Cognitive Dissonance and Scholarly Pursuits

Much is said on the Bloggernacle about the cognitive dissonance that many feel as they try to reconcile the knowledge they acquire through scholarly treatments of Mormonism with what they hear in their church meetings every Sunday. In this post I would like to explore another form of cognitive dissonance that I find quite prevalent in my own quest to become a professional historian. I hope that you will permit me a moment of personal reflection about something that I think is relevant for those who produce and consume academic history.

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From The Archives: James C. Brewster to “The Mormon Money Diggers”

James C. Brewster was the leader of a Mormon schismatic group that had its origins in the Kirtland period. After a series of visions, Brewster claimed to receive an abridgment of the first through eighth books of Esdras, an ancient Israelite prophet. Brewster published his abridgment of the Books of Esdras in June of 1842. [1]

In the December 1, 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons (page 32), in response to his book, a notice was issued calling Brewster’s Book of Esdras “a perfect humbug” and called Brewster’s credibility into question for his profession of the use of a seer stone to find hidden money around Kirtland, calling it “ridiculous and pernicious”. The article also took to task Brewster’s father and “some of our weak brethren, who perhaps have had some confidence in the ridiculous stories that are propagated concerning Joseph Smith, about money digging, [who] have assisted him in his foolish plans”. The notice ended by quoting Doctrine and Covenants 28: 2-3, 11-13 [1981 Edition] which section refers to the Hiram Page incident.

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Want to publish?

Element: The Journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology is publishing a special issue dedicated to student articles. Submissions will be accepted by undergraduate or graduate students currently enrolled in a program of study related to philosophy, theology, or other areas of religious studies. Papers will be reviewed by selected members of the SMPT Executive Board and other outside reviewers as needed.

Authors of papers selected for publication will receive a $50.00 gift certificate for books at Amazon.com with a $100.00 award for the winning article as selected by the SMPT Executive Committee.

Submissions should be sent as attachments via email to brian.birch@uvsc.edu in Microsoft Word format. An abstract of no more than 150 words should accompany each submission along with full contact information, including name, institution, program of study, phone numbers, e-mail, and mailing addresses. All articles will be subject to blind review and editorial modification.

nformation about the Society and journal can be found at www.smpt.org. For further questions, contact Brian Birch at brian.birch@uvsc.edu.

Marginal Dialogues: B. H. Roberts Memorial Library, Part 2

Roberts frequently noted where he saw resonance between his readings in philosophy ands science and the Doctrine and Covenants or other Restoration scripture.

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Marginal Dialogues: The B. H. Roberts Memorial Library

So I figured I’d follow Matt’s lead and post my MHA paper (in 2 parts) here. Since I already blogged my intro previously–on Joseph Fielding Smith’s reading of Darwin–I’ll skip that and proceed right into the Roberts library:

The B. H. Roberts Memorial Collection is housed in the Church Archives, in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. This intact collection, included as a part of the B. H. Roberts Collection, contains over 1,300 items, including most of B. H. Roberts’s personal books,

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“Those people are not Mormons”: Holiness Christians and Mistaken Identity in the American South

Recently, while reading Randall Stephens’ excellent new book, The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (review here), I came across the following passage, which naturally intrigued me.

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“Dramatic, Eerie, Violent, Erotic,” Walter A. McDougall on Early Mormonism

All of the regular bloggers and readers here at JI are connoisseurs of the variety of treatments that Joseph Smith and the Mormons receive at the hands of historians who are themselves not experts in the field of Mormon studies. Such treatments range from the ridiculous to the not-quite sublime, and coming as they do in broadly-conceived syntheses, they tend to be derivative and rely heavily on a hodgepodge of secondary interpretations (which authors they choose to cite seems often to depend on what they find on the shelves of their institution’s library–lots of Brooke, Quinn and Brodie usually). Pulitzer Prize winning historian Walter A. McDougall’s view of Joseph Smith and early Mormonism in the newly-released second volume of his multi-volume history of the U.S. is surprising in its creativity.

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Book Review: Shall Millions Now Know Brother Joseph Again? (Part 4-FIN)

Entering chapter 9, I was expecting some level of technical analysis that would be beyond my comprehension but still accessible enough that I could form an opinion of my own, perhaps that was a mistake on my part. Opposite chapter 9’s first page are pictured nine proposed daguerreotypes. I remembered Ardis’ description of a foot-longish file of proposed Joseph Smith photos and immediately wondered why these specific daguerreotypes were chosen for consideration. One of these images even has a beard! Again, being that there is no stated criteria for consideration, it seems that the author alone knows why these images were included for consideration. This opens up the possibility that the author is constructing a series of straw man arguments.

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Book Review: Shall Millions Now Know Brother Joseph Again? (Part 3)

On page 51 and 52, Tracy then summarizes the physical features of Joseph Smith by topic and then chronologically (as given in the preceding pages) within each topic. Descriptions of stature, height, face and head, weight, eyes, hands, legs, feet, nose, complexion, and hair are so arranged. Tracy attempts to show how this arrangement is beneficial by showing that the description of what is described as the “July 1838” Joseph puts Joseph’s weight at 200 lbs.

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Miracles, Mormons, and Harry Emerson Fosdick: the challenge of inoculation

Five years before the 1920s, a decade in which he did a least as much as John T. Scopes to instigate warfare between Protestant liberals and fundamentalists, and fifty years before Martin Luther King praised him as the greatest preacher of the century, the Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick was appointed to the Jessup Chair in Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary. [1]

Fosdick was not really an original thinker, but he was a master teacher and popularizer. And, perhaps because of the agonies that he struggled through on his own route to faith, he had a powerful understanding of the anxieties that plagued his age. Because of the new Biblical criticism, Fosdick wrote,

The old use of the Bible became impossible to many preachers who, as much as ever was true of their fathers, believed in Jesus Christ as the world?s Saviour and wanted to proclaim his Gospel as the power of God unto salvation.[2]

In other words, these preachers – like Fosdick himself – believed passionately in God revealed in Christ. But they no longer accepted the accuracy of Biblical history. And they did not know what to do.

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