By November 13, 2007
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By November 12, 2007
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:
By November 11, 2007
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,
By November 10, 2007
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 The discovery of two original and unpublished Eliza R. Snow poems in the collection may not shed light on Long’s mysterious death, but they do begin to confirm the tangible historical value of the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.
By November 7, 2007
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.
By November 6, 2007
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.
By November 6, 2007
Matthew N. Schmalz, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Holy Cross, has an article entitled “Meet the Mormons: From the Margins to the Mainstream” over at Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics, and Culture (hat-tip to American Religious History blog). Schmalz discusses his personal history with Mormonism (“It was Kolob and associated exotica that first drew me to the study of Mormonism” he says), as well as how his students at Holy Cross react to the study of Mormonism (“I’ve found that my students combine a personal openness to Mormonism . . . with deep skepticism about details of Mormon belief”).
By November 5, 2007
In 1986, the Pacific Historical Review published an article by Grant Underwood entitled, “Re-visioning Mormon History.” [1] Challenging the traditional portrait of 19th-century Mormonism as a countercultural, radical response to democratic politics, capitalist economics, and Victorian marriage ideals, Underwood argues that “upon closer examination, the nineteenth-century attitudes and behavior of most Latter-day Saints may prove to be less countercultural and the influence of communitarianism, plural marriage, and theocratic politics more superficial than transformationists generally assume” (412).
By November 4, 2007
As a follow-up to my last post (see below “Going global but not imperial: conversion without deculturation”), and heading in what may seem to be the complete opposite direction, I’d like to qualify my concerns with the Americanization of foreign converts with what I see as a positive American influence. When living in Taiwan, I was surprised at how often Taiwanese Saints wo
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