This brief note summarizes findings from two surveys taken among Mormons during 1967-1969, one in Salt Lake City and one in “Coastal City,” northern California.[1] Among the questions asked was the following: Most of us…
In a recent essay on the Mormons, David Brion Davis observed that “their history, in relation to American history, is much like Hamlet’s play-within-the play.”[1] Although analogies have their limitations, this one may prove useful…
Small wonder that churches use the mass media as a broad-based platform for information and persuasion. The communications marvels of our century make it possible for the LDS Church to reach a wide audience indeed,…
A serious novel about children usually is fascinating to adults. Emma Lou Thayne’s first novel, Never Past the Gate, is a zestful story with a mature theme. Ostensibly a lighthearted, nostalgic narrative of a family’s…
Edited by Claudia Lauper Bushman, founder of Exponent II, Mormon Sisters covers sizeable ground: articles about women as mystics and healers, midwives, schoolteachers, politicians, feminists; selections dealing with individual women (like Eliza Snow and Susa…
In 1831 Joseph Smith announced the Law of Consecration and Stewardship. This law was revealed, according to the Prophet, to establish the social and economic basis of the Restoration on the same scriptural foundations as…
Typhoon rains were pounding the house for the fifth consecutive night. I was preparing for bed with a candle and a bowl of water when I heard urgent feet on the stairs. Belen Rivera, our…
Late in the summer of 1833 one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, recently excommunicated from the Mormon church for “unchristianlike” conduct toward some of the sisters,[1] learned of a manuscript written some twenty years before by the late Reverend Solomon Spalding which was similar to the Book of Mormon. His interest piqued, he set out to investigate this story, principally through interviews with former residents of Conneaut, Ohio, where Spalding once had lived.
“Oh,” lamented Job, “that mine adversary had written a book.” Logic and syntax—even basic facts—which are unmistakably clear and irrefutable in manuscript form have a way of breaking down when committed to print. And when…
Zina thought: Ha, what now? She peered through her front door window at the old man crossing Lizzy’s backyard. He was skinny as a bunch of sticks, splotchy, and wrinkled as a raisin. His hair…