By Levi S. Peterson Levi S. Peterson is a former editor of Dialogue and author of novels The Backslider and Aspen Marooney, short-story collections Canyons of Grace and Night Soil, and autobiography A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning. He lives in Washington with his wife Althea. The Phoenix-bound airplane was airborne before …
Category: Issue 164–October 2011
The Monitoring of BYU Faculty Tithing Payments: 1957–1963–Part II
Continued from Part I “A Matter of Free Will Giving” As BYU opened that September 1959, Wilkinson delivered his second “forthright statement” (his term) on tithing. “Promotions should not be granted those who did not believe in and adhere to the principles and teachings of the Gospel,” especially tithing, he announced at a special faculty …
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part III
Continued from Part II In May 1842, Joseph Smith reassembled a cadre of bodyguards, selecting primarily those with experience as Danites in Missouri. Former Danites such as Dimick B. Huntington, Daniel Carn, and Albert P. Rockwood began serving as Nauvoo’s “Night Watch.”[i]Previously a Danite captain, Rockwood had already been serving as “commander of my [Smith’s] …
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part II
Continued from Part I One 24 September 1835, notwithstanding the absence of an external threat, Joseph Smith organized militarily in Kirtland. He proposed “by the voice of the Spirit of the Lord” to raise another Mormon army “to live or die on our own lands, which we have purchased in Jackson County, Missouri.” His manuscript …
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part I
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is an independent scholar in Rancho Cucamonga, Southern California. His first ancestral Mormon mother, Lydia Bilyeu Workman, died in Nauvoo on 30 September 1845, just days after she was burned out of her farmhouse by mobs. Her five youngest children were aged six to eighteen. It is extremely …
My Favorite Martian
The comically named History Channel, which specializes in sensationalistic programs on historical mysteries and conspiracy theories, recently offered a fresh take on the Angel Moroni: He may have been a space alien. For the kickoff of the second season of Ancient Aliens, which aired on 27 July (coinciding with the release of the movie Cowboys …
Leaderlore
A two-sentence version of this piece appeared as Aaron C. Brown’s 9 February 2011 Facebook status update. Nothing drives me crazier than hearing a well-meaning Latter-day Saint earnestly explain how some popular Mormon teaching doesn’t count as official—or as a “doctrine”—because it belongs to some other—supposedly inferior—category of teaching: “Culture.” “Policy.” “Speculation.” “Folklore.” It’s …
Understanding Talmage
This regular Cornucopia column features incidents from and glimpses into the life and ministry of Elder James E. Talmage as compiled by James P. Harris, who is currently working on a full-length biography of this fascinating Mormon apostle. The column title is adopted from the statement inscribed on Elder Talmage’s tombstone: “Within the Gospel of …
“Unscrupulous or Misguided Adventurers”
In this regular Cornucopia column, Curt Bench, owner and operator of Benchmark Books (www.benchmarkbooks.com), a specialty bookstore in Salt Lake City that focuses primarily on used and rare Mormon books, tells stories—both humorous and appalling—from his 35-plus years in the LDS book business. The banner headline in the January 1894 Salt Lake Herald advertisement …
How Much Does Jesus Care about Doctrinal Purity?
In this regular column, Michael Vinson, a master’s graduate of the Divinity School of the University of Cambridge and a frequent devotional speaker at Sunstone symposiums, delves into personal and scholarly aspects of scripture . . . And I shall bring to light the true points of my doctrine, yea, and the only doctrine which …