Book Review: Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901-1924 by Reid Neilson

Neilson, Reid L. Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901-1924. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010

Dr. Reid L. Neilson, managing director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ history department, has written a fascinating account of the Mormon Japanese Mission at the turn of the 20^th century. Neilson argues that the 19^th century LDS missionary experience in the United States and Europe had calcified Mormon evangelizing strategies to a degree that ultimately determined their failure in the rapidly modernizing Japanese nation. While Neilson’s trajectory often wades a little shallow and missionary-centric, his transnational gaze at Mormon mission policy and practice, while situating his study in a comparative Christian missionary framework, offers important inroads for scholars of Mormon history who have too often found themselves mired in the nineteenth century American origins story of a 21^st century global church.

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Call For Papers–July 28, 2012, Conference on the History of Mormonism in Latin America and the US-Mexico Borderlands

Call for Papers

The History of Mormonism in Latin America and the U. S.-Mexico Borderlands

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for a conference on the history of Mormonism in Latin America and the U.S. Mexico Borderlands to be held in El Paso, Texas on July 28, 2012 in conjunction with a 100^th Anniversary Commemoration of the ?Exodus? of settlers from the Mormon Colonies in northern Mexico to the United States.

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CFP: Brazilian Mormon Studies Conference

III Brazilian Mormon Studies Conference
Annual Conference of the Associação Brasileira de Estudos Mórmons (Brazilian Mormon Studies Association—ABEM)
January 28, 2012
São Paulo, Brazil

Call for papers

“Mormonism and its relationship with other denominations”

Black Methodists, White Mormons: Race and Antipolygamy

(cross-posted at Religion in American History)

The latest issue of Religion and American Culture arrived in my mailbox last week, and I was excited to see the first article dealt with a topic sure to interest JI readers: “‘Until This Curse of Polygamy Is Wiped Out’: Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century,” written by James B. Bennett, associate professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. 

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Call For Papers Reminder: 2012 Mormon History Association Conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Call For Papers: 2012 Mormon History Association Conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on June 28-July1, 2012

“Mormonism in its Expanding Global Context: Invitations to New Interpretations and Understandings.”

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Mormonism at the American Society of Church History’s Winter Meeting

A couple of days ago, I received via email a link to an early draft of the lineup for the American Society of Church History’s Winter Meeting (held in conjunction with AHA’s annual meeting, Jan. 5-8, 2012 in Chicago). The program draft can be viewed in its entirety here, but I thought I’d highlight a few papers and sessions that might be of interest to JI’s readers (relevant papers and sessions in blue), followed by my own brief commentary on each:

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Quantifying Polygamy

This last week, FAIR went live with their Mormon Defense League website.[1] Among the “false claims” the website seeks to debunk concern the LDS Church’s current relationship to polygamy. In an effort to distinguish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from polygamous groups in the western United States, the MDL emphasized that plural marriage was a limited practice that had been officially stopped over a century ago. (Including perpetuating the unfortunate rhetorical battle over the label “Mormon”–a battle of deep irony when considering our frustration of others refusing us the label “Christian.”) To answer the question of the number of Mormons who practiced polygamy, it replied that “modern estimates of LDS members practicing polygamy prior to 1904 range between 2% and 20%.” While the website does admit that it is tough to get an accurate number, and that it depends on who you count within the statistics, their final number (2% to 20%) is unfortunate in that it is not only false but misleading.

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How Deep Is Your Mormon Women’s History?

In Claudia Bushman’s 2010 article for Dialogue, “Should Mormon Women Speak Out?” 41 (1): 171-184 – and by the way, the answer is yes – she writes,

I grew up in the Church but knew nothing of LDS women?s history. I did not know that the Relief Society operated cooperative stores, spun and wove silk fabric (including hatching the silkworms from eggs and feeding them on mulberry leaves that they gathered by hand), gleaned the fields to save grain for bad times, and trained as midwives and doctors. I didn?t know that they were the first women in the United States to vote, even though Wyoming?s women were first to receive the right to vote. I didn?t know that they edited their own excellent newspaper or that they had large meetings when they spoke up for their rights and beliefs as citizens and as Mormons. Finding all this out was part of our Boston women?s study [in the 1970s]. One of our women discovered bound volumes of the Woman?s Exponent, the newspaper edited by Lula Greene Richards and Emmeline B. Wells (1872?1914) in the Harvard library. She copied out sections; and we found in our foremothers who spoke out the models we were searching for in our own lives.

What strikes me about this observation is how true it STILL is, even in 2011.

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The Mormons and the Ghost Dance: A Literature Review

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry surrounded a group of ninety Minneconjou Lakota men just west of Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The wives and children of the Lakota warriors were camped a few yards to the south of the council ground. The Cavalry was engaged in disarming the warriors, who military leaders believed were part of a wide-ranging indigenous conspiracy to push back white settlement. The Lakota men were known to be adherents of the Ghost Dance, a religious phenomenon that originated with the Paiute prophet Wovoka in Nevada and had spread from the Great Basin to the Plains in 1889-1890. During the disarming, a struggle ensued between the troopers and a young Lakota who thought he could hide his rifle under his blanket, and a shot fired into the air. Chaos?and death?followed, as the five hundred members of the Seventh Cavalry proceeded to slaughter not only the by-then largely disarmed men but also the women and children as they fled the scene. Although exact numbers are unknown, perhaps as many as three hundred Lakotas died. It was shown in the aftermath of Wounded Knee that the Ghost Dance was not a broad-based scheme to overthrow U.S. authority, and, more to the point, that most if not all of the Lakotas who lost their lives on December 29, 1890 had died innocently after surrendering without resistance.[1] Although Latter-day Saints had nothing to do with the massacre at Wounded Knee, since 1890 commentators have speculated that Mormons were somehow connected and even the primary movers behind the Ghost Dance movement.

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Introducing Guest Blogger Tona Hangen

We’re absolutely thrilled to introduce and welcome Tona Hangen as our latest guest blogger here at the Juvenile Instructor. Tona introduces herself thus:

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