By Robert A. Rees “To be in a holy place where love is found, where all are named and where hearts are freed to change the world.” —Motto of St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Hollywood, California ONE SUNDAY, MY friend David Ballantine invited me to attend church with him. I have known David since …
Tag: Robert A. Rees
Jesus in the Modern World
By Robert A. Rees Jesus is like a Rorschach test. He is like the doubloon Captain Ahab nails to the mast in Moby Dick, a mirror in which we see our own reflection staring back at us. As a Christian who teaches religion at both Graduate Theological Union and the University of California, Berkeley (as …
Sun + Stone
By Robert A. Rees When Peggy Fletcher and Scott Kenney were contemplating starting a new Mormon journal in 1974, they came to see me in Los Angeles. I liked them and I liked their energy and imagination. Being the editor of Dialogue at the time, I immediately offered to help by sending them any manuscripts …
The Dawning of a Brighter Day: An Analysis of MormonsandGays.org
By Robert A. Rees IT WOULD TAKE a calloused heart not to rejoice over the Church’s recent website, www.mormonsandgays.org. Jim Dabakis, head of Utah’s Democratic Party, was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying that producing the website “can’t have been easy” for the Church, but the messages by Church authorities (including those by …
Hosannas at Glide Memorial Church
By Robert A. Rees There is no music like that music, no drama like the drama of the saints rejoicing, the sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming together and crying holy unto the Lord. —James Baldwin On Palm Sunday there are two long lines at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church …
Jon McNaughton: Mormon Artist, Right-Wing Propagandist
By Robert A. Rees [The artist] will endeavor to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed. Living himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words. —Wassily Kandinsky Whenever we find in poetry that which gives us …
Toward a Feminist Mormon Midrash: Mormon Women and the Imaginative Reading of Scripture
By Robert A. Rees In the Jewish mind, . . . reverence for God’s word requires more creative attention. It requires an active, imaginative engagement with language. This is what imaginative reading ultimately requires: a willingness to step completely out of the boat and dive into the waters with a God who has declared …
Letters to the Editor: Issue 161
Remembering Lambda Delt In her excellent tribute to a beloved spiritual mentor, Laurie N. DiPadova-Stocks fails to mention the vital role played by the Church co-ed fraternity, Lambda Delta Sigma, in the 40’s and 50’s, which Lowell Bennion founded. As an appendage to the University of Utah’s Institute of Religion led by Bennion and his …
Letters to the Editor: Issue 162
On Glenn In her letter to the editor (Sunstone 161, December 2011) about my article “Glenn Beck: Rough Stone Roaring” (Sunstone 159, June 2010), Kathryn Hemingway says that I ignore the fact that Beck apologized for calling President Obama a racist. In truth, confronted with his words the next day, Beck said, “Well, I stand …