Volume 14, No. 4

Winter 1981

The Winter 1981 Issue, the infamous Red Issue, explores ten years of reflections on the roles, experiences, and evolving identity of women within the Mormon Church. Topics include the historical and theological context for women and priesthood, as well as women’s ongoing struggle for self-definition within the Church. Notable articles by writers such as Mary L. Bradford, Judith McConkie, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich discuss themes from church marriage norms to personal journeys of faith. Poetry, fiction, and personal narratives delve into complex reflections on identity, spirituality, and mortality, capturing a range of voices that highlight both individual and collective aspects of Mormon womanhood.

Articles/Essays

A Ten-Year Kaleidoscope

Mary Lythgoe Bradford

The young son of one of my friends was recently heard to say, “Mormon women all look alike. They have pretty faces and good teeth and most of them are overweight.” Just a sea of…

The Pink Dialogue and Beyond

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 28–39
Some time in June 1970,I invited a few friends to my house to chat about the then emerging women’s movement. If I had known we were about to make history, I would have taken minutes or at least passed a roll around, but of course I didn’t.

Mormon Women and the Struggle for Definition

Carol Cornwall Madsen

Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 40–47
I am sensitive to that steadying hand as I attempt to identify and define what for an earlier generation of women identified and defined them as women—their relationship to the Church.

Women and Priesthood

Nadine Hansen

Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 48–59
I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, “Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity employer?” I thought to myself, “Yes, that is precisely what women have been told for centuries.”

Women and Ordination: Introduction to the Biblical Context

Anthony A. Hutchinson

Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 60–69
THE QUESTION of whether worthy women could be or ought to be ordained to the LDS priesthood has not, until recently, been considered seriously in the LDS community.

Getting Unmarried in a Married Church

Marybeth Raynes

My earliest memory of my Bluebird class in Primary is cross-stitching a sampler: “I will light up my home.” Our teacher admonished us to embroider carefully because we would want our samplers to hang in…

Mary Fielding Smith: Her Ox Goes Marching On

Lavina Fielding Anderson

I should preface these remarks by establishing two things. First, I am no blood relation to Mary Fielding Smith, although, like all of you, I proudly claim her for a spiritual sister; second, my subject…

My Personal Rubicon

Eleanor Ricks Colton

Living in our nation’s capital during the recent ERA controversies has been a learning experience for me. After the turmoil of the 1975 IWY Conference in Utah, I spent a good deal of time trying…

A Time of Decision

Judy Dushku

“You are ‘pro-choice’ aren’t you?” mumbled the young legislator at his desk as he pored over my application. Anticipating my response, he wrote the label boldly across the front page. I asked why the label…

Birthing

Maureen Ursenbach Beecher

Dialogue 14.4 (Fall 1981): 117–124
So this was birthing, this crazy-quilt of contrasts, of senses and feelingsin chaos, coming occasionally to rest, as now, with a sleeping son in the crookof my arm. Had I won the grand prize?

The Last Project

Edna Laney

In our many years together Bert and I faced many trials, but working together, we managed to bring to successful conclusion all the projects that come with a good marriage. We raised seven children while…

The Last Day of Spring

Linda Sillitoe

Laurie had wanted for a long time to visit Jen. When Mama took David, the baby, to visit their favorite aunt she and Carol complained. “I know you want to see her,” Mama explained, “but…

Searching

Margaret R. Munk

Beth knew as soon as Wendy answered the phone that it was a boy on the other end. Wendy’s eager young “hello” was followed by silence and then a furtive, whispered, “Just a minute.” Wendy…

The Meeting

Anonymous

In Context

Robin Hammond

Letters to the Editor

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

Stephen W. Stathis

The vast majority of the books considered in the accompanying compilation are of a biographical, fictional, doctrinal or inspirational nature. While the biographies and works on local history are generally intended for a rather limited…

Woman See

Maida Withers

I did not just sit down and say, “This is going to be a dance in eight parts.” It evolved. When I was finishing the choreography, I visited Josephine Withers (no relation), an historian of…

Light and Dark Thoughts on Death

Claudia L. Bushman

In the midst of life we are in the midst of death, so the old church fathers tell us, and so we realize every day as a baby dies in childbirth or a friend succumbs…

Honor Thy Mother

Ruth Furr

Is it the product of a single mind or a conspiracy? I wonder as I slide into the waxed church pew. I have been force-fed a breakfast of eggs scrambled with Cool Whip (they thought…

For Linda

Loretta Randall Sharp

If only there were daisies here in tin cans.
These flowers are too nice: ivory-tongued anthurium,
gladiola mouths holding their long, red O’s
while Sister Smith whispers, “Aren’t the roses

Divided

Anita Tanner

His call came dressed
In honor
As the President grasped
For a handshake,

Old Woman Driving

Emma Lou Thayne

She lives on a street of white haired men
with time for hosing the cracks.

She goes to funerals amid people
whose names she cannot remember,

The Dancer and I

Emma Lou Thayne

As I watch, astonished,

what I hunger for
is not what I know I
cannot do

Three Communities — Two Views | Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century

Louis J. Kern

In his History of American Socialisms (1870) John Humphrey Noyes emphasized the equal importance of revivalism and socialism to the communitarian movement. “The Revivalists,” he wrote, had for their great idea the regeneration of the…

Three Communities — Two Views | Louis J. Kern, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias — the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community

Lawrence Foster

This study seeks to look analytically at the reorganization of sex roles and sexual expression in three of the most controversial religious movements of nineteenth-century America—the Shakers, who practiced celibacy; the Mormons, who introduced a…

How She Did It | Claudia L. Bushman, “A Good Poor Man’s Wife”: Being a Chronicle of Harriet Hanson Robinson and Her Family in Nineteenth-Century New England

Elouise M. Bell

In the summer of 1979, the Modern Language Association, with financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, sponsored a five-week institute on “non-traditional writings of women.” The institute was held at the University…

Volume 14, No. 4

Contents

Articles/Essays

Fiction

Interview

Letters to the Editor

Notes

Personal Voices

Poetry

Reviews