By StanMay 30, 2008
So I figured I’d follow Matt’s lead and post my MHA paper (in 2 parts) here. Since I already blogged my intro previously–on Joseph Fielding Smith’s reading of Darwin–I’ll skip that and proceed right into the Roberts library:
The B. H. Roberts Memorial Collection is housed in the Church Archives, in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. This intact collection, included as a part of the B. H. Roberts Collection, contains over 1,300 items, including most of B. H. Roberts’s personal books,
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By Ben PMay 28, 2008
One of the great things about blogging is the ability to bounce ideas off people much smarter than yourself. Therefore, I want to just throw one of my thoughts out and hope that an engaging discussion on the topic will follow.
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By matt b.May 26, 2008
I am here responding to panel 6E of the 2008 Mormon History Association Annual Meeting: “Scientific Mormonism: evolution, monism, and Mormon thought,” featuring the following papers:
?Transmutational Theology: An Unofficial Authoritative View, Mormon Responses to Darwin, 1859-1933,” Jordan Watkins, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
?Marginal Dialogues: B. H. Roberts?s Reading of Science and Philosophy,” Stanley J. Thayne, Brigham Young University
?The Making of a ?Mormon Modernity,?? John Dulin, Whittier, CA
An image: BH Roberts, hunched over a copy of William James?s The Varieties of Religious Experience, pencil in hand, brow furrowed, looking for new ideas, new images, new ways to express and understand exactly what it was that his Mormonism was telling him about the universe and humanity.
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By Jared TMay 24, 2008
I’m surprised I hadn’t put this one up yet. Richard and Claudia Bushman visited Benchmark Books last year to discuss Rough Stone Rolling, but more particularly Bushman’s then recently released On The Road With Joseph Smith, the published version of a diary Bushman was asked to keep about the events surrounding the release of Rough Stone Rolling. If you haven’t read this book, it’s a short, affordable, and highly engaging read, which I highly recommend. Again, thanks to Brent Brizzie for providing this transcript.
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By David G.May 23, 2008
Alas, I spent all my travel money going to an academic conference in the first Zion (Missouri), so I’m stuck in the second Zion (Utah) and getting regular dispatches from Christopher in the Almost Zion (California). Here’s the list of winners from this year’s awards ceremony.
Best Undergrad Paper: John Brumbaugh, “Return of Anti-Mormonism: Fred Dubois and the Reed Smoot Hearings.”
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By ChristopherMay 19, 2008
Recently, while reading Randall Stephens’ excellent new book, The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (review here), I came across the following passage, which naturally intrigued me.
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By David G.May 14, 2008
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.
…
An extract from a letter written to JOHN ADAMS BY THOMAS JEFFERSON, of Virginia, published by Mr.
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By Ben PMay 11, 2008
I spent way too much time on Saturday going through the Virginia Sorensen papers collection in BYU’s Special Collections.
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By SC TaysomMay 10, 2008
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.
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By matt b.May 10, 2008
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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Recent Comments
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
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