From the Archives: “A Sample of Pure Language,” Part I (The Text)

While JI has not done one recently, we have from time to time written a “From the Archives” post where we pluck from the historical archives an interesting document as a way to highlight an important theme, offer a new interpretation, or merely start an enlightening discussion. This post is aimed to do all of the above, only perhaps even more so because of the interesting nature of this particular document. It offers so many possibilities for interpretation, in fact, that I have asked three knowledgeable historians to give their take on it from their individual backgrounds and expertise.

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Book Review: Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Building off of Christopher’s recent review of Robert Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street, I though I would post a recent review I’ve written on an important historical text that, while not directly addressing Mormonism, offers intriguing questions and approaches that we can apply to Mormon history. The first section is my review of Howe’s fascinating volume, while the second section provides a few paragraphs on how we can relate it to Mormon studies.

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History ?thrown into divinity? ? some thoughts on faith, the past, and the historical profession

I

One of Max Weber?s more evocative phrases is the ?disenchantment of the world.? I like it because it does not refer only to the numbing birth of bloodless bureaucracy, to humans in increasingly rationalized aggregate, but also to us as individuals of mind and creativity. The lucid organization of the world as a place human comprehension might master changed our vision, our psyche, and our imagination. The Enlightenment was thus a revolution of the aesthetic and the numinous as much as of knowledge and epistemology.

I want to talk a little bit about how this applies to history, by which I mean not only the sort of narratives and analyses of the past that humans accept as authoritative, but the extent to which we ascribe existential meaning and use to them. We today expect history to be constructed according to a certain set of principles, ways of running the wiring and cranking the engine that we learned from the Enlightenment. But here, I want to float the notion that history may not be a car in the first place.

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Considering Biography and Thought in Early Mormonism

I’ve recently been researching the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, a late 18th- early 19th-century thinker who represented the transition between German enlightenment and Romantic thought. Schleiermacher, long recognized as an important sage in German culture, has only recently been given due attention in the English-speaking world. Thus, the literature on his theology is somewhat scant in the American academy (save for his demonization by 20th-century neo-conservatives like Karl Barth), especially when compared to someone like Joseph Smith who has long been scrutinized, praised, or overall engaged by scholars both within and without the Mormon tradition. Because of the relative newness of the topic, however, the narrative and frameworks in which to understand Schleiermacher’s thought is still being developed. Several important questions are just now beginning to be asked—questions which, surprisingly, still have relevance to Mormon history today.

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Joseph Smith, Thomas Dick, and the Tricky Task of Determining Influence

Recent tangential comments on JI lately have briefly touched on the development of Joseph Smith?s theology, the correct context in which to place it in, and determining what influence(s) led to what came to be his Nauvoo doctrinal system. These, as well as other topics, are among those that, in my opinion, were not handled well in the new Mormon history.

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Defining Mormon Materialism, circa 1840s

The more I look at the development of Mormon thought, the more I’m convinced that the development of materialism drastically shaped late Nauvoo and early Utah (and beyond) theology.

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Book review: Reid L. Neilson and Terryl Givens, eds., Joseph Smith, Jr., Reappraisals after two centuries. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)

This review, originally appearing in a slightly different version in Mormon Historical Studies 10:1, is reprinted here with the kind permission of Alex Baugh and Jacob Olmstead, editor and book reviews editor, respectively.

It is a mark of the fascination that Joseph Smith inspires in students of religion and religious history (the present author not excepted) to the present day that, despite the plentitude of biographies, specialized studies, movies, hymns, visual art and all the rest that his life has evoked even only in the past sixty years, this volume is still welcome.

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Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: Series Wrap-up

This post wraps up the series on Parley Pratt’s influential autobiography. As a review, and also a reference, here are all of the intelligent and insightful contributions:

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The Conversion of Parley Pratt; or, the patterns of Mormon piety

I.
First, definitions.

(And already, you know this will be long.)

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Perspectives of Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: Joseph Spencer on Pratt’s Poetry

[Yet another post in the Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography series. Joe recently received a MLS degree from San Jose State University, but has decided to turn from the practical back to the abstract and will be applying to PhD programs in philosophy this fall. He is active in the Society of Mormon Philosophy and Theology, Mormon Scholars in the Humanities, and the Mormon Theology Seminar, and is well-known in the bloggernacle for his Priesthood/RS lesson posts over at Feast Upon the Word blog. Joe is married with a  handful of kids, and his only flaw is his belief that continental philosophy can solve all the world’s problems.]

Parley P. Pratt is still well known for his poetry, didactic and pedestrian as it often enough is.

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