The Academic Study Of Religion: Prospects And Perils The recent announcement that early steps have been taken toward establishing a Mormon Studies program at Utah Valley State College has generated much excitement among many who have long felt a need for such a program at one of Utah’s state schools, but it has also raised …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2000
The Decade of the Sixties: The Early Struggles in the RLDS Shift from Sect to Denomination
The Decade of the Sixties: The Early Struggles in the RLDS Shift from Sect to Denomination This is a discussion of how, during the 1960s the RLDS Church made very decisive steps toward shedding its sectarian past. It began the decade clearly rooted in the sectarian worldview. But by the end of the decade, many …
Lucy’s Memoir: A Family Tree
Lucy’s Memoir: A Family Tree Lucy Mack Smith began dictating her family memoir within months after the assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and finished it the next year. This paper traces its surviving versions: notebooks, a rough draft, an intermediate manuscript, and two fair copies. (One came to Utah and has never been published. …
The Real Olympics Scandal
The Real Olympics Scandal The bribery scandal aside, is the Mormon culture mature enough to host an international event, or does local hubris keep it from being a world-class community? Ron Molen, Rob Bishop
From Belgrade to Sandy: Observations of an Outsider
From Belgrade to Sandy: Observations of an Outsider In June 1995, I relocated from the Netherlands to Sandy, Utah, due to a romantic coincidence. My move to Sandy resulted in my being submerged into the sea of Mormania. To that time, my contact with “the Church” had been limited to a few open-door meetings with …
Entonces Y Ahora, Then And Now: A Look At The New Spanish Hymnal
Entonces Y Ahora, Then And Now: A Look At The New Spanish Hymnal In 1992, the Church produced a new Spanish- language hymnal, the first since 1942. How does the 1992 hymnal compare with its predecessor? How does it compare to the 1985 English hymnal? How have cross-cultural considerations affected it? What contribution, if any, …
God Is Light, Somewhere in Time and Everywhere Transcending Time
God Is Light, Somewhere in Time and Everywhere Transcending Time Is it possible that God with a glorified body of flesh and bones, residing somewhere in time, can also be everywhere transcending time? Logic says no, but scriptures, the physics of light, and near-death experiences support a paradoxical reality. Everything in the universe is interconnected …
Orson Scott Card and the Ontology of Redemption
Orson Scott Card and the Ontology of Redemption This paper will focus on Card’s thinking in general, but especially on the philosophically- significant novel, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. I will argue that the novel poses, in a profound way, what is entailed in the idea of redemption–and indeed, in the practice and the …
Are We Latter-day Psi-nts?: Resources in Mormonism for Affirming the Paranormal
Are We Latter-day Psi-nts?: Resources in Mormonism for Affirming the Paranormal Many events and elements in Latter-day Saint history and belief fall under the broad classification of paranormal, or psi, phenomena. Yet, even so, we have a long-standing tradition of denying that these occurrences are ultimately “miraculous,” arguing instead that were all the principles governing …
A Commentary on Four Past and Present Naturalistic Explanations for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
A Commentary on Four Past and Present Naturalistic Explanations for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon Whether one believes that Joseph Smith was a divine prophet, a fraud, or in between, he still had a personality. This personality would have been partly the result of his cultural (American Frontier) background, his family environment, and …