Summer 1992
The Summer 1992 Issue addresses various dimensions of Mormonism, including its historical context, social issues, and personal narratives. Rebecca Worthen Chandler analyzes the effects of a media crisis on perceptions of guilt, while Thomas G. Alexander explores Wilford Woodruff's role in the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57. David Knowlton reflects on the development of Mormonism in Latin America, and Kathryn Lindquist discusses the dynamics of sexual hegemony and its impact on Mormon women. Julie J. Nichols emphasizes the importance of women’s stories and experiences, and Susette Fletcher Green provides insights into the challenges faced by those working in primary church settings. Dawn Hall Anderson and Lavina Fielding Anderson both comment on the demands and expectations within the primary, focusing on themes of service and commitment.
On 4 January 1990, police following a tip dug a family of five from a common grave in a barn in Kirtland, Ohio. Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three young daughters, hands, feet, and…
For about two years after the Mormon pioneers first began to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, they devoted themselves to the dual jobs of developing the territory and promoting the interests of the…
Over the last quarter century, the Church has experienced tremendous growth in Latin America and elsewhere in the so-called Third World, a relatively sudden surge that has received little scholarly attention (Grover n.d.). In the…
At first glance, people from a middle-class, educated, medically, technically, and industrially sophisticated country may be tempted to see the culture of a developing country as not merely different but as a polar opposite. We…
Dialogue 25.2 (Fall 1992): 75–96
The personal essay, unlike personal journals, letters, and oral histories, is not an artless form. It transforms the raw material of personal experience in the double crucible of carefully chosen language and the light of mature retrospection.
The first church I remember attending as a child wasn’t a church at all—it was the Odd Fellows Building in the heart of rundown, downtown Wilmington, Delaware. It was a spooky (at least to me)…
My call to serve as Primary president eight years ago came at a time in my life when I was especially—maybe even uniquely—unsuited for the job. I was thirty-six, married only four years. I was…
We live in a ward on the fringes of Salt Lake City’s central city neighborhood. Demo graphically, the ward contains a core of people who began young married life in their homes and are now…
I wrote this story under a spell. I was living in Salt Lake City, not in the sprawl of the new suburbs, nor even in the politically correct neighborhoods of the East Bench or the Avenues near the university, but in the Marmalade District. Gentrification has since remade the area, but at that time and for much of its history, it was a backwater of decaying pioneer dwellings and odd apartments made from broken Victorian homes, squeezed onto the foothills below Ensign Peak.
My tale begins in 1983—the year I turned thirty years old. It was definitely prime time. I had (and still do have) an incredibly fulfilling marriage with my husband, Lee. Our poverty-stricken years in graduate…
With apprehension I agreed to allow the new girl at Manetamers to cut my hair. Really I had no choice. My hairdresser had run off to Texas with one of the sales reps in the…
I’ve always wanted to be an artist. Somehow I thought that meant that I had to live like an artist—to find a lifestyle and an art form that is consistent with the ideals I want…
Why do I believe? For many years I did not feel comfortable answering this question. I would explain that my ancestors were among the first members of the Mormon Church and were important religious leaders…
I am a female returned missionary. A decade has passed since I returned from my mission in Germany. Since then I have finished graduate school, lived in Korea for a while, married, had two children.…
On Saturday mornings, mother baked good bread.
She always called my two sisters,
My two brothers, and me
To come and eat the crusts hot,
Spread with butter and strawberry jam
Made from strawberries she had picked and washed.
They say people nominalize too much.
We tell ourselves, “I am in pain,”
instead of simply, “I hurt.”
“Pain is not a prison you’re locked in,” they say.
“You hurt because you choose to hurt,
and you can choose to not hurt.”
My mom could sleep each night
without waking except
when my ear ached so much
I became a nightmare
In May 1988, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and the Mountain West Center for Western Studies at Utah State University jointly sponsored an interdisciplinary symposium to reappraise, on its…
A student of Zen Buddhism meditated daily on koans assigned by the Zen master. None of his insights impressed the master until one day, after years of thought about these puzzles, the student timidly began…
The unifying thesis of the twelve essays contained in When Prophets Die: The Post Charismatic Fate of New Religious Movements is that most new religious movements, though heavily dependent on a single dominant personality, usually…
The publication of a new book of poetry is an occasion for celebration, particularly when the poetry is by such a generous and great-hearted soul as Emma Lou Thayne. But the title of this volume,…
Sometimes when I go to readings given by Nature writers, that new and popular set exploring their private, half-mystical genre, I think for a moment that I’m listening to LDS general conference talks—the histrionic intoning…
An eight-year-old Mormon can tell you a lot about Zion. At least I could. In response to Sister Jensen’s questions in Targeteer class, I’d raise my hand to give my rote answer: “Zion is a…
