I am twenty-one years old.
I lie in the golden light of a Korean September afternoon. I have curled myself up on the musty, avocado-skinned sofa that occupies a large corner of the living room. A small living room in a small apartment, which occupies the floor above a cosmetics store that seems to sell only furniture.
To write is to siphon the clouds, the stars, the wind and rain through the pen. It’s like holding a root into the earth of the soul. It’s like a channel from the sun to…
I have persecuted Mormons for years for ten years. I began riding with the mob in the early 90’s while working for the Utah County Journal. Asked one day to write a quick editorial for…
For the last several years I have had the opportunity to serve on the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee. That assignment— in addition to my day job as Curator of Special Collections at Weber…
Midwest Pilgrims is the result of a charge given the women at the Nauvoo women’s retreat held in 1982. It was to go back to their various geo graphical locations and organize similar gatherings. It…
Dialogue 36.3 (2003): 53-80
Compton considers priesthood as portrayed in Old Testament texts and how women are underrepresented in today’s discourse.
LDS attitudes towards war and peace in general have been covered fairly comprehensively in the past decade or so. The attitudes are complex and generally attempt to strike a balance between the duty to defend one’s life, family, property and liberties on the one hand, with the commandment to renounce war as a tool of Satan on the other. While there is more than enough material in LDS scriptures and commentary to support a number of positions, until very recently any dichotomy in LDS attitudes towards specific wars has generally been seen only in the context of U.S. foreign policy.
Throughout his long tenure as a General Authority, David O. McKay was consistently opposed to Communism, as were his fellow General Authorities. Ironically, once he had become president of the Church, opposition to Communism became…
Seven and a half blocks east and five blocks south of the Salt Lake Temple, the 0,0 of the city’s cardinally aligned grid, an inconspicuous gate on the north side of the street opens onto a long path that leads to what was once the backyard of Thomas B. Child. A stonemason by trade and Mormon bishop by calling, Child spent many of his spare moments between 1945 and 1963 designing surreal and sacred sculptures and engraving poignant aphorisms into stone tablets, gradually creating one of the most unique (and, even to most Mormons, unknown) collections of folk art in the United States.
In a June 1843 public meeting, Joseph Smith was asked why “gathering . . . the people of God” was such an important principle. He responded with this lively bit of wisdom: “A man never…