By ChristopherJuly 25, 2011
This past Sunday, several of the prayers to open and close meetings in my ward included mention of United States soldiers. This, of course, was not something new. I?ve heard such particular mentions of the military in every ward I?ve ever attended, and it is especially common here in Virginia, where several members of the local congregation (and many, many more throughout the Newport News Stake) serve(d) in the armed forces. I don?t know why my mind focused on this otherwise routine supplication during yesterday?s service; perhaps it was the juxtaposition of one brother mentioning the armed forces as part of a longer list of individuals needing either God?s blessing or our thanks (they were mentioned right after the missionaries and right before the Pioneers), or perhaps I was struck by the particular language used (?please bless those fighting for our country?). Regardless, it got me thinking about the origin of the practice.
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By ChristopherJune 20, 2011
(Cross-posted at Religion in American History)
When the news feed on my facebook began to be flooded with links to the same page last week, I excitedly clicked over the the Washington Post On Faith Op-Ed by John Mark Reynolds, professor of Philosophy at Biola University. Reading the title, “Amos and Andy and the Book of Mormon,” I hopefully (but mistakenly) assumed that the article was evidence of Jared Farmer’s critique—that lurking beneath the portrayal of religion in the Book of Mormon musical was not-so-subtle racism in the show’s portrayal of Africans—starting to gain traction.
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By ChristopherJune 14, 2011
(cross-posted at Religion in American History)
Over at Religion Dispatches, Jared Farmer, professor of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and author of the excellent On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, reviews the multiple Tony Award-winning broadway play, The Book of Mormon.
By all accounts, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s satirical look at Mormon missionaries in Africa is funny. With very few
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By ChristopherJune 6, 2011
(cross-posted at Religion in American History)
Over at Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought‘s website, the editors have posted a discussion (moderated by Susanna Morrill, associate professor of religious studies at Lewis and Clark College) between noted historians and scholars of religion Richard Lyman Bushman and Robert Orsi. Bushman and Orsi reflect on the potential Orsi’s approach to “supernatural presence” and “abundant events” in modern Catholicism holds for scholars of Mormonism.
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By ChristopherMay 27, 2011
Below are this year’s Mormon History Association award winners. Juvenile Instructor bloggers are identified in blue.
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By ChristopherMay 20, 2011
As most of our readers probably know, the Mormon History Association’s annual conference will be held next week in St. George, Utah. The program looks great, and a number of JIers will be presenting and participating. I look forward to hearing great papers, catching up with old friends, and hopefully making new ones. For those students who plan on being there, make sure to attend the student reception on Friday evening after the awards banquet at 9:15 pm; it’s a great place to relax and meet other young scholars studying Mormon history–plus there’s free food and door prizes.
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By ChristopherMay 16, 2011
Behold here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man: Because, that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.
-Revelation to Joseph Smith, May 6, 1833 (Doctrine & Covenants 93:31)
“Agency” is a buzzword prominent in both of the worlds that I, and other Mormon historians, inhabit on a day-to-day basis. Within the world of Mormonism, the word signifies a central tenet of Latter-day Saint theology, one that receives regular and sustained attention from church leaders and in Sunday School curriculum. In the historical profession, meanwhile, “agency” has been labeled “the master trope of the New Social History”—signifying the collective efforts of social historians to rescue from the dustbins of history the lives and stories of marginalized figures, including especially African American and Indian slaves, women from all walks of life, and others who left behind few written records and lived otherwise unremarkable lives.[1]
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By ChristopherMay 6, 2011
Steven Harper passed along the following note and requested we post it at JI:
The Department of Church History & Doctrine at BYU is hosting a breakfast on Friday 27 May at 7 AM, before Professor Reeve?s talk at MHA. Join us at the Hilton Garden Inn, adjacent to the Dixie Center where the MHA meetings will convene.
We wish to cast a broad invitation to all who may be interested in joining the Dept. faculty and would like to ask questions, learn about dissertation grant and adjunct teaching opportunities, etc. There are no obligations. We hope that if you?re interested and able that you?ll join us.
By ChristopherMay 4, 2011
David F. Holland. Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 275pp. + index.
We spend a lot of time at this blog considering how Mormonism fits within larger frameworks in American religious history and what it uniquely reveals about the shape and contours of that past. Among the most obvious answers to the latter consideration is Mormonism’s prophetic tradition, with its adherence to a belief in continuing revelation and an expanded (and expanding) canon of scripture. In trying to tackle the complicated question of whether Mormonism can be accurately described as “Protestant” in any meaningful sense on a recent post, among the most significant reasons for those who answered “no” was Mormonism’s claims to revelation and scripture beyond the bounds of the Old and New Testaments.
But just how unique is Mormonism in this regard? What precedents are there in the American past for such beliefs and how do Mormon prophets and scriptures fit within the larger history of the
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By ChristopherApril 27, 2011
I recently finished reading S. Scott Rohrer’s Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865, a useful and readable overview of several different religious communities whose migrations to and within colonial British North America and the United States shaped American history in ways often ignored by historians of immigration.
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