By Mica McGriggs Mica McGriggs is a PhD candidate in counseling psychology at BYU. Her academic research is primarily in the area of multicultural sensitivity in psychology. I don’t remember the first time I learned about the priesthood ban, but I do have several vivid memories of my encounters with the issue. At my …
Category: Issue 178
Keeping the Promises
The story of the relationship between Mormonism and Africans is a story of promises—promises made and promises failed. Through the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, whether as translator or composer, assured the world that all humanity is “alike unto God, both black and white, bond and free, male and female.” This assurance comes to …
Violence, Mormonism, and the Sober Lessons of History: Breaking the Cycle of Defensiveness and Escalation
By Joanna Brooks Joanna Brooks is Associate Vice President of Faculty Affairs at San Diego University and the author or editor of six scholarly books. My scholarly training is in the cultural histories of race and colonialism in early America. Because I have this larger view of the violence of colonialism in the …
Are Mormons Christian?: A Personal Response to the Gospel Topics Essay
By Dan Wotherspoon Dan Wotherspoon is the host of the Mormon Matters podcast and a former editor of Sunstone. Compared with many of the other new Gospel Topics essays that have been released during the past two years, “Are Mormons Christian?” has generally flown under the radar. Thank goodness. In fairness, I suppose it …
“Are Mormons Christian?”: A Historical Perspective on the Gospel Topics Essay
By Jana Riess Jana Riess has a Ph.D. in American religious history from Columbia University. She is the author of Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor, and is at work on a book about gratitude. She is a senior columnist for Religion News Service. …
Plural Marriage Among Early Latter-day Saints
By George D. Smith George D. Smith is the award-winning author of Nauvoo Polygamy “. . . but We Called It Celestial Marriage” (Signature Books, 2011). On 22 October 2014, the LDS Church published its most frank essay on the 19th-century origins of Mormon plural marriage, practiced in secret among nearly 200 families in …
The Book of Abraham Crisis: A History
by Christopher C. Smith Christopher C. Smith is a PhD candidate at Claremont Graduate University and is completing a dissertation on early Mormon views of Native Americans. Stage 1, 1860–1861: Théodule Devéria The first hints of difficulties with the Book of Abraham appeared in the late 1850s when French scholar Théodule Devéria wrote …
From North Star to Constellation: “First Vision Accounts”
by Stephen C. Taysom Stephen C. Taysom is an associate professor of philosophy and comparative religion at Cleveland State University. Religions persist when they are able to adapt to cultural shifts by reinterpreting their own histories—even their origins—in a way that cloaks their changes in a mantle of consistency. The LDS Church’s Gospel Topics …
When Worldviews Collide: The Unintended Consequences of Apologetics in the Gospel Topics Essays
By Seth Bryant Seth Bryant is Director of the Kirtland Temple Historic Site and a former US Navy Chaplain. He has graduate degrees from the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University. I AM A cultural Mormon and a convert to the Community of Christ. So if religions are languages, I speak Community of …
Job’s Comforters
By Dana Haight Cattani Dana Haight Cattani was diagnosed with uterine cancer in April 2012. She lives with her family in Indiana. Or download the audio file here: Job’s Comforters A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 25:11 Succor the weak, lift up the hands which …