Problematizing the Reformation: Sola Scriptura and Cessation

Desidrius Erasmus was the most learned man of his day and in the spirit of the Renaissance he sought to get back to the original sources of wisdom (often called Christian Humanism). For Erasmus this meant the Fathers over the Scholastics, Origin over Augustine and, of course, the Greek Bible (which he translated into Latin) over all. Said Erasmus (in a 16th century English translation) ?I wold to god they were translated in to the tonges of all men, so that they might not only be read and knowne of the scotes and yrishmen, but also of the Turkes and sarracenes ? I wold to god the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture at his plowbeme.? [1]

This sentiment tends to be credited to William Tyndale the father of the English Bible:

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Adoption

I knew something was up when my wife?s high-school Spanish teacher came by. ?I feel like I?m losing a daughter.? We were in my wife?s hometown of Sonora, California, one week before our wedding. Even before we started dating I learned that my wife was an only child of divorced hippy parents. ?Great,? I thought, ?no pressure to be a high achieving son-in-law.? Little did I know?

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Rethinking the Reformation

I?ve argued around here that we Mormons have tended to borrow the Protestant metanarrative of history in seeking to lay out how we get from Apostasy to Restoration: early Catholics corrupt the church, on come the dark ages, Luther brings light back into the world by focusing on the scriptures and breaking with the wicked pope, setting the stage for the Restoration.

A little more autobiography if you?ll indulge me.

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Review Essay: Edward Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe

Bever, Edward. The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008.

I read this book recently at the recommendation of my adviser, Ann Taves, because she is now focused on the cognitive science aspect of religion. This book is an attempt by Bever, a historian by training, to apply some of the cognitive science methods to the study of early modern witchcraft. This review is a little long but I thought it suggested a number of interesting approaches for the study of supernatural beliefs in a historical setting.

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Review Essay: The Dechristianization Thesis

Jon Butler argued in Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People that colonial Americans were not really “Christianized” until late in the eighteenth century. In making his argument, Butler was essentially applying the “dechristianization” thesis to colonial America (he mentions Mormons in a later chapter). To shed light on these arguments, I wanted to summarize the debates over the dechristianization thesis.

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My Daughter the Deist

A week or two ago when my wife was out of town, my daughter (yes, that one) said something at dinner that caught me off guard. “I don’t believe our church is true.” She’s eight. That in and of itself didn’t catch me totally off guard because a month or so before she asked while we were doing scripture reading, “what if our church isn’t true and God is mad at us for going to the wrong church.” At that time I told her that I knew that if she prayed God would lead her in the way He saw fit.

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Book Reviews: Eva Pocs, Between the Living and the Dead and Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk

Eva Pocs. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern World. Trans. By Szilvia Redey and Michael Webb. Budapest: Central University Press, 1999.

Owen Davies. Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.

As I mentioned in my review of Emma Wilby, there is a growing focus in the study of early modern witchcraft on trying to get at the actual folk practices behind the accusations. Some of the most important works on the topic come out of Hungary where the witchcraft trials generally lasted longer. Pocs?s book is one such; I also include a little summary of Owen Davies book on the cunning-folk, which is also very helpful.

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Why All the Brodie Love? A Little Historiographical Context

On Chris Smith?s post, in my attempt to defend ?the bracket? or experiential agnosticism as a historiographical method, I made the remark that Fawn Bordie had said very little that was new. I no doubt was engaging in hyperbole, sometimes that happens around the blogs.

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How I Became a Mormon Historian and Just about the Only Mormon Fan of Refiner?s Fire

Since Ardis Parshall said JI needed more posts like Jared’s…

Once when a member asked the typical question of what I wanted to study when I got home from my mission, my companion interjected, ?He?ll say he doesn?t know, but if you really press him, he?ll say he wants to be a historian.?

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Why the Late Middle Ages Are Important for Understanding Mormonism

So when David G. was introducing his “academic friends” (his words) to his new wife at their reception, he gave her a little summation of everybody’s research. When he got to me he simply said “I can’t really explain what he does.” I know I’ve brought this predicament on myself, so to try to remedy this little problem I have, I decided to post a little write-up I did for my medieval professor.

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