Thanks to Katherine Pollock for this writeup!

“Back to Independence!” could be the calling cry of the John Whitmer Historical Association, which returns to Independence, Missouri, every three years for its annual September conference. Although the location was familiar, JWHA finds new places and spaces for the history community to gather and learn. This year, the conference was held at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. Renovated and updated in 2021, several of the session rooms contained beautifully painted murals, and attendees explored the modernized museum about President Harry S. Truman’s life throughout the conference.

Organized by President-Elect Matthew L. Harris (Colorado State University-Pueblo) and his committee, this year’s conference featured twenty-three sessions with forty-six presentations, three panels, and three keynotes. Sessions and panels spanned different Restoration denominations, time periods, and parts of the world.

Keynotes:

With the theme “Politics and Religion: The Impact of Governance and Government on the Restoration Movements from 1830 to the Present,” JWHA invited scholar Gregory A. Prince to give the Richard P. Howard Lecture. His lecture titled “Hawaii: Ground Zero for the LDS Church’s Foray into Marriage Equality” updated his research from his book Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences (2019). Price looked at the many predictions by church leaders of the negative social consequences of legalizing gay marriage would bring and how none of them came to pass.

Community of Christ’s newly ordained Prophet-President Stassi Cramm gave the keynote “Prophetic People Deciding Together,” shared Cramm’s experience with common consent in Community of Christ, comparing her experience with the ordination of women in the 1980s and LGBT ordination and marriage in the 2010s.

Mark L. Staker (Church History Department) concluded the conference giving his Presidential Address, “The Whitmer Family and the Church of Christ: Pacifists, Anti-Intellectuals, and the German Pietist Roots of a Founding Family,” which did a cultural deep dive of the background of the Whitmer family.

Scholarship Winners:

The conference’s scholarship winners included: Makoto Hunter (UC Santa Barbara), Harrison Endicott (Brigham Young University), Phoebe Turvaville (Brigham Young University), and Grace Guentzel (Arizona State University).

Tours:

JWHA chose “contextual” tours for 2025. Attendees had the option of two tours: the Brown v. Board of Education National Park in Topeka, Kansas, and the World War I Museum in Independence, Missouri. On the way to Topeka, Kansas, Matthew L. Harris gave a lecture about the Civil Rights movement and how it was reacted to by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ with present endeavors for racial reconciliation.

Conference Highlights from Attendees:

Katherine Pollock: “A session that I found particularly well-done was Makoto Hunter’s presentation on the RLDS Church’s spotlight during the Reed Smoot hearings. The RLDS Church was often used as a foil for what normal religion should be in America at the time. I counted presentations that included six denominations: Community of Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), Lyman Wight’s group, LeBaron Mormon Fundamentalists, and Church of Christ (Temple Lot).”

Kyle Beshears: “A session highlight for me was hearing Katherine Peake’s presentation on Lyman Wight. It was her first presentation, but I learned a lot. She splashed some folk history, and it reminded me of why JWHA is unique––we give amateur historians a space of respect and attention to share their work. It’s more of a community than a conference.”

Makoto Hunter: “There’s something special and electric in the way that a panel on which you present can go so well that you and your co-panelists just need to mob each other in the hallway to talk about everyone’s research for another hour. This is part of why historians still hold conferences. You don’t get spontaneous enthusiasm like that, not in the same way, if you’re simply emailing drafts and revisions to each other, hundreds of miles apart.”

Casey Paul Griffiths: “It was really unique to visit the Brown v. Board of Education National Park and see what was effectively ground zero for the Civil Rights movement in the United States. It helped me to see some of the context surrounding racial history in Restoration movements during the latter part of the 20th century.”

The Future:

President-Elect Nancy Ross (Utah Tech University) will be organizing the future 2026 JWHA Conference in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the theme “Crossroads of Identity, Community, and Technology”. Looking towards the meeting, she says, “I’m hoping that we can expand our offerings for grad students, junior scholars, and independent scholars by facilitating conversations about archives and interpretative lenses and offer mentoring. JWHA is such a friendly crowd and I look forward to seeing this group of colleagues and friends again in a year.”