Mormon Racism in Modern American Historiography

As one of the assigned texts for my course this quarter in ?Christianity and Slavery in America, 1619-1865?, I?ve engaged David Brion Davis? latest work on American slavery, Inhuman Bondage. [1] Davis, for those unacquainted with the scholarship on American slavery, has held a prominent place in groundbreaking discussion in the field for many years. This latest work presents something of synthesis of the most recent relevant scholarship in a sweeping effort to see American slavery as part of a global practice and, most especially, to articulate its transatlantic contexts.

A small part of Davis? purpose (and a central component of the course in general) is to understand how the practice and ideology of slavery became integrated to Christianity, and to understand the way it influenced both the development of Christian theology and the course of Christian practice. Although Davis? work does not have a particularly religious orientation (he seems, here at least, to focus on the secular social), his work is comprehensive enough to give a summary overview of slavery in Christian thought.

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Perspectives on Parley Pratt?s Autobiography: The Literary Impulse

Ben?s previous post was an effort to highlight the ?personal agenda? behind Parley Pratt?s writing of his Autobiography. He outlined two chief forces behind its production: Parley?s desires (conscious or not) to relive and revive his preeminent influence in the Church, and to give a revisionist account of its history more favorable and forgiving to himself. To those two well-reasoned general motives, I would like to add a third fundamental impetus ? one that was relatively unique to Parley as an individual.

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A Night at the Theater: Mahonri Stewart’s The Fading Flower

A couple of nights ago I stumbled across the antidote for all of you out there disillusioned with the attempts of LDS art to meaningfully engage with Mormon history: I saw Mahonri Stewart’s The Fading Flower, presented by New Play Project at Provo Theatre Company. I took along a date, so I was legitimately worried that the whole thing might flop. But I was pleasantly surprised: the play deals with the atmosphere surrounding Joseph III’s coming of age, his assumption of the leadership of the RLDS faith, and the heightening conflict between Nauvoo and Salt Lake – with the Smith family caught in between. It gives special attention to Emma Smith and her youngest son, David Hyrum, in a way serving as a stage adaptation of Valeen Tippetts Avery’s From Mission to Madness: Last Son of The Mormon Prophet.

Although aesthetics and empathy, not faithfulness to history, are the driving forces behind this production, it is compelling, even to the historical mind. And it’s especially significant for its intended lay LDS audience.

In any case, if you’re in Provo in the next week, it’s worthwhile. More information available at http://newplayproject.org/season/2009/fading-flower/.

Joseph Smith and Poetry-Prophecy

If to some it seems presumptuous to call Joseph Smith a prophet, it will probably seem downright asinine to suggest that he was a poet too. And yet that?s the proposition I?d like to put forward in this post. The typical narrative renders Joseph as the unlearned ploughboy that he was, who could, as Emma assures us, hardly write a well-worded letter. But anyone who?s looked at how Joseph actually spoke and wrote (including anyone who?s followed along at all in the Gospel Doctrine course recently) knows that he used language in some interesting ways, ways that for some reason we do not often see language being used nowadays in the Church.

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Mormonism and American Exceptionalism

This post is loosely a continuation of my previous one (regarding Mormonism and Anglo-American cultural conflict); both are part of an effort to examine the dialogic relationship between early Mormonism and larger elements of early American culture.

The primary impetus for this post was my recent reading in Daniel Walker Howe?s ?What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,? where Howe makes a claim that Mormons of that period ?embraced a particularly extreme version of American exceptionalism.?[1] The claim is striking to me because it seems to casually (and perhaps uncritically) connect Mormon attitudes to the much larger and longer tradition of American claims to divine favor.

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Anglo-American Culture Wars and the Early Missionary Effort in England

The prevailing “special relationship” between Britain and the United States is of fairly recent vintage (1). It has grown out the close cooperation of the two nations during the World Wars and other political engagements since. Previous to this, there was much political jockeying and often animosity that has now been lost from public memory. The American Revolution (or The American Rebellion, I suppose) was, of course, not a time of harmony; the War of 1812 ensured that the separation between the two nations was permanent and reaffirmed their differences.

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