Summer 1983
The Summer 1983 issue addresses complex figures, doctrinal interpretations, and literary reflections in Mormon thought. Irene M. Bates explores the challenges William Smith faced as a patriarch, and E. Gary Smith discusses the broader "Patriarchal Crisis" of 1845. George D. Smith provides an updated perspective on the Book of Isaiah, while Nicolas Shumway examines how ambiguity shapes authoritative language in Mormonism. In personal reflections, Steven C. Walker writes on living with purpose, and Richard Poll revisits the Liahona vs. Iron Rod metaphors. Michael Fillerup’s fiction story follows Marsha Fletcher’s journey of transformation, with poems by Dianne Dibb Forbis and Randall L. Hall adding introspective layers. Stephen W. Stathis surveys current Mormon literature, while reviews include Bruce W. Jorgenson's take on The Canyons of Grace, Francine R. Bennion's insights on Rabbi Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and John R. Pottenger’s look at Marxism and Mormonism. Cultural reflections by L. Marlene Payne round out this thoughtful collection.
William Smith, younger brother of the prophet Joseph Smith, has been easy to dismiss but difficult to deal with. More often than not, he has been described with adjectives like violent, wicked, unstable, and licentious.…
Almost a year after Patriarch to the Church Hyrum Smith was killed, the Times and Seasons, the official church newspaper in Nauvoo, carried an editorial entitled “Patriarchal,” with the prefatory note: “As the nature of…
Dialogue 16.2 (Summer 1983): 39–45
This paper examines Isaiah’s prophecies in their historical context and compares their meaning as a message for his time with the expanded meaning that Christians — and specifically Mormons — have since applied to them thousands of years later.
In what is clearly the most original and provocative of the essays in the BYU published collection Arts and Inspiration, Karen Lynn argues that two funda mental factors undermine the arts, particularly literature, in Mormondom.…
Marsha crumpled the letter into a ball and hurled it across the living room. It caromed off the TV screen and rolled a few feet before settling in the middle of the carpet. Once again…
I suspect you’re less interested in such talk than Shakespeare and I. I’m twenty years closer to death than most of you, and poor Will is centuries gone. But you’re closer than you think. And it may be that all of us would do well to get, in some ways, closer still. For a people who manage to watch 251 murders a year on TV, we Americans—and more especially we Mormons—give death short shrift.
In August 1967, I delivered a sermon in the Palo Alto Ward entitled “What the Church Means to People like Me.” DIALOGUE published it that winter and the Saints’ Herald reprinted it the following year.…
We probe and scrape and peel away the faded
Multicolored layers of a lifetime,
Like Schliemann
(Who ? Grandmother asks)
If we are to believe what we see before us, we must conclude that authors interested in writing and selling books about Mormonism have boundless opportunities. Although most of the newly released volumes are modest…
For once the language of bookhype might ring true: the publication of Levi Peterson’s Canyons of Grace as one of the four volumes this year in the Illinois Short Fiction Series can be called “a…
A silo collapsed and buried my brother in-law under tons of grain. At his funeral, a speaker offered comfort by saying that God “had need of Leon on the other side.” One of Leon’s young…
Most Mormons, in fact Christians in general, would avoid reading a book on Marx ism. Any mutually acceptable alliance has always been scuttled by equally mutual suspicion between Marxists and Christians. Carrying on the tradition…
The Culture of Narcissism is the product of an American historian who has borrowed a psychiatric syndrome to examine issues and to synthesize a picture of our culture. Narcissism, an ancient term with roots in…
With over-generous portions of direct quotations, Richard Lloyd Anderson presents the reader with statements made by the wit nesses to the Book of Mormon, and statements made by others affirming their good character and the…
In a letter to Bernard DeVoto dated 5 August 1944, Dale Morgan described a manuscript which would be published thirty-eight years later in 1982 as Quick sand and Cactus. Morgan, who had become a particularly…
Whether or not one agrees with all of the ideas presented by William Lee Stokes, it is not possible to read his little book The Creation Scriptures without being stimulated, entertained, and enlightened. Its bite-sized…
In the fall of 1971, Mayor J. Bracken Lee announced his retirement from public office. He said he was “sick and tired of politics and sick and tired of politicians.” Such a statement seems out…
The subtitle of this book indicates its primary shortcoming. This is, indeed, one more history of the Mormons. The chapter headings could be those of any similar work giving a general overview of the growth…
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to be congratulated for its latest edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. My personal copy of this volume—happily, a gift from Dr. Robert J. Matthews of…
Women of the West is a compelling tribute to the “everyday women of history,” as the jacket copy puts it. “Lively stories of courtship, love, inventiveness, humor, skulduggery, [and] passion” are told in the words of…
Criticizing the publication of William A. Wilson’s 18 November 1981 Honor Lecture in the Humanities would be equivalent to rudely refusing to applaud a virtuoso folklore performance. Although claiming to play the role of a…
