By Tona HNovember 30, 2012
Major Problems in American Religious History, 2nd ed. Documents and Essays edited by Patrick Allitt. Major Problems in American History Series. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013. vii-xx, 519 pp.
Patrick Allitt (Emory University) has updated the American religious history volume in Wadsworth/Cengage’s Major Problems series for 2013 – the original edition was published in 1999, so a second edition was long overdue. And it turns out that it was worth the wait, if you can swallow the $95 price tag.
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By November 29, 2012
[We are thrilled to have this guest post from Emily Farrer on a project she is currently working on, which covers her grandfather’s 1929 mission to South Africa. After reading this fascinating overview, go visit her site: aroundtheworldcsb.blogspot.com]
My grandfather, Clarence Sharp Barker, was born in Salt Lake City in 1903. He was a quiet man and seemed to enjoy observing things from the outside as he was a newspaper reporter. He did, however, have a great adventure of his own: a trip around the world.
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By ChristopherNovember 28, 2012
From William and Mary graduate student and friend of JI Spencer Wells:
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By GuestNovember 27, 2012
John Turner wraps up the JI’s roundtable discussion of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.
Four-and-a-half years ago, during my initial research trip to Utah, I ventured down to Provo and had lunch with Spencer Fluhman and several of his students. Among them were David Grua and Chris Jones (and Stan Thayne, I think). The Juvenile Instructor was a newborn blog at the time. So it’s a bit surreal for me to have read the topical reviews of Pioneer Prophet over the past six weeks at this blog.
I love the field of Mormon history for many reasons. The rich sources. The voluminous scholarship. Most of all, I love the fact that so many people care about the Mormon past. This has some downsides. It makes the field contentious and testy. One need only read the “letters” section of the most recent Journal of Mormon History. Such contention, however, is more than outbalanced by the passion that so many individuals bring to their writing and to conversations about Mormon history. That passion is contagious.
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By Edje JeterNovember 25, 2012
Three of President Duffin?s missionaries died during his six-year administration. [1] Below I summarize Duffin?s experience with Elder George O Stanger of Neeley, Idaho, who died, age twenty-three, of complications from typhoid fever on 1903 May 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. [2] I will focus on how Duffin handled the logistics of the illness and death and how he narrated it in terms of doctrine.
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By RobinNovember 24, 2012
[Another installment in the roundtable on John Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.]
Archival and historical research is the bread and butter of historical writing.
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By matt b.November 24, 2012
Another in the JI’s series of review essays on various aspects of John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet
One of the more common tropes in Mormon history is drawing the comparison between Joseph Smith the visionary dreamer and Brigham Young the hard-headed administrator. This is sometimes done with admiration or scholarly satisfaction ? faithful Mormons might say that Brigham was precisely what the church needed when Joseph Smith?s assassination left the Mormons dazed and splintering, and sociologists of religion often describe the transition from Joseph Smith?s leadership to Brigham Young?s as a classic case of Weberian routinization of charisma. The dichotomy is also sometimes drawn with a sense of tragedy: many liberal-leaning Mormons imagine Joseph Smith?s Mormonism as a time of exciting intellectual freedom and theological experimentation, and see in Brigham Young the slow settling in of dull institutional authoritarianism and the end of Joseph?s enthusiastic humanism.
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By Ben PNovember 20, 2012
Dinger, John S. ed. The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011. lxxxi + 616 pp. Appendixes, index. Hardback with dust jacket: $49.95; ISBN 978-1-56085-214-8.
In his preface to this volume, John S. Dinger claims, “The minutes collected in this volume are a treasure trove of material reading to the religious and secular life of the early Latter-day Saints,” and that “these two sets of documents are, I believe, two of the most important primary sources for the period” (xvi). I agree, and thus take privilege in reviewing the volume. Nauvoo is an absolutely fascinating period of Mormon history, filled with contention, innovation, conflict, dissent, and intrigue. All of these tensions come out in these important documents, as well as the mundane events that transpired in day-to-day activities.
Though the two councils in question, the City Council and High Council, were two separate bodies, they had significant overlap. Both were made up of Mormon authorities, both looked to Joseph Smith for leadership, and both seemed to merge the church/state realms that America prided itself on keeping separate (though never, in actuality, succeeded). What took place in one council likely had significance to the other, and decisions from both bodies demonstrated the LDS Church’s performance of power during the waning years of Joseph Smith’s life. What we witness in these meetings are men attempting to run the Kingdom of God on earth–no small task to take place in disestablished America. Religious sermons are offered in secular council, secular decisions are made in religious courts. Perhaps more than anything else, this collection demonstrates the permeable boundaries of church and state in Mormon Nauvoo.
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By Edje JeterNovember 18, 2012
Thanksgiving Day traditions in Texas, Kansas, and Utah around 1900, as recorded in missionary diaries, seem similar to the popular present-day model: turkey, family, gratitude, pumpkin pie. However, only two of the missionaries in this studied mentioned Thanksgiving Day; the other four missionaries with diary entries in November did not record observances, even when one of them was boarding long-term with church members. [1]
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By MaxNovember 17, 2012
Today I?m flying west, from Boston to Chicago, for the American Academy of Religion?s annual conference. Depending on how the plane banks west, we might fly directly over Lowell, Massachusetts, the onetime home of Walker Lewis, a black Mormon whom Brigham Young once described as ?one of the [Mormons?] best Elders, an African.?
The timing of this indirect mention of the black Mormon convert?Spring of 1847?is important. Young and most of the leaders of the Latter-day Saints in exile and exodus?passing the winter of 1846-47 in Winter Quarters?were debating the place of black men, or at least a black man, in their community. William McCary, the ?Nigger Prophet,? as some of the Mormons leaders called him, was causing quite a stir in camp.
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