I first discovered James Goldberg when a friend from my mission shared a blog post from the Mormon Midrashim entitled “Explanation, Justification, Sanctification.” In it, the author shares some profound theology with his ten-year-old daughter in a…
Judging by its length, Irreversible Things is the kind of book that I should have been able to finish in a couple hours. Perhaps one evening, after the kids had gone to bed, I could curl up…
As a kid growing up near the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, I spent most of my time plotting my escape—from childhood itself, but more specifically from a Mormon childhood in Utah. I…
The question I am considering here is at its heart relational. What kind of relationship with scripture exists within performative theology? When we understand scripture as wisdom rather than history, what does this understanding do…
A movement called “scriptural theology” has been part of academic theology for some time now, since the 1980s or earlier.[1] In spite of that, with some exceptions I will note, it has had little impact on…
Lisa Van Orman Hadley joins Andrew Hall in discussing her autobiographical novel, Irreversible Things. Her debut literary work, it was awarded a Special Award for Literature by the Association for Mormon Letters. The Dialogue review…
I never intended to leave Utah. In fact, I didn’t leave until I was sixteen, and that was only a trip to my father’s hometown in Wyoming. I didn’t make it to California until I…
I did much of my growing up as a Mormon while doing graduate work or engaged in teaching and administration at Stanford University. Though not a full-blown multiversity on the Berkeley or Minnesota model, Stanford…
As Mr. Fetzer’s article in this issue of Dialogue makes clear, Bernard DeVoto grew up a Catholic, not a Mormon. What is more, he grew up in a house dominated by his father, and his…
In a 1969 review-essay entitled “The New Mormon History,” Moses Rischin spoke of the sophistication with which scholars both within and without the Mormon culture were beginning to examine the Mormon past. He added, “This seems only the beginning. A giant step from church history to religious and intellectual history seems in the offing. As Mormon continuities and discontinuities are reassessed from entirely new perspectives and with a potentially greater audience than ever before, other Ameri cans and Mormons may better come to understand themselves.”