A few months ago, I started to realize how just long it had been since I first began on what we now call a faith journey. I started in college, which means that I have been going for more than twenty-five years. That realization brought a bunch of questions to mind. What’s come of all …
I didn’t stay up the evening of the election. I decided that, whatever happened, I would be better prepared to deal with the results with a good night’s sleep. Sadly, that sleep evaporated at about 4 a.m. When this kind of thing happens, I tell my body, “Look, I’m always battling sleepiness when I try …
By Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the director of publications for Sunstone, host of the Sunstone Podcast, and author of Virginia Sorensen: Pioneering Mormon Author (Signature Books). It was the middle of April, and the beginning of the pandemic. My friend Anna and I were standing, six feet apart, in the middle of …
Review Essay by Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the director of publications for the Sunstone Education Foundation. What is it that bothers mainstream Mormons about polygamy? Carol Lynn Pearson asked this question in a 2014 online survey and received more than 8,000 responses, 51 percent of them from active Mormons. Often the respondents …
By Stephen Carter Or click here to download the audio file: Call Me by My Name When I was in first grade, I decided to change my name. Well, not change it, exactly, but switch it. My parents had called me by my middle name since I was born—mainly, I think, …
By Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the director of publications for the Sunstone Education Foundation. An earlier version of this article was presented as a sermon on 17 July 2016 at the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Or right-click to download the audio here: A Reluctant Pioneer …
By Stephen Carter The first Book of Mormon metaphor my childhood brain latched onto was the rod of iron in Lehi’s Dream. I often contemplated a painting of it in an illustrated scripture book I had, fascinated by the drama of it: the struggling bodies, the miasmic landscape, the shimmering tree—all connected by …
Title: Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death, Edited by: Stephen Carter, Published: Signature books, 2017, Pages: 257 Genre: Narrative Non (mostly!) Fiction ISBN: 978-1-56085-265-0 Price: 23.95 Reviewed By Andrew Hamilton at the Association for Mormon Letters and Approaching Justice, shared here by permission. This article features a mention of Tom Kimball, who is in violation …
By Stephen Carter A friend of mine who works in the Church History Department once said that for every person who leaves the Church because of its history, two leave because of boredom. His estimate is probably conservative. I’m sure the Church has put time and resources into figuring out how to unbore its …
By Stephen Carter Eight years ago, while working on my third issue of Sunstone, I edited an article by John-Charles Duffy titled, “Mapping Mormon Historicity Debates—Part II: Perspectives from the Sociology of Knowledge.”1 Not the most exciting of titles, but the article itself upended my worldview and sent me on an eight-year journey that …
