Guest Post: Jeff Turner, “Spring Musicals: Weirdness, Accuracy, and Introductions”

[We are thrilled to have yet another guest post from Jeff Turner, a PhD student at the University of Utah. See his previous offerings here, here, and here.]

?I actually learned something about Mormonism,? said my seat-neighbor at the Book of Mormon musical this past spring. Terrified, curious, and excited, I found myself wondering what he could have learned from the musical that he hadn?t known beforehand. So I asked. Surprisingly, his new piece of information had to do with the relationship between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, namely that they knew each other in person, which made Young?s succession as the next church president more approachable to my seatmate (even though the succession was oversimplified in the musical). Well that?s not so bad, I thought, and I can see how he picked that up from the musical. We had a short chat about it afterward, and that was the end of it.

Continue Reading

Fresh Update

You may have noticed the Internet has changed under your nose. Web standards have matured enough that designers have more flexibility in typeface choices, layouts, and interactive elements. The prime medium for delivering web content has pivoted from the static and simple browser window to the mobile app. To take advantage of these developments, we?re launching a new design. Readers, rejoice?the day of an on-the-go, crisply formatted, mobile-friendly Juvenile Instructor has arrived.

Continue Reading

Book Review: Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy

Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

I’m planning on doing a series of posts on “cosmotheism,” or at least the way the Wouter Hanegraaff describes the concept in his book Esotericism and the Academy. But before I do so, I thought it best to review Hanegraaff’s book, which I had been meaning to do for a while now.

For anyone who attended MHA session on the reassessment of John Brooke’s Refiner’s Fire, both Brooke and I mentioned this book a number of times, and I would simply state here that there isn’t a book that I would recommend more highly for anyone interested in situating Mormonism both historically and intellectually within Christian history.

Continue Reading

Guest Post: A Survey on the Trek Experience

Sara M. Patterson (Hanover College) is conducting research on people’s trek experiences for a larger project on historical memory along the Mormon Trail. She invites people who have participated in trekking to fill out this short survey about their experiences: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KWVVKJR

If you have any questions, you can contact her at: patterson@hanover.edu

Conference Announcement: Black, White, and Mormon

Black, White, and Mormon: A Conference on the Evolving Status of Black Saints within the Mormon Fold

October 8-9, 2015

In December 2013, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a new essay on Race and the Priesthood on its Gospel Topics page at LDS.org.  The statement was the strongest to date in distancing the LDS Church from its prior teachings on the status of black people within Mormon theology.  This conference seeks to offer a multi-disciplinary assessment of that status across time and space.  It seeks to explore the historical evolution of race based priesthood and temple bans, the historical roots of segregation in America and how it impacts Mormonism, the expansion of Mormonism into inner-city locations in the United States as well as the impact of race on Mormonism’s international reach. It will also consider the intersections between race and Mormon women, notions of social justice within Mormonism, the implications of race upon educational opportunities at LDS universities, and a discussion of how race plays out at the ward level. In short, this conference will talk about race and Mormonism as it seeks greater understanding and higher purpose.

Continue Reading

Richard Bushman’s Reflection on RSR

We concluded the inaugural JI Summer Book Club last week. The author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Lyman Bushman, kindly agreed to reflect on the writing of RSR, its reception, and what he would change if he were to write the book again. His response is below.

I am pleased to know your group is working away at RSR.  I am sure you will find many questions worth exploring.  In my opinion you are preparing for the future.  Sometime down the line another biography will be written, and your inquiries are finding the spaces where there is more to say and another perspective to be presented.

Continue Reading

“If Any of You Lack Wisdom”: Seer Stones and John Dee’s and Joseph Smith’s Religious Quests

A number of scholars have argued for a connection between Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the commencement of his treasure-digging activities, a trend nicely summarized by Mark Ashurst-McGee in his seminal work on Joseph Smith’s seer stones:

When Joseph went to the grove he was not just wavering between Presbyterianism and Methodism, but between organized religion and folk magic. Should he join one particular denomination or were they all wrong together? Should he convert to Evangelicalism or obtain his seer stone? “Go thy way,” the Lord told him, and rejected the churches of the day in part because, as he told Joseph, they taught “the commandments of men, having a form of Godliness but they deny the power thereof.” As historian Marvin Hill notes, the power and gifts of God were not denied by the treasure seers and diggers and other practitioners of folk magic. Richard Bushman explains that the First Vision would have driven Joseph away from the organized churches in his mother’s social orbit toward the treasuring-seeking culture of his father.

Ashusrt-McGee goes so far as to ask, “Did Jesus instruct Joseph to obtain a stone?”[1]

Continue Reading

Coming to the October Ensign: Joseph Smith’s Seer Stone

Wanna know what Joseph Smith’s seer stone looks like? BEHOLD:

Picture of Joseph Smith’s seer stone, found in “Joseph The Seer,” https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng.

Minutes ago, coinciding with a Joseph Smith Papers Project press conference announcing the publication of Revelations and Translations Volume 3, Parts 1 & 2, the Church’s website for their flagship magazine, The Ensign, posted an essay that will appear in the October issue. This essay, titled “Joseph The Seer,” was written by Richard Turley, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and our very own Robin Jensen. It discusses the translation of the Book of Mormon and gives a very candid and frank account of Joseph Smith’s usage of a seer stone. It also includes the picture above.

So, this is probably a big deal. Again, you can read the essay here. I’ll update with quotes an other relevant information as it becomes available.

UPDATE:

Here are a few choice quotes from the essay, which I again encourage everyone to read:

?Seeing? and ?seers? were part of the American and family culture in which Joseph Smith grew up. Steeped in the language of the Bible and a mixture of Anglo-European cultures brought over by immigrants to North America, some people in the early 19th century believed it was possible for gifted individuals to ?see,? or receive spiritual manifestations, through material objects such as seer stones.

The young Joseph Smith accepted such familiar folk ways of his day, including the idea of using seer stones to view lost or hidden objects. Since the biblical narrative showed God using physical objects to focus people?s faith or communicate spiritually in ancient times, Joseph and others assumed the same for their day. Joseph?s parents, Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, affirmed the family?s immersion in this culture and their use of physical objects in this way, and the villagers of Palmyra and Manchester, New York, where the Smiths lived, sought out Joseph to find lost objects before he moved to Pennsylvania in late 1827.

And:

In later years, as Joseph told his remarkable story, he emphasized his visions and other spiritual experiences. Some of his former associates focused on his early use of seer stones in an effort to destroy his reputation in a world that increasingly rejected such practices. In their proselyting efforts, Joseph and other early members chose not to focus on the influence of folk culture, as many prospective converts were experiencing a transformation in how they understood religion in the Age of Reason. In what became canonized revelations, however, Joseph continued to teach that seer stones and other seeric devices, as well as the ability to work with them, were important and sacred gifts from God.

And:

In fact, historical evidence shows that in addition to the two seer stones known as ?interpreters,? Joseph Smith used at least one other seer stone in translating the Book of Mormon, often placing it into a hat in order to block out light. According to Joseph?s contemporaries, he did this in order to better view the words on the stone.

By 1833, Joseph Smith and his associates began using the biblical term ?Urim and Thummim? to refer to any stones used to receive divine revelations, including both the Nephite interpreters and the single seer stone. This imprecise terminology has complicated attempts to reconstruct the exact method by which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. In addition to using the interpreters, according to Martin Harris, Joseph also used one of his seer stones for convenience during the Book of Mormon translation. Other sources corroborate Joseph?s changing translation instruments.

JI Summer Book Club: Rough Stone Rolling, Part 12: Chapter 29 & Epilogue

This is the twelfth and final installment of the first annual JI Summer Book Club. This year we are reading Richard Bushman?s landmark biography of Mormonism?s founder, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). JI bloggers have covered small chunks of the book in successive weeks through the summer, with new posts appearing Monday mornings. We invite anyone and everyone interested to read along and to use the comment sections on each post to share your own reflections and questions. There are discussion questions below.

Installments:

• Part 1: Prologue, Chapters 1-2
• Part 2: Chapters 3-4
• Part 3: Chapters 5-6
• Part 4: Chapters 7-9
• Part 5: Chapters 10-12
• Part 6: Chapters 13-15
• Part 7: Chapters 16-18
• Part 8: Chapters 19-21
• Part 9: Chapters 22-24
• Part 10: Chapters 25-26
• Part 11: Chapters 27-28
• Next Week: Response from Richard Bushman

This fall Journals, Volume 3, of the Joseph Smith Papers will be released. This is the last of Joseph Smith?s journals and covers the end of his life. It will be noted for its generous use of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty record books, a document of near mythological character (though soon to be banalized by availability). In the case of the Council of Fifty, the record may be the only significant new document to expand on Bushman?s overall project to become available since publication. J3 also includes the most frank disclosures about the Nauvoo Temple liturgy to be published by the LDS Church in more than a century.  I thought about this as I read through the final chapters of Bushman?s biography of Joseph Smith. It is the two associated ideas: theocracy and temple cosmology that saturate Smith?s final six months.

Bushman?s cool narration of 1844 flushes out the players and issues that culminate in the bloody death of Joseph Smith alongside his brother. We see the storm rise over the parched landscape, the lightning strike, and then the fields burn. It is hard to imagine any other conclusion to these months.  Bushman carefully corrects the narrative of its most hyperbolic hagiographic conceits while appearing to simply narrate the events as they happen.

Continue Reading

Prepping for Archival Visits: The L. Tom Perry Special Collections at BYU

As a follow-up to last week’s post on preparing to visit the LDS Church History Library, I’ve written this starter guide for the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University.[1] In this post, I’ll touch on transportation, lodging, the best food in the area, policies to be familiar with, and finding collections to peruse.

This is only meant to be a brief introduction. Please add your comments, suggestions, and experiences below!

Provo, UT

The Harold B. Lee Library is located at 701 East University Parkway, in Provo. The two exits closest to the library on 1-15 are the University Parkway and Provo Center Street off-ramps, which are north and south of the school, respectively. There are several hotels throughout Provo, as well as Air BnB options, or if you’re feeling adventurous, camping options. There are sidewalks and streetlights throughout most of Provo and is generally safe to walk through during daylight. Visitor’s parking is available east of the library (next to the BYU Law School) and north of the library (in front of the BYU Museum of Art). Here is a map of the BYU campus to help you visualize. One could also use public transportation to get close to BYU campus, but not onto campus itself.

Provo is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Don’t forget to pack for the weather!

The HBLL from the Abraham O. Smoot Building (ASB). The library is the blue-green glass building directly in front of Brigham.

Continue Reading