Joseph Smith and Poetry-Prophecy

If to some it seems presumptuous to call Joseph Smith a prophet, it will probably seem downright asinine to suggest that he was a poet too. And yet that?s the proposition I?d like to put forward in this post. The typical narrative renders Joseph as the unlearned ploughboy that he was, who could, as Emma assures us, hardly write a well-worded letter. But anyone who?s looked at how Joseph actually spoke and wrote (including anyone who?s followed along at all in the Gospel Doctrine course recently) knows that he used language in some interesting ways, ways that for some reason we do not often see language being used nowadays in the Church.

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New Guest Blogger

Please join the JI in welcoming our newest guest blogger, Russell, who offers the following introduction:

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The Apostolic Authority of the Nineteenth Century Mormon Woman

Here’s another post authored by occasional guest blogger and friend to JI, Bored in Vernal. Enjoy!

I’ve been enthralled by the portrait of Mormon women painted by Edward W. Tullidge in his 1877 book The Women of Mormondom. He called them women of a new age, of new types of character, religious empire-founders, and even bestowed upon Mormon women the title “apostles.” Of course, the term “apostle” when associated with the female sex was not, in the late 1800’s, fraught with as much tension as it is today. Yet I was still interested to investigate the impulse which led Tullidge to employ this word when speaking of our nineteenth-century sisters.

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Early Patriarchal Blessings and Connecting to Antiquity

Patriarchal blessings have always been an important aspect of Mormonism, and serve as a great window through which to interpret early Mormon thought. One key to understanding Joseph Smith Sr.?s role as the first patriarch is to recognize that the bestowal of ?patriarchal blessings? was a crucial step for Latter-day Saints to connect themselves with the authority of the past. Jan Shipps noted that early Mormonism was a ?movement in which leader and followers were together living through?recapitulating?the stories of Israel and early Christianity?[1]?the implementation of patriarchal blessings was an important way to do this.

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Community of Christ Historians (Part Two)

This post continues a typology of Community of Christ historians currently working in the field. Continuing with the Biblical theme, this post considers historians running in different directions?the Jonahs running away from the tradition and the Pauls who have had their road to Damascus experience and changed allegiances.

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Community of Christ Historians (Part One)

Historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith once quipped that ?a comparison is a disciplined exaggeration in the service of knowledge? (Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, p. 52). With this caveat in mind for what the comparative enterprise entails, at the invitation of the JI permabloggers, I?ve constructed a short typological overview of Community of Christ historians currently in the field. My schema is a bit artificial (there aren?t that many historians to classify in the first place), but I?ve done so simply to serve ?a useful end.? This short essay looks at four categories of CofC historians and highlights one or two representatives from each type: the priests (historians who work for the church), the Isaiahs (the faithful iconoclasts), the Jonahs (the disillusioned historians), and the Pauls (the converts).

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“The government is the devil”: Glenn Beck and Mormonism Redux

As a follow up to my post on Glenn Beck’s drawing upon a certain strain of Mormon apocalyptic folklore in articulating his political positions (and the mainstream media’s ignoring the influence of Beck’s religion on those positions), I thought readers might be interested in the latest instance illustrating it.

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Latino/as and Mormonism: Two Steps Forward; On Ugly Step Back

I?ve been surprised that the following recent events and statements have not received more attention from the bloggernacle. I thought I?d briefly announce and discuss them here, as I think they are relevant both to scholars interested in Mormonism and race/ethnicity and to Latter-day Saints whose lives these events affect in very real ways.

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