Secularism and Religious Education: Part 1

Taylor P. holds a MTS and receives a ThD (May, 2010) in New Testament and Early Christianity from Harvard Divinity School.  His BA in Philosophy and Religious Studies is from Pace University.  He currently works as the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Study of Religion at Harvard University.  He is a founder of the Mormon Perspectives Series in Boston and a main organizer for two recent conferences for Latter-day Saints in Religious Studies.

Lisa Miller’s Newsweek article “Harvard’s Crisis of Faith” frames the need for religious eduction as driven by the fact that other people are religious. 

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Women in the Academy: Sheila Taylor

We are tickled to hear from Sheila Taylor, who is currently finishing a doctorate in systematic theology at Graduate Theological Union. Sheila shares her journey from studying history to studying theology and reflects on what it is like to be a female scholar in a male-dominated field.

Name:

Sheila Taylor.

Education:

B.A., History, BYU; M.A., History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; MTS, Theology, University of Notre Dame; PhD candidate, Systematic Theology, Graduate Theological Union.

How did you become interested in your area (s) of expertise/specialization?

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Women in the Academy: Rachel Cope

Rachel graciously shares autobiographical reflections in the first profile of the “Women in the Academy” series. These reflections show the ways in which she has been shaped by women in and out of the academy, from her great-grandmothers to Gerda Lerner to Louisa May Alcott. As she shares her journey, Rachel reveals pieces of her vision for women in and out of the academy in America and around the world. Rachel’s thoughts serve as an exciting window into the “beautifully transformative” effects of study and creation, for men and women alike.

Education: BA (history, BYU); MA (American history, BYU); PhD (American history ,women’s history and religious history, Syracuse University)

How did you become interested in your area (s) of expertise/specialization?

My academic journey commenced when I was a little girl. I was fortunate to have a mother and grandmother who had graduated from college and who referred constantly to great works of literature. I believed I was Jo March by the age of seven or eight. While the other girls read The Babysitter’s Club, I made my way through Charles Dickens, C. S. Lewis, Jane Austen, and the Bronte Sisters. Although I did not understand everything I read, I learned to love to read, to write and to think (to the point that I didn’t want to take dance lessons because I feared it would cut into my reading time).

In second grade, I read two biographical pieces in the Weekly Reader that inspired me. One told the story of Deborah Samson, a young woman who wanted to be a soldier. Because females were not allowed to serve in such positions, she cut her hair and disguised herself so she could fulfill her dream. The other article detailed the experiences of Helen Keller, a woman who overcame physical and gendered limitations. I stood in awe of both and realized women could do anything. Before I had entered my teens, I had decided that I wanted to earn a PhD.

My intellectual quests were defined further at Brigham Young University. The blossoming of personal interests in the religious past and an epiphany-like moment led to a previously unexpected direction: I became a history major. From BYU I went to Syracuse University, where it became obvious to me that women’s history had to be a part of my academic focus. In fact, it seemed rather odd that it took me so long to realize the obvious. Women’s religious history fit me perfectly, and led to a dissertation topic I found intellectually and spiritually enlightening. While dissertating was certainly difficult, it was also beautifully transformative. I treasure that time and anticipate the opportunity to pursue other meaningful projects in the future.

What are you currently studying, or what are some of your current projects (papers, books, dissertations, etc.)?

Each of my research projects contributes to the idea that accounts of female religiosity are not appendages to American history; they are American history (an insight I gained from Ann Braude, of course). I discovered this, most poignantly, when I became acquainted with the personal writings of Catherine Livingston Garrettson. Because I wanted to know everything about her, I traveled to her house, stood at her gravesite, visited her church, and explored her hometown. During this time, she became more real to me, and, consequently, so did her contemporaries. As I continued to read women’s journals, diaries, and correspondence, I saw more than I had seen before. How women worshiped, what they read, how often they prayed, what they wrote in their journals, with whom they interacted, to what extent they shared their beliefs and served others–these things mattered to them. Indeed, the daily as well as the weekly, the private as well as the public, impacted their personal lives and their cultures.

When I discovered the writings of Catherine Livingston Garrettson, I did not realize that her religious experiences and spiritual reflection would seep into my consciousness, transform my perspectives, connect my interests to one another, and ultimately capture and influence the overarching theme of my broaching academic career–how women lived and expressed their religiosity in nineteenth-century America, and how these experiences impacted conversion and shaped and reshaped their identities. Consequently, my research interests are connected to my desire to continue identifying and examining female religiosity in such a way that the larger narratives of American religious history can shift in new directions.

Currently, I am finishing an article about women as religious seekers. In April, I will be a visiting scholar at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre in England (and in my free time I will be exploring the English countryside with my little cousins Rosie and Tilda, wandering through fantastic cemeteries and old churches with my uncle, and “eating for England” with my gran; I love being a historian!). Oh yes, I will also be perusing journals and correspondence written by early Methodist women. In particular, I will be searching for their conceptions of sanctification. Future plans entail lots of research and writing about women, revivalism and conversion, as well as a project that focuses on the ways in which antebellum women relied on religion as a means to deal with domestic violence and abuse. I have yet to determine where that project is going.

What has your experience been like as a woman in the academy?

When I was in elementary school, I learned that my great-grandmothers, Irma Shumway Cope and Elizabeth Jackson Parry, had given similar answers to the same question: If you could change anything in your life, what would it be? Both expressed deep regret that they had been unable to receive a formal education. Struck by the parallel responses given by two very different women–one an Irish Catholic raised in the bustling seaport of Liverpool, England, and the other a Mormon raised in a tiny community in southern Utah–I decided that I wanted to become well educated and that I would educate other women. I thus came to understand, rather early on, that education creates a myriad of choices that empower women to make a difference in and beyond their professions. In grad school I realized I could do this, in part, by including women in the historical narrative. To be told that there are no limits on what women can accomplish is encouraging, but to recognize the many ways women have engaged in the human experience over the course of time is transforming. As Gerda Lerner so aptly stated, “Not having a history truly matters.” And, thus, having a history–having roots–confirms that women can indeed accomplish anything.

For me, personally, “femaleness” has been a central part of my academic experience: it has influenced why I study, what I study, how I study and what I want to do with my studies. Initially, it was a catalyst. As I have mentioned, my mom and my grandma, Deborah Samson and Helen Keller, Elizabeth Jackson Parry and Irma Shumway Cope, Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen taught me that women can be educated and that they can educate. They can think and write. They can dream and achieve. Women can do and become. Although most little girls from Spanish Fork, Utah, do not go on to get PhDs, I had internalized these lessons enough that the occasional discouraging or judgmental comment stung but did not defeat. Other women had taught me that I could, spiritual promptings confirmed that I could, and I knew that I could, and nothing else mattered. I met my goal. Now what?

In terms of gender in the academy, a lot of progress has been made. To claim it is enough or that it is no longer an issue, however, is ignorant at best. Has society–has the world–really changed enough? I think the question that needs to be asked is how the academy is using “knowledge” about gender to improve life outside of intellectual theorizing. A recent trip to India has only convinced me further that changes need to occur. As long as women are discouraged from pursuing dreams, as long as female infanticide rates remain high, as long as domestic violence and abuse are rampant, as long as rape is someone’s awful reality, as long as child pornography remains a thriving industry, as long as little girls are convinced that thin is never thin enough, as long as personal worth is based on the exterior rather than the interior, as long as torture and murder are real, as long as mouths remain unfed and hearts and lives continue to be broken, we cannot say we have done enough. I do not know all of the answers, but I do believe that writing women back into history and encouraging women to pursue education is an important first step. I hope to contribute to that step, and to find ways to help with the second and third steps.

In your field who are some women (living or dead) you admire? Why?

I feel indebted to and admire the work of some of the first historians who had enough courage, passion, and insight to write women back into history: the scholarship of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Gerda Lerner, most specifically, has had a profound impact on me as an individual and as a scholar. I have also been influenced by the work of Ann Braude and Catherine Brekus. Both have made women’s religious history a viable field.

For someone who is interested in studying what you do, what are some books you would recommend on the subject?

A random sampling:

• Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination.
• Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Ninteenth-Century America.
• Catherine A. Brekus, Stranger and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845.
• Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789-1880.
• Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England.
• D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England.
• Elaine Lawless, Holy Women, Wholly Women: Sharing Ministries of Wholeness through Life Stories and Reciprocal Ethnography.
• Gerda Lerner, The Creation of the Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy.
• Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters: Life and Thought.
• Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England.
• Robert Orsi, Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950.
• Richard Rabinowitz, The Spiritual Self in Everyday Life: The Transformation of Personal Religious Experience in Nineteenth-Century New England.
• Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865.
• Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era.
• Scott Stephan, Redeeming the Southern Family: Evangelical Women & Domestic Devotion in the Antebellum South.
• Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James.
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.

Book Review: Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America

Our good friend Jonathan Stapley has sent along the following review of Janet Moore Lindman’s 2008 book on Baptist community in early America, focusing on the context such an subject provides for those interested in early Mormon ritual.

Janet Moore Lindman. Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 270 pp. Maps, charts, images, endnotes, bibliography, index. Cloth: $39.95; ISBN 978-0812241143.

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Brian Birch-The Awkwardness of Mormonism and its Place in Religious Studies

Brian D. Birch is director of Utah Valley University’s Religious Studies Program and serves on the Board of Directors for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. He is director of the recently created Mormon Chapter of the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy, and a member of the steering committee for the American Academy of Religion’s Mormon Studies Consultation. His latest book, Mormonism and Christian Thought is forthcoming through Oxford University Press. Brian participated in the September 8, 2009 informal discussion on Religious Studies and Mormon Studies at the University of Utah (see this announcement) and, like Dr. Phil Barlow, has been kind enough to share a version of his remarks here at the Juvenile Instructor.

The Awkwardness of Mormonism and its Place in Religious Studies

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here and to be among good friends and colleagues.

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Philip Barlow on Mormon Studies in Relation to the Liberal Arts

Philip Barlow is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. Dr. Barlow has written Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991); as well as the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Oxford, 2000, co-authored with Edwin Scott Gaustad); and with Mark Silk co-edited Religion and Public Life in the Midwest: America’s Common Denominator? (Alta Mira Press, 2004). He is past president of the Mormon History Association, 2005-2006. On September 8, 2009 at the University of Utah, an informal discussion was held about the place of Mormon Studies in the larger field of Religious Studies. See this announcement. We’d like to thank Dr. Barlow, who has been kind enough to share his prepared remarks for that discussion here at the Juvenile Instructor.

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Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: Pratt and the Problem of Separating Latin and Anglo America

David C. Knowlton is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Utah Valley University and author of a number of important studies of Mormonism in Latin America. We’re pleased he has agreed to provide some thoughts on Parley P. Pratt’s mission to Chile and the Latin/Anglo American divide which will be more fully articulated in a pair of forthcoming articles.

The division of America into two, Latin and Anglo is a strange and deceptive cut, particularly when used for academic analysis.  If used to refer simply to matters of nation states the contrast has some utility, but it founders if taken as a statement of cultural separation.  The boundaries are simply far too fuzzy, and probably always have been, simply because of the ways in which colonial, and later national, powers competed in the New World, and because of the ways in which people migrated and engaged one another.

This issue is particularly germane for understanding Mormonism.  Despite its growth outside the New World, Mormonism is almost entirely a religion of the New World.   We can argue, however, that its growth both depended and depends on the separation of Anglo America from Latin America as a political reality at the same time it has depended on blurring the lines.  To understand this, it is useful to look, briefly, at Parley P. Pratt.

Pratt is generally argued to have been the first missionary to Latin America, when he performed his short, and troubled mission to Chile.  But, in Chile Pratt moved in a world dominated by English mercantilism and a local English speaking population, when in Valparaíso.  (In Quillota, though, he was more involved with a monolingual Spanish-speaking world.)  Nevertheless Pratt’s missionary work was made possible and ultimately frustrated by the realities of how the Anglophone world engaged the Hispanophone world at a time of English mercantilism and Chilean involvement in trade with English speaking populations.  But understanding this requires a more careful look than is generally performed.

Pratt was hampered in his efforts by his lack of Spanish, to be sure, though he had more than many give him credit for.   He was well on his way to a usable communicative competence.  This is so, despite the frustration with his linguistic inabilities that fills his autobiography.

Pratt was also hampered by severe differences between his religious culture and that of the Spanish-speaking Catholics he hoped to proselyte.  Pratt’s detailed and extensive dismay at formal Catholic worship illustrates the gap between his expectations and the nature of Latin Catholic practice.  They were deliberately separated worlds, following the council of Trent’s reaction against the Protestant reformation and the periodic reformations of Latin American Catholicism to make it less like the Protestantism that was the base of Mormonism. They also were separations that fit into the political calculus of national elites.

Forming the issue this way, however, over states the difference, just as the ideologues–or should I better say “theologues”–would have it.  Catholicism was more diverse in practice than the theologues liked. As Sociologist Jean Pierre Bastien observed, this diversity provided the most important possibilities for Protestant growth in Latin America.  Many Anglo Protestant missionaries found niches for implanting and cultivating their faith in this Catholic world; Mormons did not.  This is the fact that requires historiographic thought and historical explanation.

Pratt was also hampered by his misreading of the civil war then in course in Chile.  Generally, this is written as some variant of “Pratt arrived in Chile to find a civil war making his mission impossible.”  However, I would argue that idea is a misreading. Prior to departure Pratt was located in San Francisco, the sister port of Valparaíso, where Chileans were a numerous and much commented part of the city.  News from Chile arrived faster than news from Boston and was very current.  Instead of focusing on whether Pratt did or did not know about Chile´s politics, the more important issue is the way Mormonism moved in the world.  In Pratt´s rendering, Mormon success required a relationship with the state and formal liberalism that was not available under the ruling conservatives who won the war, although most people in the worlds in which Pratt moved–those of liberal commerce in the California gold rush–seemed to expect the liberal reformers to win.   Many Protestant groups, in contrast, did not depend on formal acceptance and state sponsored liberalism to the degree Mormonism did.  They found a place in Chilean society, Pratt returned to the US.

In other words, the issue behind Pratt´s short mission to Chile was less one of language and the conservative win, than it was one of how Mormonism fit, i.e. the kinds of social situations it required in Chile in order to establish itself.    Latin America and Anglo America were not cleanly separated.

However, it is one of how cultural projects, including ideas of ethnicity and language fit into political economic space, and the nature of religion in relationship to all of these, were formed and competed in the length and breadth of America.  I mean America from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and not the Anglo America less Canada, the Caribbean, and Guyana that became the US.

My point is further illustrated by Pratt´s prior, and generally unrecognized, mission to Latin America.  By this I mean specifically his work in California–at the time predominantly Spanish-speaking.  I also mean, with a bit of irony, the settlement of Mormons on a frontier with Mexico-Missouri and later Illinois, and the later migration deeply into Mexican territory, what became Utah and the Mexican west.

This Spanish-speaking world is a shadow, whose lack of historical exploration haunts any attempt to make sense of the hesitant Mormon growth in Mexico, and South America.  The ways in which Mormons interacted with or built barriers against the Spanish population and the Spanish institutions of the frontier of Anglo-American expansion are critical, if we wish to understand the whys and wherefores of Mormon growth, both in what is now the US west and in Mexico.  Arguably it is necessary if we wish to understand Mormon growth in the twentieth century in South America and Central America.

To this end, I have two articles in press that attempt to move into this gap, but I urge other scholars of Mormonism to not be befuddled by the Latin America Anglo America conceptual separation and to tackle head on the detailed ways in which Mormonism and Mormons interacted with the institutions and peoples of this frontier, where Spanish and English were used on both sides of national borders.

What is Mormon Studies? Some Preliminary Observations/Questions

Three years ago here at Claremont Graduate University (CA) we formed an LDS student group, the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association (CMSSA). The group consists of (mostly) graduate students studying in and around the Claremont area who are interested in Mormon studies, but mainly serves as an extension of the Mormon Studies program in the School of Religion at CGU.

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Guest Post: Charles L. Cohen on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Charles L. Cohen is Professor of History and Religious Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions. He is the author of God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) and the editor, with Paul S. Boyer, of Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). Dr. Cohen was the 2005 Tanner Lecturer at the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association, and his lecture was published as “The Construction of the Mormon People,” Journal of Mormon History 32 (2006): 25-64. He is also the author of “No Man Knows My Psychology: Fawn Brodie, Joseph Smith, and Psychoanalysis,” BYU Studies 44 (2005): 55-78. Additionally, he advised Spencer Fluhman’s 2006 PhD dissertation (“Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Antebellum America”), and is currently mentoring Jed Woodworth’s graduate studies at UW-Madison.

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Guest Post: Jeanne Halgren Kilde on Sacred Space at BYU

Jeanne Halgren Kilde is the Director of the Religious Studies program at the University of Minnesota, where she earned her PhD. She is the author of two immensely important books: When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America, and more recently Sacred Power, Sacred Space: an introduction to Christian architecture and worship, and of several articles. The value of her work is only enhanced by her graciousness as a scholar and mentor. We’re immensely honored to have her offer her thoughts here on the recent BYU Sacred Space seminar, at which she participated.

Thank you to Matt for inviting me to contribute a few words to this blog. And thank you to everyone involved in the Sacred Space symposium, including the audience members. Everyone I met was enormously hospitable and generous.

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