Retracing his spiritual odyssey, Jack Newell weaves a colorful tapestry that includes a religiously diverse extended family, his Methodist upbringing in rural Ohio, and baptism into the Mormon Church when he was twenty-three years old, in the era of David O. McKay’s leadership and High B. Brown’s liberal influence. Proceeding through a series of inspiring …
Speaker: Eric Samuelsen
Are Mormon Democrats Coming Out Of Extinction?
In April 1998, Elder Marlin K. Jensen told the Salt Lake Tribune that Church leaders feel “it’s not in the best interest [of the Church] to be known as a one-party church.” With the rise of Senator Harry Reid to Senate minority leader, and with a growing disenchantment with Bush administration policies on faith-based initiatives, …
Reading Lolita In Tehran, Reading Pride And Prejudice In Taichung: Literature As Resistance To Spiritual And Political Oppression And As An Aid To Spiritual Growth
Reading Lolita in Tehran explores how reading forbidden works of literature can be a soul-saving act of resistance to spiritual and political oppression. Latter-day Saints are advised to seek knowledge out of the best books and encouraged to believe that the church will one day have its Shakespeare’s and Miltons. Panelists will explore the relationship …
A FOOL’S ERRAND? MORMON FICTION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
There is an elephant in the room whenever one ventures to discuss the state of LDS writing, namely: do LDS people actually read LDS literature? Or more to the point, do they buy it? In this presentation, I explore the notion that LDS writers may have to reach beyond the LDS audience in order to …
NAKED WORDS: The Cutting Edge of Mormon Literature
NAKED WORDS: The Cutting Edge of Mormon Literature Eric Samuelsen, Robert Hodgson van Wagoner