Guest Post: Justin Bray on Mormon Sacrament and Material Culture

Justin Bray is an oral historian at the Church History Department in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is also an MA student at the University of Utah, where he studies American religious history. He has presented and published several papers on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper among the Latter-day Saints.

I’ve always found objects meaningful tools to reconstruct the past.

When my great-grandfather passed away many years ago, my dad inherited an old baseball bat–probably because my brothers and I couldn’t stop watching The Sandlot, and throughout our childhood we collected an unhealthy number of baseball cards. I really didn’t know anything about my great-grandfather (at the time), let alone that he was a baseball player. But the more attention I paid to the bat, the more the bat became a kind of lens into my great-grandfather’s world.

Of course every baseball player has a bat, and at first glance baseball bats all look quite similar, but every nook and cranny spoke more about this specific player. For example, the most worn part of the bat’s handle was about an inch and a half above the knob, meaning he “choked up” on it considerably. From my background in baseball, I knew that players who choked up on the bat were generally shorter, faster, and “scrappier” players looking to just get on base, so that more powerful hitters could drive them home.

The kind wood the bat was made of, the fact that no pine tar was on it, and its length and weight continued to help piece together not only the kind of baseball player my great-grandfather may have been but also how far he played professionally and in what time period his career took place. A text, such as his obituary, may have said “he played baseball,” but studying a surviving object from is athletic career added elements to his narrative that evaded the written word.

This same approach can help historians study religion in America. Men, women, and children often use objects to express their faith, like a cross, phylactery, or CTR ring.

For some time now, I’ve looked at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as a way in which to study the devotional lives of the Latter-day Saints. When researching this sacred ritual, texts can only say so much: “The sacrament was administered today.” But when researching objects that were used to administer the sacrament, such as bread, water, wine, linens, cloths, plates, cups, trays, flagons, hats, gloves, and tables, the narrative expands.

Take the sacramental bread, for example. In nineteenth-century Utah, you didn’t just pick up a loaf of Wonder Bread on Saturday night, nor did you begin baking bread on Sunday morning. Preparing the sacramental emblems was a process that required at least daylong time and attention. It was often baked by sisters of the Relief Society and became a meaningful part of their devotional life.

Objects can open new channels of inquiry that words alone cannot. They can generate new questions to familiar narratives. But material culture also has its limits. Objects must be studied against texts to get good glimpse into religious worlds.

For those living in or near Salt Lake City, I’d like to give a plug for Kris Wright’s lecture tonight at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. She’ll tell you better than I can how useful material culture is in studying the Latter-day Saints.

Breaking Amish, Sister Wives, and the Politics of Clothes

Note: This may be the least academic post I?ve ever written.  It?s mostly a collection of my random thoughts on clothing, modesty, and religious communities.  Read it with that in mind.

On Sunday night, as I was flipping through TV channels, I came across Breaking Amish, a TLC reality show about young men and women who have decided to leave the Amish.  There has been significant controversy surrounding the show. Although TLC claimed that all of the young men and women it was filming had been a part of the Amish when it began production, evidence emerged that they had frequented strip clubs, owned cell phones, and been involved in drunken parties. Websites like Jezebel accused the show of fabricating the lives of its participants, using makeup, clothes, and creative editing to make individuals who hadn?t been involved in the Amish community for years appear to be recent apostates.  Perhaps the most interesting of their techniques was the clothes.

Like many reality TV shows, Breaking Amish has its participants reflect on recent events ? whether it be a night carousing on the town, a clandestine kiss, or, in this season, an unplanned pregnancy

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An Unsigned Letter to Edward Hunter: Any Guesses Who and When?

Edward Hunter was perhaps the wealthiest convert to early Mormonism.[1] His coming to Nauvoo was a major boon to Joseph Smith as he set up a factory and brought a lot of store goods.[2]  ?My wife and myself had made up our minds to let Joseph have all of our means,” Hunter wrote in his autobiography, “until Joseph came to me and said, ?Keep it.??[3]  The following unsigned and undated letter seems to confirm that narrative.  It seems to have been written by a dissenter who was irritated by Hunter’s consecration.

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Scholarly Q&A on the Succession: Christine and Christopher Blythe

(The following is a give-and-take with Christopher and Christine Blythe, graduate students in American religious history who specialize in the many divergent forms of Mormonism. Christopher attends Florida State University, where he is nearing completion of his PhD, and Christine recently started a master’s program at Memorial University of Newfoundland. A couple weeks ago, I highlighted two of their recent articles; today, they answer a few questions presented to them by the JI cabal. The Blythes have a documentary history of the succession period due to be published by Kofford Books next year.)

Mormon-themed Aphrodisiacs, Part 1 of 4: Damiana (Possibly NSFW)

Note: this post discusses sexual activity in general and erectile dysfunction in particular, though mostly with nineteenth-century language. It also contains an image of a female nude as printed on the packaging and advertising for a late-nineteenth-century aphrodisiac pill.

Two weeks back Christopher had a socks-rocking post (with great comments) on the alleged pharmacoactive properties and Mormon uses of ?Mormon Tea.? At the moment I don?t have anything to add to the discussion of Mormon Tea, but I think there are some related, interesting things to say about damiana (see image at right), which also grows in the American Southwest, also affects human physiology, and was also allegedly part of the Mormon materia medica.

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Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup (7 September 2013); Thunderstruck Edition

The biggest Mormon studies news this week is either that: A) the American Bible Society still exists, and also that 47% of Americans, according to the still-existing American Bible Society, believe that the Book of Mormon and Bible “teach the same spiritual truths.”

Or, B) That TLC is going to grace us with another reality show about a polygamous family.

Shut down the presses, everybody.

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Kathleen Flake: Richard L. Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies

The University of Virginia announced this week that Kathleen Flake will be the inaugural Richard L. Bushman Chair for Mormon Studies in UVA’s Religious Studies Department (that’s a lot of capital letters!).

Professor Flake’s academic credentials are impressive. She received her undergraduate degree in English at BYU and her J.D. from the University of Utah Law School. She received her M.A. from Catholic University of American in Religious Studies, and her Ph.D.  from the University of Chicago.  Professor Flake has spent the past thirteen years at Vanderbilt teaching American Religious History. Her first book, The Politics of Religious Identity: the Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, is well regarded in non-Mormon and Mormon circles alike. The American Historical Review proclaimed of Flake, “no more sophisticated mind has turned its attention to the history of the Latter-day Saints.”[i]

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Joseph Smith Papers Launch Party: The Documents Series

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013, the Joseph Smith Papers Project hosted a launch party for journalists and bloggers to introduce the Documents Series, which will serve as the chronological backbone of the project. Previously, the project has released volumes from Journals Series (2), the Revelations and Translations Series (2, plus an oversized facsimile volume), and the Histories Series (2). The first volume of the Documents Series reproduces in chronological order all of Joseph Smith?s papers from July 1828 to June 1831, beginning with the earliest extant recorded revelation (D&C 3) and concluding with the historic church conference where the high priesthood (that is, the office of high priest) was restored.[1] This was a foundational period in Mormon history, tracking the translation of the Book of Mormon, the recording of the first revelations, the organization of the church, the mission to the “Lamanites,” the beginning of Joseph Smith’s revisions of the Bible, and the beginnings of the first two gathering places of the church–Kirtland and Independence. The editors–Mike Mackay, Gerrit Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Bob Woodford, and Bill Hartley, along with other smart people at the JSPP who also contributed–contextualized these issues in commendable fashion. Although images and transcriptions of these documents have been available on the JSPP website for some time, the “value added” of the JSPP editors’ introductions and annotations is well worth paying for the print volume. 

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Mormon Jesus at the Jersey Shore: Some Thoughts on LDS Images of Christ in Non-Mormon Venues

As a sort of follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago on early Mormonism on the Jersey Shore and as my own contribution to the blog’s emphasis on material culture this month, I thought I’d offer some brief thoughts on Mormon images of Christ and their appropriation and use by non-Mormons.

Earlier this summer, a family member handed me a handful of pamphlets she’d picked up during a recent trip to the Jersey Shore. Knowing of my own interests in Methodist history, she thought I’d appreciate the literature she’d picked up at the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Methodism has a long and rich history in New Jersey—Asbury Park, a seaside community made famous by Bruce Springsteen, was named after the father of American Methodism, Francis Asbury, and the town of Ocean Grove traces its own roots to the efforts of two Methodist ministers in the mid-19th century to establish a permanent camp meeting site to host summer retreats and worship services. While I found the content of the pamphlets interesting, I was struck most by the image adorning the tri-fold pamphlet advertising a series of lectures entitled “Our God Present During Difficulty.”

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Scholarly Inquiry: A Q&A with John Fea

We’re thrilled to present the following Q&A with historian John Fea. Dr. Fea is Associate Professor of History and  Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), and Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), which he co-edited with Jay Green and Eric Miller. His latest book, Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker Academic, 2013) is scheduled to be released in two weeks. Dr. Fea is currently at work on two book projects—a religious history of the American Revolution and one on history and memory in the town of Greenwich, NJ. In addition to his scholarly output, John is a prodigious blogger, a tireless traveler and dynamic speaker (check out that list—chances are he’ll be in your general neck of the woods at some point), Bruce Springsteen devotee, avid sports fan, and 2010 inductee to the Montville High School (NJ) Hall of Fame. By nearly all accounts, he is also an incredibly nice guy.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Fea!