By September 8, 2013
The biggest Mormon studies news this week is either that: A) the American Bible Society still exists, and also that 47% of Americans, according to the still-existing American Bible Society, believe that the Book of Mormon and Bible “teach the same spiritual truths.”
Or, B) That TLC is going to grace us with another reality show about a polygamous family.
Shut down the presses, everybody.
By August 13, 2013
This is from John Fugal, A Review of Priesthood Correlation (Provo: BYU Press, 1968). There are any number of interesting points about correlation we can derive from this image, but most fundamental is this: though contemporary Mormons often speak of correlation as the formative era of the modern church, there is much that is foreign to present-day Mormons about material like this.
I want to make two related observations, though I’m sure there’s far more than that we can pick out.
1) Note the names of things. “Priesthood home teaching;” “Priesthood welfare;” “Priesthood missionary work.” Though correlation is often assumed to be somehow ‘secular’ – insofar as it is a form of bureaucratic reorganization and many Americans, steeped in Protestant notions of liberty, tend to find bureaucracy and the sacred a difficult reconciliation – there is intense linguistic effort here to interpret the institutional efforts of correlation as expressly religious. Indeed, according to its advocates and this chart, the purpose of correlation was to reinvigorate those aspects of church organization considered “sacred” – namely, the priesthood hierarchy. Notice how marginalized the auxiliaries are. Correlation was less, then, purely a secularizing force than a reorganization of ideas about the sacred and the secular in Mormon life, a narrowing and focusing of whence the sacred might come.
2) That process also may go a long way, I think, toward explaining the male paternalism of the correlated church. Another striking aspect of this image is its incorporation of the “home” into the structure of the church as another priesthood organization, like the Quorum of the Twelve or the ward. Centering correlation upon priesthood leadership necessarily exalts the status of men in the church, and the way this diagram reads the home is an excellent example.
By November 24, 2012
Another in the JI’s series of review essays on various aspects of John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet
One of the more common tropes in Mormon history is drawing the comparison between Joseph Smith the visionary dreamer and Brigham Young the hard-headed administrator. This is sometimes done with admiration or scholarly satisfaction ? faithful Mormons might say that Brigham was precisely what the church needed when Joseph Smith?s assassination left the Mormons dazed and splintering, and sociologists of religion often describe the transition from Joseph Smith?s leadership to Brigham Young?s as a classic case of Weberian routinization of charisma. The dichotomy is also sometimes drawn with a sense of tragedy: many liberal-leaning Mormons imagine Joseph Smith?s Mormonism as a time of exciting intellectual freedom and theological experimentation, and see in Brigham Young the slow settling in of dull institutional authoritarianism and the end of Joseph?s enthusiastic humanism.
By August 31, 2012
The Call for Papers is below. Please use this thread to, should you desire, make contacts, organize panels, and find other like-minded scholars planning on joining us in 2013
The 48th annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held in Layton, Davis County, Utah, on June 6-9, 2013. Our theme emphasizes the particular history of Davis County and other early Wasatch Front Mormon settlements, but also invites broad investigation of what ?Wests? of all types, times, and places have meant to various branches of the Restoration movement. Further, the idea of multiple Mormon frontiers challenges us to consider Mormonism?s encounters with other groups, cultures, and institutions.
By July 24, 2012
We’re happy to announce that we’ve added an enlightening new permablogger to our ranks.
Her bio:
Cristine Hutchison-Jones (call me Crissy!) received her BA in American Studies and Religion from Florida State University in 2001, and her PhD in Religious and Theological Studies from Boston University in 2011. She is a cultural and intellectual historian of religion in the United States with a focus on religious intolerance and representations of minorities. Her dissertation, “Reviling and Revering the Mormons: Defining American Values, 1890-2008,” explored images of the Mormons in American news, fiction and non-fiction writing, and television and film. She is the author of “Center and Periphery: Mormons and American Culture in Tony Kushner’s *Angels in America*.”
Welcome, Crissy!
By May 30, 2012
Women and the LDS Church: Historical
and Contemporary Perspectives Conference
August 24 – 25, 2012
Fort Douglas, Officer’s Club Theater
150 S. Fort Douglas Blvd
University of Utah
By April 23, 2012
I discovered Christopher Lasch in the fall of my first year in a PhD program, when I picked up The World of Nations while standing at a booksale table in front of Georgetown?s library. When I saw a chapter on Mormonism in the table of contents I did a double-take; it seemed odd to me still when I ran into my people in foreign venues. Nonetheless, I took the thing home.
Here is what Christopher Lasch wrote about Mormonism, in what turned out to be a rather scathing review of Robert Flanders?s Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi and a Mormon-corporate-empire hack expose by Wallace Turner: ?The Mormons are so clearly a pathological symptom that a historian could not address himself to the Mormons, it would seem, without asking himself what sort of society could have produced them.? (Quoted in Miller, 117-118)
By January 31, 2012
Please join us for a conference titled ?Exploring Mormon Conceptions of Apostasy? to be held on March 1-2, 2012 at Brigham Young University.
The conference schedule is available at https://sites.google.com/site/mormonconceptionsofapostasy/.
The notion of an apostasy from the primitive gospel and the original church has been a key animating feature in Mormonism since its inception and in other ?religions of the book.? Apostasy as a concept, however, has proven to be tremendously fluid, with individual, institutional, communal, and historical meanings and applications all proliferating in religious thought throughout the ages. Fifteen faithful Mormon scholars from many scholarly backgrounds and methodologies, will explore the concept of apostasy in various historical and religious contexts as we consider how to narrate apostasy in ways that remain historically authentic and cohere with Mormon theology. Proceedings will be published by Greg Kofford Press in the series Perspectives on Mormon Theology.
This conference is organized by Miranda Wilcox, assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University, with financial assistance from an Eliza R. Snow Faculty Grant.
By January 12, 2012
Between October 25 and November 16 of last year, researchers for the Pew Forum interviewed 1,019 Americans who identified themselves as “Mormon.” That point is key.
There was surprise among the researchers and advisory board (including myself), and no doubt among the General Authorities when it turned out that 77% of Mormons in America attend church every week, because it is received common knowledge among most who care about such things that the actual rate of attendance (and tithepaying &etc) is nowhere near this high.
By November 7, 2011
Before I dive into the substance of this review, it’s worth pointing out, I think, a few of the things which are going on beneath its surface. The first is me once again trying to work out the relationship between trained academic scholars and autodidact scholars, and to assess their ongoing discussion about the proper form and the structure of scholarship. This is a popular topic at the JI, which reflects more generally the state of Mormon studies. Many of the points I make below have to do with my judgment of the ways this book holds up as an academic work. A book of this scope and ambition would normally, in an academic setting be a synthesis, weaving together a vast array of work into a single whole by a scholar familiar with the field. But its author is neither a trained theologian nor a trained historian – and, of course, that wide array of secondary literature on the history of Mormon theology simply does not exist. This my mean that we should take its ambitions somewhat differently than we might otherwise. Furthermore – and second – while the work itself certainly has academic aspirations, it also reads in many places as prescriptive as well as descriptive – that is, this is a work of Mormon theology as much as it is a history of Mormon thought. Harrell thinks certain ways of believing are more useful than others, and he seeks to convince us of the fact. This is not bad; indeed, I think Mormonism needs more theology, not less, and I am delighted with Harrell’s contribution to that discussion. But again, it complicates how one might engage with the book as a work of scholarship: how should it be read? Those caveats noted, the review.
Additionally, this essay will appear in a slightly altered form in an upcoming issue of Dialogue. Subscribe!
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