Mormon Studies Commons^™

Moo At The Moon, Susan Elizabeth Howe

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

March Morning, New York City, David Passey

BYU Studies Quarterly

At last the earth lifts the cobbled street between Church and City Hall back in line with the sun.

Women Of Faith Speak Up And Speak Out The Genesis And Philosophical Underpinnings Of Mormon Women For Ethical Government, Sharlee Mullins Glenn

BYU Studies Quarterly

Good government is ethical government. That is the premise upon which the nonprofit organization Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) was founded.

Like millions of people across the United States, I found myself growing increasingly alarmed during the 2016 U.S. election cycle as I watched the great rifts in our political landscape widen and deepen, abetted by the divisive and often vitriolic discourse on all sides. This division, combined with the flagrant flouting of basic human decency by some who were running for public office, awakened many of us to a sense of our duty as citizens.

Bending The Arc Of Politics Toward Zion Voices From Mormon Women For Ethical Government, Jennifer Walker Thomas, Emma Petty Addams

BYU Studies Quarterly

At the conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. paraphrased the words of Theodore Parker to situate small battles for justice within a larger movement toward God’s ideal

world. Parker, a Boston abolitionist, beautifully described the ache of discipleship that results when spirits reach for worlds they cannot quite see: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.

And from what I …

“To Moderate And Unify” The Role That Latter-Day Saint Citizen-Rhetors Can Play In Healing American Political Discourse, Kristine Hansen

BYU Studies Quarterly

In the April 1997 general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then-Elder Henry B. Eyring stated, “When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.” Repetition, he asserted, means the Lord’s servants are “warning the people, telling them the way to safety.” In both the October 2020 and the April 2021 general conferences, President Dallin H. Oaks stressed the importance of the rule of law and the best ways to participate as citizens in political processes. Although he focused on the United States, President Oaks reassured his global audience that the principles he …

Cradled, Kevin Klein

BYU Studies Quarterly

Son, if my breath were mine to give. If I could spend more than a ragged few to welcome and say goodbye to you. If we knew your mother could live

The Role Of The Article Iii Judge, Thomas B. Griffith

BYU Studies Quarterly

The Constitution says precious little about the role envisioned for federal judges in the new government that document created: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.”

Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’S Answer To An Age Of Conflict, Patrick Q. Mason, J. David Pulsipher, Kristine Haglund, Reviewer

BYU Studies Quarterly

Let’s start at the end. The achievement of Proclaim Peace is particularly evident in its endnotes, which comprise balanced references to Restoration scripture, the Bible, Latter-day Saint authorities, and academic Mormon studies and peace studies literature. Scholars ranging from early Americanists like Bernard Bailyn to sociologist Max Weber and even geneticists like Marc Haber provide interdisciplinary contextual richness. There are references to thinkers from Catholic, Protestant, Latter-day Saint, Community of Christ, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu traditions. This broadly informed and carefully applied framework for reading scripture and exploring a key aspect of the restored gospel and Church history is a …

The Saints And The State: The Mormon Troubles In Illinois, James Simeone, Brent M. Rogers, Reviewer

BYU Studies Quarterly

The history of the Latter-day Saint experience in Nauvoo, Illinois, still has a great deal to teach us. It is not just the simplistic story of religious persecution and expulsion that is often rehearsed. In seven dense chapters, James Simeone, professor of political science at Illinois Wesleyan University, unveils a complex political milieu to explain the tension that led to the 1846 departure of the Saints from Illinois—and ultimately the United States. Relying on political theory and philosophy and his deep knowledge of politics in frontier Illinois, Simeone unpacks the paradox of a developing democracy, which he defines as the …

Review: Stretching The Heavens: The Life Of Eugene England And The Crisis Of Modern Mormonism; Eugene England: A Mormon Liberal , Terryl L. Givens, Kristine L. Haglund, Steven C. Walker, Reviewer

BYU Studies Quarterly

Kristine Haglund’s compact biography, Eugene England: A Mormon Liberal, is an illuminating contribution to the new Introduction to Mormon Thought series. Mormon Thought provides “short and accessible introductions” to those who have “shaped” the many manifestations of “Mormonism” (vii). Haglund situates England historically, as a liberal influence on a developing faith. Born 1933—the year of the deaths of old-style expansive theologians B. H. Roberts and James E. Talmage, and the same year J. Reuben Clark introduced more conservative influence in the First Presidency—Gene was caught in the collision between Mormonism’s original enthusiasm for innovative theology and the increasing rigidity of …

Front Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Gold, Silver, And Grain, Shinji Takagi

BYU Studies Quarterly

In this paper, I discuss, from the perspective of a monetary economist, the operational aspects of the system of fixed prices for gold, silver, and all kinds of grain described in the Book of Mormon (Alma 11:3–19), based on internal evidence, economic logic, and historical precedents from antiquity. Previous authors have noted several unique features of the Nephite system, which was purportedly created by king Mosiah in the early first century BC. For example, John Welch, approaching the system strictly as one of weights and measures, argued that, in this otherwise binary system (in which denomination increases by a multiple …

Religion And Sexual Orientation As Predictors Of Utah Youth Suicidality, W. Justin Dyer, Michael A. Goodman, David S. Wood

BYU Studies Quarterly

Adolescent suicide rates have increased substantially over the last two decades; suicide has become the second leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults since 2017. Some areas in the U.S. have experienced particularly large rises in suicide. For example, according to the Utah Department of Health, there was a 136.2 percent increase in suicides among Utah youth age 10–17 from 2011 to 2015, compared to an increase of 24 percent nationally.

Prophets, Pagans, And Papyri, Stephen O. Smoot, Kerry Muhlestein

BYU Studies Quarterly

Egypt has a long history of exchange and contact with a variety of people. Ancient people of diverse ethnic backgrounds made their way into Egypt—whether as war captives, mercenaries, merchants, invading armies, members of diplomatic parties, refugees, or simple migrants—bringing with them their language and culture. One such group was the ancient Jews, whose enslavement at the hands of “a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8), and exodus under the prophetic leadership of Moses may be the best-remembered incident of a Hebrew presence in Egypt, but it was not the only one.

On The Necessity Of Loss, Shamae Budd

BYU Studies Quarterly

The second night in the hospital after our son was born, I crept out of bed, hobbled a few feet across the linoleum, and curled up on the stiff pleather couch where Daniel was sleeping. Our son was in the NICU with a mild case of pneumonia, so it was just he and I in that little room. My body hurt. My heart, too. Daniel pulled me close on the little green hospital couch, and I wept. It felt like nothing would be good again—like we would never be the same.

The River Conception's Mouth, David Thacker

BYU Studies Quarterly

Under her linea nigra the abdominals have parted, / and the couple has finally neared the river’s estuary, / a lowland of swirling impatience and rising pain.

This Holy Mess, Sharlee Mullins Glenn

BYU Studies Quarterly

When we go on road trips as a family, we often play what we call “Deep Questions.” One person asks a probing question, and then the rest of us have to answer (“What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” “If you could spend one hour with any historical figure, who would it be?” and so on). On one such occasion, someone asked: “What is your greatest fear?”

A New Witness To The World, By Robert A. Rees (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2020), Lane Welch

BYU Studies Quarterly

This book provides a series of essays that analyze and contextualize the text of the Book of Mormon while providing Professor Rees’s faithful perspective on the text. Though each essay stands on its own as a separate work, the later essays, handling the context of Joseph Smith’s work as a nineteenth-century American writer, do reference and build off one another. These later essays handle the backgrounds and processes of various American writers contemporary to Joseph Smith, providing an effective survey of the literary milieu into which the Book of Mormon first entered; the earlier essays are more focused on the …

End Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Why Abraham Was Not Wrong To Lie, Duane Boyce

BYU Studies Quarterly

The book of Genesis contains two well-known accounts of Abraham lying about his wife, Sarah (Gen. 12:10–20; 20:1–18).1 In each of them, Abraham reports that Sarah is his sister, 2 Sarah is then taken from Abraham, trouble ensues for those who have taken her, and Sarah is then returned to Abraham. The account in Genesis 20 also explicitly tells us that the Lord protected Sarah from being “touched” in the circumstances (v. 6), and the account in Genesis 12, too, tells us that the Lord intervened, presumably for the same purpose (v. 17).