DIALOGUE 54.1 Spring 2021
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DIALOGUE PO Box 1094 Farmington, UT 84025 DIALOGUE electronic service requested DIALOGUE a journal of mormon thought 54.1 spring 2021 EDITORS DIALOGUE EDITOR Taylor Petrey, Kalamazoo, MI a journal of mormon thought WEB EDITOR Emily W. Jensen, Farmington, UT PERSONAL VOICES Julie J. Nichols, Provo, UT FICTION Jennifer Quist, Edmonton, Canada POETRY Elizabeth C. Garcia, Atlanta, GA NEXT ISSUE: REVIEWS (non-fiction) Amy Hoyt, Elk Grove, CA REVIEWS (literature) Andrew Hall, Fukuoka, Japan A special issue dedicated to ART Andi Pitcher Davis, Orem, UT “Mormonism and Indigeneity” BUSINESS & PRODUCTION STAFF BUSINESS MANAGER Emily W. Jensen, Farmington, UT COPY EDITOR Richelle Wilson, Madison, WI SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS Adam McLain, Kansas City, KS Calvin J. Burke, Provo, UT Join our DIALOGUE! EDITORIAL BOARD Find us on Facebook at Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Follow us on Twitter @DialogueJournal Brian Birch, Draper, UT Nathan B. 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On the cover: “Untitled,” acrylic collage, 6"×6", by Marlena Marie Wilding (front); “Black,” acrylic collage, 6"×6", by Marlena Marie Wilding (back). www.dialoguejournal.com DIALOGUE a journal of mormon thought is an independent quarterly established to express Mormon culture and to exam- ine the relevance of religion to secular life. It is edited by Latter-day Saints who wish to bring their faith into dialogue with the larger stream of world religious thought and with human experience as a whole and to foster artistic and schol- arly achievement based on their cul- tural heritage. The journal encourages a variety of viewpoints; although every effort is made to ensure accurate schol- arship and responsible judgment, the views expressed are those of the indi- vidual authors and are not necessarily those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints or of the editors. ii Dialogue 54, no. 1, Spring 2021 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought is published quarterly by the University of Illinois Press for the Dialogue Foundation. Dialogue has no official connec- tion with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. Contents copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Print ISSN 0012- 2157; electronic ISSN 1554- 9399. Dialogue is available in full text in electronic form at www.dialoguejournal.com and JSTOR.org and is archived by the University of Utah Marriott Library Special Collections, available online at www.lib.utah.edu /portal/site/marriottlibrary. Dialogue is also available on microforms through University Microfilms International, www.umi.com. Dialogue welcomes articles, essays, poetry, notes, fiction, letters to the editor, and art. Submissions should follow the current Chicago Manual of Style, using foot- notes for all citations. All submissions should be in Word and may be submitted electronically at https://dialoguejournal.com/submissions/. For submissions of visual art, please contact [email protected]. Submissions published in the journal, including letters to the editor, are covered by our publications policy, https://dialoguejournal.com/submissions/publication - policy/, under which the author retains the copyright of the work and grants Dialogue permission to publish. See www.dialoguejournal.com. editors emeriti Eugene England and G. Wesley Johnson Robert A. Rees Mary Lythgoe Bradford Linda King Newell and L. Jackson Newell F. Ross Peterson and Mary Kay Peterson Martha Sonntag Bradley and Allen D. Roberts Neal Chandler and Rebecca Worthen Chandler Karen Marguerite Moloney Levi S. Peterson Kristine Haglund Boyd J. Petersen CONTENTS ARTICLES Queer Mormon Histories and the Politics Alexandria Griffin 1 of a Usable Past The Theological Trajectory of “The Family: M. David Huston 17 A Proclamation to the World” Variety of Perceptions of God Among Taylor Kerby 29 Latter-day Saints PERSONAL VOICES Assuming Power Linda Hoffman Kimball 53 Called Not to Serve Neal David Silvester 59 Excommunication and Finding Wholeness John Gustav-Wrathall 69 The Complementarity Principle Lisa Poulson 87 Finding Rebecca: A Eulogy Marie Blanchard 105 POETRY Until You Come J.S. Absher 111 Praying on Gravel J.S. Absher 113 Grasshoppers in the Jar of the World J.S. Absher 114 Matriarchal Blessing Kyle Bond 115 Parousia A. I. Christensen 119 FICTION Confession Sylvette Wolfe 121 Excerpt from Eleusis: The Long and Winding Road, R. de la Lanza 129 Translated and introduced by James Goldberg. ART NOTE The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Darron T. Smith 149 Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art ROUNDTABLE Mormonism and White Supremacy . As an Explanation of Mormonism James C. Jones 155 and White Supremacy As Cultural Critique W. Paul Reeve 158 As White Mormon Scholarship LaShawn C. Williams 162 REVIEWS Recent Collections, In Three Movements Eric W Jepson 167 R. A. Christmas, Leaves of Sass Colin B. Douglas, Into the Sun: Poems Revised, Rearranged, and New Jan G. Otterstrom F., Move On Kate Piersanti, Life in Poetry Michael Lavers, After Earth Sunni Brown Wilkinson, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field Dayna Patterson, If Mother Braids a Waterfall Dayna Patterson, Titania in Yellow The Pearl’s Price Jenny Webb 177 Terryl Givens with Brian M. Hauglid, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture Politicking with the Saints: On Reading S. Spencer Wells 179 Benjamin Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo Benjamin E. Park, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier God and Politics Amanda Hendrix-Komoto 184 Matthew L. Harris, ed., Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics FROM THE PULPIT I Was a Stranger . Keith Norman 189 ARTICLES QUEER MORMON HISTORIES AND THE POLITICS OF A USABLE PAST Alexandria Griffin The relationship between the queer community and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has received considerable attention in the last few decades, along with the overlap between the two communities and the queer Mormon experience. While both scholarly and amateur work on the history and identity of queer Mormons is on the rise (especially ethnographic work on contemporary queer Mormons), there have, as of yet, been no works outlining what kind of arguments are commonly made by people participating in the construction of queer Mormon vernacular histories and what they are trying to achieve with these arguments.1 Queer Mormon vernacular histories employ arguments about people in the past to construct new ways of being for the future. Vernacular histories include publishing a pamphlet, writing a blog post, or writing an essay in a collection intended for non-academic readership. This work may, in some cases, be done by people with 1. A note on terminology: throughout this paper, I purposefully use the term “queer” to refer to a wide swath of non-heterosexual people (whether cisgender or transgender), including those who may identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay, queer, person with same-sex attraction, or a host of other possible terms. I turn to the umbrella term “queer” as a space-saving measure so that I am not constantly reiterating this extensive list of possible identities, as well as in recognition of its utility in scholarship on this and related topics, e.g., “queer theory.” I recognize that “queer,” which is, essentially, a reclaimed slur, is certainly a term that people of any of those categories may not necessarily identify with or might object to; I use it for its expediency, with full realization of these potential problems. 1 2 Dialogue 54, no. 1, Spring 2021 academic training in historical methods; however, more often than not, this is not the case. This does not mean that the authors of such work have not researched substantially on their own, or that they do not interact with academic work on the subject. I examine a variety of sources; many come from archival materials, the LDS LGBTQ organization Affirmation, Instagram accounts, blog posts, YouTube videos, and even advertising for commercial brands. These represent the variety of ways that popular accounts of the past make it to the general public. I focus specifically on material that not only explores the queer Mormon past but makes arguments about what that past means for the future.