Winter 1987
The Winter 1987 issue explores aspects of Mormon life, belief, and history. Lavina Fielding Anderson reflects on discussions with Linda and L. Jackson Newell, while David John Buerger traces the evolution of the temple endowment ceremony. Armand Mauss analyzes the interplay of culture, charisma, and change within temple worship, and Allen D. Roberts revisits the historical impact of forger Mark Hofmann. Linda Sillitoe reviews the commercialization of religious artifacts, and Roger D. Launius examines Joseph Smith III’s opposition to polygamy. Essays by Levi S. Peterson and Eugene England discuss themes of erotica, fidelity, and celestial marriage, with Jessie L. Embry profiling the lives of polygamous husbands. Personal narratives and fiction provide reflections on family, politics, and modern challenges to tradition.
After serving five and a half years, Linda and Jack Newell step down as editors of DIALOGUE as this issue goes to press, turning the editorship over to Kay and Ross Peterson of Logan, Utah.…
Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 75–122
Buerger outlines the history of the endowment ceremony but does not share anything that he has covenanted not to divulge.
Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 33–76
Mauss encourages an openess about the temple to help better prepare future endowment holders and to create a better understanding among members and nonmembers.
On 23 January 1987, an unemotional Mark W. Hofmann entered the Utah State Prison after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of theft by deception before third District Judge Kenneth Rigtrup.…
Not long ago at a convention in Salt Lake City for police chiefs, a visiting law enforcer dubbed Utah a “white-collar crime capital.” He was alluding to pyramid schemes and speculative investments initiated by unscrupulous…
Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 77–85
When Joseph Smith III preached his first sermon as a leader of the Reoganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at Amboy, Illinois, on 6 April 1860, he expressed his unqualifed aversion to the Mormon doctrine of plural marriage.
Despite my title, I do not intend to defend pornography, Mormon or otherwise. But I do intend to discuss Mormon attitudes toward erotica and suggest that a dearth of sexuality in Mormon literature may be…
When Levi and I presented earlier versions of these papers at the 1986 Sunstone Symposium, the moment had already acquired an appropriately symptomatic quality by being given two titles: Levi’s too-brave or even brazen “In…
Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 138–154
England shares his reasons for why Joseph Smith introduced polygamy and then removed it as one of the commandments. England argues that polygamy was a faith testing experience which lead them to in his words “worthy to build God’s kingdom.”
Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 158–166
Despite what researchers have said over the years regarding for why men married plural wives, Embry argues that a significant portion of husbands married plural wives because of their religious beliefs.
Headed west, Brother and Sister Gustavson pushed their handcart for many miles singing, “Some must push and some must pull” before their miracle happened. They inherited a wagon -— all in the moment a hand…
On the morning the Challenger space shuttle exploded, Maggie shot on over. I’ve been thinking about both events as though they were connected, even though I know they aren’t. They were separated not merely by…
The Lombardy poplars are almost gone now. This shouldn’t nag at me, but it does. They used to be everywhere in Utah, lining the edges of farms, marking a town’s boundaries, or marching down long…
I sat there on the bench in Lecture Block C at Cambridge University with a very real ache in my brain where my classical education should have been. It was a rare warm day in…
You are required to keep the poundage low:
two large cases and a carry-on:
what you take for months overseas.
In a year of famine, you have volunteered
No room at the inn,
For them, anyway.
It didn’t take ESP to read the situation.
Just avoiding unpleasantness later.
He had enough on his mind just then.
We didn’t know they were hard times,
even though that winter they had to borrow our hoard:
seven dollars from me and five from my sister.
Our days were the usual homemade loaves,
peaches we’d bottled, our own half-beef in the locker,
The chapel dark, organ pipes glow
moon-silver. Silence
is filled: after-ripples,
the aura of living tones,
Bach, Handel.
Thousands of Latter-day Saints were first introduced to William E. Berrett and the Church’s history when they were assigned in seminary to read his book The Restored Church (1940). Initially written in the late 1930s,…
