By July 30, 2010
I feel like I’m the bearer of bad news lately. It has come to my attention that George P. Lee, the most famous product of the great surge of LDS interest in Native Americans that defined much of the post-World War II era, died this week in Provo.
By June 23, 2010
To get a better understanding of the cultural milieu of early Mormonism, one might need to make an extra trip to Yale?s Beinecke Library. And read French.
Damrosch, Leo. Tocqueville?s Discovery of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. xxi + 227 pp. Illustrations, maps, endnotes, index. Hardback: $27.00; ISBN 978-0-374-27817-5.
By June 4, 2010
(Cross-posted at Religion in American History)
Over at Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks has a two-part post asking ?Who Says the Tea Party isn?t a Religious Movement?? In challenging Lou Ruprecht?s answer of ?no,? Brooks notes that ?for the Mormon sector of the movement (including Tea Party icon Glenn Beck), ? the Tea Party taps into a powerful and distinctive complex of Mormon beliefs about the divinity of the U.S. Constitution and the last-days role of righteous souls from the Rocky Mountains in saving it from destruction.?
By March 12, 2010
Look, in lots of ways, Glenn Beck is a loon. A loon poorly informed by history, at that. But plowing through the veritable scads of secondary material on my dissertation topic (Protestant fundamentalism) has driven one particular truth pretty well home to me: there’s nothing so destructive to a piece of academic writing as a slightly concealed sneer on an author’s face. Concluding that any particular individual or group is so hopelessly drenched in wingnuttery or disappointing political positions or slavish and bewildering adherence to the blindingly goofy that they are no longer worthy of intelligent analysis is to abdicate the responsibility to understand ourselves that the humanities as a discipline lays upon us. Heck, even for activists (as opposed to scholars), to malign and snarl and taunt the representatives of a cause one finds objectionable is to make the classic mistake of treating the symptom as the disease. Which is why I was not terribly impressed with Jim Wallis’s response to Glenn Beck’s by now blaringly well covered advice to Christians: that they should investigate their faith for the dread and dire words “social justice,” (aka, “Progressivism” (Beck’s definition); aka collectiivsm; aka fascism; aka hurting puppies) and if that mark of the beast should be located, flee for the hills.
By July 29, 2009
This morning, several hundred members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints gathered on the steps of Salt Lake City’s Matheson Courthouse and on the lawn of the Salt Lake City and County Building across the street to express their dismay that District Judge Denise Lindberg was considering ordering the United Effort Plan trust, which contains a great deal of church property, dismantled and sold.
By June 23, 2009
Over the past week, four contributors to the Juvenile Instructor have toured, given tours, researched in, peered through the windows of, and otherwise participated in the opening of the new LDS Church History Library and Archives. Their experiences, ruminations, and ponderables are below.
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 February 13, 2009
Word leaked out on January 23 that the Obama administration was vetting BYU law professor Larry EchoHawk for a potential nomination as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. Echohawk is well-known in Indian Country for his advocacy for various tribal groups, and has served as an Idaho State Representative and Idaho Attorney General. EchoHawk’s relative, John, was one of the founders of the Native American Rights Fund, a major Indian law firm. If appointed, EchoHawk would not be the first Mormon Assistant Secretary of the Interior (H. Rex Lee served in the position in the 1950s), but he would likely be the highest-ranking American Indian Latter-day Saint in government service.
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.
By September 22, 2008
Almost fifty years ago, Leonard J. Arrington sent out a questionnaire to fifty prominent Mormons asking who they thought were the “five most eminent intellectuals in Mormon history.”
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