Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Reflection From An African Convert On Official Declaration 2, Khumbulani D. Mdletshe

BYU Studies

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will commemorate in June 2018 the fortieth anniversary of the coming forth of Official Declaration 2. This anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the priesthood ban and the 1978 revelation. The revelation came through the prophet of the Lord, Spencer W. Kimball, and has had critics and supporters. As a convert to the Church and especially as a black African convert, I have experienced a long journey but a worthwhile one. This essay will focus on this personal journey and how I came to understand the background history …

Stephen H. Webb (1961-2016): Universal Scholar And Personal Friend, Alonzo L. Gaskill

BYU Studies

For many Latter-day Saints, their first awareness of the Roman Catholic scholar Stephen H. Webb came through his 2012 First Things article, titled “Mormonism Obsessed with Christ.” In that piece—which surprised Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints alike—Webb pointed out that “what gives Christianity its identity is its commitment to the divinity of Jesus Christ. And on that ground Mormons are more Christian than many mainstream Christians. . . . Mormonism is obsessed with Christ, and everything that it teaches is meant to awaken, encourage, and expand faith in him.” Within a week of that article’s publication, my inbox was flooded …

The Brigham Young University Football Program And The Analytics Revolution, Nelson Chung

BYU Studies

The Brigham Young University football program is the most visible component of the LDS Church’s flagship school. In 2010, it contracted to ESPN the broadcast of a majority of its games for a reported $800,000 to $1.2 million per home game through 2018. During the 2015 season, its eight games on the ESPN–ABC family of networks reached 14.8 million televisions, an average of 1.9 million each game. In terms of missionary value, the program rivals the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Along with publicity, the Choir has also invited a fair amount of scholarly attention, most notably a study of how its …

Socrates' Mission, Daniel W. Graham

BYU Studies

Socrates is the quintessential watershed of ancient thought. He is known as the thinker who turned philosophy away from cosmological speculation to ethics and value theory. In his own time, he was hailed by Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi as the man who was wiser than all others, and he was lampooned by Aristophanes on the comic stage as a quack, a sophist, and a fraud. His followers included two of the greatest traitors Athens produced, Alcibiades and Critias, and two of the greatest thinkers and moralists, Plato and Xenophon. In the end, he was tried on charges of impiety and …

The Bass Coupler, Marilyn Nielson

BYU Studies

Being called to play the organ for the first time, as a pianist, felt like being asked to ice skate for the U.S. Olympic team because you did such a good job walking into the arena. “You already know how to walk, after all,” the coaches reason. “This is basically the same thing—a stride lengthened here, a leg elevated there. You’ll pick it up in no time.”

Transmitting Religion: A Look At Vern L. Bengtson's Families And Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down Across Generations, Loren D. Marks

BYU Studies

Over the past hundred years, social scientists have tended to take one of three approaches with respect to the topic of religion. Approach 1 typically pathologizes and intellectually scorns religious beliefs, practices, and faith communities, although there are now hundreds of empirical studies that link religious involvement with increased mental health, relational health, physical health, and longevity. Approach 2 politely ignores, minimizes, or marginalizes religion. Approach 3 engages in actively studying religion but typically with a cold, arms-length, agnostic-like feel. For nearly thirty years, sociologist Vern Bengtson, the author of Families and Faith,3 practiced this third approach.

Death Being Swallowed Up In Netzach In The Bible And The Book Of Mormon, David Larsen

BYU Studies

One way to read the Book of Mormon is to be attentive to ways in which it comes across as a translated text. Being mindful of this is wise, because all translations—even inspired translations—lose something of the primary language, particularly as meanings shift when words are rendered into the vocabulary or idioms of the target language.

Gathering, Vivian M. Adams

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Our Classroom Journey Of Changing Our 7th Grade View Of The World, Gaylynn Parker

The Utah English Journal

How do I feel when I am treated unfairly? This essential question in my 7th grade Honors Language Arts class is usually met with comments such as, “My parents won’t let me get a cell phone” or “I’m tired of babysitting my siblings for free every weekend.” This year it was different. Pairing informational text with current events and literature changed the way my students saw themselves and the world, creating an awareness that elevated their perspectives from superficiality to depth as they examined the world through new eyes.

Making The "Moves" More "Modal", Thomas Henry

The Utah English Journal

We live in a multimodal world. Almost every piece of information that we receive on computers and mobile devices is multimodal. For those new to this term, multimodality refers to multiple modes of communication: the textual, the visual, the written, the aural/oral, and the gestural (Kress, 2000). Although seemingly appearing in isolation, these modalities are often expressed in pairs simultaneously. For instance, pictures may include text, videos often include audio, and even speakers and actors use gestures in their performances. In everyday online communication via Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter, we convey and respond to both textual and visual information working …

Book Review: Dark Energy, Marina Gutierrez

The Utah English Journal

“This story isn’t about dark energy, except to say there is a ton of stuff in the universe that we don’t understand” (Wells, 2016, p. 2).

With a touch of blue racing through her hair as she drives her BMW 550i Gran Turismo, Alice Goodwin was doing just fine in Florida. That is until her dad whisks her 2,000 miles away to the Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented in Minnesota. After stocking up on sweaters, she settles in at her new school while her father, director of special projects at NASA, investigates the crash landing of an alien …

Book Review: All Better Now, Mindee S. Ricks

The Utah English Journal

A modern memoir following a misfit girl from kindergarten to college, All Better Now is equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful. The author and protagonist, Emily Wing Smith, struggles for years to fit in with other kids—she is everything except “normal.”

Book Review: The Hidden Oracle, Tessa Hauglid

The Utah English Journal

“Is anything sadder than the sound of a god hitting a pile of garbage bags?” So questions the (former) god, Apollo, after Zeus turns him into a pimply 16-year-old boy, jettisoning him into a New York City dumpster. Apollo quickly realizes he has lost the very attributes that make him a god: immortality, beauty, and strength. The only divine gifts he seems to have retained are his expansive ego and his wit.

Die Schlacht Am Little Bighorn Und Ihre Physischen Zeugnisse: Eine Frage Der Interpretation (1. Teil), Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

Over a thousand shell casings and bullets have been found at the location of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. These artifacts have led to many interpretations on the nature of the battle, but there are many problems with these theories. Many of the artifacts are suspect because some of them could have been moved, introduced later, or may not be a representative sample. Any analysis made on the bases of the remaining shell casings and bullets must be made with these limitations in mind.

This article is the first article in a two-part series. You can access the second …

“We Rang The Bell”: Olonzod. Merrill’S Mission To Tonga (1892-1895)

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

No abstract provided.

Salman, Salman, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Salman and his family are from Afghanistan, where he worked as a doctor. He worked for fifteen years for a mining institute, and before that he worked in various hospitals with Americans and Germans for another combined 15 years. The family ran into problems with the Taliban, who threatened violence if he didn’t close his drugstore. During that same time, his son witnessed a suicide bombing at his school. Their daughter was forced to abandon her education when the Taliban poisoned the water at her school. They fled in attempts to live a normal life again and escape the threats …

Emal, Emal, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Emal was a gate security guard in the Afghan army and a supplier for American forces at the airport. Before leaving Afghanistan, Emal was kidnapped by Daesh, beaten, thrown into a pile of bodies, and left for dead. He woke up weeks later in hospital with adent in his skull, brain damage, and mental/emotional problems. When he was able, Emal fled with his wife and six kids, but they travelled with smugglers in separate cars and got separated. Iran police deported his wife and children back to Afghanistan. Emal continued on and eventually made his way to Oinofyta refugee camp …

"A Kind Of Painful Progress": Contesting And Collaborating On The Mormon Image In America, Cristine Hutchison-Jones

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Wrestling With Language: Exploring The Impact Of Mormon Metaphysics On Theological Pedagogy, Michelle Chaplin Sanchez

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

The Online Journal Of George Q. Cannon, Richard Dilworth Rust

BYU Studies

A long-anticipated project is coming to completion. Much of the journal of George Q. Cannon, covering the last half of the nineteenth century, is now freely available online at www.churchhistorianspress.org/george-q-cannon/, and the remainder of the journal will soon be available. As with other Church Historian’s Press publications, meticulous attention has been paid to produce an accurate and reliable transcript. It has been prepared largely according to the editorial procedures developed by the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Heron Song, Elizabeth Garcia

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Minutes Of The Afternoon Meeting Of The Council Of Fifty, April 11, 1844, Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaaat, Jeffrey D. Mahas

BYU Studies

In his essay “Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,” on the previous pages in this issue, Ronald K. Esplin overviews the history of the Council of Fifty and the three books in which William Clayton recorded its minutes. He tells what these minutes add to our understanding of Church leaders’ concerns about outreach to American Indians, Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, and the desire to claim religious liberty. The text presented and annotated below is excerpted from The Joseph Smith Papers, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846.

Nephi’S Use Of Inverted Parallels, Dennis Newton

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Did Nephi intentionally use chiasmus in his writings? An analysis of fifteen multi-level chiasm candidates in Nephi’s writings demonstrates a high statistical probability (99%+) that the poetic form was used intentionally by Nephi but only during two specific writing periods. This finding is buttressed by further analysis, which reveals a clear and unexpected literary pattern for which Nephi seems to have reserved his usage of chiasmus. The nature of obedience is a major theme in Nephi’s writings, and he regularly employed chiasms to explore the topic early in his writings. After a period during which he discontinued use of the …

The Faith To See: Burning In The Bosom And Translating The Book Of Mormon In Doctrine And Covenants 9, Stan Spencer

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Doctrine and Covenants 9:7–9 is conventionally interpreted as the Lord’s description of the method by which the Book of Mormon was translated. A close reading of the entire revelation, however, suggests that the Lord was not telling Oliver Cowdery how to translate but rather how to know whether it was right for him to translate and how to obtain the faith necessary to do so. Faith would have enabled Oliver Cowdery to overcome his fear and translate, just as it would have enabled Peter (in Matthew 14) to overcome his fear and walk on water.

Perhaps Close Can Count In More Than Horseshoes, Brant A. Gardner

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Schooling the Prophet provides a good survey of many early Latter-day Saint doctrines. It suggests that there is a causal link between the Book of Mormon and those doctrines. Sometimes it makes the case; many times it is close but doesn’t quite support the thesis of the book.

“O Ye Fair Ones” — Revisited, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Turning To The Lord With The Whole Heart: The Doctrine Of Repentance In The Bible And The Book Of Mormon, Loren Spendlove, Tina Spendlove

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Repentance is considered one of the foundational principles of the gospel. As demonstrated in this article, there is a harmony in how repentance is portrayed in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon. In all three books the principle of repentance is shown to be a two-part process of turning away from sin and returning to the Lord through good works. Just as faith has been called “active belief,” repentance could be called “active remorse,” and must be accompanied by good works to be effective in our lives. The goal and end result of sincere repentance is a …

Vanquishing The Mormon Menace, Stephen O. Smoot

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Patrick Mason has offered a fascinating look at the history of nineteenth century anti-Mormonism in the American South with his 2011 volume The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South. Situating nineteenth century Southern anti-Mormonism in its historical context, Mason narrates a vivid account of how Mormons at times faced violent opposition that stemmed from deep cultural, religious, and political differences with mainstream American Protestants. Mason’s volume is an excellent resource for those interested in Mormon history.

David G. Stewart Jr. And Matthew Martinich, Reaching The Nations: International Lds Church Growth Almanac, Carter Charles Et Al.

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Proselyting On The Rock Of Gibraltar, 1853-1855: The Letters Of Edward Stevenson To The Juvenile Instructor In 1885, Reid L. Neilson

BYU Studies

In January 1885, the Mormon Juvenile Instructor magazine ran a short cover story on the history of Gibraltar, known as “the Rock,” the British overseas territory located on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula bordering Spain. While the magazine aimed to educate Latter-day Saints about the cosmopolitan world generally, the Rock did have a noteworthy place in Mormon history. The editor, George Q. Cannon, wrote, “As in the mother country [Great Britain] all religious societies are said to enjoy perfect freedom. Still when Elders Edward Stevenson and N[athan] T. Porter arrived in Gibraltar in March, 1853, to preach ‘Mormonism,’ …