by Stephen Carter 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 left stories of their own encounters with polygamy in an answer box at the end of …
Tag: Stephen Carter
Review of Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt
by Patrick Q. Mason Reviewed by Stephen Carter Doubt has two unique definitions in Mormon culture. In church meetings, we’re most likely to use the word in a negative sense to describe the state of someone who is breaking themselves against—or ignoring—an obvious gospel truth. (Except when we are talking about someone who is …
Pilot Program: Making Polygamy Personal
Reviewed by Stephen Carter A blossom of faith That’s what opened in front of Abigail—just for an instant—when her stake president called her and her husband, Jacob, to be part of a pilot program to reintroduce plural marriage into the Mormon Church. Everything in her brain said no. But that blossom. Like most of us …
Movie Reviews: The Cokeville Miracle and Freetown
Reviewed by Stephen Carter The Cokeville Miracle and Freetown are fascinating glimpses into how Mormons approach faith-promoting stories, and how those stories interact with the core message of the gospel. The Cokeville Miracle If you haven’t heard about the Cokeville miracle: in 1986, David and Doris Young (played by Nathan Stevens and Kym Mellen, repectively) …
Purple: Review
Reviewed by Stephen Carter Purple Mary Lythgoe Bradford Dialogue Foundation, 2009 72 pages WE SEEM TO be magnets for beauty. Our childhoods are “cherry tree worlds” haunted by “twanging harpies,” and nourished by “string bean summers.” As we grow, “deep library treasures” take seed in our souls and whisper to us until we start …
Growing with Sunstone
By Stephen Carter I‘m certainly not the youngest person to helm Sunstone Magazine, but I am the first editor to be as old as the magazine itself, both of us being born in 1975. Though I was not raised in a household that subscribed to Sunstone, or any other independent Mormon publication (I was kept …
On Gratitude
By Stephen Carter Based on a sacrament meeting talk given 25 November 2012 in the Orem, Utah 6th Ward. Preparing this talk on gratitude became daunting almost immediately. Before I even began researching, I could already hear an insistent voice trying to take control. It wanted me to say things like, “I have …
In Memoriam: Paul Swenson
By Stephen Carter From Medicare’s point of view, Paul Swenson’s 100-day recovery from the life-threatening infection he contracted in August 2011 was probably money ill spent since he passed away only a few months after his release from care. But for me, it was a great time. I knew where Paul was living, and …
Faith By Proxy: A Conversation with Author Brady Udall
If we exclude science fiction and vampire authors, Brady Udall is currently Mormonism’s brightest literary star. Breaking onto the scene with his short story collection Letting Loose the Hounds (1996), Udall has been characterized as a contemporary Charles Dickens. His first novel, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (2002), tells the sprawling story of …
Playdate with President Benson
by Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the editor of Sunstone and author of What of the Night? a collection of award-winning personal essays from Zarahemla Books. He is stay-at-home dad to two almost-teenage sons and the world’s most beautiful toddler daughter. Or, right-click here to download the audio file: Playdate with President Benson …