By October 19, 2012
"I like to call it the lunar mission of the Church." -Elder Steven E. Snow referring to the Joseph Smith Papers
After too much waiting, being swamped at work, and my own timidity, I’d like to share my notes from the recent blogger event the Church History Library hosted for the release of Histories Volume 2 of the Joseph Smith Papers.
By October 18, 2012
[Another installment in the roundtable on John Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.]
If the first few chapters of Turner’s excellent biography narrate the foundations of Brigham Young’s Mormon experience, as Christopher outlined Tuesday, then it is the chapters surrounding Young’s assent to the Church’s top position (chapters 4-6) where the pioneer prophet’s dominant image comes into view. The period of succession following Joseph Smith’s death in 1844 used to be one of the dominant topics in Mormon historiography in the 1980s–led by scholarship from D. Michael Quinn, Ronald Esplin, Andrew Ehat, and partly spurred by the Hoffman-forged Joseph Smith III ordination document–but has since faded to the periphery in many ways. Since the topic’s heyday, a general narrative has taken prominence: Joseph Smith left, at least publicly, a very ambiguous plan for what would happen when he was gone, leading to a handful of quasi-legitimate succession claims. Brigham Young, this narrative generally says, gained the largest number of adherents in the wake of this “crisis” due to his Nauvoo ecclesiastical duties, temple activities, and, especially, his sheer will. While there are several problems with this framework–and Rob Jensen outlined some of them here–it is still quite formidable for most purposes, especially when focusing on the leading figures. (Focusing on the average saint during the period is a completely other matter.) Turner’s Brigham Young, along with Terryl Givens and Matt Grow’s Parley P. Pratt, offer important nuance to this narrative and, importantly, extends the analysis by showing the broader ramifications of what went on between 1844 and 1847.
By October 17, 2012
When Larry Echo Hawk was sustained as a Seventy earlier this month, he became just the second self-identifying North American indigenous person to serve as a General Authority. His call came over two decades following the excommunication of his predecessor, George P. Lee, and three decades following the church’s decision to discontinue its programs aimed at American indigenes: the Indian Student Placement Program, the Indian Seminary, and BYU’s Indian programs. Echo Hawk’s experience therefore presents a window into how at least one Mormon Native reared during the twentieth-century’s ?Day of the Lamanite? continues to appropriate and utilize a Lamanite identity, at least for a predominantly white audience. Since the early 1990s, Echo Hawk has commented on this subject in talks given at BYU, LDS Church News interviews, and his recent conference talk .
By October 16, 2012
I suspect that most readers of John Turner?s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (and consequently, most readers of this roundtable) are interested primarily in the final thirty years of Young?s life, or at least some aspect of it. It was during that time, after all, that the most obviously exciting, controversial, and significant events in Brigham Young?s own life and the church that he led occurred; it was during that time that Young became the pioneer prophet the book sets out to describe and analyze.
By October 15, 2012
J. Spencer Fluhman is assistant professor of History at Brigham Young University. He graduated summa cum laude from BYU with a degree in Near Eastern Studies (1998) and attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was awarded a MA (2000) and PhD (2006) in History. He is the author of the recently-released A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), and the editor (with Andrew H. Hedges and Alonzo L. Gaskill) of The Doctrine & Covenants: Revelations in Context (Religious Studies Center, BYU, and Deseret Book, 2008). He also guest edited (with Steven Harper and Jed Woodworth) the , ?Mormonism in Cultural Context.? Dr. Fluhman is also a dynamic lecturer and popular teacher at BYU. He personally mentored several of the bloggers at Juvenile Instructor, and remains a close friend and trusted mentor to the current generation of Mormon graduate students. Below he answers your questions about his recent book, broader researcher, and Mormon history more generally.
By October 14, 2012
The Juvenile Instructor is pleased to announce a round table discussion of one of the most important works to appear on Mormon history in recent memory–John G. Turner‘s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. Turner’s biography, published by Harvard University Press, represents perhaps the apex of what I’ve called elsewhere a “Brigham Young Revival,” as historians have revisited the second Mormon prophet with renewed vigor after a long period of scholarly neglect. In the early twentieth century, historians found Brigham Young to be a far more interesting figure than Joseph Smith, since the former embodied scholars’ fascination with the frontier as the source of American culture and distinctiveness. Smith, by contrast, was usually cast as a womanizing deceiver who preyed upon credulous dupes, whose achievements paled in comparison to those of his successor. By the 1940s, however, scholars began to see Smith in a more positive light, producing several important studies and biographies, while the interest in Young waned. In the post-Civil Rights era, Young’s primary importance for historians lay in his racial policies and controversial theological teachings. Only Leonard Arrington published a major work on Young during this period, whose 1985 Brigham Young: American Moses reflected an earlier era of frontier historiography.
By October 13, 2012
Years ago I was combing BYU?s L. Tom Perry Special Collections for materials related to Joseph F. Smith, 6th president of the Church. I found a number of hidden treasures, including a holograph copy of a patriarchal blessing supposedly given to Joseph F. Smith more than a year and a half prior to his first Hawaiian mission, when he was thirteen years old.
By October 12, 2012
So when I created my fall course on American religious pluralism I built it around five units. In this post I thought I?d share those, and invite conversation about where Mormonism shows up in my course or where it could be discussed in a similar course.
By October 11, 2012
With the buzz of the new missionary-age announcement still ringing throughout the blogs, I couldn’t help but muse over the different consequences and implications many are anticipating through this change.
I had a discussion with some friends today over the possibility of further changes we might see in the missionary program?s future.
Female AP?s? Not likely. Equalizing two-year lengths for all? Perhaps. Pantsuits? Why not. De-quantification?
Hm?probably never.
By October 10, 2012
I’m sure almost everyone has heard the news by now. Today, the University of Virginia has announced the establishment of the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies, which will be housed in the Department of Religious Studies (see coverage here). This chair has been in the works for a while, and it is remarkable how quickly they were able to raise a $3 million dollar endowment, but that just points to the excitement out there for the topic. (It also helps that east coast donors have probably not been hit up for the other Mormon studies chairs out west.)
A few rapid-fire thoughts on this important development:
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