King Follett and Clouds of Meaning

April 12, 2013 by

We’ve just experienced the Mormon preaching festival. That is, general conference! In addition to inspired teaching, it gives the outside world a chance to experience some of the variety of Mormon address. And besides, I’ve been toiling over chapter 7 of the book, rewriting, rethinking some, and redoing other. This represents mental suds rising to the top of my brain-glass.

Texts are always encased by interpretation. Generations come and go, and interpretation floods over texts, at least those that rise to surface (paradoxically), via unearthing by graduate students or rediscovery by the public, or just constant devotion, etc. Scripture is no exception, and everyone, not just Nephi, deploys a kind of rationalization with circumstance and inspiration to come up with a correlated understanding, whether that be official, communal, familial, or even “backlistial.” Among Mormons, Joseph Smith’s sermons are quite often seen as doctrinal in some sense, a sense I won’t attempt to make precise.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Modern Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Post-Manifesto Era, Pre-Manifesto Era, Scriptures, Theology, Doctrine & Policy

UVU Conference Reminder: The Expanded Canon, April 4-5, 2013

April 1, 2013 by

uvulogo_overThis week, Utah Valley University plays host to what promises to be a fascinating conference on Mormonism’s scriptural canon. Five reasons you should attend: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Scriptures

Sidney Rigdon, the Manuscript History of the Church and Making Sermons Texts.

July 8, 2012 by

In 1844, Mormonism was in for its biggest historical moment so far: the death of Joseph Smith. The headquarters of the Church was Nauvoo, Illinois and it was bursting with converts from the US and the UK. These people had some basic familiarity with the movement’s history, but they didn’t have the experience, they weren’t insiders, they hadn’t been part of those heady days of revelation upon revelation, revelations of all kinds and spectra. That deficit was addressed at the April General Conference. President Sidney Rigdon stood to preach to the very large open-air crowd. I’m not going to try and tell you everything he said. He spoke for a long time. What we are about here is, how do we know (some of) what he said?[1] Two clerks had been assigned to take minutes, William Clayton and Thomas Bullock. Both were capable longhand reporters, and they had somewhat complementary styles. This complementarity can serve us well. I’ll give you an example (without the intrusive sics). Here is Clayton’s version of some of Pres. Rigdon’s address:
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Mormon Studies Tagged With: , ,

Review: Joanna Brooks, “The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories From an American Faith”

May 17, 2012 by

Title: The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories From an American Faith
Author: Joanna Brooks
Publisher: Self published (but not for long…)
Genre: Memoir
Year: 2012
Pages: 204
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780615593449
Price: $11.99

Rumor has it Joanna Brooks’s self-published memoir, The Book of Mormon Girl has been picked up by Free Press/Simon & Schuster for national publication this August with an expanded chapter-and-a-half. We’ve seen a lot of chatter about her book online recently, so I thought I’d venture a review. I hope you’ll excuse my decision to kick things off with an observation based on personal experience. (The Book of Mormon Girl is, after all, a personal memoir!) My own undergraduate years were spent writing and editing articles for a variety of small Utah newspapers. I remember how daunting it felt to be assigned an article on a subject I knew next-to-nothing about, like computer animation, mechanical engineering, or say, feminism. Oh, how comforting to a journalist is that friendly, articulate insider willing to endure the inane questions of—and likely later misrepresentation by—the stammering cub reporter! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books & Journals, Current Events, EQ/HP, Family, Gender & Sexuality, Modern Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Politics, Relief Society, Theology, Doctrine & Policy, Young Women Tagged With:

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich lecture: “Stirring up LDS History” Live Blog

December 11, 2011 by

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Updated to now include video of the lecture.

Sponsored by Sunstone and Friends of the Marriott Library at the University of Utah

Relief Society sisters now have a new resource—a compact history of the Relief Society called Daughters of My Kingdom. The new manual, which is to be used from time to time for lessons given the first Sunday of each month, is not only unusual for its focus on women but for its chronological organization. Most Church manuals are organized thematically, offering little scope for discussing change over time. Despite its uplifting narrative, this manual may require a new set of skills. As teachers of women’s history know, you can’t just “add women and stir.”

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich taught her first Relief Society lesson more than fifty years ago, when she was an undergraduate attending a student ward at the University of Utah. She began teaching women’s history at the college level in 1975 when she was a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of many books and articles on early American history and women’s history and is now completing her first book-length work in Mormon history, “A House Full of Females: Family and Faith in Nineteenth-century Mormon Diaries.” She is 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies, Relief Society, Women

Review, Tom Mould, “Still, the Small Voice”

November 30, 2011 by

Title: Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition
Author: Tom Mould
Publisher: Utah State University Press
Genre: Religion/Folklore
Year: 2011
Pages: 448
Binding: Cloth
ISBN13: 978-0-87421-817-6
Price: $39.95 (e-book $32.00)

 

Wordsworth, should I believe you?

Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
Our meddling intellect
Distorts the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Replace “nature” with “religion” above and you raise one of the most difficult problems I see in the study of religion, especially as I’ve studied my own faith. The wind bloweth where it listeth and we try to catch it in jars, measure it with our rulers, weigh it in our hands, graph it in our charts, fold it up and tuck it between the pages of our books. The letter alone killeth, but the spirit giveth life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies

Review: Davis Bitton, “Knowing Brother Joseph Again: Perceptions and Perspectives”

November 15, 2011 by

Title: Knowing Brother Joseph Again: Perceptions and Perspectives 
Author: Davis Bitton
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Biography
Year: 2011
Pages: 197
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 978-1-58958-123-4
Price: $19.95 (Kindle, $9.95)

The fluidity of personality; the fallibility of perception; ambiguous memory construction; the happenstance instances of recording; the ravages of time. Just a few minor things to consider when trying to recall important events in my own life. And if I face such challenges regarding the things I’ve personally witnessed, how much more cautious should I be when dealing with history? With a particular historical figure? Named Joseph Smith. Who was he? So many different Josephs to choose from.

This is the general lesson LDS historian Davis Bitton hoped to convey in his book, Knowing Brother Joseph Again: Perceptions and Perspectives (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books & Journals, Joseph Smith Era, Mormon Studies

Becoming a Mormon: Thinking about a Brand with Elder Ballard

October 14, 2011 by

I am a recent convert to “Mormonism” myself. Not too many years ago you could find me vigorously arguing on Mormon-themed blogs about the importance of avoiding the word “Mormon” as a nickname for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[1] At the time, it felt like a concession to detractors of our faith to self-identify by the nickname they derisively gave to us in the nineteenth century. Ironically, however, it was precisely our nineteenth-century ancestors in the faith who had made peace with the descriptor and good-naturedly co-opted it to describe themselves, leaving us with the lasting nickname. [Read more…]

Filed Under: General Conference, Media, Missionary, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Politics, Religion, TCoJCoLDS, Theology, Doctrine & Policy

“Trailing clouds of hermeneutical glory”

October 13, 2011 by

While we believe we come “trailing clouds of glory” from a pre-mortal past, our scripture reading comes trailing clouds of interpretation from pre-Mormon centuries of hermeneutics. Our spirits weren’t created ex nihilo, nor are our assumptions while reading. This might raise a few eyebrows, but it seems to me that we members of the Church mingle the philosophies of men with scripture on a fairly regular basis. Not so much by incorporating particular ideas into our canon (though we do that too),1 but in the very way we approach scripture to begin with. The ways we read scripture mingle the words on the page with our implicit assumptions.

I realize this sounds like an indictment. But keep in mind that, according to Mormons, not everything the serpent says (“ye shall be as gods…“) is necessarily 100% false. A revelation to Joseph Smith states that God speaks to his servants “in their weakness, after the manner of their language.” A certain amount of mingling seems inevitable, so in my view the question isn’t really about whether it happens, but what we do about it.

One thing we can do is become more aware of our assumptions. Like any good Mormon might, we can start by learning our hermeneutical genealogy. That’s an exercise far outside the scope of a blog post and explorations are already underway elsewhere.2 I want to call attention here to one particular way the Enlightenment still affects our scripture reading today: in our view of biblical scholarship. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies

Matthew B. Brown: In Memoriam

October 5, 2011 by

Matt Brown died earlier today. He was, I believe, 46 years old. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Mormon, Mormon Studies

Givens and Grow Book Signing Event

October 5, 2011 by

Spend an Evening with the Authors

We are excited to announce the arrival of Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism by Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, published by Oxford University Press. We will have both authors at our store to speak about and sign their book on Friday, October 14. They will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., speaking at 6:00, and will answer questions and sign books before and after that time. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Film & Television, Media, Mormon, Mormon Studies

Conference Prep #2. Pulpit scripture and canon Scripture

September 4, 2011 by

This is the second post in a series on General Conference. Part 1 is here. The followup post is here.

I have some continuing interest in antebellum American sermon culture and this post examines some legacies of early Mormonism on the topic of sermons. Protestants of the era inherited an ongoing question over the status of the pulpit. Where do sermons fit into the rule of faith? The issue was most touchy in the more severe “Bible Alone” strains of Protestantism and one can see the same concern in Protestant debates over creedal statements and confessions or the likes of the Book of Common Prayer. On the other hand, even though the early Latter-day Saints were liberals regarding “revelation,” the relationship between pulpit and scripture in Mormonism was a curious one and bore a resemblance to that cautious calculus surrounding the subject among conservative Protestants.[1]

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Modern Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: , ,

Resource Constraints & Shifts In Religious Behavior Patterns

June 29, 2011 by

The recent issue of BYU Studies contains a paper written by my co-blogger Jonathan Stapley regarding the Relief Society’s burial services the early 1900’s.  The paper addresses a decline in Relief Society burial preparations, and largely attributes this decline to the Relief Society’s inability to compete with professional burial service providers. I think this is reasonable, but found it somewhat incomplete when I looked at the data.  In particular, I was curious about the speed of the decline in burial preparations over time, and wondered if there might be more to the story than an inability to provide equally good burial services. In any case, it seemed like an excellent opportunity for rampant speculation. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Economics, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Post-Manifesto Era, Relief Society

The Mythic Joseph Smith

May 4, 2011 by

Joseph Smith’s 19th century Utah editors held him in high regard, not necessarily for his personal perfection, but for his standing as opener of ancient mysteries, restorer of forgotten salvific lore and authoritative purveyor of power to defeat death, hell and the Devil.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Studies Tagged With: , , , ,

Cemetourism: Alpheus Cutler (1784–1864)

April 21, 2011 by

To mark the passing of Stanley E. Whiting, the most recent president of the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), it seems appropriate in this installment of “Cemetourism” to remember the first, Alpheus Cutler.*

Alpheus Cutler’s grave is located at the site of Manti, Iowa, the first headquarters of the reorganized Cutlerite church.  Once a bustling town, Manti is all but abandoned today — a victim of brinkmanship with the railroad.  After Manti became an RLDS town, church leaders advised members to hold out for a good price for rail right-of-way.  Rather than pay, the railroad skipped over Manti and founded a new town called Shenandoah.  Over time, Manti’s residents moved to Shenandoah and even dragged many of Manti’s vacant buildings to the new town.

Now some of the last historic Cutlerite homes are falling into ruin and only the stagecoach station is in good repair. The most visible remains of the old Cutlerite town are a road, a memorial park, and a pioneer cemetery.  The site is in Freemont County in the extreme southwest of Iowa — where Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri meet.  The first generation of Mormons had been promised that the Second Coming of Christ would occur in their lifetimes and they knew that the Kingdom would be built in Jackson County, Missouri. Cutler saw little reason to trudge across the Great Plains to live in Utah Territory only to have to trudge back when the call came.  Missouri was unsafe for Mormon settlement, but Manti was just about as close as you could get: Jackson County was a quick steamboat ride down the Missouri River.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: ,

Death of a Mormon Prophet

April 20, 2011 by

On Monday afternoon, 18 April 2011, Stanley E. Whiting passed away at a Hospice center just outside Independence, Missouri. Earlier this year, at age 76, Stanley learned that the pancreatic cancer he successfully pushed back 3 years ago had returned with a vengeance. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: , ,

The Value of a Sermon Critical Edition, Part 5.

April 19, 2011 by

Here is part 4.

Bibliographical disciplines have divided up into various specialties and during the last several decades the dominant Anglo-American textual theories have splintered into a variety of approaches modeled on various ideas with roots ranging from multivalued and fuzzy logics to epistemology, philology, physics, biology, etc., which coexist in some tension.[1] This means that no matter what approach a critic or editor takes he or she is bound to fall victim to a thrashing by somebody. The good side of this is a wide open field for expression. One hopes that *someone* likes the result.

This time I want to give a few examples of various ways texts are presented. These will range from classical presentations where the editor is concerned with laying out both editorial decisions and the available alternatives, to a clear text format where the presentation records a smooth, clean (easily quotable) grammatically correct text whose relationship to manuscripts or other editions is essentially hidden from the reader or if not that extreme, at least annotation is placed in back matter.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: ,

A Visit with the “Den Mother of Mormon History”

April 19, 2011 by

On our way home from the Restoration Studies Symposium, Mike and I stayed overnight Sunday at “Balmy Gilead Farm” — the home of Jan and Tony Shipps, nestled in the woods just east of Bloomington, Indiana.  The visit was a mixture of southern country hospitality and reminiscences of the golden age of Mormon studies, alongside discussions of current research and events in the field.  Jan has hardly let her eighty-two years slow her down, as the list she shared with us of her upcoming lecture trips, projects, and books proved.

Right: Tony, Jan, and myself (holding Mr. Darcy) yesterday at Balmy Gilead Farm.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies

Join BCC this weekend at Restoration Studies

April 12, 2011 by

A number of BCC permas will be presenters this weekend at the annual Restoration Studies / Sunstone Midwest Symposium. The symposium kicks off Friday night with an address on the conference theme: “‘A Woman’s Place…’ Ideas, Impacts, and Experiences of Restoration Women” given by Gail Mengel.  (Now retired, Gail was one of two women who became the first female apostles in the RLDS Church, now known as the Community of Christ.)

Russel Arben Fox chairs a star-studded panel that includes our own Kristine Haglund and Tracy McKay, along with Christian Harrison and Chris Henrichsen, in a session entitled “Homemaking Radicalism and Homemaking Realities.”  Kristine will also be joining Stacy Mengel Keenan, JWHA Executive Director Sherry Mesle-Morrain, and Sunstone Executive Director Mary Ellen Robertson, to explore the topic of “Getting Educated: How Attending a Church University (or not) Shapes Restoration Women’s Experiences.”

My own presentation will look at the histories of two small American denominations that initially embraced problematic doctrines that they eventually jettisoned before they each ultimately became “just another Protestant church”.  The Worldwide Church of God (now Grace Communion International) believed in Anglo-Israelitism (the view that the Anglo-Saxons were the lost tribes of Israel), and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church (now Christ Community Church) famously believed that the world is flat.  How has becoming just another Protestant church worked out in these two examples and what lessons might these experiences hold for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ)?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Comparative/Ecumenical, Gender & Sexuality, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Women Tagged With: , ,

The Kirtland Temple Turns 175

March 28, 2011 by

“Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to God and the Lamb! Amen, Amen, and Amen!”

There’s nothing quite like singing “The Spirit of God” with a congregation in the Kirtland Temple.  I’ve had the opportunity three times — the first time was at the dedication of the new Temple Visitor Center, the second was at a meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association, and the third time was yesterday.  However, yesterday was the first time the congregation also gave the “Hosanna shout.”  (I’ve heard a lot of reviews of lackluster Hosanna shouts — I’ve never before participated in one, so I have no basis for comparison —  but I thought this one was pretty good.)

Yesterday was the 175th anniversary of the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and I traveled there for the weekend to participate in the commemorative events.  Beginning Friday there were a series of special meetings, services, seminars, lectures, and tours.  There were three services on Sunday itself — an LDS service in the early morning and one in the evening, and a Community of Christ service in the mid-morning.  To preserve the temple, the number of attendees for each session was limited to 300 (over a thousand apparently packed in for the original 1836 dedication), so I was only able to attend the Community of Christ service, but by every account, all three were very special and moving. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Mormon Studies Tagged With: ,

The Eighth Day

March 3, 2011 by

Today, I will press my hands on my son who was born eight days ago and I will bless him. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Family, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Pre-Manifesto Era, Theology, Doctrine & Policy Tagged With: , ,

Oral Histories: Minding the Gaps

March 2, 2011 by

Some of my favorite parts of Mormon history are the accounts and stories of rank and file members, tales from their lives that show the impact of the gospel and the culture around them. I like to see how people interpreted (or do interpret) their religion, and how their faith plays out in their lives. It’s not a secret that much of earlier Church history lacks firsthand accounts and stories from women. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies, Women Tagged With: ,

War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives

February 25, 2011 by

The people at Claremont Graduate University continue to outdo themselves. On March 18-19, 2011, the Howard W. Hunter chair for Mormon Studies is sponsoring this conference.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Current Events, Mormon, Mormon Studies

UVU to host yet another really cool conference

February 17, 2011 by

Just when you thought last year’s Mormon Studies conference at UVU could not be improved upon…

Check this out.

Filed Under: Announcements, Comparative/Ecumenical, Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: , ,

Female healing article now available

February 7, 2011 by

The last six years have been a lot of fun, and I count myself very fortunate to have been able to work on this project and to work on it with Kristine. Honestly, there were moments in the Church History Library when I thought to myself, “If I never have the opportunity to see anything else or work on another project, I will still be full.” We owe many friends and institutions much for their support. Thank you.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements, Books & Journals, Gender & Sexuality, Joseph Smith Era, Liturgy, Modern Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Post-Manifesto Era, Pre-Manifesto Era, TCoJCoLDS, Theology, Doctrine & Policy, Women

Mapping the Acts of the Apostle Parley

February 7, 2011 by

I was recently commissioned by Terryl L. Givens, Matthew J. Grow, and Oxford University Press to produce a new series of maps for their upcoming biography, Parley P. Pratt: The St. Paul of Mormonism (scheduled for release in October of this year). There’s been no skimping on the maps — the volume will include ten full maps plus insets.

Parley P. Pratt's Early Life
Locations in the early life of Parley P. Pratt.

In keeping with the title, the bulk of the maps focus on the missionary journeys of the peripatetic Pratt. The vision of the authors, which I attempted to fulfill, was to produce a series of maps almost reminiscent of the maps at the back of LDS Bibles that show the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Mormon Studies Tagged With:

BCC Zeitcast 64: Morris Thurston & The Miller Eccles Study Group

February 3, 2011 by

In this two part episode, Scott B. interviews Morris Thurston, a supporter and participants in several areas of Mormon Studies. The interview covers a range of topics, including Thurston’s early experiences in Mormon Studies, later experiences with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, and the history of the Miller Eccles Studies Group, which has been holding monthly lectures and meetings in Southern California for over 30 years.

Part 1: Part 2:

Links for your convenience:
[Read more…]

Filed Under: BCC Zeitcast, Features, Mormon, Mormon Studies Tagged With: , , ,

Being Political? Women, Healing and the Uses of Mormon History

November 24, 2010 by

Kris Wright is a former BCC blogger. 

Every important new discovery about the past changes how we think about the present, and what we expect from the future; on the other hand every change in the conditions of the present and in the expectations for the future revises our perceptions of the past.  In this complex context, history is born ostensibly as a reflection on the past: a reflection which is never isolated from the present or the future.  History deals with human life as it “flows” through time. [1]

Recently I listened to a podcast interview here at BCC in which Scott B. interviewed Jonathan Stapley about women and Mormon healing rituals.  During the discussion, Jonathan was able to share his broad knowledge of Mormon history and spoke about the history of women and healing in his trademark erudite manner.  Because I was already familiar with the historical sources used in the forthcoming paper and the conclusions drawn from them, the most interesting part of the podcast for me occurred in the final eleven minutes, where the theme of the uses of history and the question of objectivity emerged.  Scott asked Jonathan what his hopes were for the paper and what it meant for the modern LDS Church.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Studies, Women

BCC Zeitcast 58: Female Ritual Healing In Mormonism

November 17, 2010 by

The BCC Zeitcast returns with a brand new season!

In this two-part episode, Scott B. and J. Stapley discuss the long-promised and oft-cited paper on Female Ritual Healing which Stapley and BCC Emeritus Kris Wright co-authored, and which will be published in the Winter 2011 Journal of Mormon History, due out this January. [Read more…]

Filed Under: BCC Zeitcast, Features, Liturgy, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Theology, Doctrine & Policy, Women

James Adams. Part 3. Textual Landmarks. Conference Primer.

September 29, 2010 by

Part 1 is here, part 2, here.

As you watch General Conference this weekend, appreciate it for some of the textual certainties. And you never know what you may hear.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Studies Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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