By July 9, 2009
[What follows is an extract from a section of my paper presented at the 2009 Pratt Summer Seminar, titled “‘Here Was an End to Mysticism’: Divine Embodiment, Human Corporality, and Parley Pratt.”]
By June 16, 2009
For early Mormon writers, their growing materialist theology brought several theological problems for their rationalistic minds to solve. Placing God within a physical body that takes up physical place perceivably posed threats to God?s omnipotence, omniscience, and, especially, omnipresence. Thus, many were left to determine how a godhead composed of three personages could be everywhere at the same time and have power over everything in the universe. The answer, at least for the Pratt brothers, was a redefinition of the Holy Ghost.
By June 1, 2009
(Note: If you couldn’t from Ryan T’s last comment and this brief post, three of us JIers are currently taking part in an intense seminar on the Pratt brothers’ writings. Therefore, you may see quite a bit on good ol’ Parley and Orson; be advised.)
By May 29, 2009
As one whose ?to-read? pile lends a large shadow over both my desk and nightstand, devotional history books put out by publishers like Deseret Book or Covenant Press don?t usually make the list. However, a couple weeks I decided to download the audio version of a recent ?popular? devotional/historical work.[1] While this post is formatted like a standard book review, I hope that it will serve as a ?springboard? of sorts to discuss the practice of writing history for the faithful masses.
By May 11, 2009
Patriarchal blessings have always been an important aspect of Mormonism, and serve as a great window through which to interpret early Mormon thought. One key to understanding Joseph Smith Sr.?s role as the first patriarch is to recognize that the bestowal of ?patriarchal blessings? was a crucial step for Latter-day Saints to connect themselves with the authority of the past. Jan Shipps noted that early Mormonism was a ?movement in which leader and followers were together living through?recapitulating?the stories of Israel and early Christianity?[1]?the implementation of patriarchal blessings was an important way to do this.
By April 26, 2009
To begin his preface to A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy, conservative Calvinist Samuel Tyler quoted approvingly Francis Bacon’s famous statement that had by then became the mantra for American religious discourse: “It ought to be eternally resolved and settled, that the understanding cannot be decide[d] otherwise, than by Induction, and by a legitimate form of it.”[1]
By April 20, 2009
I have been dealving into Nauvoo-era theology recently–a task not for the faint of heart. There are plenty of un-touched topics there just waiting to be analyzed, but one of the themes that has stood out to me the most, however, is Joseph Smith’s reconception of the state of the body–its nature, its potential, and even its inherent power. These are some preliminary thoughts on the topic; preliminary, because it only relies on sermons reproduced in Ehat and Cook’s Words of Joseph Smith (and only those before summer of ’43 at that), and engages very limited contemporary and secondary sources. (Also, since we have been getting quite a bit of discussion on Joseph Smith’s view of spirits lately, I thought we should even it out by also engaging his view of the body.)
By April 8, 2009
…and don’t worry, it doesn’t mention any salamanders.
By April 2, 2009
We recently had a stirring discussion over at BCC concerning the causes of the 1838 conflict in Missouri. Much of the discussion concentrated not on the historical evidence that has survived, but on the role of bias in determining what gets included and what gets left out when individuals narrate the past.
By March 27, 2009
So, I am more than a little embarrassed that almost all of Women’s History month has passed and the JI has not published even one post on women and Mormonism. I was hoping to put together a more analytical post on how gender shaped some of the early Mormon narratives and poems written after the expulsion from Missouri, but that’s a project that will have to wait for now. But here is an Eliza R. Snow poem that describes the Haun’s Mill massacre. How does Snow use gender to shape the memory of the massacre?
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