5/2/12 2:55 PM DIALOGUE volume 45 no. 2 summer 2012 DIALOGUE 58423 po box UT 84158 city, salt lake serviceelectronic requested sunny.indd 1 EDITORS EDITOR Kristine L. Haglund, Belmont, MA DIALOGUE WEB EDITOR Emily W. Jensen, Ogden, UT a journal of mormon thought ASSOCIATE EDITOR Matthew B. Bowman, Arlington, VA REVIEWS Melissa Madsen Fox, Russell Arben Fox, Wichita, KS INTERNATIONAL Ronan James Head, Malvern, England HISTORY Steven Taysom, Shaker Heights, OH SCIENCE Steven Peck, Provo, UT Be sure to visit the redesigned PERSONAL VOICES Kristine Wright, Guelph, ONT POETRY Tyler Chadwick, Pocatello, ID dialoguejournal.com FICTION Heather Marx, Westwood, MA In our fall issue: FILM AND THEATER Eric Samuelsen, Provo, UT a Conference Report BUSINESS AND PRODUCTION STAFF MANAGING DIRECTOR Lori Levinson, Salt Lake City, UT A wide range of short papers from OFFICE ASSISTANT Madeline Christopher, Salt Lake City, UT recent Mormon Studies conferences, PRODUCTION MANAGER Brent Corcoran, Salt Lake City, UT ART DIRECTOR Nathan Florence, Salt Lake City, UT including The Association for COPY EDITOR Lavina Fielding Anderson, Salt Lake City, UT Mormon Letters’ annual meeting PROOFREADER Jani Fleet, Salt Lake City, UT Mormon Scholars in the Humanities BYU Women’s Studies Conference EDITORIAL BOARD UVU Mormon Studies Conference Mary Lythgoe Bradford, Lansdowne, VA Becky Linford, Chantilly, VA Stephen Evans, Seattle, WA Max Perry Mueller, Somerville, MA Justin Flosi, Chicago, IL Michael Nielsen, Statesboro, GA Richard Haglund, Brentwood, TN Melissa Proctor, Cambridge, MA Heidi Harris, Rostock, Germany Ethan Yorgason, Daegu, South Korea Linda Hoffman Kimball, Evanston, IL PRINT: Old-fashioned but most beloved. BOARD OF DIRECTORS 1 year (4 issues) $50, international $70, seniors/students $35 Philip L. Barlow, Logan, UT Val Hemming, Kensington, MD *Kevin Barney, Chair, Hoffman Estates, IL Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont, CA ELECTRONIC: Be the first to read the newest edition online. Molly McLellan Bennion, Seattle, WA Michael McBride, Irvine, CA Download, print, and share full-text pdfs. $25 Brian D. Birch, Draper, UT F. Ross Peterson, Logan, UT Claudia L. Bushman, Pasadena, CA Gregory A. Prince, Potomac, MD DVD ARCHIVE: Contains Volumes 1–44, 1966–2011 Sumer Thurston Evans, Seattle, WA *Karla Stirling, New York, NY Read and print full-text pdfs. $40 Kristine L. Haglund, Belmont, MA Morris Thurston, Villa Park, CA Greg Kofford, Sandy, UT *members of the Executive Committee Join our DIALOGUE. Subscribe today. On the Cover: Sunny Belliston Taylor, Front: The Frontier is No More, mixed media, More titles and special offers available on our website. acrylic on paper, 22" x 22" Back: Hindsight, mixed media, 5.5" x 5.5" x 2.5" www.dialoguejournal.com Sunny Inside Cover full.indd 1 5/17/12 8:54 AM DIALOGUEa 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 achievement based on their cultural heritage. The journal encour- ages a variety of viewpoints; although every effort is made to ensure accurate scholarship and responsible judgment, the views express- ed are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or of the editors. ii DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, 45, no. 2 (Summer 2012) Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought is published quarterly by the Dia- logue Foundation. Dialogue has no official connection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Contents copyright by the Dialogue Foundation. ISSN 0012–2157. Dialogue is available in full text in elec- tronic form at www.dialoguejournal.com and is archived by the Univer- sity of Utah Marriott Library Special Collections, available online at: www.lib.utah. edu/portal/site/marriottlibrary. Dialogue is also avail- able on microforms through University Microfilms International, www. umi.com., and online at dialoguejournal.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 electroni- cally at https://dialoguejournal.com/submissions/. For submissions of visual art, please contact [email protected]. Allow eight to twelve weeks for review of all submissions. Submissions published in the journal, including letters to the editor, are covered by our publication policy, https://dialoguejournal.com/sub- missions/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 (Vols. 1:1–5:4, 1966–70) Robert A. Rees (Vols. 6:1–11:4, 1970–76) Mary Lythgoe Bradford (Vols. 12:1–16:4, 1977–82) Linda King Newell and L. Jackson Newell (Vols. 17:1–21:4, 1982–86) F. Ross Peterson and Mary Kay Peterson (Vols. 22:1–26:4, 1987–92) Martha Sonntag Bradley and Allen D. Roberts (Vols. 27:1–31:4, 1993–98) Neal Chandler and Rebecca Worthen Chandler (Vols. 32:1–36:4, 1999–2003) Karen Marguerite Moloney (Vol. 37:1, 2004) Levi S. Peterson (Vol. 37:1–41:4, 2004–8) DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, 45, no. 2 (Summer 2012) CONTENTS ARTICLES AND ESSAYS The King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work Grant Hardy 1 Unity and the King James Bible Ronan James Head 45 (Re)Interpreting Early Mormon Thought: Synthesizing Joseph Smith’s Theology and the Process of Religion Formation Benjamin E. Park 59 PERSONAL VOICES Our Dinner with Levi Peterson Ruth A. Starkman 89 Undie Running on the Line between Church and State Max Perry Mueller 96 Fierce Joy and Proof That It happened Libby Potter Boss 108 POETRY Perplexed by the Revelator’s Heaven Scott Cameron 116 Mass Transit Madonna Will Reger 117 Runaway John Schouten 118 Finding Place Doug Talley 119 After Her Stroke Shannon Castleton 120 Revelation Elisa Pulido 121 Atlanta to Salt Lake Elizabeth Garcia 123 The Afternoon Hour Terresa Wellborn 124 iii iv DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, 45, no. 2 (Summer 2012) FICTION Field Walking Angela Hallstrom 125 INTERVIEWS AND CONVERSATIONS Mormon Authoritarianism and American Pluralism David Campbell, Russell Arben Fox, Matthew B. Bowman, and Kristine L. Haglund 148 REVIEWS Making Visible the Hand of Ritual Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842–1845: A Documentary History; Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845–1846: A Documentary History; and Devery S. Anderson, ed., The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846–2000: A Documentary History Stephen C. Taysom 164 Errand Out of the Wilderness Matthew Bowman. The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith Robert Elder 176 Dear Diary: Joseph F. Smith’s Mission Journals Nathaniel R. Ricks, ed. “My Candid Opinion”: The Sandwich Island Diaries of Joseph F. Smith, 1856–1857 Steve Evans 182 FROM THE PULPIT To the 78 Percent Heidi Harris 188 Uncertainty and Healing Anne Lazenby 196 CONTRIBUTORS 198 ARTICLES AND ESSAYS The King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work Grant Hardy The Problem Not long ago I went out with the full-time elders and we taught a young mother who was quite interested in our message. In fact, she had been meeting with the missionaries for several weeks. When they referred to a biblical scripture and invited her to read along, she did so and then responded, “That’s not what it says in my Bible.” Even though she was a conservative Christian, from a Pentecostal background, she was using the New International Version (NIV). And it is not just that the words were differ- ent—most Christians are familiar with multiple versions of the Bi- ble these days. The meanings did not match up. The elders were f lustered, having no idea how to handle the situation, and they tried to move on to the next point as quickly as possible. In this case, our exclusive reliance on the King James Version (KJV), which is official policy according to the Church’s Handbook 2, had become a barrier to sharing the message of the gospel.1 This problem will only increase in the future because things have changed dramatically since 1956, when J. Reuben Clark wrote Why the King James Version, and even since 1979, when our LDS edition of the Bible was first published. The KJV is no longer the dominant Bible of the English-speaking world, and the only de- nominations that still hold exclusively to that four-hundred-year- old translation are Latter-day Saints and a few marginal fringe groups. The Gideons, famous for providing free Bibles in hotel rooms, recognize that King James English no longer speaks to Americans and have consequently started distributing modern language translations. Even proudly fundamentalist Bob Jones 1 2 DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, 45, no. 2 (Summer 2012) University has a disclaimer on its website clearly stating that it does not agree with the King James Only position.2 The obstacles to effective communication will be compounded as we become a more international church. When American Latter-day Saints em- ploy arguments that depend on peculiar readings of the KJV, these will not make sense when translated for Mormons and other Christians who read the Bible in their native languages. For example,