Summer 1993
The Summer 1993 Issue examines various dimensions of Mormonism, including political conflicts, historical figures, and literary contributions. D. Michael Quinti explores the political conflicts surrounding Ezra Taft Benson, while Gary James Bergera and Ernest L. Wilkinson investigate the intersection of the LDS Church and Utah politics. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher presents a study of the lives of four women named Zina, delving into their unique experiences. Marie Cornwall, Camela Courtright, and Laga Van Beek discuss the principle of plural marriage among women in 1860. William Mulder reflects on the pursuit of truth in contemporary Mormon literature, and Leonard J. Arrington revisits themes from "Great Basin Kingdom." In the realm of scriptural studies, Steven Molen analyzes the identity of Jacob's opponent in Genesis 32:32, grappling with the text's ambiguities. And much more!
From the 1950s to the 1980s Ezra Taft Benson was at the center of a series of political conflicts within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1943 he became a member of…
For Ernest Leroy Wilkinson, successful Washington, D.C., lawyer and seventh president of Brigham Young University, campaign politics was a game he could never master. From his rowdy youth in Ogden, Utah’s notorious Hell’s Half-Acre district, where blind eyes turned to cock-fighting and bootlegging, he had been fascinated by the nature and use of power. By the time he was fifty, he had secured a string of hard-won national victories as a tenacious and intimidating legalist. But the lure of politics remained the one attraction, despite other professional and personal accomplishments, he could not resist.
Dialogue 26.2 (Summer 1993): 139–153
A study done to see how many polygamous wives there were at the peak of polygamy in the church.
At least the kids were gone, settled among family for the next ten or twelve hours. That gave him some time to pull himself together, to sort things out before tomorrow, before the rest of…
No funeral today, but the town
has business at its cemetery.
Dust leads the procession;
handles of rakes and hoes protrude
Marlon Brando’s such a babe in Guys and Dolls,
it’s an ideal, makes you feel
positively reverent, same as orange blossoms,
the way they delicately ask to seduce
It’s the simplicity I like, no pulpit thunder,
no fiery “Thou shalt nots” rattling the soul.
A set prayer, phrases you can roll around
your mouth all week, then string together
The picture gathers from a host of things—
From giggles of remembering, not play
By play but one word lifting from another
Into a rearview record, a happy weather
My sister sings Puccini in the shower.
A fever ripped the muscle of her heart
when she was five but now she is almost
twenty-one and lovely. She leaves music
At the baptismal Erma sings “Que grande es El,”
her voice breaking,
and the woman she has brought to Jesus,
clothed in white on the front row, weeps.
From where we sat on the fourth pew
the three square windows looked like cubes
of shimmery gold
vertically stacked
All night, all day, angels
watching over me, my Lord.
And him slipping off,
letting the door close
I debated hours, whether to send you a kiss
by the river or the overabundant lips
of a Rosetti madonna. You get both: See
the pansies the madonna holds? That’s how I know
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism provides a great wealth of information on the history and social character of Mormonism and the structure and administration of the LDS church and its institutions, but, on the whole, as…
When the Encyclopedia of Mormonism project was first announced with its all male board of editors, I developed a keen interest in how women’s issues would be handled and was delighted when two women were…
The prophet Joseph Smith once told Nancy Rigdon, whom he was attempting to persuade to become his plural wife, that whatever God required was right, no matter what it was (374). Smith went on to…
