Summer 1988
The Summer 1988 issue highlights the legacy of Hugh B. Brown, exploring his early life, correspondence with family, and leadership during Europe's crises. David H. Bailey examines Mormon theology's compatibility with science, while Keith Norman humorously questions scriptural literalism. C. Brooklyn Derr reflects on LDS leadership in France, and David D. Peck compares Mormonism with Eastern mysticism. Eugene England and Leonard Arrington discuss Dialogue's role in fostering intellectual discourse within the LDS community, with tributes emphasizing its contributions. Richard P. Howard and Garth N. Jones examine the challenges and learnings from past scholarly missteps. And more!
In 1969 Edwin B. Firmage taped oral history interviews with his grandfather, Hugh B. Brown. The following essay has been adapted from these memoirs, which will be published by Signature Books in 1988 as An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown.
“Mother, do you know your boyfriend is a poor, old, decrepit, forgotten has-been? I can’t see to read, I can’t hear, my nose drips, my hands shake, I drool. Here I come, just shuffling down…
Mary Firmage, daughter of President Hugh B. Brown, has recently deposited a large collection of her father’s personal letters in the Church Archives. President Brown wrote part of this correspondence while he was mission president…
A 1974 article published in Science identified the Mormon culture as an unusually productive source of American scientists and scholars, an achievement linked to such distinctive tenets of Mormon theology as rationalism, natural law, and…
A few years ago on a cross-country trip, my brother Paul and I detoured from Interstate 70 in western Missouri for some site-seeing. After stopping at the Far West temple site and the town square…
We often hear the phrase, “The Church is the same all over the world.” While a mutual commitment to the gospel provides a feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood that transcends many cultural barriers, I feel…
By adopting the above-cited definition of mysticism, the compilers of the “Topical Guide” (LDS Edition 1979) distance Mormonism from a religious heritage which is perhaps as old as any other of record. The most obvious differences between Mormonism and mysticism are ones of form, and not necessarily of doctrine. The Church organization is both pervasive and extensive, whereas mystical practices are generally much less formal. Mormonism accepts a prophet as head of the Church organization which is endowed with divine authority through an organized priesthood, whereas many mystical traditions manifest a strong non-institutional tendency and go only so far as to incorporate the notion of a “guide,” a leader who does not speak with divine authority but is instead familiar with one path to God.
In the Spring 1987 issue of DIALOGUE, the first of the twentieth-anniversary issues, I was referred to as “the founding editor of DIALOGUE.” That is not true. I was merely one of a group of…
Many of you will find it difficult to understand the enormous importance DIALOGUE had to my generation and to young Latter-day Saint readers at the time of its founding—those between the ages of twenty and…
While I was on my mission in France, I received number 1, volume 1 of a publication I had never heard of before—a chunky little journal in a bright blue cover called DIALOGUE. It was…
I could justly praise DIALOGUE for many qualities . But for the sake of brevity I will concentrate upon a single overriding virtue. DIALOGUE makes my religion interesting. When I was a boy, I believed…
In the May 1986 Mormon History Association meetings, a panel of historians and archivists explored the impact of the Mark Hofmann documents on the LDS and RLDS churches and views of their common origin. Soon…
My late father-in-law, Anchor Luke Clegg, often told the following story at family gatherings: “My direct relative, and yours too, was the second convert in the British Isles. He would have been first, but he…
Southern Illinois in sweltering and wet summer.
Thunder and the whippoorwill sing strange
duets at night.
From southwestern deserts to the closest
I’m no Abraham.
I’ve bowed to a few idols in my day —
Just somewhat unintentioned.
Sacrificing children to idols
“Go get dressed. You’re no man for this army!”
I went, thanking for the first time the crook
In my spine that stopped me buck naked
From buck privacy, and took me back to you
At night along the canals
Dad was best.
Beside narrow dusty tractor roads
Slow dark waters,
Until recently, most Mormon writers have been pressed onto the defensive by the insistence with which anti-Mormons have exploited every hint that Joseph Smith, Jr.’s, family practiced folk magic. Consequently, the mounting evidence for the…
I discovered early in my scholastic career why a Mormon would never produce great literature. (A good Mormon, that is.) The reason was simple, expounded with eloquence and authority by my BYU “Intro duction to Poetry”…
For Richard O. Cowan, a professor of LDS history at Brigham Young University specializing in twentieth-century Mormon ism, the history of the Mormon kingdom is not only the religious success story of the last 2,000…
In the Fall of 1985 DIALOGUE published Meg Munk’s suite of poems entitled, “One Year.” In a mature voice and through particular images, she dramatized her battle with cancer. In the spring of 1986, this…
What happens when a Mormon house wife, faithful to husband and church, encounters the dark side of human experience including adultery, child molestation, spouse abandonment, and divorce? In this fine first novel, Linda Sillitoe answers…
