Mormon Religion, But: Accounts
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ZXea U It r*n Ir.lmb* fw . ~hnrchrh40) te 'lrwnllln mn -1- ' ! Mormon Religion, but: Accounts . .... 7. - _. Allen D. Roberts Peggy Fletcher Administrative Assistants Susan Staker Oman W. Randall Dixon Board of Editors William W. Slaughter, History Jayare Roberts, Fiction Volume Four, Number One, January-February1979 Dennis Clark, Poetry Readers' Forum Nancy Jensen, Personal Essay Update Lynn Davis, Contemporary Issues John Sillito, Book Reviews Mormon Associations Ron Bitton, TheatreIFilm Reviews History Richard Sherlock Julie W. Petrusky, Social Issues Campus in Crisis: BW, 1911 Personal Essay Special Projects Perceptions of The Plight: A Review-Response Linda Sillitoe Richard Tanner The Cemetery Douglas D. Alder Vince Iturbe Fiction Mark Thomas Private Gene Hurst Lowell Brown Man at the Bar Michael Hicks Religion National Correspondents Moroni 8 as Rhetoric Mark Thomas Jim Cartwright, Director On Moonists and Mormonites Philip L. Barlow Bellamy Brown, Phoenix Literature Bruce Young, Boston Vardis Fisher's Children of God: A Second Look Levi S. Peterson Roger Purdy, Santa Barbara Contemporary Corina Nolting, Los Angeles Eskdale, Utah: A Refuge in the Desert Frederick S. Buchanan Mannequins and Mormons Cliff Sloan Designer Randall Smith poetry A Faun, On Reading Horace's Address Stephen Taylor Staff Tribunal Alien Stephen Gould Stephen Taylor Debby Lilenquist Sophia Fish Census Stephen Gould Beverly Newman Book Reviews Donna Roberts Sister Saints Nancy McCormick The Early Temples of the Mormons Paul L. Anderson Joseph and Emma, Companions Val T. Avery Utah: A Bicentennial History Merle Wells Mormon Miscellany Joseph Smith's Last Dream W. W. Phelps Correction: Omitted from the first page of Lavina Fielding Anderson, "Identity Crisis in L.D.S. Missionary Fiction," September-October1978, was a notation that the paper was first delivered at the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters, October 1978, in Salt Lake City. The first sentence, third paragraph, is slightly garbled and should read: "yet this question may well be the most infrequently asked ques- tion . ." The quotation from Franklin Fisher appears in Dialogue. Sunstone, P.O. Box 2272, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110 Sunsfone is published six times each year by The Sunstone Foundation, a nonprofit corporation with no On the cover Collage by Randall Smith. official connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Articles represent the attitudes of Courtesy of the Salt Lake Tribune. the writers only, and not necessarily those of the editors/publishers or the editorial board. Subscriptions are $U for one year, $21 for two years, and $30.00 for three years. One-year subscriptions are offered at a discount rate of $9.00 for students, missionaries, and retired people. Overseas subscriptions am $15 per year. Sunstone is mailed third class bulk and is not forwarded. Subscribers are responsible to notify the magazine at least one month in advance of address changes. Sunstone is not responsible for undelived issues. Send all correspondence and manuscripts to Sunstone, P. 0.Box 2272, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by sufficient return postage. Copyright 0 1978 by The Sunstone Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. patterns that Card finds to uniquely Mormon. In fact, if he had looked at books like Edwin Newman's Plain Speaking or A Civil Tongue, he would have found that most of his examples are just plain old cliches. Again, the reason they may seem to be uniquely Mormon is that many of us spend so little time among non-Mormons we don't really know what is unique about ourselves. Praiseworthy another use of irony, Card says that we "magically upgraded the good old ward A great collection of essays which illus- With great gusto I applaud the concept, recreation hall into a "cultural hall." The trate the decline of the language is course, and creativity of Sunstone. While fact is that we still use the hall mostly as a Dwight Macdonald's Against the Ameri- shedding most of the scholarly trappings gym, as we always have. Some would can Grain. In "Updating the Bible," a and profoundities of Dialogue and BYU suggest that upgrading the name for the criticism of the New English translation, Studies, your magazine has nevertheless gym is an attempt to make up for the fact he says that he retained the same spirit of openess and that we have downgraded the building thought-provoking inquiry. -neither the names nor the architecture knew all the great passages would be Features such as Update and One Fold are as honest as they once were. bulldozed flat, but still it was a shock and the generally high quality of gra- to go from: "When I was a child, I Another temble example is "investig- phics (oh, but what a garishly red All- spake as a child, I understood as a Seeing Eye in your fall issue!)widen your ator," a word we will probably have with child, I thought as a child. But when I appeal past the scholar to the educated us until the milleniurn. But couldn't became a man, I put away childish and intelligent layman. All in all you some well-read English teacher among things. For now we see through a serve as a kind of middlebrow-highbrow us have thought of a better word to call glass darkly. ." to: "When I was a LDS Atlantic Monthly that seeks to in- non-members, especially when we so child, my speech, my outlook, and form and instruct as well as to entertain. often use the word to their face -mis- my thoughts were all childish. When I sionaries introducing members to "our What you have done in the past bodes grew up, I had finished with childish new investigator," Sunday School sup- well for the future. things. Now we see only puzzling erintendents telling them that they will reflections in a mirror." Like finding a James L. Kirnball Jr. "go to the investigator's class." Maybe parking lot where a great church once Salt Lake City, Utah part of the problem is with words that are stood. But what I was not prepared thought up in Salt Lake City, which Saint Speaks Back for was the opposite- the inflation of wasn't officially part of the mission field simple Anglo-Saxon into acade- E.B. White, in the introduction to his col- until recently. Now we are on the verge mese . The Camford-style Sermon lected essays, quotes Dr. Johnson's com- of adding "name extractor" to our lexi- on the Mount might be pastiched, us- ment that the essay is "an irregular and con. Horrors! That sounds more like a ing only phrases that appear in this undigested piece." While Orson Scott science fiction creature than the good translation: Card's essay on "Saintspeak offers German couple across the street called to some funny examples of language, his read microfilm for evenings on end. When he realized how things stood, analysis is still much too irregular. Aside Since the work they will do is hard Jesus held a meeting to look into the from some minor matters (wards, both enough, couldn't we have found for matter. It was no hole in the comer the name and the ecclesiastical divisions, them a more congenial name? "Re- business. He went up the hill and began in Nauvoo, not in Salt Lake City), searcher" or "genealogy missionary" - began: what is most disappointing is his failure almost anything would be better. 'And now, not to take UD too much of to distinguish between the few creative The next two categories in the essay are your time; I crave indulience for a uses of language in the church and the brief statement of our case. How blest majority of examples which reflect only coined words and allusions. Surely call- ing an innocent little kid a "CTR" is not are those that know that they are our succumbing to the general decline of poor. You are light for all the world. If the English language. One assumes that "a creative expression of Mormon cul- ture." The widespread dislike among a man wants to sue you for your shirt, it is only writer's irony when Card says let him have your coat as well. I also that learning Saintspeak, for the new Mormons of FDR (note the initials) and his WPA, NRA, and all those other ini- might make bold to say that you can- convert, "is more difficult than all the not serve God and Money. Do not new callings and all the new cornmand- tialed agencies should have saved us from "CTR."And some of the examples feed your pearls to pigs, and be ready ments put together"; the near-absence of for action, with belts fastened and serious language teaching in schools of allusion, the third category, are just not allusions. While a Sunday School lamps alight. Thank you for giving me (including universities) these days a hearing. makes misuse of the language very easy, teacher may allude to Joseph Smith by almost second nature, for old and new talking repeatedly of "~ose~h,"it is not He then went to lunch with some dis- Mormons. an allusion when someone says "Eliza R. tinmished- persons." Snow" - that is her name. The new The first group of examples in the essay member's problem is not the too fre- Is this all too critical? For a people that is existing English words to which Mor- quent use of allusion but his ignorance of read each from the King mons give special meanings. Unfortu- church history. Fortunately the solution James Bible, Macdonald's closing corn- nately, we are sometimes surprisingly to that problem -learning the history- ment in "The Decline and Fall of Eng- inept at choosing the words on which to is easier than the first two.