By Robert A. Rees Robert A. Rees is the director of Mormon Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. He is compiling a collection of his essays on the Book of Mormon, and can be reached at bobrees2@gmail.com. On October 2017, I got a call from my son-in-law Paul Clark informing me that Salvator …
Category: Issue 187
Tower
By Ryan McIlvain Ryan McIlvain is the author of Elders (2013) and The Radicals (2018). A former Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford, McIlvain has taught writing and literature at Rutgers, Stanford, and USC. Dad came home that afternoon from a last-minute grocery run, honking the horn from the driveway. I’d just …
A Dove and a Serpent
By Tom Kimball Tom Kimball is an English student at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio where he also works as a staff volunteer at the Kirtland Temple. This text is by a presenter who has since been found in violation of our code of conduct. For more info on Tom Kimball and his history, …
420 North
By Alex Peterson Alex Peterson was born of goodly parents. He lives in Ephraim, Utah with his wife and offspring, with whom he likes to hang. The whispering came again—this time a hint stronger than before. The feeling was distinct, like what they taught me in Sunday school. I don’t think it …
An LGBTQ Borderlander
By D. Jeff Burton D. Jeff Burton is the author of For Those Who Wonder and a former member of the Sunstone board of directors. In this column I share the story of a gay/bisexual man I’ve become acquainted with over email. Names and details are changed to protect his privacy (and …
Poured Out Like Water
By Charlotte Johnson Willian Charlotte Johnson Willian is a child/family advocate who resides in the southern hills of Indiana, where she is surrounded by the trees she loves. This essay received first place in the 2017 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest. A drop of water, if it could write out …
I Was Raised by Communists!
By R. A. Christmas Thank God—because my sweet grandpa admired Senator Bob Taft, disliked FDR, and was all for “shipping the Negroes back to Africa,” and my sour grandpa would back me into a corner of his warehouse, and tell me I didn’t know how to work, and why he hated the …
That’s Alright, Mama, Just Anyway You Do
By J. S. Absher Mama said she just had to see Elvis as he traveled back to Memphis by whistle-stop: He’ll be something, she sighed, in his dress blues. Daddy said, No, with a look in his eye, so she didn’t. But he did, and brought back news: Though Elvis never opened …
Greenwashing In Zion
By Mark Thomas Mark Thomas earned an MBA from Northwestern University, and works professionally in public finance. He is the author of Digging in Cummorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives. For the first time in history, a conviction has developed among those who can actually think a decade ahead that we …
Own Your Religion
By Gregory A. Prince Gregory A. Prince is the author of Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History (University of Utah, 2016), David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (University of Utah, 2005), and Power from on High: The Development of the Mormon Priesthood (Signature, 1995). For two years, …