“Seventy years ago this Church was organized with six members. We commenced, so to speak, as an infant’. We advanced into boyhood, and still we undoubtedly made some mistakes, which did not generally arise from a design to make them, but from a lack of experience. Yet as we advanced the experience of the past materially assisted us to avoid such mistakes as we had made in our boyhood. But now we are pretty well along to manhood; we are seventy years of age, and one would imagine that after a man had lived through his infancy, through his boyhood, and on until he had arrived at the age of seventy years, he would be able, through his long experience, to do a great many things that seemed impossible and in fact were impossible for him to do in his boyhood state. While we congratulate ourselves in this direction, There are many things for us to do yet.[1]”

Lorenzo Snow’s words to Latter-day Saints at the opening of the 20^th century are telling. Snow had lived through Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, the trek west, and the presidencies of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and many of the most important events of the first seventy years of the LDS Church. He had known Joseph Smith as an adult, walked with him in Zion’s Camp, and helped settle and colonize Utah. Lorenzo Snow had as much right as anyone to create this narrative of the Mormon past: it had been born, felt its growing pains, and was entering maturity.

When thinking about 20^th century Mormon History, Snow’s timeline provides a useful paradigm for understanding the progress of the field. The books in Mormon History that are most acclaimed and enjoy broader readership within the Academy (as well as the number of books in general) are largely rooted in the years 1830-1900, including Rough Stone Rolling, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet and The Mormon Question, and Refiner’s Fire. Mormon Studies journals are filled with articles on plural marriage, theocracy, economic systems, and the peculiarities of 19^th Century Mormonism. Events of the 20th century are being highlighted more often in the past few years, but articles on the first seventy years of Mormonism far outstrip the events of the proceeding 113.

This isn’t surprising. Mormonism presents an interesting case study for the birth and maturity of a global religion. 19^th Century Mormonism offers the study of the effects of charismatic leaders, how religious groups coalesce, and how burgeoning religious movements and their peculiar practices are portrayed in the public eye. Many of these items of interest hold value in academic conversation as well as in explaining Mormonism to the faithful.

Furthermore, in the study of 19^th century Mormonism there are primary sources available. The study of 20^th Century Mormonism suffers from the dearth of available sources. For every set of papers that are available (James E. Talmage, J. Reuben Clark, David O. McKay) there are a dozen that aren’t (Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, John A. Widtsoe, and Bruce R. McConkie’s papers come immediately to mind). This lack of sources makes it much more difficult to tell the “full” story of an event, or even to gain insight into how certain events happened or came to happen. This decision is institutional, though not unusual, in light of governmental and corporate policies that prohibit documents from being “de-classified” for a set number of years.

In spite of these difficulties, works such as Kathleen Flake’s The Politics of American Religious Identity, the most acclaimed book on 20^th Century Mormon History show the promise that 20^th Century of Mormon History holds. Greg Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, Ed Kimball’s biographies of Spencer W. Kimball, the J. Reuben Clark biographies, and Michael Quinn’s Mormon Hierarchy series provide invaluable insight to Mormon leaders.  Marti Bradley’s Pedestals and Podiums and Beecher, Cannon’s Women of Covenant and Anderson’s Sisters in Spirit have furthered the study of Mormon women beyond their participation in plural marriage. Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount, Mauss’s Angel and the Beehive and Alexander’s Mormonism in Transition have also given insight to Mormon History in the 20^th Century. Some have been able to gain the trust of Church archivists, have received the papers required for their work as a gift, relied on oral histories, or relied on social, cultural, or environmental histories to alleviate the necessity of institutional records. In many cases, phenomenal work has been done without the primary material that may have added depth to already cogent analysis and argument.[1]

20^th Century Mormonism has picked up steam in recent years: including forthcoming biographies of James E. Talmage, Joseph F. Smith, and Ezra Taft Benson, studies on the “Mormon Jesus,” and the public image of Mormonism in the 20^th Century.[2] This month at JI, we will focus our posts on 20^th Century Mormonism. In doing so, we hope to not only highlight the excellent scholarship that has been done on the 20^th Century, but to call attention to areas that could be further developed in Mormon History.  We hope through our posts and the posts of guest-bloggers, to add to the contributions of 20^th Century Mormon Historians and to spark further discussion on what can be done to further the study of Mormonism in the 20^th Century.

What are some 20^th Century topics that you would like to read more about? Any particular decades, leaders, or movements that deserve more attention? I would like to see greater study of the global(izing) Church as it expanded from the United States, studies in the development of Mormon political conservatism, and perhaps studies on the lived religion of the Latter-day Saints. As Mormon History “grows up,” to borrow Lorenzo Snow’s term, the study of Mormonism should continue and expand their embrace of the 20^th century Church and its people.