How could a “Gentile” survive in Utah in the 1980s? This was the focus of the article “Stalking the Wild Gentile,” by Al Church, published in Network magazine, “the monthly for Utah’s working women.” When Church moved to Utah, during the late 1960s, a Catholic nun told him, “As a kid raised a Catholic, you …
Mormonism has always dreamed big and in this episode, we dive into one of its boldest and most disastrous dreams: the great gathering of Zion. Lindsay and Bryan pull apart the myth and the machinery behind Brigham Young’s plan to build a literal Kingdom of God in the American West, fueled by prophecies, poverty, and, …
In 1982, some Christian denominations in Utah Valley explicitly asked that vocal prayer not be conducted in public schools. According to the October 1982 issue of the Sunstone Review, a statement from the Utah Valley Ministerial Association said, “Religious ideas or doctrines are conveyed in vocal prayer and there is already pressure upon children in …
Being a single, 25-year-old Mormon female is a tough life. But Dorothy Black makes it into a stand-up comedy routine in this episode of the Sunstone Podcast.
Back in the dark ages when there was no such thing as online advertising, Sunstone had to advertise its event on real paper. Sooo clunky. But really pretty. For example, this one for the 1981 symposium. And I was amazed to find out the high caliber of authors Sunstone was able to bring in even …
Part V of the Sunstone Classics series. Peggy Fletcher Stack was editor in chief of Sunstone and has been a longtime religion reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. This is excerpted from a Sunstone article published in 1985. It starts on page 4 of issue 46. When I was a teenager, the soulful, hungry faces, …
A few months ago, I started to realize how just long it had been since I first began on what we now call a faith journey. I started in college, which means that I have been going for more than twenty-five years. That realization brought a bunch of questions to mind. What’s come of all …
In 1982, one BYU professor stood on the brink of creating a new discipline. As the Sunstone Review reported in its November 1982 issue, “Dr. Wesley Burr has suggested a new term—famology—for a new academic field.” And what does famology study? Coming from a BYU professor, there can be only one answer: families! Burr was …
This brings us back to our question about whether Moroni’s head sticking out of a hat crosses onto sacred ground. I’m going to try to answer that by using a story from J. Golden Kimball. He writes that he was once approached by a woman who told him that she had two brothers. One of …
Before Mountain Meadows, there was blood in Arkansas. This is the wild, tragic, and shockingly true story of the Mormon apostle murdered over a love triangle, the woman caught in the crossfire, and the ripple effect that helped ignite one of the darkest moments in American frontier history. SHOWNOTES: Eleanor McLean and the Murder of …
