Center for Communal Studies Travel Grant (from Matt Grow, sort of)

(Matt is apparently too busy guest-blogging at Big Brown to have remembered to send this our way, but I’ve cribbed this announcement from H-Net, which may be of interest to our readers doing comparative research on communalism.)

The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana
invites applications for a travel grant to fund research at the Communal
Studies Collection at USI’s David L. Rice Library. The Communal Studies

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Mormonism’s Unbroken Past: Transcending the 1890 Rupture

1890 is a date that looms large in American history, thanks largely to Frederick Jackson Turner, who famously declared in 1893 that the frontier had “closed” three years earlier, and with it, a distinctive element of American identity had closed as well. Turner’s 1893 essay revolutionized how historians thought about the American past, as he pointed to the process of westward movement as being the core of American distinctiveness. The frontier was where civilization met savagery and the wilderness, where Europeans became Americans, marked by values of individualism and democracy. Turner’s essay also had the curious effect of creating a significant rupture localized at the year 1890, a chasm that left historians with few conceptual tools with which to frame the history of the American West during the 20th century. If American exceptionalism died in 1890, was there anything worth writing about after that date?

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“Oh! Woman, thought I, where is thy shame”: William I. Appleby, Intermarriage, and the Ban

Although I have drafted this post, I acknowledge that the idea for it and one of the sources comes from frequent commenter and guestblogger Steve Fleming.

As Connell O’Donovan has shown in his brilliant research on Walker Lewis and the origins of the Priesthood ban, Brigham Young initially did not see black skin as an impediment to a man holding the priesthood (unless otherwise noted, all quotations come from O’Donovan’s article). In fact, as late as March 1847, Young is quoted as saying that

Its [that is, priesthood restrictions] nothing to do with the blood for [from] one blood has God made all flesh, we

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One of “the great achievements of American literature”: Mormonism in Howe’s What Hath God Wrought, Part 1

During Winter semester 2006 I attended Grant Underwood’s U.S. Religious History course at BYU.[1] Our text for the class was Martin Marty’s Pilgrims in their Own Land, a narrative overview of American religious history. Although Marty is widely recognized as one of the leading historians of American religion, his chapter on Mormons is, to put it kindly, lacking. Many of the students in Underwood’s class complained widely that Marty “got it all wrong,” and “if he’s this wrong on Mormonism, how can we trust the rest of the book?” I remember thinking that these students were missing a crucial point; the greatest value in Marty’s book was not in the details of his presentation, but rather in the placing of Mormonism within the wider tapestry of America’s religious history. I thought, “We can’t expect these major historians to know all the details. What is important is where they place us.” Similarly, a year ago Chris wrote a post on Charles Sellers’ The Market Revolution, in which Chris argued that the value of Sellers’s work was not in his admittedly-flawed discussion of Mormonism, but rather in the number of pages that Sellers chose to devote to Joseph Smith’s religion.

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“[W]e, the members of the society of the Daughter of Zion…”: The Danite Constitution

All this talk about the imminent publication of the first volume in the Joseph Smith Papers’ Journal Series has brought back a lot of memories about my time spent on the Project, especially 2004-2005 when I worked specifically on this volume. The Scriptory Book, Joseph’s 1838 journal, contains some of our only contemporary references to the Danites from a pro-Mormon source. Another important contemporary document that sheds invaluable light on the organization is the Danite Constitution. We unfortunately haven’t found the original text, so determining authorship by examining the handwriting is not an option. Scholars have speculated that either Sampson Avard or Sidney Rigdon wrote it, but it’s really too difficult to know at this point. I may at some point write a post giving a more detailed discussion about what we know about the Constitution, but for the time being here’s a transcript of it. What strikes me the most about it is the rich republican language as well as the obvious reference to the Declaration of Independence.

Whereas, in all bodies laws are necessary for the permanency, safety and well-being of society, we, the members of the society of the Daughter of Zion, do agree to regulate ourselves under such laws as, in righteousness shall be deemed necessary for the preservation of our holy religion, and of our most sacred rights, and the rights of our wives and children. But, to be explicit on the subject, it is especially our object to support and defend the rights conferred on us by our venerable sires, who purchased them with the pledges of their lives and fortunes, and their sacred honors. And now, to pro

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Call for Submissions (with money awards)

From Matt Grow:

The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana announces its annual paper prize competition for the best undergraduate and graduate student paper on historic or contemporary communal groups.  The author of the best graduate paper or thesis or dissertation chapter will receive $500.  The author of the best undergraduate paper or thesis will receive $250.  Send two copies of submissions, by January 15, 2009, to Matthew Grow, 8600 University Boulevard, Evansville, IN, 47712. Questions may be directed to mjgrow@usi.edu.

“[I]t is a moral evil for any person…to deny any human being the right…to every privilege of citizenship”: Civil Rights in General Conference, 1963

Although it has been described as such, the following document is not an official declaration by the First Presidency supporting civil rights. It wasn’t even written by the First Presidency, but rather by Sterling M. McMurrin. However, President Hugh B. Brown read the statement as part of his October 1963 General Conference address with the approval of Pres. McKay and it was later reprinted in the Deseret News as a quasi-official statement of the Church’s position on civil rights. The statement was drafted in an attempt (that proved to be successful) to avoid protests at conference by the NAACP, which had requested and was denied a meeting with the First Presidency to discuss the Church’s position on civil rights legislation in Utah. Despite its semi-official status, the document is an anomaly, a lone representation of racial liberalism in a sea of conservatism.

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“[T]he only thing that distinguishes Utah from Georgia is that it does not have jim-crow cars”: Wallace Thurman, Mormon Utah, and Blacks in the West

Although it may be surprising to many today, during the nineteenth century anti-Mormons often denied that Latter-day Saints were white. Mormon authors fiercely contested this argument, using republican discourses to portray themselves not only as literal but also ideological descendants of the Revolution. As Patty Limerick has argued, anti-Mormons waived aside these objections and gave the Mormons the same choice given to Native Americans during the 1830s–either renounce your cultural distinctiveness, or move west of the Mississippi River, where no whites live.[1]

Once the Mormons resettled in the Great Basin, they discursively constructed their territory as a place of refuge in contrast to the tyranny of the East. Perhaps due to their insistence on claiming whiteness, their Great Basin refuge had borders that were not only geographically defined but also racially delimited. Although sporadic attempts were made during the first few decades of settlement to live peaceably with Native Americans, by 1850 Mormons in Utah Valley

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MHA 2009 Call for Papers

2009 Springfield Illinois Conference
Call for Papers
Mormonism and the Land of Lincoln:
Intersections, Crosscurrents, and Dispersions

(HT: Justin)

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Parley P. Pratt, Writing, and the History of Reading

Beginning in the 1830s, Parley P. Pratt produced a tremendous amount of literature describing his people’s persecutions. Pratt wrote not only for his fellow religionists, but also as a means to inform other Americans of the Mormon plight and seek redress.[1] Of the hundreds of pages of his prose, among the most significant included his Extra of the Mormon newspaper The Evening and the Morning Star entitled “?Mormons,’ So Called”, which is perhaps the most comprehensive contemporary description of the 1833-1834 Jackson County expulsion.[2] Pratt included this Extra as part of his eighty-four page history of the Missouri persecutions that he published in 1839.[3] In turn, this history later formed the basis of parts of Pratt’s autobiography.[4] Beyond his narrative contributions, Pratt also wrote several poems describing his people’s sufferings that he published in 1840 in The Millennium and Other Poems.[5]

Historian Kenneth Winn has described Pratt as the leading Mormon commentator on

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