Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Hi all, here’s the best of the Mormon week that was. No General Conference commentary or historical perspective until next week!

FamilySearch has teamed up with GenealogyBank.org for a huge–seriously, huge–digitization project that was announced recently. When it’s completed, a billion records from 100 million US newpaper obituaries, from 1730 onward will be digitized and searchable online. They’re looking for tens of thousands of volunteers to help–could be you!

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Conference Reminder: Post “Mormon Moment”

Post ?Mormon Moment? conference to examine LDS and media

Conference Oct. 17 at BYU Salt Lake Center will honor historian Jan Shipps

SALT LAKE CITY — At look at how journalists covered Mormonism during the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment campaign, a discussion about how Mormons are responding to a call to share their faith through social media, and a tribute to historian Jan Shipps are scheduled at the Third Mormon Media Studies Conference, Friday, Oct. 17. Admission is free. 

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More than One Stubborn Log in the Field

Okay, so this is from a different era. Still, I think it applies!

1863 was a troublesome year for Abraham Lincoln.  His Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January 1^st, but it needed to be vindicated by victories on the battlefield.  However, Grant?s prolonged siege of Vicksburg and the game-changing victory at Gettysburg wouldn?t see completion until early July.

Those victories were inconceivable mid-1863, especially after costly Union losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville the previous winter and spring. Lincoln had another problem on his hands, too:  political trouble in Missouri, brewing since the start of the war and coming to a head in the summer of 1863.  The Border State had a large population of slave owners and had been occupied by a heavy Union military presence since early in the war.  The various Unionist factions that arose in the state continued to press Lincoln to support their respective camps, either in spreading immediate emancipation to Missouri or allowing slavery to exist with a more gradual emancipation plan.  When a delegation of the more radical faction visited Lincoln in Autumn to appeal for his support, he refused to add presidential clout to either group.

Frustrated with the politicking in Missouri, but unwilling to join sides, Lincoln remarked to a reporter that he had ?adopted the plan learned when a farmer boy engaged in plowing.  When he came across stumps too deep and too tough to be torn up, and too wet to burn, he plowed round them.?  In other words, he opted for the course of least resistance rather than directly dealing with the most difficult of situations?and possibly unwinnable ones? as in Missouri.[1]

Wait?he said that about Missourians?

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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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