Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Let’s dive right in:

First things first: the Church History department is now on Tumblr! I’ve already added it to my blog roll and look forward to more fun and informative posts.

Then, a Trib article on the (presumed) relationship between Mormons and the GOP, and a Huffington Post article on Mormons, social media, and progressive activism.

And because this post deserved another link, and these are words I never thought I’d read in one sentence, “Polygamist women in ninja costumes” involved in nefarious activity. See KUTV for more details on what is a funny headline for a sad story.

Lastly, a reminder that the deadline for this year’s Mormon History Association is coming up! All submissions are due October 1. You can find the CFP here.

Feel free to add your links in the comments!

five reasons to visit the Church History Museum

1. There’s something for everyone: exhibits on Relief Society history, Presidents of the Church, Book of Mormon Fiesta…

2. One exhibit, “Practicing Charity: Everyday Daughters of God,” features some striking art about the breadth and depth of womanhood and charity. Regular JI readers might remember this post, in which curator Lauren Allred Hurtado introduced the exhibit. (Not in Utah? You can see an online version of the exhibit here.)

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Announcement: A Day with the Bushmans and Patrick Mason, Portland, Oregon, September 20, 2014

From the event‘s organizers:

Date:  September 20, 2014
Time:  10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
_____________________

Where:
Portland, OR
The Wells Fargo Center Building at 1300 SW 5th Ave.
At the offices of Davis Wright Tremaine
Floor 24

              Located on the Max Green line stop at 5th and Jefferson
There are several parking lots/garages in the vicinity.
Full day parking on Saturday is between $5 and $6.

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 7: Joseph Smith and Learning

Smith’s own lack of education may be an objection to the claim that Christian Platonism influenced him.  “Being in indigent circumstances [we] were obliged to labour hard,” Smith said of his childhood. “Therefore we were deprived of the bennifit of an education[.] Suffice it to Say I was mearly instructed in reading writing and the ground rules of Arithmatic which constuted my whole literary acquirements.”[1]  His mother, Lucy, said Smith read less that her other children and his wife Emma said at the time he dictated the Book of Mormon, he “could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter.”[2]  Smith’s writing skills were limited and he most often dictated what he wanted to communicate.  But Smith was not cut off from learning and literacy in his day.  His mother said he read less than her other children, not that he didn’t read at all, and both his mother’s and his wife’s statements were made in context of defending the validity of the Book of Mormon against the claim the Smith was the author.  Lucy and Emma may have been exaggerating Smith’s ignorance to bolster that claim.  Though he grew up in a small, recently settled town, print was available to him: newspapers, bookstores, and libraries.[3]  Smith also made attempts to engage intellectually with his peers by attending religious meetings and a local debating society.[4]  Furthermore, Smith continually worked at his education; Smith even attended school when he was 20 to 21.[5]  A major shift occurred when Smith founded his church.  Smith now had more free time with which to read and many of his followers had better educations than he did; he even founded a study group, the school of the prophets.  In an important sermon toward the end of his life, Smith declared after giving an exegesis of Genesis 1:1 along Christian-Platonic lines, “if you do not believe it you do not believe the learned man of God.”[6]

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 6: Study and Faith

Yet arguing for the influence of these various thinkers on Smith raises the issue that Smith never once mentioned any of their writings.  Visionaries often did not cite their sources, however: Jacob Boehme, Jane Lead, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and William Blake said nothing about what they were reading other than the Bible.  This has caused problems for scholars who have tried to contextualize these visionaries.  Swedenborg’s followers have tended to view claims of influence as delegitimizing and have argued against Swedenborg being influenced by other thinkers (similar to Mormon scholars’ concerns), but as Brian Gibbons argues, “The tendency of Swedenborg’s hagiographers to see his work as created ex nihilo is clearly untenable.”[1]  Scholars have vigorously debated what William Blake’s influences might have been with Harold Bloom declaring that Blake “was not an antiquarian, a mystic, an occultist or theosophist, and not much of a scholar of any writings beyond the Bible and other poetry insofar as it resembled the Bible,” while numerous other scholars have argued that Blake was influenced by esoteric ideas, particularly Neoplatonism.  

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 5: Family Religion and Jane Lead

Yet Mormonism was not simply a product of Joseph Smith digging through texts that described early Christianity and Judaism (though he likely made use of such texts).  Smith?s earliest contact with Christian-Platonic ideas came through the Smith family?s religiosity.  A series of dreams that Smith?s father had continually described the feeling that something fundamental was missing from the established churches; Smith?s notion that that the established churches and even the Bible were missing truth likely came from his father.  As I argue in Chapters Two and Three, Smith?s father?s dreams align with visions described in John Dee?s spirit diary (1659).  Dee and Smith had a number of additional similarities: both used a seer stone, wrote a book that was dictated by a person looking in a seer stone, made Enoch central to their theology, and had similar marital practices.  Dee was heavily influenced by Christian Platonism (see below) and the similarities between Dee and Smith suggest that Smith felt that early modern visionaries could also have parts of the missing truth.  Smith?s grandfather was a Universalist and his father joined them at one point; Origen?s writings inspired the rise of Universalism in early modern Europe.[1]  In addition, the Smiths engaged in a number of traditions related to the cunning-folk, or those who either believed that they had special powers or believed that such could be derived from ?magic? books called grimoires.  Grimoires were full of Neoplatonism (Platonic philosophy inspired by Ammonius), particularly theurgy.[2]  Furthermore, evidence suggests that Smith?s father had some association with a movement called the New Israelites, who, among other things, believed that they really were Israelites, a claim that the Mormons also made.  These connections suggest that interest in Jews was part of the Smith family religion, an interest that may have led Smith to read Allen?s Modern Judaism.

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 4: Plato and the Apostasy

Just as Allen had condemned Kabbalah as Platonic, Mosheim and the encyclopedias also condemned Ammonius and Origen.  These sources went so far as to claim that these thinkers had corrupted Christianity.  Mosheim began the passage by declaring, ?A new sect of philosophers arose of a sudden, spread with amazing rapidity throughout the greatest part of the Roman empire ? and was extremely detrimental to the cause of Christianity.?  Mosheim then asserted, ?This new species of philosophy imprudently adopted by Origen and many other Christians, was extremely prejudicial to the cause of the gospel, and to the beautiful simplicity of its celestial doctrines.?  Ultimately, said Mosheim, this philosophy led to ?an unseemly mixture of platonism and Christianity.?[1]  Those who reprinted this passage reprinted these denunciations and Alexander Campbell in his introduction to Mosheim?s passage declared, ?Mosheim ? satisfactorily shows, that the first ?Theological Seminary? established at Alexandria in Egypt, in the second century, was the grave of primitive Christianity.?  Such, said Campbell, ?was the fountain, the streams whereof polluted the great mass of Christian professors, and completed the establishment of a paganized Christianity, in the room of the religion of the New Testament.?[2]  Mosheim and Campbell were repeating the popular notion that Platonism had corrupted primitive Christianity, a notion that Protestants had developed to attack both Catholics and Christian Platonists in their day (Chapters One and Three).[3]

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 3: The Alexandrians

The above quotes from Mosheim were descriptions of the same movement: Alexandrian philosophy of the first centuries C.E.  In addition to attempting to pull together all truth and entering the presence of God (similar to Smith?s goals), Mosheim said that Ammonius Saccas taught that Jesus?s ?sole view, in descending upon earth, was ? to remove the errors that had crept into the religions of all nations but not to abolish the ancient theology from whence they were derived.?  Mosheim went on to say that Jesus?s ?only intention was to purify the ancient religion, and that his followers had manifestly corrupted the doctrine of their divine master.? Mosheim suggested that Ammonius believed that Jesus?s followers had corrupted Christianity by removing truths that aligned with the ?ancient theology.?  Just like the Book of Mormon said, according to Mosheim, Ammonius believed that truth had been removed, and as Mosheim said that Ammonius believed that the ancient theology was Platonic, the truth removed by Jesus?s followers would align with the Platonic ideas found in the Book of Mormon and Allen?s Modern Judaism.  Thus, just like Ammonius, Smith sought to restore this lost truth: Mosheim called Ammonius?s followers the ?latter platonics? similar to Smith?s Latter-day Saints.[1]

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 2: Kabbalah

Christian Platonism is simply the thought and practices of Christians who drew on Plato either deliberately or who drew upon the long tradition of those who had done so.  Christian Platonists believed in philosophia perennis, the perennial philosophy of God?s wisdom that was found in many sources including Plato, that often manifested itself as prisca theologia or ancient truth that originated with the patriarchs and had spread through many civilizations.  They viewed Jesus as the ultimate locus of Wisdom but believed that Christ?s truth had many precursors and that Jesus had manifested himself many generations prior to his coming.  Plato and others could be a reservoir of the Word in the same way the Old Testament was.[1]  Christian Platonism had a number of tenets including pre-existence of the soul, deification, utopianism, marriage in heaven, universal or near-universal salvation, post-mortal progression, and marital experimentation.  Christian Platonists tended to believe in an animated universe with powers of an unseen world and in the superiority of that unseen world which was usually immaterial.  There were many varieties of Christian Platonism, and, as there was no Christian-Platonist church, the varieties differed from person to person.  Christian Platonists could embrace some of these tenets while seeing others as heretical or impractical.  Early Mormonism embraced all of these tenets except for the notion of spirit over matter, but even the importance of matter gained ascendency in a number of Platonic traditions including Kabbalah.

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Dissertation Introduction, Part 1

Now that I have my dissertation filed, I thought I’d post some parts of the introduction.  Here’s the beginning.

Introduction

?Mormonism is truth, the First Fundamental principal of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men.? Joseph Smith, letter to Isaac Galland, March 22, 1839. 

?Those real sages ? who were sick of those arrogant and contentious sects,[1] which required an invariable attachment to their particular systems. And, indeed, nothing could have a more engaging aspect than a set of men, who, abandoning all cavil and all prejudices in favour of any party, professed searching after the truth alone, were ready to adopt, from all the different systems and sects such tenets as they thought agreeable to it.? Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, discussing Alexandrian Platonism in the first centuries C.E. and its influence on Alexandrian Christianity, Ecclesiastical History, 1:138.

?[If the] Presbyterians [have] any truth, embrace that. Baptist. Methodist &c. get all the good in the world, [and] come out a pure Mormon.? Joseph Smith, sermon, July 23, 1843.

?These sages were of opinion that true philosophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of God to mortals was scattered in various portions through all the different sects; and it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man, and more especially of every Christian doctor to gather it from the several corners where it lay dispersed.? Mosheim discussing early Alexandrian Christians including Clement of Alexandria, Ecclesiastical History, 1:139.

?I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to though all of them have some thruth [sic]. but I want to come up into the presence of God & learn all things but the creeds set up stakes, & say hitherto shalt thou come, & no further.?which I cannot subscribe to.? Joseph Smith, sermon, October 15, 1843.

?They were to raise above all terrestrial things, by the towering efforts of holy contemplation, those souls whose origin was celestial and divine ? that thus, in this life, they might enjoy communion with the Supreme Being, and ascend after death, active and unencumbered, to the universal Parent, to live in his presence for ever.? Mosheim, discussing Alexandrian Christian Platonist Ammonius Saccus and his Neoplatonic followers, Ecclesiastical History, 1:142.

Comparing statements from Joseph Smith to the views of early Christian Platonists in Alexandria, particularly one named Ammonius Saccas (c. 175-250), as discussed in Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, a popular book that Smith likely owned, highlights important themes in this dissertation.[2] Smith, like the early Christian Platonists described by Mosheim, said that he sought the truth from eclectic sources and also stated his motivation for such a quest: to come into the presence of God.

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