By August 23, 2012
Earlier this week, Max Mueller posted at Peculiar People some thoughtful reflections on non-Latter-day Saint historians of Mormonism and their role as “friendly critics” to Mormons and Mormonism. He used recent op-eds authored by Helen Radkey and John Turner on proxy baptisms and Mormonism’s history of racial exclusion, respectively, to frame his argument. It’s well worth reading and recommended to all JI readers.
By August 21, 2012
The following post comes from intrepid researcher by Erin Jennings. Erin (BS, Cameron University; MSE, Arkansas State University) is an independent historian and current board member of the John Whitmer Historical Association. Among her areas of focus, Erin has extensively researched Jesse Gause, Charles Anthon, and the Whitmer family. She has published, ?The Consequential Counselor: Restoring the Root(s) of Jesse Gause,? in the Journal of Mormon History, and ?The Whitmer Family Beliefs and Their Church of Christ,? in the book Scattering of the Saints: Schism Within Mormonism, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer. The Juvenile Instructor thanks Erin for kindly sharing an important document she recently found:
A relentless eight-year search has finally come to an end for me. Thanks to an ever-growing trove of digital tools, I?ve finally located an elusive Oliver Cowdery letter that in February 1830 Cornelius Blatchly claimed was reproduced in a New York newspaper in 1829.
By August 18, 2012
A few days ago, Christopher Jones posted a link on the backchannel for Juvenile Instructor, linking to a post by a New Zealand Mormon. The post explored the effects that correlation and the homogenization of the Mormon Church has had on Mormon communities outside of the United States. The conversation that ensued that was so interesting that we decided to post an edited version here:
Christopher Jones: Amanda, David, Max, others: thought you’d be interested in this. It’s written by a New Zealander, but touches on issues that relate to each of your respective research interests in some way or another. Really fascinating stuff.
Unlatching from the Amerimormon Cultural Teat
http://kiwimormon.com/2012/08/07/unlatching-from-the-amerimormon-cultural-teat/
By August 15, 2012
My new calling as ward choir director came with the keys, so to speak, to the closet of old music. I cleaned it out, took it all home, and spread it all over the floor of our library to organize. I didn?t intend for this to be an archival research moment, but as I sorted and tossed I became drawn into the experience and starting reading slower and slower? it was, in a sense, a historical archive dating back at least to the late 1970s.
By August 14, 2012
I recently listened to Joanna Brooks’s fascinating interview on Mormon Stories (which I recommend, especially as a supplementary activity to reading her marvellous memoir), and was struck by one point of the conversation. John Dehlin asked Joanna if the type of identity she exemplifies—that of “unorthodox”—was something new, something that couldn’t have happened long ago. Joanna rightly pointed out her long intellectual genealogy within the LDS tradition, noting that her position is not so much new but exemplary of what many Latter-day Saints had done before her.
The idea of unorthodox figures in LDS history is an important point that deserves further consideration. It also relates to a recent focus of study of mine, Edward Tullidge, who was the topic of my MHA paper this last year. To demonstrate that this isn’t a new phenomenon, I’d like to give a bit of background to Tullidge, mostly plagiarizing my paper, and then touch on his relevance. In today’s age, when the concept of an “Unorthodox Mormon” seems to be heralded as a modern idea, it is important to note the heterogeneous history that is Mormonism.
By August 13, 2012
In 1843, a woman named Ann Essam willed the sum of her estate ?for and towards the printing and publishing and propagation of the sacred writings of the late Joanna Southcott.?[1] The plebian Southcott claimed to receive revelations and prophecies from God, and heightened the intrigue when an inner voice told her to seal some of the writings until a time of great danger and global distress.[2]
Essam wasn?t the only one to donate funds to cryptic projects.
By August 11, 2012
We’ve advertised this before, but it’s important enough to advertise it again since the dates are approaching. Besides be co-organized by one of our own JIers (Matt B), we’ll have several contributors in attendance who will provide updates and recaps.
Note there are two events, although closely related.
By August 9, 2012
JI is currently doing a series on Mormon teen literature and what it tells us about the history of Mormon girls. So far, the series has looked Johnny Lingo and Jack Weyland and has considered ideas about the body. I am excited to present the next post in this series, in which Susanna Morrill, a professor at Lewis and Clark College, explores Shirley Sealy’s “Beyond This Moment.” Susanna received her PhD from the University of Chicago in Religious Studies and “White Roses on the Floor of Heaven: Mormon Women’s Popular Theology, 1880 – 1920.”
I?m a newcomer to modern Mormon romance literature, but am excited to expand my horizons a bit. I decided to read Shirley Sealy?s Beyond This Moment (Provo: Seventy?s Mission Bookstore, 1977). Amanda began the series talking about what young adult books had taught her about her body. So, when I finished Sealy?s book, I asked myself the same question: What did the book want to teach a young Mormon woman in the 1970s about her body and, more broadly, her physical existence in the world? A lot, as it turned out!
By August 8, 2012
Joseph Stuart is a BA student in American Studies at Brigham Young University, entering his last semester. He is planning on going to grad school in history or religious studies. He has worked on several fascinating projects, one of which examines the social history of the Woodruff Manifesto, from which the following document is taken. Let’s give a warm welcome to Joseph.
This summer I have had the good fortune to work for the Charles Redd Center at BYU, attempting to examine responses to the 1890 Woodruff Manifesto. By canvasing roughly 800 journals, diaries and autobiographies, I found a veritable cornucopia of results, from the bemused to the belligerent. One reaction that was of particular interest, though not directly related to the Manifesto, came from a note in the Abraham Cannon diaries.[i] It said simply:
“I attended my Quorum meeting…spent nearly two hours in interesting and instructive conversation on various points of doctrine. The subject was the Josephite [RLDS] Church, its authority and gifts, was discussed, in the course of which John Henry Smith read a letter to him form the head of that Church, Joseph Smith [III] dated Nov’r 7th. The people and authorities here are congratulated therein for their abandonment of plural marriage, and the writer suggests that this matter could not have originated with the Lord or it would have remained unchanged.
This man is certainly not sincere or he would have accepted the truth long ago, as he has had abundant evidence given him that his father, the Prophet, had more than one wife.”
This tantalizing reference piqued my interest, and I resolved to find what JSIII had to say after the cessation of plural marriages. After nearly two months of archival work, I stumbled across the Wilford Woodruff Correspondence Register[ii] at the Church History Library, and found a letter that was very similar to the letter to John Henry Smith. It reads:
Office of
THE FIRST PRESIDENCY
Of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ
President Wilford Woodruff Lamoni, Iowa Nov 8th, 1890
Salt Lake City, Utah
Dear Sir: —
Permit me to congratulate you on the action of yourself and the late Conference of October 6th; yourself, for presenting the manifesto and the advice in contained; the Conference for accepting and adopting the advice given.
For the advance of the Angel’s message and the final triumph of truth,
Yours respectfully,
Joseph Smith
There are several intriguing aspects of the letter.
Like the Federal Government and many Latter-day Saints, JSIII does not appear to know whether or not the Manifesto was a press release, a formal disavowal of practice, or a renunciation of belief. The Federal Government went to the point of asking President Woodruff about whether cohabitation was still permitted during a federal inquiry in 1892 when the Church was seeking amnesty, a fair question considering how many plural marriages were still approved after the Manifesto was released, and the exodus of a significant minority of LDS polygamists to Mexico and Canada. This understanding of the Manifesto as “advice” may have led to the Second Manifesto, when Joseph F. Smith put some teeth into the Church’s anti-polygamy stance in 1904.
The second area of importance is the phrase “the angel’s message.” Rather than focusing on, for example, “my father’s teachings” or “priesthood revelation,” JSIII says “the angel’s message,” referring to Moroni’s multiple visitations. I suppose that this was typical of early Mormonism, a focus on Cumorah (the Book of Mormon) rather than the Grove (Priesthood succession and restoration), and the RLDS (now Community of Christ) would logically follow that thought.
The second part of the second statement, “the final triumph of truth” appears to be a subtle slight aimed at the Church’s new stance. Joseph F. Smith, JSIII’s cousin, had affidavits sworn by the wives of Joseph Smith saying that the Prophet had lived and taught polygamy. JFS ultimately sent these affidavits to RLDS headquarters (the “abundant evidence” cited by Cannon in his diary). The RLDS responded by attempting to persuade the “Utah Church” through mail and missionaries that polygamy was an invention of Brigham Young rather than revelation through Joseph Smith.
It is difficult for me to fathom the relationship between the RLDS and the LDS Churches at this time, when cousins led or would soon lead their respective branches of Mormonism (JSIII and Joseph F. Smith, who served in the First Presidency at the time). Being able to write the Utah Church in the wake of their renunciation of polygamy, after such a protracted public and personal battle over the origin of the practice, must have been especially satisfying to JSIII.
[i] Cannon, Abraham H. (Abraham Hoagland), 1859-1896. Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle : The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889-1895. Ed. Edward Leo Lyman 1942-. Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with the Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2010. December 2, 1890.
[ii] Wilford Woodruff General Correspondence File 1887-1898, LDS Church Archives.
By August 7, 2012
[I meant to put up a Mormon journal roundup, but I’ll have to postpone that for next week–apologies]
A lingering benefit of the centennial commemoration of the Mormon Exodus and the conference on Mormon history in Latin America and the Borderlands that took place a week and a bit ago (see here) is the Finding Refuge in El paso Lecture Series that the El Paso Museum of History is sponsoring to help promote the Finding Refuge in El Paso museum exhibit that recently opened.
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