This is Sunstone’s perennially best-attended session. Hear speakers share the events and concepts that animate their religious lives—a little soul-baring, a little spiritual journey, a little intellectual testimony-bearing. This self-reflective night is about the things that matter most, including spirited congregational hymn-singing. Ardis E. Parshall, Camilla M. Smith
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2011
Pursuing Truth Through Fiction: The Assassination Of Governor Boggs, A Historical Novel
On 6 May 1842, an unknown assailant shot Lilburn Boggs, former governor of Missouri and author of the infamous extermination order against the Mormons. Though given up for dead and widely reported killed, Boggs survived. The crime was never solved. Twenty-five years after the fact, seeking closure if not justice, his family hired a Pinkerton …
Banquet: Treasures Of Earth On Heaven: The Impact Of Mormonism’s Missing, Repudiated, Rebuilt, And Museum-Sequestered Artifacts
A supremely important artifact to early Christians was the cross; slivers of it were cherished as the most valuable of relics. Over time, the cross has been repudiated by latter-day Saints, who instead mark their most sacred buildings with a statue of Moroni. Arguably the most important artifact of Mormonism, the object on which its …
Circumscribing Meaning: Mediating Religious Experience
The LDS Church often patrols or limits the proliferation of meaning by using paratexts, “verbal frames,” or “symbolic packages.” in “The loss of the Creature,” Walker Percy discusses the way this “general surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie” amounts to a …
Practicing Stewardship In A Consumer Culture
As our testimony of the gospel gives meaning and motivation to our relations with other people, so too our sense of divinely appointed stewardship informs all of our interactions with the material world, both manufactured and naturally created. We must strive to live as responsible stewards, making prudent use of resources, cultivating abundance in our …
Joseph And Emma Smith’s Nauvoo Mansion House: History And Mystery
Joseph and Emma Smith’s Nauvoo, IL, “Mansion House” has been open for tours since 1918. This illustrated presentation will explore questions related to restoration and interpretation of the home. Topics will include who gets credit/blame for the bar room, the real purpose of Joseph’s secret closet, and exterior symbolism the Mansion House shares with the …
Trusting Smallness In An Infinity Squared Universe
Just within our lifetime, the frontiers of our universe have been pushed outward in ways that take language and comprehension beyond their limits. God’s declaration that the creation was “good” takes on added gravitas, added awe, now that scientists have given us a vastly bigger glimpse of creation. But the small story is just as …
Sibbrich’s Tale
In this portion of a longer memoir that examines my connections to the lives of lineal ancestors in sixteenth-century northern Germany, I draw on historical events to imagine what life would have been like for the daughter of a ferryman ancestor named Edde Feerman. Records of the time primarily document the lives of the region’s …
What LDS Hymns Really Say To, For, & About Us
We participate in worship through congregational singing—and many LDS hymns use language that acknowledges the hims in the congregation but not the hers. In this respect, are hymns a measure of Church doctrine? At Christmas, do we seek only “Peace on earth, good will to men”? What about the sisters when I offer to “divide …
Mormonism And The Prosperity Gospel
The Prosperity Gospel is the Christian belief that God wants to reward his followers with material prosperity and wealth. This philosophy continues to rise in prominence among many Christian adherents following its foundation in the latter half of the twentieth century. I compare this theology with similar strains of thought in the Mormon paradigm and …