The Promise And Peril Of The Internet Within Mormonism The Internet presents considerable promise and peril within Mormonism. Over the past fifteen years, LDS-themed web sites, forums, blogs, podcasts, and wikis have emerged, each technology developing a unique set of cultural and social implications for Latter-day Saints. In 2006, new technologies and services such as …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2006
Green Salads Of The Not-So-Peculiar, Congealed Kind
Green Salads Of The Not-So-Peculiar, Congealed Kind Green Jell-O salad, a staple of ward dinners and funerals, has long been a source of pride, peculiarity, and, for some, embarrassment among the Latter-day Saints. Many Saints proudly embrace the official snack food of Utah as a whimsical symbol of our peculiarity. Yet are we any more …
Fawn McKay Brodie And Joseph Smith: A 60th Anniversary Retrospective
Fawn McKay Brodie And Joseph Smith: A 60th Anniversary Retrospective This session, consisting of two presentations, provides a retrospective on the life and work of the controversial writer-biographer Fawn McKay Brodie. This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Brodie’s highly influential biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History. It also …
Lengthen Your Stride: The Administration Of Spencer W Kimball
Lengthen Your Stride: The Administration Of Spencer W Kimball The twelve-year presidency (1973–1985) of Spencer W. Kimball was marked by many significant events, the revelation on priesthood, the ERA battle, the fight against the MX, Howard Hughes’s will, and by a president operating at a frantic pace, traveling the world to conduct more than forty …
Reflections On Mormon Liminality: A Generational Response
Reflections On Mormon Liminality: A Generational Response Dan Wotherspoon’s December 2005 Sunstone editorial speaks of the concept of liminality in relation to the Sunstone community, that as we explore questions within Mormonism, we often find ourselves in the awkward, sometimes dangerous, threshold (limen) between two worlds. Wotherspoon speaks of his own sustained immersion in liminality …
‘Faithful Scholarship’ And The Mainstreaming Of Mormon Studies
‘Faithful Scholarship’ And The Mainstreaming Of Mormon Studies As Mormon studies emerges at non-LDS institutions of higher education (Utah Valley State College, Utah State University, Claremont Graduate University), it will be shaped by negotiation among various interests. The most important set of LDS interests is represented by “faithful scholarship,” which has come to set the …
My Creed: Writing One’s Personal Articles Of Faith
My Creed: Writing One’s Personal Articles Of Faith For millennia, Christians have distilled their beliefs into short statements, similar to Joseph Smith’s Articles of Faith. While the practice of a committee imposing a creedal statement of belief on members is anathema to Mormons, the use of the literary form of the creed by individuals is …
Annealing And Healing, Or New Wine In Old Bottles
Annealing And Healing, Or New Wine In Old Bottles Annealing and healing is a modern metaphor for the familiar Biblical one of new wine in old bottles. This presentation describes the physical process of annealing from a metallurgist’s point of view, showing how annealing (recrystallizing) a metal can be a useful metaphor for the spiritual …
The Indians Are Lamanites But The Los Angeles Times Is Not: An Alternate Interpretation Of DNA Results And Promises Made To The Chosen People Of The Americas
The Indians Are Lamanites But The Los Angeles Times Is Not: An Alternate Interpretation Of DNA Results And Promises Made To The Chosen People Of The Americas On February 16, 2006, William Lobdell, a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times, published an article headlined: “Bedrock of a Faith Is Jolted.” Whether or not the …
The Erotics Of Fifties Pop Culture (partial only)
The Erotics Of Fifties Pop Culture (partial only) Church leaders work hard to separate LDS young people from much of popular culture, certainly from the explicit sexuality in movies, on television, and on the Internet. In the wake of such efforts, a major industry has sprung up which provides entertainment that embodies LDS standards and …