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. This column shares the story of “Ryan,” a Church employee stationed in Guatemala. (Names, locations, and details have been changed to protect identities.) A few years ago, he found …
Author: Stephen Carter
An Inappropriate Friendship
By Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the director of publications for Sunstone, host of the Sunstone Podcast, and author of Virginia Sorensen: Pioneering Mormon Author (Signature Books). It was the middle of April, and the beginning of the pandemic. My friend Anna and I were standing, six feet apart, in the middle of …
Earth Stewardship: Our Work for the Unborn
By Robert A. Rees Robert A. Rees is the director of Mormon Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. He is the author of A New Witness for the World (BCC Press, 2020) and editor of Why I Stay 2 (Signature Books, 2021). I According to Latter-day Saint theology, this earth was created by the …
Household Codes and “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”
By M. David Huston M. David Huston lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. He is a husband and the father of four children. Although it remains outside the LDS Church’s canonized scripture, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (hereafter, “the Proclamation”) is framed authoritatively. It ascribes “divine design” to the …
Decorating Quarantine
By Grace Pool Grace Pool is a hand embroidery and digital media artist living in Salt Lake City. She is the events manager for Sunstone. Growing up, I did everything you’re supposed to do as a good Mormon. Sort of. I remember canning our own grape juice concentrate so we’d have fresh juice …
Mother-hunger
By Dayna Patterson Dayna Patterson is a writer, editor, textile artist, macro photographer, amateur fungophile, and Thea-curious recovering Mormon. Find her at daynapatterson.com. As the camera zooms out to capture the last scene—a paved road winding through Switzerland’s rolling green—I feel myself about to break. We’re sitting on the bed in pajamas, me and my …
Reconciling Mormonism with Pluralism
By Ronn Smith Ronn Smith is a consulting engineer in Wyoming who taught college physics and engineering for fifteen years. He and his wife founded the Sheridan Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in 1983. As A Mormon youth enthralled with physics and philosophy, perhaps my post-mission departure from the LDS Church was inevitable. I wrestled with …
What Does an LDS Temple Look Like to AI?
Spoiler: The Idaho Falls Temple Today I showed my wife this picture and asked her what came to mind. “It kind of looks like a Mormon temple pagoda,” she said. “I think so, too!” I said. “But why does it look Mormon?” The image is from a book called Temples of the Imagination: AI-generated …
Traitor Aversion and Mormonism
A recent Pew Research Center poll reported that Americans tend to view members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more negatively than they view Catholics, Jews, evangelicals, atheists, and Muslims. It seems odd that a religion born and raised in the United States should be so distrusted by Americans. While I was …
Before the Bombs: A Mark Hofmann Interview
In September 1982, the Sunstone Review published an interview with Mark Hofmann. At the time, Hofmann was known for having found a series of extraordinary historical documents. One was the Anthon transcript, which contained symbols Joseph Smith allegedly copied from the golden plates and sent to New York scholar Charles Anthon. Another contained an alleged …