All of us in the Borderlands of the Church must eventually face the issues of: when, to whom, and how to disclose our situation. Past studies suggest that almost all Borderlanders are in the closet to some extent and that a large share have not told their spouses the whole story. A panel of D. …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2011
Do They Still Teach That?
The song “I Believe” from the Tony award-winning musical The Book of Mormon mentions familiar, obscure, and even contested Mormon doctrines. This panel is a riff of sorts on ideas enumerated in the song, from the foundational belief that God created the universe and sent his son to die for our sins to the idea …
The Changing Message Of Kirtland Temple Tours 1830-2011
This paper will look at how the tour message delivered at the Kirtland Temple has changed over the past 175 years. Detailing the early tours led by Joseph Smith Sr. and Warren Parrish as well as the Kirtland Temple guides of today, the presentation will show how often the message shared at the Kirtland Temple …
Insights Toward Understanding Homosexuality: A Father’s Journey
In a discussion with my college-aged son during the 2004 election debates on gay marriage, I was shocked when he expressed sympathy for gay marriage, and I argued against it. Six months later, our family learned that our oldest son is gay. This sent us on a journey to understand the complexity of homosexuality. “Insights …
The Significance Of Martin Luther King For The Saints Today
We all know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leading civil rights activist in America in the 1960s—a man who offered a prophetic voice to the major domestic issue of his time. But he should also be seen as one whose thought, as reflected in a significant body of public writings, reveals a man …
Mormonism, Desire, And Popular Romance: Constructions Of Gender, Relationships, And Power
Romantic fiction comprises 25% of books sold in the US; its readers represent a diverse group. Popularity notwithstanding, the genre is regularly challenged as trashy and prurient and for reinforcing the limitations of raditional gender roles. This panel will examine what the themes, trends, and traits of the genre and its readership help reveal about …
Long-Haired Preachers Come Out Every Night: Mormonism’s Role In The Joe Hill Case
The state of Utah executed labor songwriter Joe Hill ninety-five years ago. While there is no evidence that Church leadership played any direct part in the case, interesting questions arise in three areas where the Joe Hill case intersects with Mormon history and Mormon players in the trial. How did the utah Supreme Court favor …
We Are All Going To Have To Live It Someday
Mormon theology distinguishes between eternal principles, called ‘higher laws,’ and earthly compromises or ‘lower laws.’ While the early practice of plural marriage is now forbidden in the mainstream LDS Church, it is still considered by many to be a higher law that ‘we are all going to have to live someday.’ This session will compare …
From The Absolute To The Individual: Person And Pre-Mortal Existence In Nineteenth-Century Mormonism And Romanticism
In When Souls Had Wings: Premortal Existence in Western Thought, Terryl Givens covers the heterodox doctrine of a pre-mortal existence from Plato to today. This idea in Platonic philosophy and its emphasis in Christian Platonism always accompanies a story of a fall from perfect unity in the ideal and a return to the same unity …
Solitary Faith
The paper investigates the cultural space inhabited by LDS women who remain single past the “ordinary” marrying age of their religion. Using stories and personal narratives of single LDS women, the project situates and analyzes the experiences of the women within the broader Mormon framework. The women in the study feel out of sorts: they …