Winter 1984
The Winter 1984 Issue presents a thoughtful examination of Mormon perspectives on war, peace, and ethics, particularly in the context of nuclear strategy. D. Michael Quinn discusses the implications of the Spanish-American War on the Church's stance toward selective pacifism and reflects on the American Catholic bishops' peace pastoral. The collaborative hymn by Charles S. Wain and Frank Wright advocates for peace over war. Poetry contributions from Michael R. Collings, Kathy Evans, and Emma Lou Thayne explore themes related to nature, defense, and the value of the Earth. Additionally, Stephen W. Stathis provides a survey of current dissertations and theses related to Mormon studies, while reviews round out the issue, offering critical insights into recent literature.
The impact of the Spanish-American War on the people of the American West has been overshadowed by its profound effect upon the American nation as a world power. A little-known sidelight to the war is…
Nearly everyone talks about nuclear weapons and our nation’s nuclear policies and strategies. Yet very few of us understand even the most elementary vocabulary of the subject. Why should terms like “counterforce” and “countervalue,” “first…
May a nation threaten what it may never do? May it possess what it may never use: These questions, raised in the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter, state concisely the ethical dilemma with which Christians in…
From primitive rocks and clubs to the present nuclear arsenals, the history of warfare is characterized by the dramatic increase in the number of civilians killed in each war and by scale changes in our…
In recent years the subject of war and peace has taken renewed significance for American Latter-day Saints. The announcement by the First Presidency against the basing of the MX missile system in Utah came as…
Adolph Hitler was barely one month old when my father, Walter ‘Edward Clark, now still living, was born on 31 May 1889. When he was fifteen, in 1904, Father started to farm on his own in Idaho. Hitler was then a choirboy in Austria, avidly aspiring to become a priest. Only six years earlier, the United States had been engaged in a “splendid little war” on the largest Carribean island — at the enthusiastic urging of William Randolph Hearst and Teddy Roosevelt.
I was born and raised in Bremen, a city in northwest Germany, in a I middle-class family. At age fifteen, I became interested in politics, joined a neo-orthodox communistic “cell group” at high school, and…
NOVEMBER 1982: I’m out of breath. This past month I’ve passed both my written and oral exams and presented my prospectus. Now nothing stands in the way of my trip to Ireland except earning the…
Of course, when anyone asks me what my husband does for a living, I never say, “He builds nuclear weapons.” No one in Richland builds bombs. People here only teach school, fight fires, design containment…
I was six.
I wheeled Grandpa’s milk cans out
to wait like patient soldiers for the cheese truck.
I strutted in a new red and blue
corduroy cowboy suit.
We were inside the world.
The children were sleeping.
Light fell through the window.
One of us wore red.
The peril of extinction brings us up against this reality, this simple basic fact: Before there can be good or evil, service or harm, lamenting or rejoicing, there must be life.[1] About Considering Consider is…
Perhaps the Roman historian Tacitus put it as well as anyone when he ‘wrote that “history’s highest function” is “to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as…
For the last two centuries, the scientific study of the Bible has been dominated by historical concerns, as scholars have at tempted, in different ways, first to write a history of the literature of ancient…
After a century of fledgling survival, Chesterfield, a quiet, remote hamlet in southeastern Idaho, has suddenly become the subject of unprecedented attention. This hamlet is curiously without any of the trappings of the contemporary landscape — fast food restaurants, gasoline stations or residential subdivisions.
Ronald H. Limbaugh’s Rocky Mountain Carpetbaggers chronicles Idaho’s gubernatorial administrations—maladministrations?— during its territorial years. The scenario Limbaugh creates runs as follows: (1) a petty politician has connections in Washington; (2) he is appointed to the…
It is a pleasure to discuss these two books edited and written by Brigham D. Madsen, professor of history at the University of Utah. Their primary subject matter is the westward migration during the California…
“All issues are political issues,” said Orwell, “and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.” Among contemporary political issues, abortion is…
This novel comes in glossy green and gold paperback with an embossed title and a blurb announcing it as “the epic saga of a woman who dared to search the world for love.” Such commercial…
