Dissertation Prospectus 3.1

So I’m still writing prospectuses (or is it prospecti?) My committee technically passed off my first prospectus in December but did so with reservations. I’ve been working on placating those ever since. Also, the way my adviser Ann Taves likes to do it is to write an original prospectus, then do all the research, and then write another one at that point. I certainly haven’t completed my research but I’m getting there. My point is though I’m still working at this but I don’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels.

Anyway, the latest draft weighed in at 55 pages and 230 footnotes. I’m thinking of doing three posts of some of the introductory material. Here’s number one: [note: a fair amount of this is Ann’s wording]

“The Presence of God: Early Mormonism and Neoplatonism”

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Plato on Deification and Eternal Marriage

Clement of Alexandria asserted that Plato was an important precursor to the coming of Christ. [1] The quotes I post from Plato here suggest that Mormons could sympathize with Clement’s point of view. The first is Plato’s statement on deification from the Theaetetus.

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Early Mormon Writings on Christian History/Apostasy: A Query

Steve Fleming and I are currently working on a paper examining early Latter-day Saint understandings of what Mormons today refer to as “the Great Apostasy.” Among other things, we are looking at sustained treatments of the subject authored by early Mormons (defined for our purposes here as works written and/or published between 1830 and 1850). While Steve and I feel like we have a pretty good grasp of the most obvious sources, we want to make sure we have all of our bases covered, and that’s where we need your help. What essays, books, pamphlets, etc. attempted to examine the history of the Christian church and/or the apostasy of the early Christian church? Here are a few we’ve already identified:

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Mormonism and Agency: A Historical Query

Behold here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man: Because, that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.

-Revelation to Joseph Smith, May 6, 1833 (Doctrine & Covenants 93:31)

“Agency” is a buzzword prominent in both of the worlds that I, and other Mormon historians, inhabit on a day-to-day basis. Within the world of Mormonism, the word signifies a central tenet of Latter-day Saint theology, one that receives regular and sustained attention from church leaders and in Sunday School curriculum. In the historical profession, meanwhile, “agency” has been labeled “the master trope of the New Social History”—signifying the collective efforts of social historians to rescue from the dustbins of history the lives and stories of marginalized figures, including especially African American and Indian slaves, women from all walks of life, and others who left behind few written records and lived otherwise unremarkable lives.[1]

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Book Review: David Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America

David F. Holland. Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 275pp. + index.

We spend a lot of time at this blog considering how Mormonism fits within larger frameworks in American religious history and what it uniquely reveals about the shape and contours of that past. Among the most obvious answers to the latter consideration is Mormonism’s prophetic tradition, with its adherence to a belief in continuing revelation and an expanded (and expanding) canon of scripture. In trying to tackle the complicated question of whether Mormonism can be accurately described as “Protestant” in any meaningful sense on a recent post, among the most significant reasons for those who answered “no” was Mormonism’s claims to revelation and scripture beyond the bounds of the Old and New Testaments.

But just how unique is Mormonism in this regard? What precedents are there in the American past for such beliefs and how do Mormon prophets and scriptures fit within the larger history of the

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Is Mormonism Protestant?: Some Reflections on Rohrer’s Wandering Souls

I recently finished reading S. Scott Rohrer’s Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865, a useful and readable overview of several different religious communities whose migrations to and within colonial British North America and the United States shaped American history in ways often ignored by historians of immigration.

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Creation ex Nihilo, Proclus, and the Apostasy

Adolf von Harnock asserted the famous paradigm that early Christianity was corrupted by Greek philosophy. He pointed to the Gnostics as the extreme form of that corruption but asserted that Christianity as a whole was tainted. The way he described the effects of Plato on Christianity would have been (and indeed was) appealing to Mormons.

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Women’s History Month at JI: Women and Revelation in Christian History

This wraps up our un-official series for Women’s History Month here at JI. Thanks to all the contributors and readers for their comments! –David G.

Throughout the history of Christianity, prophets and revelators have overwhelmingly been women. Though few such figures are found in the scriptures, David Potter argues that the very act of canonization is a routinization of charisma and a suppression of female prophecy. ?In the primary canon,” argues Potter “accepted prophets had to look like the authority figures of the church: they had to be men; they also had to be dead so that they could not confuse the situation by offering their own views on what it was that they were saying. In this, the early church was blessed by its Jewish heritage, from which it inherited the idea of sacred canon, male prophecy, and prophetic interpretation through the exegesis of texts.? [1]

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Joseph Smith and the Persistence of Late Neoplatonism; Or, a Possible Source for ?Telestial?

As I mentioned in the prospectus I posted, I see both striking resemblances between Mormonism and late Neoplatonism and important influences of late Neoplatonism on the history of Christianity that need to be explored. My committee balked at linking Mormonism to late Neoplatonism and wanted further proof. So I?ve been doing some research.

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Nebuchadnezzar and The Mormon Social Imaginary

My presentation at the last MHA conference revolved around some ideas I?d been working with related to Mormon collective identity. A while ago I became fascinated with the way that Charles Taylor has been using the concept of ?social imaginaries? in his work in social philosophy. To him, a ?social imaginary? is basically the perceived social world of an individual, and Taylor?s work shows how these perceptions are critical for understanding how societies function. [1] This is an idea similar to the basic premise that Benedict Anderson introduced in Imagined Communities. Anderson focused on the phenomenon of the nation, and he described how the shared perceptions of citizens of were truly the element that made a nation possible. [2] In my view, both of these ideas ? ?social imaginaries? and ?imagined communities? have an important connection to the question of group or collective identity.

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