Top 10 JI Posts from 2014

Happy New Year’s Eve! Before we ring in the new year, we thought we’d look back at the year that was at JI. Below you will find the 10 most-viewed posts from the past twelve months.

Continue Reading

The Stairs–A Nauvoo Rumor Featuring Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, and Plural Marriage

Welcome back to our series, wherein we answer questions from our readers about plural marriage. Where possible, I’ve linked to all the available sources for readers, so that others can investigate each question more fully, if they wish. Today’s question addresses the rumor concerning a physical altercation between Emma Hale Smith and Eliza R. Snow in Nauvoo.

In the 1982 issue of BYU Studies, three important Mormon women?s historians ? Maureen Beecher, Val Avery, and Linda King Newell ? explored the ?oft-told tale? that Joseph Smith?s wife Emma pushed Eliza R. Snow down the stairs in a fit of jealousy. The story as they construct it is one that has several variants: ?The characters involved are Joseph Smith, his wife Emma Hale Smith, and a plural wife, usually Eliza Roxcy Snow. The place is invariably Nauvoo, the scene either the Homestead residence of the Smiths or the later roomier Mansion House. The time, if specified, is either very early morning, or night, in 1843, April or May, or in 1844. The action involves two women in or coming out of separate bedrooms. Emma discovers the other woman in the embrace of or being kissed by Joseph. A tussle follows in which Emma pulls the woman?s hair, or hits her with a broom, or pushes her down stairs, causing either bruises, or a persistent limp, or, in the extreme versions, a miscarriage. There may or may not be a witness or witnesses.?

Continue Reading

Religious Affiliation Requirement in Indian Boarding Schools

In my research of Navajo educational history, I have come across several student case files that include ?religion? as a major category in individual profiles. Growing up with Navajo family and friends, I remember references to how they had to choose their ?religion? at boarding school during the 1950s.

Continue Reading

Review: Jedediah S. Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History

Jedediah S. Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2014).

Secret ecclesiastical organizations usually draw a lot of attention, yet few secret ecclesiastical organizations have garnered as much speculation and mythologization as the Council of Fifty. Anyone with even a cursory interest in Mormon history has heard of the council, often wrapped up with rumors of kingly coronations, clandestine governments, and power struggles. Academic engagement with the organization has ranged from the ambitious (and as it turns out, overstated) Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (Michigan State University Press, 1967) by Klaus Hansen to the more nuanced articles by Michael Quinn and Andrew Ehat.[1] Recently, the LDS Church has announced plans to publish the long-secluded minutes from the original Nauvoo council as part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. But the council left a larger printed impact than what is found in that minute book; further, the council lasted much longer than merely Nauvoo. To help chart the development and relevance of this quixotic council, Jedidiah S. Rogers has edited The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History, which compiles a large number of documents that shed light on the secretive organization from its formation in 1844 through John Taylor’s resuscitation of the council in the 1880s. There are a lot of things that could be highlighted from the volume for discussion, but as a historian of American religious and political culture, I’d like to point out two themes that stood out to me.[2]

Continue Reading

Weekly Round-up

The coming of Christmas has slowed Mormon-related news this week. TLC announced that it will be airing a special called “My Husband’s Not Gay,” which will follow the lives of several men whose primary sexual attraction is towards men but who have chosen to marry women. The announcement of the program has revived discussions about Josh Weed and his willingness to discuss his relationship with his wife Lolly. Think Progress (linked above) hopes that the program will avoid the suggestion that homosexuality is something to be overcome but isn’t holding its breath. As someone who supports same sex marriage,* I agree with the sentiment and share their overall pessimism. It makes me yearn for the TLC of my high school years, which aired Baby Story every morning at 11:00 a.m. The last episode of Mormon Expression in which John Larsen will be hosting the podcast also aired this week. Adam Archer will take over soon.

*I should note that not everyone at JI agrees with my support of same sex marriage.

Sabbath, Sabbatical, and the Changing Seasons

Solstice was this week (which is also my birthday), a day which to me always represents a fresh start, the year’s pivot point back towards the light. This dawning feels especially significant, as the start of an unfamiliar new phase: I’ve just begun a sabbatical.

Continue Reading

Images: The Mistletoe Tradition at Salt Lake City

Note: the post below includes images of pejorative racial and ethnic stereotypes from 1912.

Today?s image, ?The Mistletoe Tradition at Salt Lake City,? came to my attention via Bunker and Bitton?s The Mormon Graphic Image, 1834-1914, where it illustrates a period (1908-1914) when portrayals of Mormons declined in frequency and hostility. ?Mistletoe…? comes from the British Punch?s Almanack for 1912—an appendage to the more famous Punch—and Bunker and Bitton only included the Mormon part of the full-page, three-panel gag about cultural exchange in British colonialism. [1] The whole page is below.

Continue Reading

More Questions from the Mailbag (On Plural Marriage, Joseph Smith’s Youngest Wife)

Welcome back to our series, wherein we answer questions from our readers about plural marriage. Where possible, I’ve linked to all the available sources for readers, so that others can investigate each question more fully, if they wish.

Apologies for the delay in answering questions (finals, life, etc.), but if you have any more questions, feel free to post them in the comments.

For other posts in this series, see

Samuel Brown and Kate Holbrook (Embodiment and Sexuality)

WVS (D&C 132 Questions)

Miscellaneous Questions

Continue Reading

MEGA ROUND-UP

All the most important links for the past 3 weeks. You know the drill: if we missed anything, let us know in the comments. If you have opinions on the news articles, let us know in the comments.

Continue Reading

The Mormon Old Man of the Mountain

One of my favorite hyperbolic descriptions of Brigham Young (??In the course of an unusually long life, he was never known to do a generous or unselfish action??) includes the line: ?If we search history for his prototypes, we find him a mixture of Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Kohrassan, and that terrible chief of the assassins, the Old Man of the Mountain.? [1] I recently wrote about the Mormon Mokanna; today I address the other half of the mix. In the mid- and late-nineteenth century, critics of Mormonism sometimes compared Mormons to the ?Old Man of the Mountain,? the leader of what Marco Polo and many since understood to be the fanatically dedicated and fantastically skilled Hashashin / ?Assassins.?

Continue Reading