The 2018 Church History Symposium will be held 1-2 March 2018, splitting days between BYU campus and the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. The program committee has assembled a full slate of panels addressing the theme for this year’s conference, “Financing Faith: The Intersection of Business and Religion.” 

In addition to the two days of panels, the conference will feature two keynote speakers. The first will be Dr. Sharon Murphy, professor of history at Providence College, who will speak on Thursday, March 1, from 7:00-8:00 PM in the auditorium of the BYU Conference Center. Dr. Murphy is a renowned expert on economic history in the nineteenth century and is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) and Other People?s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). She is currently working on an investigation of the public perception of banks around the Panic of 1819, and an examination of the relationship between southern banks and American slavery. The topic of her keynote address will be ?Financing Faith: Mormonism and Banking in the 1830s and 1840s.? It should be an informative and enlightening presentation. The other keynote will be given by Bishop Gerald Causse on Friday, March 2, from 10:45-11:45 AM in the Little Theater of the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Bishop Causse is the Presiding Bishop of the church and will provide his thoughts on church finance and business.

The Church History Library will also have a special display in the reading room from February 26 to March 10. The display will consist of various financial documents throughout the history of the church including a Kirtland Safety Society note, an account of the Camp of Israel (Zion?s Camp), Nauvoo city scrip, promissory notes from Winter Quarters, currency from Utah Territory, and a ledger of the Perpetual Emigration Fund.

Several Bloggernaclers are on the program, including the JI’s Andrea Radke-Moss, Robin Jensen, and David Grua, as well as BCC’s Sam Brunson.