By Steve FlemingDecember 10, 2012
I think it was in 2005 when I came across Times and Seasons and I was rather enchanted by it. “These people are talking about interesting things.” “I want to be part of this conversation.” “I have important things to say.” “I’m working on important things right now that would inform these conversations.” “I would like it if these people knew who I was and thought what I had to say was important.”
Yet I quickly saw that all these feelings suggested that the blogs could be a dangerously seductive place to the aspiring scholar. I’m probably not just speaking for myself when I say that aspiring scholars badly want to be recognized. To be recognized we need to publish and that can be a long and difficult process. The time and effort between “brilliant idea” and “brilliant idea in print” is often significant. What if I could just skip all that and just throw my ideas up on a blog? Very tempting.
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By Edje JeterDecember 9, 2012
In previous posts I wrote about the deaths of missionaries; in this present I will treat the deaths of missionaries? family members. As before, I will focus on how the missionaries narrated the deaths in light of their Mormonism and on how the deaths influenced mission administration. Next week I will conclude this mini-series on death with a discussion of missionary reactions to the deaths of prominent church members.
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By CristineDecember 8, 2012
I am not a Bob Dylan fan. But I happen to live with one, and I?ve learned a lot about Dylan by osmosis. I suppose it?s only fair that some of my husband?s knowledge about music that isn?t to my taste has rubbed off on me. In the last several years, he?s become something of a scholar of representations of the Latter-day Saints in American history without any significant interest in the subject ? a hazard of living with someone who?s working on their PhD. [1] He has also become a valuable scout of sources for me, and can spot a pop culture reference to Mormonism at twenty paces. Imagine our mutual surprise when he recently starting putting things in front of me in which Bob Dylan makes explicit ? and sometimes admiring ? reference to the Mormons.
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By Edje JeterDecember 2, 2012
Last week I wrote about the death of Elder George O Stanger, who died in Missouri in May 1903. Today I discuss the deaths of Elders Richard E Johnson of Monroe, Utah, and Thomas J Adair of Loma, New Mexico, who died in August 1903 and August 1906, respectively. [1]
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By November 29, 2012
[We are thrilled to have this guest post from Emily Farrer on a project she is currently working on, which covers her grandfather’s 1929 mission to South Africa. After reading this fascinating overview, go visit her site: aroundtheworldcsb.blogspot.com]
My grandfather, Clarence Sharp Barker, was born in Salt Lake City in 1903. He was a quiet man and seemed to enjoy observing things from the outside as he was a newspaper reporter. He did, however, have a great adventure of his own: a trip around the world.
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By Edje JeterNovember 25, 2012
Three of President Duffin?s missionaries died during his six-year administration. [1] Below I summarize Duffin?s experience with Elder George O Stanger of Neeley, Idaho, who died, age twenty-three, of complications from typhoid fever on 1903 May 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. [2] I will focus on how Duffin handled the logistics of the illness and death and how he narrated it in terms of doctrine.
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By RobinNovember 24, 2012
[Another installment in the roundtable on John Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.]
Archival and historical research is the bread and butter of historical writing.
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By matt b.November 24, 2012
Another in the JI’s series of review essays on various aspects of John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet
One of the more common tropes in Mormon history is drawing the comparison between Joseph Smith the visionary dreamer and Brigham Young the hard-headed administrator. This is sometimes done with admiration or scholarly satisfaction ? faithful Mormons might say that Brigham was precisely what the church needed when Joseph Smith?s assassination left the Mormons dazed and splintering, and sociologists of religion often describe the transition from Joseph Smith?s leadership to Brigham Young?s as a classic case of Weberian routinization of charisma. The dichotomy is also sometimes drawn with a sense of tragedy: many liberal-leaning Mormons imagine Joseph Smith?s Mormonism as a time of exciting intellectual freedom and theological experimentation, and see in Brigham Young the slow settling in of dull institutional authoritarianism and the end of Joseph?s enthusiastic humanism.
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By Edje JeterNovember 18, 2012
Thanksgiving Day traditions in Texas, Kansas, and Utah around 1900, as recorded in missionary diaries, seem similar to the popular present-day model: turkey, family, gratitude, pumpkin pie. However, only two of the missionaries in this studied mentioned Thanksgiving Day; the other four missionaries with diary entries in November did not record observances, even when one of them was boarding long-term with church members. [1]
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By MaxNovember 17, 2012
Today I?m flying west, from Boston to Chicago, for the American Academy of Religion?s annual conference. Depending on how the plane banks west, we might fly directly over Lowell, Massachusetts, the onetime home of Walker Lewis, a black Mormon whom Brigham Young once described as ?one of the [Mormons?] best Elders, an African.?
The timing of this indirect mention of the black Mormon convert?Spring of 1847?is important. Young and most of the leaders of the Latter-day Saints in exile and exodus?passing the winter of 1846-47 in Winter Quarters?were debating the place of black men, or at least a black man, in their community. William McCary, the ?Nigger Prophet,? as some of the Mormons leaders called him, was causing quite a stir in camp.
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