Section

Cultural History

Rational Supernaturalism, Part II: What’s in a Name?

By October 17, 2008


See part I here.

On the last page of the May 1834 issue of Evening and the Morning Star, the Church included the minutes of a meeting held on May 3, 1834. In a straightforward way, and lacking any fanfare, it included the following:

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Ghost stories

By October 3, 2008


So, you?ve hunted down the latest eerie photograph of dead prisoners of war once held in Salt Lake City?s Fort Douglas. You?ve stumbled backwards over the rough ground around Emo?s grave more nights than you can remember, and you?ve shaken your head in patronizing amusement when George fiddles with the lighting in the Capitol Theatre. You?ve even made the trip down to Utah Valley to poke around the old Lehi Hospital, where the elevator does not always work as it should, and the chief resident once murdered his lover, the unlucky head of nursing.

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“Thou Wast Willing to Lay Down Thy Life for Thy Brethren”: Zion’s Blessings in the Early Church, Part II

By October 2, 2008


*This is continued from Part I.

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“Thou Wast Willing to Lay Down Thy Life for Thy Brethren”: Zion’s Blessings in the Early Church, Part I

By October 1, 2008


*This is the first of a two-part summary of the paper I presented at JWHA this past weekend.

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Rational Supernaturalism, Part I: Joseph Smith, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Angels

By August 17, 2008


Enlightenment thought brought many threats to eighteenth and nineteenth century religious movements.

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Parley P. Pratt, Writing, and the History of Reading

By July 8, 2008


Beginning in the 1830s, Parley P. Pratt produced a tremendous amount of literature describing his people’s persecutions. Pratt wrote not only for his fellow religionists, but also as a means to inform other Americans of the Mormon plight and seek redress.[1] Of the hundreds of pages of his prose, among the most significant included his Extra of the Mormon newspaper The Evening and the Morning Star entitled “?Mormons,’ So Called”, which is perhaps the most comprehensive contemporary description of the 1833-1834 Jackson County expulsion.[2] Pratt included this Extra as part of his eighty-four page history of the Missouri persecutions that he published in 1839.[3] In turn, this history later formed the basis of parts of Pratt’s autobiography.[4] Beyond his narrative contributions, Pratt also wrote several poems describing his people’s sufferings that he published in 1840 in The Millennium and Other Poems.[5]

Historian Kenneth Winn has described Pratt as the leading Mormon commentator on

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The Transcendentalist’s “New Bible”, the Book of Mormon, and the Romantic Quest for Modern Scriptural Texts

By July 2, 2008


Literary scholar Lawrence Buell, in his excellent New England Literary Culture, explored one of the most important ideas related to the antebellum Romantic thinkers–an idea that he defines as “literary scripturism.”

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For never, since the Son of God was slain/ Had blood so noble, flow’d from human vein

By June 27, 2008


No time for a real post dealing with the martyrdom today, but here’s ERS’s memorial of Joseph Smith’s death.

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Review: Deseret Sunday School Songs, a hymnal

By June 15, 2008


There is no date, though a bit of research reveals that this hymnal was published in 1909.

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The Role of Friendship and Community among Romantics

By June 3, 2008


Just in case you didnt get enough on Emerson back in February (see here and here), this is an encore performance.

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