYU.[1] In compliance with typical university procedures, Professor Houston quickly appealed the decision.[2] Members…
Like the early Mormons whose beliefs she would eventually adopt, landscape artist Ella Smyth Peacock early on sought refuge in the west.[1] She was born in 1905 in Germantown, near Philadelphia, a city created in…
Very early in our history, we Mormons began to identify ourselves symbolically with ancient Israel as a chosen people. We too, we believed, were heirs to the covenant and blessings of Abraham because of God’s…
The year 1998 found the nation in the grip of a sex scandal in the White House, a sex scandal in which a president (named for Thomas Jefferson) flatly denied “improper sexual relations,” believing, evidently,…
Today is June 9, 1998. I have been forty-three for two days. My father, Robert Wallace Blair, is teaching spring term; he will retire when the term ends after thirty-four years as a linguistics professor…
Dialogue 32.1 (Spring 1999): 119–135
Norman discusses instances where the racist teachings that justified the priesthood restrictions before 1978 continue to be taught.
DZEH-NESH-CHEE-AH-NAH-TSIN-TLITI-TSAH-AS-ZIH. Elk-Nut-Eye-Match-Yucca. His grandfather used to say the bilagaanas always come in twos. The first time he was barely five years old, playing on a sand dune near their hogan west of Valley Store. He…
I used to run. Fast and furiously, always anxious, always thinking I should be quicker, go farther. I had friends who had run marathons and competed in 10Ks. I envied them and wanted to be like them: longer legs, faster times, thinner limbs. I counted calories and measured miles. I ran, but never liked it, didn’t like the way I beat myself up while I was running—”faster! faster!”—nor the fact that I dreaded the next run before the current one was even done.
At fourteen, when I could legally hunt game birds, I became a serious hunter. I hunted ducks and pheasants, but also rabbits, crows, rock chucks, hawks, owls, eagles, coyotes, rodents, and rattlesnakes. I never killed…
On the sill, torsos wrenched out of clay
still bore the sculptor’s mark, the print
of cocked thumb and nail. Tortured, vaguely
female, they shamed us. We crowded in,
We’d had problems, especially lately:
Just last week I snapped at him
and found myself staring into the outraged eyes
of a former national rugby star, his one fist
At five, standing at the edge of the field,
Dad up there on the great green Deere,
I must have been scared he’d leave.
He made me an offer: Catch me a seagull
English professor and rebel:
Off campus, our sentences race
the tabletop, garbed in wit and color.
By the time food comes, our ideas dance
The river’s long curve
enters the bay in streak between meadow
and forest—algae green of freshwater,
kelp green of salt.
Once on the porch I asked
great-grandfather Porter a question
loudly and he said wait
though he was just sitting still
his face raised to low sun
eyes half-open
Her last hymn in the book—and they’re dragging it.
Behold, her royal army’s old. Band of stragglers,
banners furled, tired voices buckling the pews.
If the din of cities makes the moon
shine dimly in the night;
if the touch of concrete and tin
drowns the sound of water;
In prose that can hum alternately with the wry empathy of Barbara Kingsolver and the lyricism of Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Palmer’s The Tabernacle Bar explores the spiritual dilemmas of the citizens both in and…
The nineteenth century saw the rise and fall of many “crusades” that have been painstakingly examined by scholars, including abolition, temperance, and nativism. Yet the equally important campaigns to eradicate polygamy and stem the tide…
Charter for Statehood chronicles Utah’s constitutional history from its territorial days through the present. Dr. White, emeritus professor of political science at Weber State University, employs her vast skills in state and local history and…
