My earliest memory of Retty Mott is of hurrying past her house as I walked home from Primary. I hurried past because my cousins had told me that she chased people. Once she had leaped out from behind a tree in her front yard and hit Max Peterson with a fire shovel. She had chased him clear to the end of the block, hitting him all the way with the fire shovel . . .
Most readers of Mormon fiction would quickly agree that the genre still awaits a writer of the stature of Chaim Potok or James Michener, to say nothing of a Joyce or a Faulkner. Perhaps one…
During the early part of the twentieth century, Lorin C. Woolley of Centerville, Utah, produced affidavits in which he maintained that on 26 and 27 September 1886, Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith appeared to President…
One of the strongest virtues of this volume is the modesty of its project. It does not claim to be the story of Mormon pioneering in Mexico, but simply a story of the same. It…
In the afternoon of 1 July 1895, Emmeline Wells and thirteen other Mormon literary lights and friends met in the parlor of Julia C. Howe’s home in memory of a deceased colleague, poet Hannah King.…
The subtitle of this book indicates its primary shortcoming. This is, indeed, one more history of the Mormons. The chapter headings could be those of any similar work giving a general overview of the growth…
The first group of Welsh converts to Mormonism arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on 26 October 1849 after a voyage of more than eight months. They had buried more than one-fifth of their number…
Dialogue 17.3 (Fall 1984): 75–88
Utah Mormons have had over a hundred years in which to systematize and institutionalize their beliefs. Institutionalized religion tends to expend its energies in conserving and promulgating the truths once delivered to the saints.
Engaging in dialogue is one of the first experiences we have as human beings. Even when our communication is only inarticulate gurgling, we are participating in some kind of communication. Entering into dialogue with another, whether human or divine, is one of the experiences we bring from the preexistence.
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…