Guest Post: James Egan, ?Sermonizing with Heathens?

JI would like to welcome James Egan. He is a third-year law student at Brigham Young University who studied literature and political philosophy at the University of Utah.  He reads JI  regularly and loves jazz music. 

I must confess at the outset of this post that I am most definitely an amateur when it comes to Mormon history. (If I had the guts, I?d confess that I am in fact a law student.) So with the all-too-convenient excuse for ignorance that my amateur status afforded me (I trust I haven?t lost it yet), I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the annual Maxwell Institute Seminar, which gave time to dive into the deep well of early Mormon primary documents. I spent a good portion of my time in the Utah sermons of the latter half of the 19^th century, and my paper for the seminar?s symposium[1] grew out of a fascinating remark in one of Brigham Young?s earlier sermons. During one of his many calls for gathering truth from every corner of the world, Young pointed the saints to ?pagans of all countries? and made the remarkable claim that ?in their religious rights [sic] and ceremonies may be found a great many truths which we will also gather home to Zion.?[2] I ended up writing about the elements of Mormon intellectual history that made it possible for Brigham Young to entertain the possibility that pagan or heathen[3] ritual would be a part of Mormon gathering, but along the way, I spent a little time considering how other invocations of heathen nations functioned rhetorically in Young?s sermons.[4]

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Mormon History and the history of Indigenous Peoples: a top 10 list

One of the difficulties with engaging in new fields of inquiry is finding out what books are essential for providing a background in the topic. As part of our month investigating the relationship between indigenous people and the LDS Church at the Juvenile Instructor, we have compiled a list dealing with the top 10 books on Native American, Polynesian, and other native peoples within Mormon history. Compiling the list of books was difficult because it raised issues of how much weight should be placed on different categories. How should we weight syntheses vs. monographs? How much should theory count over information? How do you compare books about different locales and different time periods? How should articles count?

Included with each books is a description of its contents from Amazon.

In no particular order, they are:

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Journal of Mormon History – Call for Papers, Student Edition

The Journal of Mormon History will be sponsoring a special issue devoted to innovative student scholarship. The issue, which will be edited by Christopher Jones and Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, will seek to highlight a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies. They particularly welcome submissions that take seriously Mormonism’s international history, its engagement with non-white people, and its emphasis upon materiality. Please see the call for papers below.

Call For Papers

Special Student Issue of the Journal of Mormon History

Fall 2015

The Journal of Mormon History is seeking contributions for a special issue that will highlight the work of undergraduate and graduate students working on Mormon history. Papers may address any aspect of the Restoration Movement, including the Community of Christ and Mormon fundamentalists. The Journal is especially interested in contributions that address Mormonism?s racial and geographic diversity, twentieth-century Mormon history, and material culture. All topics and contributions, however, will be given serious consideration.

Interested students should submit a short 500-word abstract of their suggested article along with a CV or brief biography by January 1^st, 2014. Accepted articles will be due September 1^st, 2014 for planned publication in Fall 2015.  The issue will be co-edited by Amanda Hendrix-Komoto (PhD Candidate, University of Michigan) and Christopher Jones (PhD Candidate, College of William and Mary).

Please submit all abstracts and CVs to either Amanda Hendrix-Komoto (hendrixa@umich.edu) or Christopher Jones (chrisjones13@gmail.com)

Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Welcome to the Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup!

This week did not begin well for ?Mormons in the News? when it was revealed that Orem-born and primary-raised Julianne Hough had apparently missed the memo that blackface is racist and decided to darken her skin for her Crazy Eyes costume. Hough, who is most famous for her appearances on Dancing with the Stars, is also a country singer whose first album debuted

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“No Race Suicide in Utah:” Eugenics, Race, and a 1907 Postcard

This is a guest post by Cassandra Clark, a PhD student at the University of Utah whose work focuses on how religious communities thought about religious discourse and race.  Cassandra is the mother two lovely daughters – both of whom bear the names of Presidents!.  She also attended the University of Northern Colorado where she earned a MA in history and teaches courses at the community college in Salt Lake.

Filed away in the archives of the Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are two copies of a 1907 postcard with the by-line, ?No Race Suicide in Utah!?[1]  The scene printed on the postcard depicts an old bearded gentleman, decked out in a black suit and top hat, carrying a baby on each arm with eight children following him.  Each child is adorned in brightly colored dress, and several of them hold toys while two clutch balloon strings.   The artist, identified as C.R. Miller, printed ?No Race Suicide in Utah!? in all capital letters on one fourth of the top right hand corner of the card.

As I held this postcard in my hands, I realized that this one piece of material culture provided a physical representation of the conclusions I drew about Mormon involvement in the American eugenics movement.  The eugenics movement, or the scientific program pioneered by Charles Darwin?s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, encompassed two main objectives. First, the promotion of ?positive eugenics,? or the proliferation of the ?white? race by emulating Victorian gender roles and large family sizes, and second, ?negative eugenics,? or the sterilization of all people deemed ?unfit? because of their lifestyles and economic status.[2] For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living in the midst of the American West, eugenics became a vehicle

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Food as Relic? Sacrament Bread as Material Culture

This is a guest post from Kris Wright, a fantastic independent historian whose work on the healing practices of Mormon women  (written with Jonathan Stapley) has received awards from the Mormon History Association and should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Mormon women.  Links to those articles can be found here: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/mormonhistory/vol37/iss1/1/ and here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1664187

Photo courtesy of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers

Two weeks ago, I ran up the steep hill behind the Conference Centre in the pouring rain (without an umbrella, of course) on my way to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum.  I have been interested in the material religion of Mormon women, particularly how they have created and used religious objects that are associated with LDS rituals –things like sacrament bread, sacrament vessels, consecrated oil, sacred clothing and other textiles.  I was hoping to see some handmade sacrament cloths that were housed in the museum and cursed myself for my poor planning.  As I entered the building soaked and winded, I hoped that the trip was going to be worthwhile.  I did see the sacrament cloths, but it also ended up being a great opportunity to see something that I would have never imagined still existed ? sacrament bread from the 19^th century.

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Breaking Amish, Sister Wives, and the Politics of Clothes

Note: This may be the least academic post I?ve ever written.  It?s mostly a collection of my random thoughts on clothing, modesty, and religious communities.  Read it with that in mind.

On Sunday night, as I was flipping through TV channels, I came across Breaking Amish, a TLC reality show about young men and women who have decided to leave the Amish.  There has been significant controversy surrounding the show. Although TLC claimed that all of the young men and women it was filming had been a part of the Amish when it began production, evidence emerged that they had frequented strip clubs, owned cell phones, and been involved in drunken parties. Websites like Jezebel accused the show of fabricating the lives of its participants, using makeup, clothes, and creative editing to make individuals who hadn?t been involved in the Amish community for years appear to be recent apostates.  Perhaps the most interesting of their techniques was the clothes.

Like many reality TV shows, Breaking Amish has its participants reflect on recent events ? whether it be a night carousing on the town, a clandestine kiss, or, in this season, an unplanned pregnancy

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Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Has LL Cool J been keeping his faith in Mormonism secret?

In the Mormon Studies Weekly Round-Up, we try to present some of the most interesting and fun news items concerning Mormonism from the past week.  We also link to any relevant conferences, book announcements, and calls for papers.  This week, a New York rapper and former TV and movie star tweets a quote from Gordon B. Hinckley while a former NFL quarterback comes out publicly in support of gay rights.  Matt Bowman also chronicles the strange world of the Mormon supernatural and Blair Hodges provides a helpful guide to debates about the viability of Mormon studies as discipline.

General Mormon History

LL Cool J, accidental Mormon? Chris Jones and the Deseret News investigate.

Steve Young: Hall of Fame Quarterback, BYU Graduate, and Supporter of LGTBQ rights

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Conversations: Elijah Abel/Ables and the Politics of Race within Mormon History

Recently, two biographies were published on Elijah Abel/Ables, a black Mormon man who held the priesthood in the nineteenth century with the blessing of Joseph Smith and many of his contemporaries.  Rather than attempt a traditional review, I decided to write a conversations post with Russell Stevenson, the author of one of the two biographies.  Stevenson is an independent scholar with a master?s degree in history from the University of Kentucky.  He recently self-published Black Mormon: The Story of Elijah Ables. 

In order to make the post easier to read, I have arranged the questions I asked and Stevenson?s responses into categories.

General Questions

The Spelling of Abel?s Name

Amanda: In your book, you use a spelling of Elijah Abel’s name that many readers will be unfamiliar with.  Where does it come from?  Why did you decide to go with that spelling?

Guest Post: Audrey Bastian, From Siamese Prison to Mormon Memory

Note: This post is part of our international Mormonism month.  Audrey Bastian is a freelance writer and interpreter speaking Mandarin, Arabic and American Sign Language.  She lived in various countries in Asia eight years and received her masters degree in International Law and World Order from the University of Reading in England.  Her bachelors degree is in History with a minor in Arabic.  She won an honorable mention in 2006 in the Writer?s Digest 75th Annual Writing Competition for a memoir entitled, ?Japanese Carp?.  She currently owns her own business and resides in Washington, DC.

?…the King confined bro. [Trail] 71 days in a Siamese prison, 14 feet square, with 50 other prisoners, some were confined for debt others for stealing &c several ware put to the rack to draw out a fu [teekals (tikal money)]…?  –Elam Luddington April 1854

A day after Elam Luddington baptized his first and only convert in Siam, Captain James Trail, the King of Siam thrust the convert into a debtor?s prison without food.  The captain?s crime was misunderstanding a command and firing a salute from his ship in the rhodes of Singapore.  

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