Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought
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DIALOGUE DIALOGUE PO Box 381209 Cambridge, MA 02238 electronic service requested DIALOGUE a journal of mormon thought 49.3 fall 2016 49.3 EDITORS EDITOR Boyd Jay Petersen, Provo, UT ASSOCIATE EDITOR David W. Scott, Lehi, UT WEB EDITOR Emily W. Jensen, Farmington, UT DIALOGUE FICTION Julie Nichols, Orem, UT a journal of mormon thought POETRY Darlene Young, South Jordan, UT REVIEWS (non-fiction) John Hatch, Salt Lake City, UT REVIEWS (literature) Andrew Hall, Fukuoka, Japan INTERNATIONAL Gina Colvin, Christchurch, New Zealand Carter Charles, Bordeaux, France POLITICAL Russell Arben Fox, Wichita, KS HISTORY Sheree Maxwell Bench, Pleasant Grove, UT SCIENCE Steven Peck, Provo, UT FILM & THEATRE Eric Samuelson, Provo, UT PHILOSOPHY/THEOLOGY Brian Birch, Draper, UT IN THE NEXT ISSUE ART Andrea Davis, Orem, UT Brad Kramer, Murray, UT Steven Peck, “Bishop Johnson Rescues a Lost Soul” BUSINESS & PRODUCTION STAFF Featuring a special focus on multiple New Voices BUSINESS MANAGER Mariya Manzhos, Cambridge, MA PRODUCTION MANAGER Jenny Webb, Huntsville, AL COPY EDITORS Sarah Moore, Madison, AL Articles on the theme of Joseph Smith by William Davis, Richelle Wilson, Madison, WI William V. Smith, and Clyde Ford INTERNS Stocktcon Carter, Provo, UT Geoff Griffin, Provo, UT Nathan Tucker, Provo, UT Christian Van Dyke, Provo, UT EDITORIAL BOARD Lavina Fielding Anderson, Salt Lake City, UT Becky Reid Linford, Leesburg, VA Mary L. Bradford, Landsdowne, VA William Morris, Minneapolis, MN Claudia Bushman, New York, NY Michael Nielsen, Statesboro, GA Daniel Dwyer, Albany, NY Nathan B. Oman, Williamsburg, VA Ignacio M. Garcia, Provo, UT Thomas F. Rogers, Bountiful, UT Brian M. Hauglid, Spanish Fork, UT Mathew Schmalz, Worcester, MA Join our DIALOGUE! Gregory Jackson, Lehi, UT John Turner, Fairfax, VA G. Kevin Jones, Salt Lake City, UT Find us on Facebook at Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Blair Van Dyke, Cedar Hills, UT Follow us on Twitter @DialogueJournal BOARD OF DIRECTORS SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS Michael Austin, Evansville, IN Gregory A. Prince, Potomac, MD *Molly McLellan Bennion, Chair, Seattle, WA PRINT: 1 year (4 issues) $50 | international $70 | seniors/students $35 Robert Rees, Mill Valley, CA Joanna Brooks, San Diego, CA ELECTRONIC (PDF): 1 year (4 issues) $25 Brent Rushforth, Potomac, MD Sumer Thurston Evans, Verona, WI DVD ARCHIVE: Volumes 1–44 (1966–2011) in PDF format, $40 *Karla Stirling, New York, NY Fiona Givens, Montpelier, VA Travis Stratford, New York, NY Robert A. Goldberg, Salt Lake City, UT More titles and special offers available on our website: Jonathan Thomas, Chicago, IL Kristine Haglund, Belmont, MA Morris Thurston, Villa Park, CA Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, St. Louis, MO Margaret Blair Young, Provo, UT *Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont, CA www.dialoguejournal.com *members of the Executive Committee Michael McBride, Irvine, CA On the cover: “Emma” by Cassandra Barney, 2003, oil on panel DIALOGUE a journal of mormon thought is an independent quarterly established to express Mormon culture and to examine 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 scholarly achieve- ment based on their cultural heritage. The journal encourages a variety of view- points; although every effort is made to en- sure accurate scholarship and responsible judgment, the views expressed are those of the individual authors and are not neces- sarily those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or of the editors. ii Dialogue, Fall 2016 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought is published quarterly by the Dialogue Foundation. Dialogue has no official connection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Contents copyrighted by the Dialogue Foundation. ISSN 0012-2157. Dialogue is available in full text in electronic form at www.dialoguejournal.com 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. 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 copy- right 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 Dialogue, Fall 2016 iii CONTENTS ARTICLES AND ESSAYS Jesus Christ, Marriage, and Mormon John G. Turner 1 Christianities: 2016 Smith-Pettit Lecture, Sunstone Symposium The Celestial Law Carol Lynn Pearson 21 Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Samuel Morris Brown 41 Levirate Widow A View from the Inside: How Critical Jennifer Huss Basquiat 61 Ethnography Changed My Mind about Polygamy Scared Sacred: How the Horrifying Story Stephen Carter 75 of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Can Help Save Us Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism Gregory A. Prince, 89 Lester E. Bush, Jr., Brent N. Rushforth The Source of God’s Authority: One Roger Terry 109 Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence PERSONAL VOICES The Missing Mrs. Marianne Hales Harding 145 POETRY Eight Visions of the First Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen 151 Words Jamie Naylor 156 The Flock Les Blake 157 The Skin of the Story Susan Elizabeth Howe 159 My Sadness Susan Elizabeth Howe 161 FICTION The River Rerun Karen Rosenbaum 163 REVIEWS Mormon Tradition and the Individual Talent Joey Franklin 181 Mary Lythgoe Bradford. Mr. Mustard Plaster and Other Mormon Essays Quiet Stories, Complex Emotion Braden Hepner 185 Darin Cozzens. The Last Blessing of J. Guyman LeGrand and Other Stories Past Second Base Eric Freeze 188 Joey Franklin. My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives: Ceaselessly Josh Allen 192 into the Past Karen Rosenbaum. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives The New Descartes and the Book of Mormon Mark D. Thomas 195 Earl M. Wunderli. An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us about Itself IN MEMORIAM Stephen Webb: In Memoriam Mathew N. Schmalz 199 FROM THE PULPIT How to Build a Paradox: Making Kristine Haglund 211 the New Jerusalem CONTRIBUTORS 221 ARTICLES JESUS CHRIST, MARRIAGE, AND MORMON CHRISTIANITIES: 2016 SMITH-PETTIT LECTURE, SUNSTONE SYMPOSIUM John G. Turner “I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.” According to his official history, that’s all Joseph Smith said to his mother after God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him while he prayed by himself in the woods. Whether or not Presbyterianism was true was a more pressing question for the young Joseph Smith than it is for most of you. Sometime in the mid-1820s, Lucy Mack Smith and several of Joseph’s siblings joined a Presbyterian church. Joseph must have wrestled with his mother’s choice. Like his father, though, he never joined any Protestant church. But it was surely a major point of controversy and discussion in the family. “Presbyterianism is not true.” I have to say that’s a rather small takeaway for a theophany. It’s rather like meeting a three-star Michelin chef and having him declare that the food at McDonald’s is not good. And it’s a bit annoying. God and Jesus visit the prophet-to-be in a grove and tell him that my church is not true. Still, having been a Presbyterian all my life, I’d have to concede that Joseph Smith or the Lord had a point. There have been some terribly false things about Presbyterianism and Presbyterians. It’s not just that 1 2 Dialogue, Fall 2016 we have an unspellable and unpronounceable name, or that what we most excel at is forming committees and subcommittees. John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation in Geneva were the theological inspiration for those in Scotland and England who embraced Presbyterianism, which means, most simply, the local and regional gov- ernance of churches by elected elders and ministers. It’s ecclesiastical democracy with checks and balances. It allows us to do things “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). John Calvin was the theological bogeyman of early nineteenth-cen- tury America. Calvinism was under assault from Americans who could not abide the idea that God arbitrarily chose to save some individuals and damn others. The basic concept struck many early Americans as arbitrary and cruel. Methodists insisted that salvation was freely available to all individuals who chose to place their faith in Jesus Christ. Many Unitarians contended that predestination made God loathsome. Joseph Smith and his followers rejected Calvinism as well. A central teaching of the Book of Mormon is that individuals are free to choose “liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all” (2 Nephi 2:27). Christ died for all, not just for a select number of God’s chosen. Calvin did not exclude infants from God’s sovereign and just decrees about salvation: “even infants bring their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb [and] suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect. For although infants have not yet produced the fruits of their own unrighteousness, they have the seed implanted in them . their whole nature is . a seed-bed of sin.”1 That just stinks.