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Foreword: Dead Wood And Rushing Water: Essays On Mormon Faith, Family And Culture, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

The essay is a form particularly well suited for Mormon writers, for it blends a number of their cultural and religious imperatives. We are a confessional people, in both senses of the word. In keeping with Augustine’s principal employment of the term, we are committed to the public profession of our faith. Not merely as an act of evangelizing, but among the more reflective Saints, as an articulated meditation on our yearning for the divine, and a psalmic celebration of God’s gifts. We are also confessional in the more conventional sense: journal keeping, the informality of Mormon worship, public testimony …