In 1926 just before leaving Argentina after a six-month mission and few baptisms, Elder Melvin J. Ballard of the Council of the Twelve Apostles drew on natural images to suggest the future growth of the…
I hope that you will not find an unsolicited letter presumptuous, but I wanted to give you my thoughts on what I see as Dialogue’s problems and some things it could do to improve. First, let me say I wish Dialogue well, and I want it to succeed. I am very heartened to see the appearance of important works on Mormonism in places like Oxford University Press or the Harvard Theological Review. However, while there may someday come a time when the publishing of Mormon studies can occur entirely outside the ghetto of wholly Mormon venues, that time has not yet come. Furthermore, for certain topics I don’t think that it will ever come. That being the case, I care a great deal about the health and public reputation of Mormon intellectual fora.
A few years back, I was assisting the Ethics Committee of a large metropolitan hospital. The second case on our agenda one afternoon was presented by a pediatric nurse. Two weeks earlier, a baby in…
1 have always wondered about the meaning of the atonement. Why was it necessary for Christ to suffer? What did his suffering accomplish? How did it work? Growing up as a Latter-day Saint, I was…
Unquestionably, Dialogue has a tradition. It has been on the Mormon scene for forty years now, and those who manage, edit, and read it are determined to see it make another forty.
A native of Salt Lake City, Lane Twitchell lives with his family in Brooklyn. He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums and has received numerous awards, grants, residencies, and commissions. His work is in…
This article examines John T. Clark, a relatively little-known but influential figure in the rise of fundamentalism among the Latter-day Saints during the early twentieth century. By 1921, small groups of excommunicated polygamists had begun to congregate at homes, offices, industrial buildings, and even in open-air settings. While no identifiable leaders would emerge until the 1930s, these groups would eventually coalesce to form the fundamentalist movement. Several individuals, including Clark, became prominent within the informal gatherings, either because of their testimonies, convictions, publications, financial successes, or claims to priesthood authority. Clark is unusual, however, because he was apparently never a polygamist. Rather, it was his doctrinal unorthodoxy and creative theological speculations that distanced him from the official LDS Church and made him an appealing figure to others whose ideas included the continuation of post-Manifesto polygamy.
The growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has recently slowed in Japan, as elsewhere, adding to the decades-long challenge for the Church of a low activity rate within the country. Latter-day Saints often say that conversion is more of a process than a one-time event. The same is true with LDS enculturation, or acceptance of this American-based church by other cultures as a legitimate part of their societies. Both conversion and enculturation require that people get to know something new and accept it as part of their personal being or their society’s character. As such, both processes are types of internalization, one at the individual level and one at the societal level.
Susan Lee Anderson, Appreciation for Frances Menlove
Tom Rogers, An Issue Reflecting Balance
LaVal W. Spencer, Kirk Hagen’s Accomplishment
David O. Tolman, Natural vs. Supernatural
William D. Russell, What Is FARMS Afraid Of?
Mark Ashurst-McGee, Ashurst-McGee Replies to Vogel
Ralph Hansen, A Founder Bows Out
The Last Supper (Place Setting) Bethanne Andersen A graduate of Brigham Young University’s BFA and MFA program, Bethanne Andersen initially focused on abstract painting but later moved to New York to study illustration at the…