By David G.May 14, 2008
I found this while going through the Times and Seasons, and it reminded me of Chris’s post on Mormonizing John Wesley. Apparently Mormon J. M. Grant (Jedediah, I presume) wrote a letter to the New York Messenger, and included an excerpt from a letter from Jefferson to John Adams, and asked his readers if they thought Thomas Jefferson was a Mormon. Grant’s letter was later republished in the Times and Seasons.
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An extract from a letter written to JOHN ADAMS BY THOMAS JEFFERSON, of Virginia, published by Mr.
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By matt b.May 10, 2008
Before we can ask whether a Mormon theology of the movies is a viable idea, I suppose that making the case that a theology of the movies in general works would be useful.
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By Ben PApril 22, 2008
One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred.
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By Ben PFebruary 19, 2008
We as Latter-day Saints love to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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By Ben PFebruary 15, 2008
When Joseph the Prophet and Hyrum the Patriarch were murdered, the Mormon community felt as if the worst event possible had happened.
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By David G.January 30, 2008
One thing that continually impresses me is the ability of the early Latter-day Saints to reinterpret their persecutions as positive events in their lives. Although they also complained a lot concerning the the treatment they received at the hands of the Missourians and Illinoisans, early Mormons were also adept in reversing their losses and turning them into triumphs. For Parley P. Pratt and other Latter-day Saints, being called to suffer and even die for the truth was
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By Ben PJanuary 23, 2008
In his 1993 Tanner Lecture delivered to the Mormon History Association, historian Richard Hughes suggested that “romanticism quickly emerged as the defining intellectual influence [of the Mormon Church] … and this was the difference that made all the difference.”[1] In a similar vein, Jacksonian scholar and Joseph Smith biographer Robert Remini concluded that “Joseph was a romantic to his innermost fiber.”[2] The connection between romanticism and early Mormonism is a fascinating one that deserves further attention.
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By David G.January 7, 2008
We often hear about Joseph Smith’s sojourn in a Missouri prison during the winter of 1838-1839, but Parley P. Pratt also spent about eight months in a Missouri jail, an experience that receives little attention. Those eight months were, in a word, prolific, as Pratt produced not only a major full-length treatise describing the Mormon persecutions in Missouri, but also an important theological essay. He also wrote several surviving letters and poems. Some of the poems are better
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By David G.January 5, 2008
It has recently been suggested that we should commemorate the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, rather than his birthday. I wonder how contemporary Latter-day Saints would respond to having an official holiday set aside to remember the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In speaking to some of my friends and family about the idea, I’ve seen some resistance, in part I think to the contemporary fear of being perceived by outsiders as worshipping Joseph Smith. Parley P. Pratt, in his “One Hundred Years Hence. 1945.”, speculated that in the Millennium we will hold feast days to h
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By David G.December 17, 2007
This is cross-posted at Times and Seasons.
In April 2005, I spent two weeks on assignment for the Joseph Smith Papers Project in Missouri and Illinois, visiting court houses and archives searching for documents pertaining to early Mormon history. On the second evening of my stay in northwestern Missouri, I drove down a lonely dirt road to a desolate place that had significant meaning for me as a Latter-day Saint. When I arrived, I found only a small creek surrounded by trees, grass, mud, and a small plaque that identified the site of the Haun?s Mill Massacre, where Missouri vigilantes murdered 17 Mormon men and boys in October 1838. As I looked over the site, I felt that I was standing on hallowed ground. I would not know until later that among the 17 wa
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