Intellectualism
Recommended
Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture
Benjamin E. ParkWhen fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…
The September Six and the Evolution of Mormon Magisteria
Kristine HaglundIn 1997, Stephen Jay Gould published a short essay aimed at limning the conflict between science and religion, particularly with respect to the question of evolution as the mechanism of generating life on Earth. In…
Mormonism’s Inside-Outsider Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, Jan Shipps: A Social and Intellectual Portrait: How a Methodist Girl from Hueytown, Alabama, Became an Acclaimed Mormon Studies Scholar
Cristina RosettiExcommunication and Finding Wholeness
John Gustav-WrathallDialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 69–79
Five years after my excommunication, I met and entered into a relationship with the man who is my husband to this day. We became a couple in 1991; we held a public commitment ceremony in 1995, a time when same-sex marriage was legal nowhere in the United States; we purchased a home together in 1996; and we legally married in California in 2008. Regardless of how or why I was excommunicated in 1986, current Church policy is such that if I were a member, my bishop would have grounds for excommunicating me now, and I cannot currently be reinstated into membership.
Review: Lost in Translation Adam S. Miller. The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs
Robert A. ReesMormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture
Benjamin E. ParkWhen fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…
The September Six and the Evolution of Mormon Magisteria
Kristine HaglundIn 1997, Stephen Jay Gould published a short essay aimed at limning the conflict between science and religion, particularly with respect to the question of evolution as the mechanism of generating life on Earth. In…
Mormonism’s Inside-Outsider Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, Jan Shipps: A Social and Intellectual Portrait: How a Methodist Girl from Hueytown, Alabama, Became an Acclaimed Mormon Studies Scholar
Cristina RosettiExcommunication and Finding Wholeness
John Gustav-WrathallDialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 69–79
Five years after my excommunication, I met and entered into a relationship with the man who is my husband to this day. We became a couple in 1991; we held a public commitment ceremony in 1995, a time when same-sex marriage was legal nowhere in the United States; we purchased a home together in 1996; and we legally married in California in 2008. Regardless of how or why I was excommunicated in 1986, current Church policy is such that if I were a member, my bishop would have grounds for excommunicating me now, and I cannot currently be reinstated into membership.
Being, A Household World
David Charles GoreReading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd
Rachel GilmanReview: Lost in Translation Adam S. Miller. The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs
Robert A. ReesReview: “Twisted Apples”: Lance Larsen Takes on Prose Poetry Lance Larsen. What the Body Knows
Darlene YoungReview: Nothing by Itself George B. Handley. American Fork
Sheldon LawrenceReview: Expertly Built: Stories within Stories Tim Wirkus. The Infinite Future
Gabriel Gonzalez N.Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists
Samuel M. BrownThe Student: His University and His Church
Claude J. BurtenshawIn an attempt to encourage wider reading about issues raised in a class discussion, I once suggested that the students read an article which I referred to as a philosophic analysis of the subject. After…
The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism
Mario S. De PillisIf there is to be any honest dialogue whatsoever between educated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and outsiders, the question of the historical origins of Mormonism must ever remain…
The Challenge of Honesty
Frances Lee MenloveBoth the Protestant and Catholic communities are being swept by a passion for honesty. They are scrutinizing centuries-old suppositions and re-examining current attitudes and goals. In the Protestant world, the writings of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, Tillich,…
By Study and By Faith | Frank B. Salisbury, Truth by Reason and by Revelation
Joseph R. MurphyA survey of Latter-day Saint literature dealing with science and religion will reveal that, with few exceptions, biologists are poorly represented. All manner of other scientists and technologists, including chemists, physicists, geologists, agriculturalists, sociologists, medical…
Every Soul Has Its South
Karl KellerDialogue 1.2 (Summer 1966): 72–79
In this important article in one of the earliest Dialogue issues, Keller says “I went because I was frankly worried: worried that my wife and children should find me slipping after talking intense brotherhood, worried that the church members I led and taught should know where the doctrine but not the action in life is, worried that the students I counseled and read and philosophized with where I taught should reach for meaning for their lives and find no guts, worried in fact that I should somehow while propagating and preaching the Kingdom of God miss it, miss it altogether. The rest was nonsense.”
Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism: A Response
James B. AllenWhenever a young Mormon intellectual attempts to discuss anti-intellectualism within his Church, especially in the broad, 166-year historical context attempted by Professor Bitton, it seems to me that he is faced with at least three…
Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History
Davis BittonAlmost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…
The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints
Leonard J. ArringtonIn one of the earliest books of imaginative literature about the Ameri can West (published in 1826), novelist-editor-missionary-biographer Timothy Flint reveals a common impression of the time that “in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing…
The Sterling M. McMurring Papers
L. G. BrownDr. Sterling Moss McMurrin needs no introduction to Dialogue readers. He is one of the Church’s most outstanding scholars, and is a nationally recognized administrator, educator, and philosopher. He has been a member of the…
Gambit in the Throbs of a Ten-Year-Old Swamp: Confessions of a Dialogue Intern
Karen Marguerite MoloneyHow does an English graduate student who wants a visit to the East Coast, instruction in the American political system and an introduction into the Mormon publishing world satisfy these three ambitions in one two-month…
The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal
William D. RussellDialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 115–119
Although Courage struck a responsive chord in quite a few hearts, its readers did not support it to the extent the editors had expected. Appealing only to a minority in a small church, and without either sufficient subscribers or a financial “angel/ Courage died after its eleventh number (Winter/Spring 1973).
Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2
Randy JohnsonJousting with windmills is a bit out of fashion nowadays, insanity even more so. But every now and then some glittering-eyed individual comes by with an idea most people do best to ignore.
The New Messenger & Advocate
Kevin BarnhurstA magazine is supposed to be one of the easiest businesses to start. It requires no office, no equipment (printing and even mailing can be farmed out to local businesses), no staff as long as…
Sunstone
Scott Kenney“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…
A Wider Sisterhood: Exponent II
Claudia L. BushmanMany readers were surprised and delighted when Exponent II burst upon the scene. “You have lifted my thoughts from the mundane and sweetened my dreams of fulfillment,” wrote one. Another commented, “A newspaper for Mormon…
BYU Studies, How She Is
Laura WadleyPeople are always asking me how I like working at BYU Studies. I say . . .
Gospel by the Month: Ensign
David BriscoeIn 1971, all official church magazines were literally swept away and replaced by three colorful, professional, slick publications, each aimed at a different age group—the Ensign for adults, the New Era for young people and…
Hying to Kolob
Edward A. GearyOld Bishop Leonard used to insist that the Spirit World was right here on earth and the dead were never far from home. He was not really the bishop anymore, but the title was for…
An “Inside-Outsider” in Zion
Jan ShippsAt the invitation of Sunstone, I sat down a couple of years ago to write a book review of Samuel Woolley Taylor’s Rocky Mountain Empire. As did Topsy, that review just grew and grew until…
Ideas as Entities | Sterling M. McMurrin, Religion, Reason, and Truth—Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
Blake T. OstlerProbably few people derive their religious beliefs or lack of them from the philosophy of religion. However, when viewed historically, it becomes clear that the philosophy of religion has greatly influenced religion in general and…
Beyond Literalism
William D. RussellMormonism has, in my view, a serious theological problem with its understanding of scripture. The problem lies in the tendency to read the scriptures uncritically, and it exists in both the LDS and RLDS traditions.…
In loco parentis — Alive and Well in Provo | Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith
Anthony W. MorganDavid Riesman, in his landmark study of American higher education entitled The Academic Revolution (1969), was fascinated by BYU and insightfully observes: “Despite academic upgrading, Brigham Young has not lost its sectarian character nor even…
A Survey of Current Dissertations
Stephen W. Stathis“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age,” Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1747, but “if we do not plant it while young it will give us no…
Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective
Thomas G. AlexanderSeventeen years ago, Moses Rischin, Fulbright Professor of History at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, in a review essay first used the phrase, “the New Mormon History.” By it, he meant to categorize the…
Explorations in Mormon Social Character Beyond the Liahona and Iron Rod
Jeffrey C. JacobRichard Poll, hands clasped, leaned forward and strained to clarify, with labored sensitivity, two kinds of ideal-typical Mormons, the Iron Rod member and the Liahona Saint, whose characteristics he had recently detailed in a controversial…
B.H. Roberts’s Autobiography
Gary James BergeraThe B.H. Roberts Papers at the University of Utah
Everett L. CooleyIn the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought appeared Leonard Arrington’s article, ‘The Intellectual Traditions of the Latter-day Saints,” based partly on a questionnaire he had sent to “50 prominent LDS…
Intellectuals in Mormon History: An Update
Stan LarsonMore than twenty-four years ago, Leonard Arrington asked some fifty prominent Mormons to identify the most important intellectuals in Mormon history. He published his findings in the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of…
Famine Relief, the Church, and the Environment
Donald L. GibbonConsecration, Stewardship, and Accountability: Remedy for a Dying Planet
Clayton C. NewberryThe Church and the Community: Personal Reflections on Mormon Intellectual Life
O. Kendall White Jr.Freedom and Grace: Rethinking Theocracy
Janice M. AllredComing of Age? The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the 1960s
Roger D. LauniusDialogue 28.4 (Winter 1995): 31–55
In many respects the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of the 1960s mirrored the general tumult, if not the details, of the larger American society.
Satan’s Foot in the Door: Democrats at Brigham Young University
Paul C. RichardsMormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles
Armand L. MaussIn recent years social scientists have found it theoretically useful to understand church growth or decline in the context of a “religious economy.”[1] In this conceptualization each society has a “religion industry” in the same…
Mormonism in Modern Japan
Jiro Numano“Since Japan as a nation has made such remarkable economic and technological progress, why is the church in Japan not also making comparable progress, but in fact is stagnant?” For some years now such a…
Between Covenant and Treaty: The LDS Future in New Zealand
Ian G. BarberFor the earliest nineteenth-century LDS missionaries in the Pacific, a strong appeal of the British Crown colony of New Zealand was the high concentration of English-speaking settlers among whom they could proselyte. Elder Addison Pratt,…
Towards 2000: Mormonism in Australia
Marjorie NewtonIn April 1994 some sixty LDS professionals and business people from around Australia were invited to meet with the Pacific Area presidency in a Sydney conference unique to the Mormon church in this country. Quite…
Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbinger of the Future?
Thomas W. MurphyWith the assistance of her family, Marta Angelica Solizo forms and paints incredibly detailed ceramic Nativity scenes. A standard set con sists of fourteen pieces: three sheep, a bull, four donkeys laden with corn, squash,…
Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century
David Clark KnowltonFrom the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now taking part in a revolution that is radically transforming Latin America. As a result, the church…
Ethnization and Accommodation: Dutch Mormons in Twenty-first-century Europe
Walter E. A. Van BeekAlongside Utrecht’s largest canal, the nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic Martinuschurch dominates the centuries-old waterfront houses. Far be neath its glistening spire, the little entrance square, with a statue of the warrior saint Martinus at the center, bristles…
Feeding the Fleeing Flock: Reflections on the Struggle to Retain Church Members in Europe
Wilfried DecooAs a twenty-two-year-old convert of just a few years, I was called in June 1969 to preside over a small branch of the church in Belgium. In the tiny office of the old house serving…
Science and Mormonism: Past, Present, Future
David H. BaileyDialogue 29.1 (Spring 1996): 80–97
Will the church be able to retain the essence of its theology in the faceof challenges from science? Will the church’s discourse on scientific topicsbe marked by fundamentalism, isolationism, or progressivism? Will the church be able to retain its large contingent of professional scientists?
Thinking About the Word of God in the Twenty-First Century
Karl C. SandbergFor those imbued with Mormonism, the most appropriate figure for talking about the word of God in the twenty-first century is Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, presider over doors and gateways, and…
Membership Growth, Church Activity, and Missionary Recruitment
Gary ShepherdTo comprehend the potential emergence of Mormonism as a major religious force in the twenty-first century, it is essential to comprehend the missionary ideology and practices of the LDS church. For rank-and-file Latter-day Saints, this proposition seems simply axiomatic of their foundational faith in the restoration of Christ’s gospel and their divine man date to convert the world in anticipation of his second advent.
The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020
Lawrence A. YoungMore than ever before the LDS church seems to measure its milestones in terms of numbers. Almost every issue of the Church News and the En sign includes an article or a graphic that highlights…
Guest Editor’s Introduction
Armand L. MaussWho would have dared to predict in 1830 that a tiny, radical circle of religious seekers around the Joseph and Lucy Smith family would be a church of 10 million only a few generations later…
Renegotiating Scylla and Charybdis: Reading and the Distance between New York and Utah
John BennionReaders unpacked Brian Evenson’s nationally-published collection of controversial short stories, Altmann’s Tongue, in diverse (perverse) ways. Jerry Johnston, a columnist for the Mormon church-owned Deseret News, observed, “The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind. He is…
A Saint for All Seasons
Mary Lythgoe BradfordAs Sterling McMurrin put it, “Every religion needs a saint, and Lowell Bennion is Mormonism’s saint.” Why does a church need a saint? People need a flesh and blood example, a person who has attained…
Max Weber and Lowell Bennion: Towards an Understanding of Hierarchy and Authority
Laurie Newman DiPadovaLowell L. Bennion was widely known among Latter-day Saints for his Christlike life and humanitarianism, as well as for his teaching and authorship of numerous church books and manuals.
Hard Day for Professor Midgely: An Essay for Fawn McKay Brodie
Glenn J. HettingerThe year 1998 found the nation in the grip of a sex scandal in the White House, a sex scandal in which a president (named for Thomas Jefferson) flatly denied “improper sexual relations,” believing, evidently,…
Good Literature for a Chosen People
Eugene EnglandVery early in our history, we Mormons began to identify ourselves symbolically with ancient Israel as a chosen people. We too, we believed, were heirs to the covenant and blessings of Abraham because of God’s…
Ella Smyth Peacock: Seeking Her Place in the West
Kathryn J. AbajianLike the early Mormons whose beliefs she would eventually adopt, landscape artist Ella Smyth Peacock early on sought refuge in the west.[1] She was born in 1905 in Germantown, near Philadelphia, a city created in…
The Zion University Reverie: A Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Brigham Young University’s Academic Climate
Paul M. RoseOn June 5th, 1996, Assistant Professor Gail Houston of the Brigham Young University English Department was denied tenure and promotion at BYU.[1] In compliance with typical university procedures, Professor Houston quickly appealed the decision.[2] Members…
Evidence without Reconciliation | LaMar Petersen, The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry
Polly StewartOne cannot read or write about the Book of Mormon without acknowledging a position with respect to its truth claims. Even to profess no stake in any such claims is to take a position. People…
Bringing Balance to Our Historical Writing | Valeen Tippetts Avery, From Mission to Madness: Last Son of the Mormon Prophet
William D. RussellDavid Hyrum Smith was Joseph Smith’s last child, born several months after the assassination of his father. He followed his oldest brother, Joseph Smith III, and his mother, Emma, into the RLDS Church and became a…
Missionaries, Missions, Converts, Cultures | Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle
David Clark KnowltonTo social scientists, missionaries are a great unknown. Perhaps the most important agents of social change around the globe, they have competed with scholars whose goal is to understand and appreciate people rather than to…
Building Cultural Bridges | Jessie L. Embry, Asian American Mormons: Bridging Cultures, and Jessie L. Embry, “In His Own Language”: Mormon Spanish Speaking Congregations in the United States
Paul GuajardoAs a missionary in Denver, I served in a Spanish-speaking branch—a re warding and sometimes frustrating experience. Because of the limited size of the congregation, I wondered about the segregation and whether the Spanish speaking…
Mission Complexities in Asia | R. Lanier Britsch, From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851-1996
Glen M. CooperAs a missionary in Taiwan many years ago, I often reflected on the historical significance of our work. President Hyer numbly reminded us that we were only the most recent phase of an historical process…
Postscript from Iraq: A Flicker of Hope in Conflict’s Moral Twilight
Matthew BoltonDialogue 37.1 (Spring 2004): 180–187
It was as I waded through the sewage, stagnant in the streets of one of Africa’s biggest slums—Mukuru, Nairobi, Kenya—while on an assignment with the Community of Christ-sponsore WorldService Corps in summer 2000, that I was first struck by the enormity of the world’s problems and the horrifying conditions faced by the majority of its inhabiants.
In the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: War Is Eternal: The Case for Military Preparedness
Robert M. HoggeIn the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: Of Wars, Maps, and Ideals
Barney HaddenIn the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: From Flanders Fields
(author)In the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: Reflections on War of a Liberal Catholic in Mormon Utah
M. Diane KrantzA Woman of Influence: An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells by Carol Cornwall Madsen
Deborah Farmer KrisChoices, Consequences, and Grace: God’s Army 2: States of Grace, written and directed by Richard Dutcher
Samuel M. BrownRemembering Gene and His Generation: Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England, edited by Robert A. Rees
R. John WilliamsHow to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated)
Kevin L. BarneyDialogue 41.4 (Winter 2008): 121–147
In this essay, I shall begin by describing what we can learn about our Mother in Heaven from the scriptures. I then will draw from those descriptions some (very modest) suggestions for how we might actually worship, or at least honor, Her in ways that should not be considered offensive or heterodox by traditionalists. This essay is therefore a little exercise in religion-making. It is my hope that I will be able to express my mediating thoughts in a way that will not be deemed offensive by those of either school of thought on the subject.
Modernism and Mormonism: James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Responses to Biblical Criticism
Clyde D. Ford“Weak-Kneed Republicans and Socialist Democrats”: Ezra Taft Benson as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture 1953-61
Gary James BergeraSeeking a “Second Harvest”: Controlling the Costs of LDS Membership in Europe
Armand L. MaussBelonging (and Believing) as LDS Scholars of Religion
Mauro ProperziToward a Theology of Dissent: An Ecclesiological Interpretation
Matthew Bowman“That Which Surpasses All Understanding”: The Limitations of Human Thought
Mark J. NielsenThe Best Place to Deal with Questions: An Interview with Brady Udall
Brady UdallWalking into the Heart of the Questions: An Interview with W. Grant McMurray
W. Grant McMurrayReview: Armand L. Mauss. Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic
Brayden KingEx-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics
Seth PayneReview: E-mails with a Young Mormon about Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon Adam S. Miller. Letters to a Young Mormon
Russell Arben FoxDeveloping Integrity in an Uncertain World: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
Kristine HaglundReview: Liberalism and the American Mormon: Three Takes David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson. Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics Richard Davis. The Liberal Soul: Applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Politics Terryl
Russell Arben Fox“After the Body of My Spirit”: Embodiment, Empathy, and Mormon Aesthetics
Gary EttariThe Last Memory: Joseph F. Smith and Lieux de Mémoire in Late Nineteenth-Century Mormonism
Stephen TaysomMormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture
Benjamin E. ParkWhen fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as…
The September Six and the Evolution of Mormon Magisteria
Kristine HaglundIn 1997, Stephen Jay Gould published a short essay aimed at limning the conflict between science and religion, particularly with respect to the question of evolution as the mechanism of generating life on Earth. In…
Mormonism’s Inside-Outsider Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, Jan Shipps: A Social and Intellectual Portrait: How a Methodist Girl from Hueytown, Alabama, Became an Acclaimed Mormon Studies Scholar
Cristina RosettiExcommunication and Finding Wholeness
John Gustav-WrathallDialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 69–79
Five years after my excommunication, I met and entered into a relationship with the man who is my husband to this day. We became a couple in 1991; we held a public commitment ceremony in 1995, a time when same-sex marriage was legal nowhere in the United States; we purchased a home together in 1996; and we legally married in California in 2008. Regardless of how or why I was excommunicated in 1986, current Church policy is such that if I were a member, my bishop would have grounds for excommunicating me now, and I cannot currently be reinstated into membership.
Being, A Household World
David Charles GoreReading the Word: Spirit Materiality in the Mountain Landscapes of Nan Shepherd
Rachel GilmanReview: Lost in Translation Adam S. Miller. The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs
Robert A. ReesReview: “Twisted Apples”: Lance Larsen Takes on Prose Poetry Lance Larsen. What the Body Knows
Darlene YoungReview: Nothing by Itself George B. Handley. American Fork
Sheldon LawrenceReview: Expertly Built: Stories within Stories Tim Wirkus. The Infinite Future
Gabriel Gonzalez N.Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists
Samuel M. BrownThe Student: His University and His Church
Claude J. BurtenshawIn an attempt to encourage wider reading about issues raised in a class discussion, I once suggested that the students read an article which I referred to as a philosophic analysis of the subject. After…
The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism
Mario S. De PillisIf there is to be any honest dialogue whatsoever between educated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and outsiders, the question of the historical origins of Mormonism must ever remain…
The Challenge of Honesty
Frances Lee MenloveBoth the Protestant and Catholic communities are being swept by a passion for honesty. They are scrutinizing centuries-old suppositions and re-examining current attitudes and goals. In the Protestant world, the writings of Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, Tillich,…
By Study and By Faith | Frank B. Salisbury, Truth by Reason and by Revelation
Joseph R. MurphyA survey of Latter-day Saint literature dealing with science and religion will reveal that, with few exceptions, biologists are poorly represented. All manner of other scientists and technologists, including chemists, physicists, geologists, agriculturalists, sociologists, medical…
Every Soul Has Its South
Karl KellerDialogue 1.2 (Summer 1966): 72–79
In this important article in one of the earliest Dialogue issues, Keller says “I went because I was frankly worried: worried that my wife and children should find me slipping after talking intense brotherhood, worried that the church members I led and taught should know where the doctrine but not the action in life is, worried that the students I counseled and read and philosophized with where I taught should reach for meaning for their lives and find no guts, worried in fact that I should somehow while propagating and preaching the Kingdom of God miss it, miss it altogether. The rest was nonsense.”
Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism: A Response
James B. AllenWhenever a young Mormon intellectual attempts to discuss anti-intellectualism within his Church, especially in the broad, 166-year historical context attempted by Professor Bitton, it seems to me that he is faced with at least three…
Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History
Davis BittonAlmost from its beginning Mormonism was disparaged as funda mentally superstitious and irrational, with an appeal only for the poor and uneducated. Even before the description of Joseph Smith as “ignorant” and “illiterate” by the…
The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints
Leonard J. ArringtonIn one of the earliest books of imaginative literature about the Ameri can West (published in 1826), novelist-editor-missionary-biographer Timothy Flint reveals a common impression of the time that “in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing…
The Sterling M. McMurring Papers
L. G. BrownDr. Sterling Moss McMurrin needs no introduction to Dialogue readers. He is one of the Church’s most outstanding scholars, and is a nationally recognized administrator, educator, and philosopher. He has been a member of the…
Gambit in the Throbs of a Ten-Year-Old Swamp: Confessions of a Dialogue Intern
Karen Marguerite MoloneyHow does an English graduate student who wants a visit to the East Coast, instruction in the American political system and an introduction into the Mormon publishing world satisfy these three ambitions in one two-month…
The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal
William D. RussellDialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 115–119
Although Courage struck a responsive chord in quite a few hearts, its readers did not support it to the extent the editors had expected. Appealing only to a minority in a small church, and without either sufficient subscribers or a financial “angel/ Courage died after its eleventh number (Winter/Spring 1973).
Windmill Jousting and Other Madness: Century 2
Randy JohnsonJousting with windmills is a bit out of fashion nowadays, insanity even more so. But every now and then some glittering-eyed individual comes by with an idea most people do best to ignore.
The New Messenger & Advocate
Kevin BarnhurstA magazine is supposed to be one of the easiest businesses to start. It requires no office, no equipment (printing and even mailing can be farmed out to local businesses), no staff as long as…
Sunstone
Scott Kenney“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…
A Wider Sisterhood: Exponent II
Claudia L. BushmanMany readers were surprised and delighted when Exponent II burst upon the scene. “You have lifted my thoughts from the mundane and sweetened my dreams of fulfillment,” wrote one. Another commented, “A newspaper for Mormon…
BYU Studies, How She Is
Laura WadleyPeople are always asking me how I like working at BYU Studies. I say . . .
Gospel by the Month: Ensign
David BriscoeIn 1971, all official church magazines were literally swept away and replaced by three colorful, professional, slick publications, each aimed at a different age group—the Ensign for adults, the New Era for young people and…
Hying to Kolob
Edward A. GearyOld Bishop Leonard used to insist that the Spirit World was right here on earth and the dead were never far from home. He was not really the bishop anymore, but the title was for…
An “Inside-Outsider” in Zion
Jan ShippsAt the invitation of Sunstone, I sat down a couple of years ago to write a book review of Samuel Woolley Taylor’s Rocky Mountain Empire. As did Topsy, that review just grew and grew until…
Ideas as Entities | Sterling M. McMurrin, Religion, Reason, and Truth—Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
Blake T. OstlerProbably few people derive their religious beliefs or lack of them from the philosophy of religion. However, when viewed historically, it becomes clear that the philosophy of religion has greatly influenced religion in general and…
Beyond Literalism
William D. RussellMormonism has, in my view, a serious theological problem with its understanding of scripture. The problem lies in the tendency to read the scriptures uncritically, and it exists in both the LDS and RLDS traditions.…
In loco parentis — Alive and Well in Provo | Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith
Anthony W. MorganDavid Riesman, in his landmark study of American higher education entitled The Academic Revolution (1969), was fascinated by BYU and insightfully observes: “Despite academic upgrading, Brigham Young has not lost its sectarian character nor even…
A Survey of Current Dissertations
Stephen W. Stathis“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age,” Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1747, but “if we do not plant it while young it will give us no…
Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective
Thomas G. AlexanderSeventeen years ago, Moses Rischin, Fulbright Professor of History at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, in a review essay first used the phrase, “the New Mormon History.” By it, he meant to categorize the…
Explorations in Mormon Social Character Beyond the Liahona and Iron Rod
Jeffrey C. JacobRichard Poll, hands clasped, leaned forward and strained to clarify, with labored sensitivity, two kinds of ideal-typical Mormons, the Iron Rod member and the Liahona Saint, whose characteristics he had recently detailed in a controversial…
B.H. Roberts’s Autobiography
Gary James BergeraThe B.H. Roberts Papers at the University of Utah
Everett L. CooleyIn the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought appeared Leonard Arrington’s article, ‘The Intellectual Traditions of the Latter-day Saints,” based partly on a questionnaire he had sent to “50 prominent LDS…
Intellectuals in Mormon History: An Update
Stan LarsonMore than twenty-four years ago, Leonard Arrington asked some fifty prominent Mormons to identify the most important intellectuals in Mormon history. He published his findings in the spring 1969 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of…
Famine Relief, the Church, and the Environment
Donald L. GibbonConsecration, Stewardship, and Accountability: Remedy for a Dying Planet
Clayton C. NewberryThe Church and the Community: Personal Reflections on Mormon Intellectual Life
O. Kendall White Jr.Freedom and Grace: Rethinking Theocracy
Janice M. AllredComing of Age? The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the 1960s
Roger D. LauniusDialogue 28.4 (Winter 1995): 31–55
In many respects the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of the 1960s mirrored the general tumult, if not the details, of the larger American society.
Satan’s Foot in the Door: Democrats at Brigham Young University
Paul C. RichardsMormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles
Armand L. MaussIn recent years social scientists have found it theoretically useful to understand church growth or decline in the context of a “religious economy.”[1] In this conceptualization each society has a “religion industry” in the same…
Mormonism in Modern Japan
Jiro Numano“Since Japan as a nation has made such remarkable economic and technological progress, why is the church in Japan not also making comparable progress, but in fact is stagnant?” For some years now such a…
Between Covenant and Treaty: The LDS Future in New Zealand
Ian G. BarberFor the earliest nineteenth-century LDS missionaries in the Pacific, a strong appeal of the British Crown colony of New Zealand was the high concentration of English-speaking settlers among whom they could proselyte. Elder Addison Pratt,…
Towards 2000: Mormonism in Australia
Marjorie NewtonIn April 1994 some sixty LDS professionals and business people from around Australia were invited to meet with the Pacific Area presidency in a Sydney conference unique to the Mormon church in this country. Quite…
Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbinger of the Future?
Thomas W. MurphyWith the assistance of her family, Marta Angelica Solizo forms and paints incredibly detailed ceramic Nativity scenes. A standard set con sists of fourteen pieces: three sheep, a bull, four donkeys laden with corn, squash,…
Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century
David Clark KnowltonFrom the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now taking part in a revolution that is radically transforming Latin America. As a result, the church…
Ethnization and Accommodation: Dutch Mormons in Twenty-first-century Europe
Walter E. A. Van BeekAlongside Utrecht’s largest canal, the nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic Martinuschurch dominates the centuries-old waterfront houses. Far be neath its glistening spire, the little entrance square, with a statue of the warrior saint Martinus at the center, bristles…
Feeding the Fleeing Flock: Reflections on the Struggle to Retain Church Members in Europe
Wilfried DecooAs a twenty-two-year-old convert of just a few years, I was called in June 1969 to preside over a small branch of the church in Belgium. In the tiny office of the old house serving…
Science and Mormonism: Past, Present, Future
David H. BaileyDialogue 29.1 (Spring 1996): 80–97
Will the church be able to retain the essence of its theology in the faceof challenges from science? Will the church’s discourse on scientific topicsbe marked by fundamentalism, isolationism, or progressivism? Will the church be able to retain its large contingent of professional scientists?
Thinking About the Word of God in the Twenty-First Century
Karl C. SandbergFor those imbued with Mormonism, the most appropriate figure for talking about the word of God in the twenty-first century is Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, presider over doors and gateways, and…
Membership Growth, Church Activity, and Missionary Recruitment
Gary ShepherdTo comprehend the potential emergence of Mormonism as a major religious force in the twenty-first century, it is essential to comprehend the missionary ideology and practices of the LDS church. For rank-and-file Latter-day Saints, this proposition seems simply axiomatic of their foundational faith in the restoration of Christ’s gospel and their divine man date to convert the world in anticipation of his second advent.
The Uncertain Dynamics of LDS Expansion, 1950-2020
Lawrence A. YoungMore than ever before the LDS church seems to measure its milestones in terms of numbers. Almost every issue of the Church News and the En sign includes an article or a graphic that highlights…
Guest Editor’s Introduction
Armand L. MaussWho would have dared to predict in 1830 that a tiny, radical circle of religious seekers around the Joseph and Lucy Smith family would be a church of 10 million only a few generations later…
Renegotiating Scylla and Charybdis: Reading and the Distance between New York and Utah
John BennionReaders unpacked Brian Evenson’s nationally-published collection of controversial short stories, Altmann’s Tongue, in diverse (perverse) ways. Jerry Johnston, a columnist for the Mormon church-owned Deseret News, observed, “The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind. He is…
A Saint for All Seasons
Mary Lythgoe BradfordAs Sterling McMurrin put it, “Every religion needs a saint, and Lowell Bennion is Mormonism’s saint.” Why does a church need a saint? People need a flesh and blood example, a person who has attained…
Max Weber and Lowell Bennion: Towards an Understanding of Hierarchy and Authority
Laurie Newman DiPadovaLowell L. Bennion was widely known among Latter-day Saints for his Christlike life and humanitarianism, as well as for his teaching and authorship of numerous church books and manuals.
Hard Day for Professor Midgely: An Essay for Fawn McKay Brodie
Glenn J. HettingerThe year 1998 found the nation in the grip of a sex scandal in the White House, a sex scandal in which a president (named for Thomas Jefferson) flatly denied “improper sexual relations,” believing, evidently,…
Good Literature for a Chosen People
Eugene EnglandVery early in our history, we Mormons began to identify ourselves symbolically with ancient Israel as a chosen people. We too, we believed, were heirs to the covenant and blessings of Abraham because of God’s…
Ella Smyth Peacock: Seeking Her Place in the West
Kathryn J. AbajianLike the early Mormons whose beliefs she would eventually adopt, landscape artist Ella Smyth Peacock early on sought refuge in the west.[1] She was born in 1905 in Germantown, near Philadelphia, a city created in…
The Zion University Reverie: A Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Brigham Young University’s Academic Climate
Paul M. RoseOn June 5th, 1996, Assistant Professor Gail Houston of the Brigham Young University English Department was denied tenure and promotion at BYU.[1] In compliance with typical university procedures, Professor Houston quickly appealed the decision.[2] Members…
Evidence without Reconciliation | LaMar Petersen, The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry
Polly StewartOne cannot read or write about the Book of Mormon without acknowledging a position with respect to its truth claims. Even to profess no stake in any such claims is to take a position. People…
Bringing Balance to Our Historical Writing | Valeen Tippetts Avery, From Mission to Madness: Last Son of the Mormon Prophet
William D. RussellDavid Hyrum Smith was Joseph Smith’s last child, born several months after the assassination of his father. He followed his oldest brother, Joseph Smith III, and his mother, Emma, into the RLDS Church and became a…
Missionaries, Missions, Converts, Cultures | Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle
David Clark KnowltonTo social scientists, missionaries are a great unknown. Perhaps the most important agents of social change around the globe, they have competed with scholars whose goal is to understand and appreciate people rather than to…
Building Cultural Bridges | Jessie L. Embry, Asian American Mormons: Bridging Cultures, and Jessie L. Embry, “In His Own Language”: Mormon Spanish Speaking Congregations in the United States
Paul GuajardoAs a missionary in Denver, I served in a Spanish-speaking branch—a re warding and sometimes frustrating experience. Because of the limited size of the congregation, I wondered about the segregation and whether the Spanish speaking…
Mission Complexities in Asia | R. Lanier Britsch, From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851-1996
Glen M. CooperAs a missionary in Taiwan many years ago, I often reflected on the historical significance of our work. President Hyer numbly reminded us that we were only the most recent phase of an historical process…
Postscript from Iraq: A Flicker of Hope in Conflict’s Moral Twilight
Matthew BoltonDialogue 37.1 (Spring 2004): 180–187
It was as I waded through the sewage, stagnant in the streets of one of Africa’s biggest slums—Mukuru, Nairobi, Kenya—while on an assignment with the Community of Christ-sponsore WorldService Corps in summer 2000, that I was first struck by the enormity of the world’s problems and the horrifying conditions faced by the majority of its inhabiants.
In the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: War Is Eternal: The Case for Military Preparedness
Robert M. HoggeIn the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: Of Wars, Maps, and Ideals
Barney HaddenIn the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: From Flanders Fields
(author)In the Service of Peace, in the Defense of War: Reflections on War of a Liberal Catholic in Mormon Utah
M. Diane KrantzA Woman of Influence: An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells by Carol Cornwall Madsen
Deborah Farmer KrisChoices, Consequences, and Grace: God’s Army 2: States of Grace, written and directed by Richard Dutcher
Samuel M. BrownRemembering Gene and His Generation: Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England, edited by Robert A. Rees
R. John WilliamsHow to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated)
Kevin L. BarneyDialogue 41.4 (Winter 2008): 121–147
In this essay, I shall begin by describing what we can learn about our Mother in Heaven from the scriptures. I then will draw from those descriptions some (very modest) suggestions for how we might actually worship, or at least honor, Her in ways that should not be considered offensive or heterodox by traditionalists. This essay is therefore a little exercise in religion-making. It is my hope that I will be able to express my mediating thoughts in a way that will not be deemed offensive by those of either school of thought on the subject.