I found this while going through the Times and Seasons, and it reminded me of Chris’s post on Mormonizing John Wesley. Apparently Mormon J. M. Grant (Jedediah, I presume) wrote a letter to the New York Messenger, and included an excerpt from a letter from Jefferson to John Adams, and asked his readers if they thought Thomas Jefferson was a Mormon. Grant’s letter was later republished in the Times and Seasons.

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An extract from a letter written to JOHN ADAMS BY THOMAS JEFFERSON, of Virginia, published by Mr. (more…)

I spent way too much time on Saturday going through the Virginia Sorensen papers collection in BYU’s Special Collections. (more…)

All of the regular bloggers and readers here at JI are connoisseurs of the variety of treatments that Joseph Smith and the Mormons receive at the hands of historians who are themselves not experts in the field of Mormon studies. Such treatments range from the ridiculous to the not-quite sublime, and coming as they do in broadly-conceived syntheses, they tend to be derivative and rely heavily on a hodgepodge of secondary interpretations (which authors they choose to cite seems often to depend on what they find on the shelves of their institution’s library–lots of Brooke, Quinn and Brodie usually). Pulitzer Prize winning historian Walter A. McDougall’s view of Joseph Smith and early Mormonism in the newly-released second volume of his multi-volume history of the U.S. is surprising in its creativity. (more…)

Before we can ask whether a Mormon theology of the movies is a viable idea, I suppose that making the case that a theology of the movies in general works would be useful.

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I decided to take a little break from my weighty posts of the last few weeks and ask everyone if they find anything particularly Mormon in the following passage:

I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my background makes me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation. I believe in her institutions, ideals, and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. She had granted me liberties and opportunities such as no individual enjoys in this world today. She had given me an education befitting kings. She has entrusted me with the responsibilities of the franchise. She has permitted me to build a home, to earn a livelihood, to worship, think, speak, and act as I please-as a free man equal to every other man. (more…)

Be sure to check out and support Ardis’ new blog, Keepapitchinin.org, which went live today. 

This is not one of my normal posts, which are usually pretty detached and scholarly. Rather, I’m going to share a personal experience about bringing in academic history to the ward setting. Sunday before last I gave a talk in sacrament meeting, with the assigned topic being scriptures and their value in my life. Initially, the second counselor in my bishopric asked me to address the FLDS situation and continuing revelation, a topic that I was initially excited about but with further reflection I realized that it would be altogether too difficult to do justice in a 10 minute presentation that is supposed to be faith promoting. So I backed off, opting instead to tackle a slightly less (more…)

Joe asked some good questions in the comments section of part 4.  As I began to write a response, I found that I had quickly written almost 3 pages of response, so I figured that would make a pretty annoying comment.  I here reproduce his questions and my response.  Now I really am finished with posting on this topic.  I thank everyone for their longsuffering and comments up to now, I didn’t mean to hijack the blog for the last day or so, I appologize. (more…)

Entering chapter 9, I was expecting some level of technical analysis that would be beyond my comprehension but still accessible enough that I could form an opinion of my own, perhaps that was a mistake on my part. Opposite chapter 9’s first page are pictured nine proposed daguerreotypes. I remembered Ardis’ description of a foot-longish file of proposed Joseph Smith photos and immediately wondered why these specific daguerreotypes were chosen for consideration. One of these images even has a beard! Again, being that there is no stated criteria for consideration, it seems that the author alone knows why these images were included for consideration. This opens up the possibility that the author is constructing a series of straw man arguments. (more…)

On page 51 and 52, Tracy then summarizes the physical features of Joseph Smith by topic and then chronologically (as given in the preceding pages) within each topic. Descriptions of stature, height, face and head, weight, eyes, hands, legs, feet, nose, complexion, and hair are so arranged. Tracy attempts to show how this arrangement is beneficial by showing that the description of what is described as the “July 1838″ Joseph puts Joseph’s weight at 200 lbs. (more…)

I’m indebted to Joel for so well presenting what historical methodology consists of and how devotional treatments of history differ from academic treatments. Methodologically, in this book, a number of issues stand out. First, I struggled to understand what kind of book this is. Is it supposed to be a scholarly book or a devotional book, or both? (more…)

S. Michael Tracy. Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again: The Joseph Smith Photograph. Salt Lake City, Utah: Eborn Publishing, LLC, 2008. x + 264 pp. $39.99. Hardback, ISBN: 1-890718-61-0.

I have to say that from the time I first saw the Scannel image almost 5 years ago, I liked it. With a resurgence of interest in the Scannel daguerreotype in the last year, I grew excited at the possibility of a true image of the prophet Joseph Smith. When I found out there would be a book about it, I looked forward with anxious anticipation to its publication, which would lay out all the evidence and show convincingly that this was an authentic photo of Joseph Smith. I wanted to believe. As discussion increased around the bloggernacle, a number of questions were raised about the merits of the Scannel image as a true image of Joseph Smith. With regards to the Scannel image, I resolved that I would reserve judgment until I could evaluate the evidence for itself in the book. (more…)

From Margaret Young:

The Idaho Black History Museum is proud to present

Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons

Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers (more…)

I just wanted.to thank everyone for their comments to my last post about the place of theory in the study of history and its implications for the study of the Mormon past. This post will focus on historical methodology and its implications in the study of Mormon history. Questions about historical methodology and Mormonism are what inspired my recent rhapsodies on process of historical inquiry. I was skimming through Prince’s provocative biography of David O. McKay, which I liked very much in many ways, but I was appalled at the way he described his methodology. (more…)

The following was printed in Times and Seasons, September 1, 1842. (more…)

Five years before the 1920s, a decade in which he did a least as much as John T. Scopes to instigate warfare between Protestant liberals and fundamentalists, and fifty years before Martin Luther King praised him as the greatest preacher of the century, the Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick was appointed to the Jessup Chair in Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary. [1]

Fosdick was not really an original thinker, but he was a master teacher and popularizer. And, perhaps because of the agonies that he struggled through on his own route to faith, he had a powerful understanding of the anxieties that plagued his age. Because of the new Biblical criticism, Fosdick wrote,

The old use of the Bible became impossible to many preachers who, as much as ever was true of their fathers, believed in Jesus Christ as the world’s Saviour and wanted to proclaim his Gospel as the power of God unto salvation.[2]

In other words, these preachers - like Fosdick himself - believed passionately in God revealed in Christ. But they no longer accepted the accuracy of Biblical history. And they did not know what to do. (more…)

Harry Emerson Fosdick was among the most popular preachers and writers of the first half of the twentieth century. He’s particularly known for a trilogy of devotional works called “The Three Meanings:” The Meaning of Prayer, the Meaning of Faith, the Meaning of Service. These books have sold millions of copies; there are reports that Gandhi read them in prison; and they’re still in print today.

Despite Fosdick’s high profile,* however, it was the RLDS, not Harold B. Lee or J. Reuben Clark, who stepped up to the plate to represent Mormonism to Fosdick. (more…)

Before anything else, I want to wish everyone good luck or congratulations on their end of semester work–which ever option best fits your own situation. After having done my best to diagram the historical craft in my previous post and postulate what such observations might mean for the study of Mormon history, I have decided today to tackle the role of theory in historical inquiry. Once again, I am treating an extremely complex topic, but I hope to present my ideas in a clear and concise manner. As such, I will probably oversimplify some concepts for which I profoundly apologize-this topic has proven much more difficult than I initially thought. (more…)

One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred. (more…)

In honor of Earth Day, here is an excerpt from an 1860 sermon by Brigham Young. I’m intrigued by how his counsel to cultivate the earth figures into his eschatology. (more…)