By Edje JeterMay 6, 2012
How did Mormon missionaries around 1900 understand and act against Satan and his incorporeal minions? The diaries point mostly to literal belief in sentient, personal beings that actively worked against the Elders by influencing understandings and feelings. [1] There are a few acknowledgments of the possibility of possession, but no instances of it. In three cases the Elders report the direct detection of evil spirits (rather than deducing influence from the unreceptiveness of the people) but there are no mentions of exorcism: these Elders resisted Satan by living gospel principles and persuading others to do the same.
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By Jared TMay 4, 2012
We’re pleased to present a guest post by Christopher Smith, who is a PhD candidate at Claremont Graduate University in Religions in North America. He has never been to the North Pole, and thus can neither confirm nor deny that there are no Israelites there.
According to an 1831 revelation, when Christ returns to the earth the continents will join together and the ?great deep . . . shall be driven back into the north countries.? Then, the ten lost tribes of Israel who reside in the ?north countries? will ?smite the rocks? like Moses, ?and the ice shall flow down at their presence,? and a ?highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep,? and they shall march to Zion in glory. [1] A milder version of the same idea was communicated in a vision in 1836, in which ?Moses appeared before us, and committed unto us the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the Earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the North.? [2] These prophecies enlarged upon Jeremiah 31:8, which referred to a remnant of Israel being gathered from the north.
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By CarlMay 4, 2012
I know that too often church history after Joseph Smith gets shortchanged. I think there are a few reasons for this. Mostly, it?s just that Joseph is such a powerful figure it?s hard to look at anything else. Another reason, at least in the church, is that we focus on church history through and by the D&C, and the D&C gets really sparse after Joseph?s death. But I found myself falling into the same trap as I organized my class. Unit 1 was about Smith, and then we did an entire unit on ?everything else.? My reasons for doing so are basically academic-and are based on Max Weber?s idea of institutionalizing charisma. Even the devout Latter-day Saint must admit that, compared with Joseph Smith, his successors to the prophetic office were not as dynamic as he.
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By Edje JeterApril 29, 2012
Mormon missionary efforts within the United States prompted resentment beyond simple sectarianism. Most turn-of-the-century Americans thought of ?missionaries? as working with non-White non-Protestants, usually overseas. [1] Since they sent missionaries to ?inferiors? they tended to perceive missionaries at their own door as a racial insult.
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By Ben PApril 26, 2012
Continuing a semi-tradition I started in January, the release of MHA’s quarterly newsletter seems a good time to catch up on Mormon history-related news. I’m sure I’m missing some things, so feel free to mention them in the comments.
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By matt b.April 23, 2012
I discovered Christopher Lasch in the fall of my first year in a PhD program, when I picked up The World of Nations while standing at a booksale table in front of Georgetown?s library. When I saw a chapter on Mormonism in the table of contents I did a double-take; it seemed odd to me still when I ran into my people in foreign venues. Nonetheless, I took the thing home.
Here is what Christopher Lasch wrote about Mormonism, in what turned out to be a rather scathing review of Robert Flanders?s Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi and a Mormon-corporate-empire hack expose by Wallace Turner: ?The Mormons are so clearly a pathological symptom that a historian could not address himself to the Mormons, it would seem, without asking himself what sort of society could have produced them.? (Quoted in Miller, 117-118)
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By Edje JeterApril 22, 2012
In the early 1900s mission presidents addressed the general conference of the Church.
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By Ben PApril 19, 2012
Historian/Writer, Church History Department
Job Description
The Church History Department seeks a full-time historian/writer with the appropriate academic training, research and writing skills to contribute to major writing projects on the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Qualifications.
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By Ben PApril 16, 2012
[In which I just share some cool findings from today’s research.]
In a religious movement that is rife with enigmatic characters, Edward Tullidge still stands out among his fellow Mormons. Converted to the LDS gospel in his native England in 1848, at the youthful age of nineteen, his contested baptism was only the first of many changes throughout his life, a voyage that included stops in deism, Godbeitism, Josephitism, and, intermittently, renewed commitment to the Utah version of Mormonism. Importantly, he narrated his many faith transitions through essays, newspapers, books, and plays, leaving a fascinating and eclectic corpus of writing–think of him as the Mormon Orestes Brownson. As I am currently working my way through his work as part of a broader project, I thought I would share some excerpts from one stop of his journey: his proselyting mission to New York City in 1866, with the purpose of defending Mormonism in print to the many “gentiles” on the east coast.
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By Edje JeterApril 15, 2012
For 1900 Jul 16, Elder Jones reports that ?After dinner I went out to the branch where I washed my garments and had a bath.? [1] How often and in what circumstances did the missionaries wash clothes?
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