By GuestMay 26, 2009
Admin: Guest post by Russell.
Perhaps it is the heretical imp in me, but I have often shifted in my seat uncomfortably as I sit in classes at BYU and in the church house while folks accept as axiomatic all the talk about the American revolution as merely the harbinger of the Restoration. The argument goes like this: the gospel could not be established in a land of tyranny, it is argued. Whatever the errors or skeletons of our founding fathers (if they be admitted at all), they served as Cyrus figures for the Saints. They were “wise men” who helped to shake the shackles of tyranny from the colonists (“shake” here should be read as war and destruction of human life–just so we’re on the same page). I have two problems with this: 1) I hate war. Elder McConkie is correct: war is one of the greatest tools of Satan and 2) while no nation is free from the blood of innocents, for being the land of freedom, America has not been kind to LDS ideals to say nothing of the LDS people. To soothe my theo-ideological angst, I sometimes engage in a rather subversive counterfactual: could the Lord have carried out the restoration in a British America?
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By GuestMay 13, 2009
Here’s another post authored by occasional guest blogger and friend to JI, Bored in Vernal. Enjoy!
I’ve been enthralled by the portrait of Mormon women painted by Edward W. Tullidge in his 1877 book The Women of Mormondom. He called them women of a new age, of new types of character, religious empire-founders, and even bestowed upon Mormon women the title “apostles.” Of course, the term “apostle” when associated with the female sex was not, in the late 1800’s, fraught with as much tension as it is today. Yet I was still interested to investigate the impulse which led Tullidge to employ this word when speaking of our nineteenth-century sisters.
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By GuestApril 9, 2009
Kristine Haglund is a stay-in-the-minivan mother of three kids, and the current editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. She blames her interest in Mormon history on her father, who gave her a copy of _Mormon Sisters_ when she was 9 years old, and then asked her to give a sacrament meeting talk about Ellis Shipp and Patty Sessions. She blogs full-time, of course, at By Common Consent. Kristine presented these remarks at the Mormonism in the Public Mind conference at UVU on Friday, April 3, 2009.
I am more than a little bit surprised to find myself on a panel with “new media” and “pop culture” in the session title-I grew up mostly without a TV and am inflicting the same deprivation on my children; I’m old enough to have taken a typewriter with me when I went to college; and I grew up in a home where “contemporary” music meant anything post-Mahler, like maybe Copland.
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By GuestMarch 17, 2009
Admin: We’re pleased to have Brant E. present an introduction to some of his fascinating research on Mormon participation in the Civil War.
I am thrilled for the opportunity to share some of my research with an audience that actually may be as interested in it as I am! It has been too long since I last had someone’s eyes widen when I told them I am studying the Mormons during the Civil War. And as I have been following JI as a “ghost reader” for some time now, I feel it is only appropriate that I finally thank the contributors for their insightful posts.
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By GuestNovember 4, 2008
As Matt mentioned in his generous introduction, I was fortunate to study for a summer under Claudia Bushman at the (then) Smith Institute at Brigham Young University. I spent two months reveling in the history I knew, and was alternately fascinated, disturbed, and incredulous at the history I did not. At the time, I was interested in how LDS Church teachings linked female modesty and morality and its effect on women’s self image. As projects often do, it transformed; my resulting paper focused on changing standards and rationales for women’s dress, particularly as indicated by the evolution of the BYU Honor Code and the For the Strength of Youth pamphlets.
Historically, modesty in dress had important symbolic meaning for Church leaders and members alike–it represented women and the Church’s effort and responsibility to maintain boundaries between themselves and the world. Brigham Young often warned women against following the indecent fashions of his day; thirty years after Young’s death, President Joseph F. Smith worried that women in the Church were “seemingly oblivious … to the promptings and duties of true womanhood,” especially related to dress and fashion. [1] In 1917, in response to President Smith’s charge, Amy Brown Lyman led the general boards of the Relief Society, YLMIA, and Primary to issue dress guidelines for all Mormon women. [2] Several decades later, on February 13, 1951, Elder Spencer W. Kimball delivered a speech to students at a Brigham Young University devotional entitled “A Style of Our Own: Modesty in Dress and its Relationship to the Church.” [3] Kimball’s talk defined standards of modesty for LDS women in the twentieth century (with a specific pronouncement against strapless dresses) and also articulated enduring rationales for proper dress. Generally regarded as the “first” modesty talk of the twentieth century, it caused a stir at BYU and elsewhere. My own grandmother, in attendance at the devotional, had planned to wear a strapless dress to an upcoming formal dance and “kimballized” it by adding a jacket.
Here is a brief summary of subtle changes in both dress standards and rationales for modest dress, that in part reflect changing LDS Church’s teachings and attitudes towards chastity and women, the feminine ideal, and women’s roles.
In 1951, Elder Kimball denounced “immodest dresses that are worn by our young women, and their mothers” as contributors to the breakdown of moral values in America. He encouraged women to create “a style of our own” that would set them apart from the world. He declared to the students that “immodest clothes lead to sin,” [4] perhaps first articulating an oft repeated rationale for women’s responsibility not only for her own dress and related chastity, but also for the chastity of her male associates. Much has been written about women’s responsibility for chastity. I am more interested in the great emphasis placed on feminine dress, perhaps even more than “modest” dress, in LDS publications and addresses in the late 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1960s, Church leaders witnessed a decade of incredible social change in the United States, and were especially worried about the effects of the societal upheaval on their youth. This perceived nationwide moral crisis was epitomized by the popularity of new women’s fashions, including the miniskirt and hip hugging bellbottoms, introduction of the birth control pill in 1965, a nascent feminist movement, and the sexual revolution. [5] Also alarming to Church leaders was the emergence of the drug culture, counterculture, radical student movements, and a general disregard for authority among the nation’s youth. In the midst of these changes, Mormon youth began adopting the dress and grooming habits of the new morality and the counterculture, including shorter skirts, “grubby” clothing, and longer hair and beards for men. The importance of modest dress took on a new urgency; prior to the 1950s, many Church leaders saw immodest dress as a nuisance. However, in the 1960s, immodest and unkempt dress became symbols of movements Church leaders felt were undesirable, if not evil.
Modesty in dress became a watch cry for protecting the purity and moral values of LDS youth, and increasingly, leaders exhorted members to dress modestly and appropriately. Although Church leaders singled out the miniskirt as the most perilous of the alarming new fashion trends, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, LDS Church publications and pronouncements indicate that appropriate dress for women now meant feminine dress. While women of the world began to wear pants, jeans, and grubby clothing in general, adopting a unisex look, Church leaders pled with LDS women to retain their feminine charm.
Without the influence of the feminist movement, perhaps Church leaders would not have worried as much about young women wearing jeans or collarless jackets, both of which were modest and therefore would not lead women to unchastity. The second wave of feminism, which began in the 1960s, was concerned, among other things, with inequalities facing women in the United States, and sought to redress inequalities in the workplace, government, and education. Some radical feminist organizations such as New York Radical Women and the Redstockings advocated the overthrow of capitalism, and “repudiated the male master class, marriage, and the traditional nuclear family,” positions clearly subversive to LDS Church teachings concerning the importance of marriage and family. Others, like the National Organization for Women also advocated that women did not have to find fulfillment as a wife and mother, but instead could remain single or enter the workplace, even with children at home. [6]
As early as 1965, the Church published its first For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, which provided LDS youth with guidelines concerning dress, manners, dating, dancing, and clean living. [7] Six years after the Church issued dress standards for youth, Brigham Young University and other Church colleges formally adopted a dress and grooming standard as a condition of enrollment. [8] Both documents have evolving definitions of gender appropriate clothing, including the acceptability of pants, jeans, sweatshirts, and shorts. These two “codes of modesty,” used as a case study for the Church’s emphasis on femininity, indicate that Church leaders invoked modesty to prevent women from at least looking, if not behaving, like women of the world. The emphasis on femininity was meant to discourage women from following larger American trends away from women’s traditional roles, and instead to encourage women to dress a certain way because it reflected their feminine, God-given nature.
Perhaps Church leaders saw that allowing women to wear jeans or other “androgynous” attire would not drastically alter how they saw themselves, or how they represented themselves to the world. Subsequent Honor Code statements changed few things about the early 1970s Dress and Grooming Standards, with the exception of finally allowing jeans for women (1981), [9] knee-length shorts for both sexes (1991), and the most recent prohibition of tattoos and multiple earrings for men and women (2000). [10] These prohibitions, along with an occasional threat to revoke the privilege of wearing shorts, have stayed largely the same since the early years of both the Dress and Grooming Standards and the For the Strength of Youth pamphlets. If anything, both “codes of modesty” have become stricter, emphasizing not necessarily the standards themselves, but youth and other members of the Church’s responsibility to follow them. Today, most injunctions to dress appropriately are not necessarily related to gender, as they were in the earlier days. Instead, rather than invoking their distinct femininity when asked to follow the standards, women are reminded of their status as a child of God, or that their body is a temple.
Modesty of dress has had many meanings for many people, perhaps because the specific guidelines and rationales for modesty have fluctuated in response to changes within the Church and within the broader American culture. For example, Church leaders and publications have emphasized that members should avoid particular fashions, such as miniskirts. They were instructed to avoid pants, grubby clothing and unfeminine dress in general during the late 1960s and 1970s because these articles of clothing were symbols of the counterculture and feminism, two movements that LDS Church leaders did not want their members to be involved with, sympathize with, or even look like. Symbols and image have been and remain very important to both the leadership and the general membership of the LDS Church–how one dresses matters. Definitions of modest and appropriate dress are somewhat fluid’as the larger culture and society changed, fashion as a boundary matters, not because it will lead one to immorality or because one must emphasize one’s femininity, but because dress fundamentally represents not only the individual, but the Church in general.
[1] Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose, A Call to the Women of the Church, September 22, 1916, Church History Library, Family and Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.
[2] In response to the above cited letter from the First Presidency, the General Boards of the Relief Society, Deseret Sunday School Union, Y.M.M.I.A., Y.L.M.I.A., Primary Associations and Religion Classes (and approved by the First Presidency) issued Communication on Dress, [1917], which was sent to “All Women Officers and Teachers in the Church,” Church Library.
[3] Spencer W. Kimball, A Style of Our Own: Modesty in Dress and Its Relationship to the Church, An Apostle Speaks to Youth, no. 4 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1951).
[4] Kimball, A Style of Our Own.
[5] Karen Greenspan, The Timetables of Women’s History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Women’s History,” Touchstone Books, 1996, 364.
[6] Robert A. Goldberg, Grassroots Resistance: Social Movements in 20th Century America, Waveland Press, 1996, 200, 204.
[7] Introduction to For the Strength of Youth (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1965), 2, microfiche, Church Library.)
[8] “Y Board, Church System Establish Dress Standards,” Daily Universe, July 22, 1971, 1. The July 22, 1971 Daily Universe was a “Special Issue” that was published by BYU’s Public Relations Department, and mailed to all new and continuing students.
[9] Code of Honor/Dress and Grooming Standards (1981), Church Library.
[10] Under President Jeffrey R. Holland, a group of faculty, administrators and students updated the Honor Code and Dress and Grooming Standards. The 1991 revision of the Honor Code included some supplemental pamphlets, including Honor Code Council, On My Honor: From Students, To Students, (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1992) and BYU Honor Code and Standards: The Faculty Role (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1992).
By GuestOctober 8, 2008
Admin: This post is authored by former occasional guest blogger and friend to JI, Bored in Vernal. Thanks, BiV!
Doctrine and Covenants 84:3-4 instructs the Latter-day Saints concerning the city of Zion, which was to be their “New Jerusalem:”
3 Which city shall be built, beginning at the temple lot, which is appointed by the finger of the Lord, in the western boundaries of the State of Missouri, and dedicated by the hand of Joseph Smith, Jun., and others with whom the Lord was well pleased.
4 Verily this is the word of the Lord, that the city New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the saints, beginning at this place, even the place of the temple, which temple shall be reared in this generation.
When the Mormons were expelled from Jackson County at the end of 1833, they were quite understandably worried about what to do with their property. As they relocated in what would become Nauvoo, Illinois, they were instructed to put their energy and resources into building this new home. In March 1839 Joseph Smith “counseled to sell all the land in Jackson county, and all other lands in the state whatsoever.” [1] Within the next two years, a revelation was given absolving the Saints of their responsibilities by the word of the Lord: “. . . I have accepted the offering of those men who I commanded to build up a city and a house unto my name in Jackson county, Missouri…” They were told that if enemies hindered them from their work, God would “require that work no more.” [2]
It seems fascinating to me that in spite of the rescinding of the requirement to build Zion in Jackson County, leaders of the Church remained dedicated to the idea that the New Jerusalem would be raised in Missouri. Soon after the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, speaking as president of the council of Twelve Apostles, stated in a conference on April 6, 1845:
“And when we get into Jackson county to walk in the courts of that house, we can say we built this temple: for as the Lord lives we will build up Jackson county in this generation.” [3]
This sentiment was perpetuated after the Mormons were established in the Salt Lake Valley. In 1871 Orson Pratt referred to D&C 84 and publicly insisted,
“Here then we see a prediction, and we believe it. Yes! The Latter-day Saints have as firm faith and rely upon this promise as much as they rely upon the promise of forgiveness of sins when they comply with the first principles of the Gospel. We just as much expect that a city will be built, called Zion, in the place and on the land which has been appointed by the Lord our God, and that a temple will be reared on the spot that has been selected, and the corner-stone of which has been laid, in the generation when this revelation was given; we just as much expect this as we expect the sun to rise in the morning and set in the evening; or as much as we expect to see the fulfillment of any of the purposes of the Lord our God, pertaining to the works of his hands. But say the objector, ‘thirty nine years have passed away.’ What of that? The generation has not passed away; all the people that were living thirty-nine years ago have not passed away; but before they do pass away this will be fulfilled.” [4]
Pratt exhibited full confidence that the D&C’s prophecy concerning the Missouri temple being reared “in this generation” would come to pass. But even more, he considered the establishment of Zion in Jackson County as essential to the LDS faith as the forgiveness of sins!
Even after the generation who was alive at the time of Joseph’s prophecy began to pass on, the hope was kept alive within the membership of the Church that one day a temple would be raised in Jackson County. Tidbits of information concerning the events of the last days often included references to Missouri. In October Conference of 1930, J. Golden Kimball remarked: “[t]he western boundaries of the State of Missouri will be swept so clean of its inhabitants that as President [Brigham] Young tells us, ‘when we return to that place there will not be as much as a yellow dog to wag his tail.'” [5]
I find little evidence that any of the Mormons were willing to escape their responsibility to build up Zion in Jackson county by applying the revelation given in 1841 that the Lord no longer required it. Instead, in October 1967 we see an interesting occurrence. President David O. McKay announced plans to build a Visitors Center across the street from the Temple Lot in Independence, on part of the original parcel of ground set apart for this purpose. Alvin R. Dyer, though not a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, was made an Apostle on October 5, 1967, with the blessing pronounced on him that he was to be a watchman over the consecrated lands in Missouri. [6] While serving in this capacity, Dyer wrote a book about the destiny of the Church in Zion, which he titled The refiner’s fire: The significance of events transpiring in Missouri. Dyer often spoke and wrote about his goal of reviving Independence and the general Jackson county area in the consciousness of the Church.
While still an Apostle, Spencer W. Kimball became interested in the gathering of American Indians (“Lamanites”) into the Church. As his inspiration, he took D&C 52:2 where instructions are given to convene the next conference in Missouri where missionaries to the Indians had gone. In this verse, the Lord consecrates the land to his people, the “remnant of Jacob.” Elder Kimball gave his opinion of why the temple in Independence had not been built in a timely manner:
I’ve known people who have been promised in their patriarchal blessings that they would live to see the temple built and some of them are dying and haven’t seen the temple built. Do you know why? In my estimation, the Lord’s time table is directed a good deal by us. We speed up the clock or we slow the hands down and we turn them back by our activities or our procrastinations. And do you know why I think people who are actually promised that they would live to see the temple built are dying before the completion of the temple? Because we haven’t converted the Indians in large enough numbers; never shall we go to Jackson County until we have converted and brought into this church great numbers of Lamanites. Now you just as well set that down as a basic fact. [7]
After the Church began to acquire land in the vicinity of Jackson county and following the organization of multiple stakes in Missouri, additional folklore began to develop concerning the return to Zion. In the late 1970’s the Church made an effort to counter the myths that were circulating. Graham W. Doxey, former president of the Missouri Independence Mission, warned Church members:
Myth #1: We’re going to walk to Missouri to prepare for the Second Coming. Scripture makes it clear that Missouri has a prophetic role to play in the Second Coming and it seems logical that some people will need to go there to assist in portions of that work. But the scriptures contain no references that spell out in detail how that assistance will be given.
One of the quotations I hear frequently repeated is part of a sermon by Joseph F. Smith in 1882: “When God leads the people back to Jackson County, how will he do it” Let me picture to you how some of us may be gathered and led to Jackson County. I think I see two or three hundred thousand people wending their way across the great plain enduring the nameless hardships of the journey, herding and guarding their cattle by day and by night. “This is one way to look at it. It is certainly a practical view. Some might ask, what will become of the railroads? I fear that the sifting process would be insufficient were we to travel by railroads.” (Journal of Discourses, 24:156-57.)
This is a vivid mental picture, but people frequently remember the picture and forget he said “some of us” and “may be gathered.” We should also keep in mind that he said this is “one way to look at it,” remembering also the perspective of 1882. From our perspective in 1979, it seems even less likely that we would sell our automobiles and herd cattle along our freeway systems. But we simply have no scriptural information about who–if any general Church members–will be called to go back and the means that they might use. The prophets of our day have not found it timely or necessary to speak on the matter. [8]
Despite these cautions, thousands of members of the Church still have in their minds the romantic picture of walking to Jackson County in the latter days. With the announcement in the October 2008 General Conference of a temple to be built in “the greater Kansas City area,” imaginations have again been fired. Where will the Temple be located? Are the last days upon us? Is this the beginning of an effort to bolster the Church’s presence in an area of religious significance for the Mormons?
___________________________________________
[1] History of the Church 3:274-75.
[2] H. Michael Marquardt, The Independence Temple of Zion. This revelation came from the manuscript volume “Book of the Law of the Lord, and was read by John C. Bennett at the April 1841 General Conference.
[3] Times and Seasons 6 (1 July 1845):956.
[4] Journal of Discourses, Vol. 14, p. 275.
[5] J. Golden Kimball, Conference Report, October 1930, p.59.
[6] H. Michael Marquardt, The Independence Temple of Zion. Dyer was later set apart as a third counselor in the First Presidency (1968). This was one of the very few times when a man who was not a member of the Council of the Twelve served as an Apostle.
[7] Ibid. From a copy of the December 1963 talk obtained from President Kimball’s secretary as quoted in Book of Mormon Student Manual (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., 1981), 427-28. Kimball speaking to the Lamanites [Indians] said: “You must flourish, and you must become a great people so that you can go back to Jackson County with us and we with you, and we will build there the magnificent temple which Orson Pratt said will be the most beautiful building that ever was built or that ever will be built. . . . They must be leaders in their communities, because not too far away there is going to be a great migration to Jackson County, Missouri, and there we are going to build the great temple” (426-27).
[8] Graham W. Doxey, “Missouri Myths,” Ensign, Apr 1979, 64
By GuestJuly 1, 2008
Admin: Janiece (or JJ as we like to call her), is a PhD student at the University of Utah where her she is completing dissertation work in part on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In It Does Not Die, Maitreyi Devi wrote a “she said” to Mircea Elidae’s Bengal Nights, the “he said” semi-autobiographical account of his time in 1930s Calcutta and his relationship with Devi.[1] Unsurprisingly, Devi offered a very different version of events in her narrative. Academia (and even Oprah thanks to James Frey) has long debated the definition of memoir and its highly subjective nature. A comparison of It Does Not Die and Bengal Nights provides many aspects for analysis of events personally subjective and emotive while grounded in history. Can scholarship ever overcome personal opinion or reaction in highly emotionally charged historical events?
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