So, for our first 100 years, Mormons wanted all the ground to be stable. We might think of the Nauvoo Mormons draining the swamp so that they could have solid ground to build their houses on. We can also think of them trekking across the prairie to get to Salt Lake City where they could …
In 2015, Lynn Gorton Cropper published an article in Sunstone titled, “Laughs Precede the Miracle.” She starts with two studies. The first study, “Humor and Group Effectiveness,” (2008), concludes that successful group humor can create an attitude of psychological safety for the group members, enabling them to feel less defensive when faced with tension and …
Above the resurrected beings is deity. And this is one place where Sunstone readers made their views known. Sunstone reprinted this comic in 1989 from the Wittenberg Door, a magazine of Christian satire. According to editor Elbert Peck, Sunstone received a barrage of complaints about this cartoon—though none of them got into the letters to …
So, the next step up is, do we publish humor about founding leaders? For example, this cartoon about why Martin Harris was Joseph’s scribe only briefly. This is one of the very few cartoons I could find about Joseph Smith published in Sunstone. It seems that, for the most part, we stayed away from pictorial …
One of the most interesting questions you can ask about a culture is what it considers to be within the realm of humor. What subjects and people can humor be about? Where is sacred ground—where humor is not allowed—and where is mundane ground—where it is? As Sunstone started its humor career, it stuck mainly with …
The first 100 years of Mormonism produced almost zero published humor. The closest thing we have is Parley P. Pratt’s short story about Joseph Smith meeting the devil. And, of course, it was meant as proselytizing material. You would be completely within your rights to point out that J. Golden Kimball contributed a lot of …
By Lynne Gorton Cropper SINCE ITS FOUNDING in 1830, the Mormon Church has had to deal with disparagement from outsiders. In the Church’s early days, the stress created by unfavorable media attention sometimes resulted in violence as is evidenced by Joseph Smith’s 1844 decision to destroy The Nauvoo Expositor’s printing press. In an attempt to protect sacred …
