Poll: Origins of the Priesthood Ban

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The Montagues and the Capulets of San Juan County; or, When Mormon Elites Meet

Sitting in front of the fireplace at my in-law’s this evening, I began chatting with my wife’s 93-year-old grandmother about her life growing up in San Juan County, Utah. She began by telling me again about the hole-in-the-rockers, the original Mormon settlers of the Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello region in southeastern Utah who had hacked their way through the desert in one of the most incredible colonization missions in Western history.

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The Grinch Who Stole Thanksgiving

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New Book: Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies

Recently released from Mercer University Press, Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, edited by Donald W. Musser and David L. Paulsen, promises to be a tome of interest to both Mormons and Christians alike who are interested in dialogue. Martin Marty seems to think so. “When I agreed to read the manuscript and write the foreword,” Marty writes, “I don’t think I anticipated the scope, detail, and depth of this one. Now I pass it along to other readers who will find that such scope, detail, and depth represent gifts to everyone who has interest and concern for ‘the

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Welcome

Welcome to the new home of The Juvenile Instructor. We hope the new features make it easier and more convenient for all of our readers.  A big thanks to J. Stapley of Splendid Sun and By Common Consent for creating the new layout. 

Self-Blame and The Twin Relics of Barbarism

Carmon Hardy, in his article “Self-Blame and the Manifesto”, draws a parallel between elements of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and Mormon explanations for the Manifesto. After tenaciously clinging to “The Principle”, and after repeated affirmations of the justness of the polygamous cause, the Mormon people had to account for the cessation of plural marriage. Increasingly, Latter-day Saints looked inward and cited a failure on the part of the Latter-day Saints as the reason the promised protection did not come. An excerpt from the Anthon Lund diaries illustrates this view:

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Manifest Mormon Destiny

As certain babblers in Zion shared everything but their testimonies from the pulpit in Church today[1] (we had stake conference last week so this today was fast and testimony meeting), I began flipping through the hymn book, reading some of those obscure old hymns we never sing. I lighted on Orson F. Whitney’s poetic little reverie “The Wintry Day, Descending to Its Close” and got a good dose of manifest destiny in the 4th verse:

The wilderness, that naught before would yield,

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Two Eliza R. Snow Poems Discovered in Long Documents

A friend of mine mentioned to me last week that he hoped that the John V. Long documents would be sold for a million dollars…and then prove to contain nothing of worth, just to prove the conspiracy theorists wrong. The discovery of two original and unpublished Eliza R. Snow poems in the collection may not shed light on Long’s mysterious death, but they do begin to confirm the tangible historical value of the collection. ABC4.com reports that the two poems were found in the scrapbook of Sarah Long, wife of John V. Long. 

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From the Archives: John Wesley, the Latter-day Saint

Modern Mormons, it seems, are quite fond of “romanticizing the Reformation,” meaning that Mormons often portray Luther, Arminius, and other Protestant Reformers as being sort of proto-Latter-day Saints.  In my experience, this tendency is not limited to seeing Reformers as such, but often extends to Christopher Columbus and America’s Founding Fathers.  However, this is far from being a recent development in Mormonism’s worldview.  Parley P. Pratt, noted apostle and editor of The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, included the following in the June 1841 (Vol. 2, No. 2) issue of that periodical.

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Jeffs Attempted Suicide

As a follow-up to the previous post on the latest in the Warren Jeffs saga, it appears that Jeffs attempted to hang himself while imprisoned in Purgatory Correctional Facility in January.  Brooke Adams of the Salt Lake Tribune reports that despite a motion opposing their release, court documents released today reveal that shortly after Jeffs’s confession to his brother that he was not a Prophet in January, he attempted suicide.  The new documents also explain that Jeffs admitted that William E. Jessop was the rightful FLDS prophet and that he had usurped the position. 

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