By David G.November 30, 2007
This month’s Ensign contains a fascinating little article describing Joseph Smith’s seven journals. The authors, two friends of mine, are editors on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Mark Ashurst-McGee (MA, USU; PhD. candidate, ASU) is editing journals from the 1830s. Alex Smith (MA, BYU) is editing Smith’s journals from 1841-April 1843. Mark is also editing the journals from April 1843 to June 1844. They’re both excellent scholars and likely know more about these journals, in terms of content, physical description, and provenance, than anyone alive. Alex has worked directly with the Nauvoo journal, The Book of the Law of the Lord, which previous scholars such as Scott Faulring and Michael Marquardt have not had access to.
The 6 page article gives summaries of the seven journals and also includes images of the artifacts. We also get
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By StanNovember 25, 2007
Sitting in front of the fireplace at my in-law’s this evening, I began chatting with my wife’s 93-year-old grandmother about her life growing up in San Juan County, Utah. She began by telling me again about the hole-in-the-rockers, the original Mormon settlers of the Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello region in southeastern Utah who had hacked their way through the desert in one of the most incredible colonization missions in Western history.
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By ChristopherNovember 25, 2007
This previous week, while I was home in Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife and I attended the wedding of an old friend from high school. This friend, who grew up a member of the Wesleyan Church, was married at Perkins Chapel (located on Southern Methodist University’s campus at the Perkins School of Theology). The ceremony was beautiful, and it was fun to see old friends and catch up with each of them. Much to my wife’s chagrin, though, I couldn’t set aside the aspiring religious scholar in me, and was fascinated with the chapel’s architecture and layout, the wedding liturgy, and everything else.
The following are a few of my observations.
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By David G.November 18, 2007
Warning: Plot spoilers follow.
Tonight my girlfriend and I attended an advance screening of the forthcoming movie, Emma Smith: My Story. It was, to say the least, better than we had expected. I’m not a film critic, so I cannot critique the movie based on editing, music, camera angles, or even dialogue. However, none of these more aesthetic characteristics stuck out as being “bad” to me, despite being told before hand that the movie was still very rough. If I came into this movie with little historical
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By David G.November 17, 2007
Justin’s recent post at Mormon Wasp describes the latest Jack Chick anti-Mormon comic book, The Enchanter. Chick’s comic contains a picture of Joseph Smith, dressed in full Nauvoo Legion attire, saying: “If the people let us alone, we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion with the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood…from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a 2nd Muhammad, whose motto in treating for peace was ?the Al-Qur’an or the sword.’ So sha
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By StanNovember 16, 2007
Recently released from Mercer University Press, Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, edited by Donald W. Musser and David L. Paulsen, promises to be a tome of interest to both Mormons and Christians alike who are interested in dialogue. Martin Marty seems to think so. “When I agreed to read the manuscript and write the foreword,” Marty writes, “I don’t think I anticipated the scope, detail, and depth of this one. Now I pass it along to other readers who will find that such scope, detail, and depth represent gifts to everyone who has interest and concern for ‘the
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By Ben PNovember 15, 2007
Continuing on a previous post from earlier this week, I would now like to discuss a specific example of Mormon folklore. In preparation for the Folklore Society of Utah Conference this Saturday, I have collected close to 100 interviews of college-aged students regarding the practice of polygamy. I have discovered that as a result of the Church being virtually silent when it comes to the purposes of polygamy in authoritative discourse and writings, the most common way of learning about it is through folklore. This has lead to a wide diversity on when it was initiated, why it was practiced, and what will happen with it concerning the future.
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By David G.November 15, 2007
Over at Religion in American History, John Fea asks:
Which American religious historians are the best writers?
Being unimaginative today, we’re going to ask the same question at the Juvenile Instructor, but modified to Mormon history. Who’s the Joseph Ellis of Mormon history/studies?
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