From the Archives: Interview with a (Strawman?) Clergyman
By April 30, 2008
The following was printed in Times and Seasons, September 1, 1842.
By April 30, 2008
The following was printed in Times and Seasons, September 1, 1842.
By April 24, 2008
Harry Emerson Fosdick was among the most popular preachers and writers of the first half of the twentieth century. He’s particularly known for a trilogy of devotional works called “The Three Meanings:” The Meaning of Prayer, the Meaning of Faith, the Meaning of Service. These books have sold millions of copies; there are reports that Gandhi read them in prison; and they’re still in print today.
Despite Fosdick’s high profile,* however, it was the RLDS, not Harold B. Lee or J. Reuben Clark, who stepped up to the plate to represent Mormonism to Fosdick.
By April 3, 2008
At least that’s the message that early twentieth-century Mormon author Nephi Anderson was trying to send in his short story “The Inevitable,” published in the Improvement Era in 1907. I think it is significant that Anderson wrote this story after the death of his first wife, Asenath Tillotson in 1904, and just before his second marriage to Maud Rebecca Symons in 1908. Questions of his marital status with his first wife and a potential second wife in the hereafter were likely on his mind.
Given the recent discussions around the ‘nacle concerning celestial polygamy, I thought I’d post this here so we can get some feel for the emergence of this idea in Mormon thought in the post-1890 era. It’s a bit long, but it’s a short story, so it should be a quick read for the curious.
By March 20, 2008
For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed singing hymns. In high school I sang in the ward and stake choirs. As a missionary I tried to sing at every appointment. In the years since my mission, I have gone nearly every Sunday to a local retirement center to sing to the residents there. As I sing I always like to let my eyes wander to the bottom of the page to see who wrote the song and when. I’ve always found it fascinating that many of the hymns in our hymnbook were not written by Mormons, but rather come from Protestant writers. For me at least, making this realization has always
By March 5, 2008
Following the Manifesto of 1890 and the decline of officially-sanctioned plural marriages among the Latter-day Saints, many Mormons worked to construct explanations for the practice of polygamy. The discursive means used by Mormons to situate their peculiar institution in their past reveal insights into how Mormons saw themselves during the first decades of the twentieth century and how they wanted the world to perceive them. One strategy, highlighted here, was to downplay the significance of plural marriage in both practice and in doctrine. However, at the same time that this was occurring, many Mormons were arguing that polygamy had produced a large and righteous posterity, “racially” superior to o
By February 29, 2008
An important part of early Mormon culture making was the promotion of polygamy in the ranks. Although Kathy Daynes is correct to note that the brethren had to preach polygamy from the pulpit in order to get the members to enter into polygamous relationships, it is also important to remember that polygamy was promoted in other forms as well, such as in the following song. According to Carmon Hardy, “[t]his verse appeared as part of a ballad sung to the tune of ‘Rosa May’ in the 17th Ward School House in Salt Lake City, on 15 October 1856,” at the height of the Mormon Reformation
By February 18, 2008
From January 13-15, 1834, the State of Ohio held a preliminary hearing, ostensibly to determine if anti-Mormon Doctor Philastus Hurlbut had in fact threatened the life of Joseph Smith. After hearing several witnesses, the justice of the peace determined that there was sufficient evidence that a threat had occurred, and the case was set for the following April. But the JP also allowed for testimony on far more than just the alleged threat. The First Presidency wrote not long after the hearing to the Saints in Missouri that the trial included an investigation of “the merits of our religion.”[1] It appears that the JP heard testimony concerning Hurlbut’s research on the Soloman Spalding manscript and even had Joseph testify concerning the finding of the Book of Mormon. Hurlbut’s attorney, James A. Briggs, wrote several letters later in his life
By February 13, 2008
Vengeance on God’s enemies has been a key theme in Latter-day Saint collective memory of persecution. This, I believe, in part reflects the uneven power relations that structured Mormon contact with other Americans. Since the Latter
By February 4, 2008
Although Mormon historians usually focus primarily on the metropolis in Mormon history, there has been for most of our history a thriving presence of Latter-day Saints on the periphery. The following excerpt, taken from an 1856 New Jersey article, sheds light on Latter-day Saint life outside of Utah and the West during the 1850s.
State Gazette (Trenton) 6 September 1856
MORMONS IN NEW JERSEY.-There are a considerable number of Mormons in this state; in Monmouth,
By February 1, 2008
In the decades following the demise of polygamy, Church leaders were continually called upon to answer questions concerning the practice of plural marriage. The answers provided illustrate the negotiations that these leaders undertook between the presence of the past and demands of the present. I believe that it is simplistic to argue that leaders only downplayed polygamy. Rather, narratives of polygamy were often shaped during this period with not only Protestant America in mind (which led to a marginalizing of plural marriage) but also the RLDS (which led to a centralizing of polygamy in the Mormon past). The following excerpt comes from Charles W. Penrose, “Peculiar Questions Answered Briefly,” Improvement Era 15, no. 11 (September 1912): [sorry, GospeLink doesn’t give page numbers].
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