Trouble, Right Here in Sal Tlay Ka Siti
“I always think there’s a band, kid.” —Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man
By the time that I figured out that I hated The Music Man, it had been my favorite musical for more than 20 years.
If the Book of Mormon possesses, in the words of the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell, “divine architecture,” then it follows that one task of theology ought to be to seek God in the structure of the book. In this vein, Adam Miller argues that “theological readings aim to develop a text’s latent images of Christ.” Given that the Book of Mormon is, whatever else it may be, a narrative, then those searching for God in it would do well to pay attention to the ways the text’s narrative structure (i.e., its “divine architecture”) develops “latent images of Christ.” Miller gestures toward a methodology for divining Christ in texts when he writes that the power of theology “derives from its freedom to pose hypothetical questions: if such and such were the case, then what meaningful pattern would the text produce in response?” In what follows I offer such a theological reading of the small plates of Nephi, paying particular attention to the book of Enos.
A foundational tenet and raison d’être of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that a Great Apostasy occurred within the first few centuries of the early Christian era, resulting in the withdrawal…
Stonehenge was a disappointment. If we had shown up for the summer solstice, we could have touched the stones while watching the sun rise. However, that would have involved fighting our way through a crowd…
A family is a thing with edges. The edges can grow, shrink, smooth off, and get spikey and sharp. The changes that happen can be full of joy, sadness, loss, trauma, comfort, or strength. None…
Listen to an interview about this piece here. On February 27, 1961, two hundred British Singing Mothers, dressed in matching Utah-sewn white blouses and fashioning neat, short, curled hair, stood in tiers on the stage…
When I picked up William V. Smith’s The King Follett Sermon: A Biography, I was expecting to find a history of the text of the famous sermon from April 1844. I found that it was…
Listen to an interview about this piece here. Sometimes in the morning, I wake earlier than the others. I slip out of my room and sit down on that well-worn spot on the couch that…
Dear Sirs: I have been very interested in Dialogue since its beginning. Congratulations for a “job well done” in the face of tremendous obstacles. Particularly, I have admired the broad coverage you have given the…
Dear Brother Price,
In view of the message regarding Dialogue’s possible demise after this year, which we received with our last issue, it seemed appropriate to include some of my feelings along with our renewal. Although our financial situation doesn’t allow us to become Dialogue Associates, we are sending a gift sub scription and enclosing a token donation.