Intellectuals in Mormon History
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.”
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.”
By September 14, 2008
This is not so much an analytical post as it is an invitation for a forum of discussion.
By August 19, 2008
Earlier this summer, in preparation for my first-time visit to Monticello in the lush country of Virginia, I read Joseph Ellis?s biography on Thomas Jefferson.[1] In the introduction, I was particularly struck by what Ellis described as one of the main struggles in writing on a man like Jefferson:
By May 11, 2008
I spent way too much time on Saturday going through the Virginia Sorensen papers collection in BYU’s Special Collections.
By March 13, 2008
I am currently trying to situate Joseph Smith within the larger American romantic movement, and am hoping for some help. While there are a lot of similarities between Smith and the likes of Emerson, I also agree with Clark in believing that these similarities can be easily overstated (see here and here). While both hoped to collapse the distance between the sacred and the profane, I just can’t get over Joseph’s institutional thought. To me, while they both wanted to bring people into the presence of God, Emerson focused on self-reliance and nature while Joseph utilized the priesthood. It seems like for the early Mormons romanticism merely serv
By March 11, 2008
If you are looking for a post that explores the rich theological possibilities of theodicy, this post is not it. While I find the topic interesting, I don’t want to address the questions associated with it here. Rather, I want to use the topic of theodicy as a starting point for a discussion on how we use Joseph’s teachings.
By February 7, 2008
This last weekend, while reading a book discussing the transition of Mormonism in the early twentieth century, the same thought came to my mind that has come hundreds of times (and I’m sure that it is the same for many of you): someone needs to write a scholarly biography on Joseph F. Smith.
So, this got me thinking. What other books on Mormon history still need to be written? The comments in a past post show that more work still needs to be done on persecution narratives. In a graduate course the other day, several of us co-bloggers discussed the need for a book to explore the idea of “theo-democracy,” as seen in the early Church. Another book on my “wish list” would be a biography on Oliver Cowdery.
What unwritten books are on your “wish list”?
By December 10, 2007
In her novel A Little Lower than the Angels, Virginia Sorensen writes of a fictional family living in Nauvoo, Illinois.
By November 10, 2007
One of the objectives for most Mormon historians today (including this blog) is to attempt to place Joseph Smith within his American framework. One author who has succeeded the most in this attempt is Richard Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling. However, in his address at The Worlds of Joseph Smith Symposium in the Library of Congress, he spoke about putting limits on this type of approach. In it, he makes several arguments as to why Joseph should be placed within a larger framework than just American religious history.
First, he stated why he feels this “transnational” approach is necessary.
By November 5, 2007
As explored elsewhere, novel reading/writing did not have a major stronghold in 19th century Mormonism. This sentiment changed with Orson Whitney’s call for “home literature” around the turn of the 20th century, novels became more common both for past-time reading as well as a career in writing. These were often didactic tales teaching morals with a simple plot, usually with the intention of building faith. Very characteristic of the neo-classicism era, they found historical accuracy not as important in their tales as the message gleaned from them. A modern-day
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