By Jared TMay 4, 2012
We’re pleased to present a guest post by Christopher Smith, who is a PhD candidate at Claremont Graduate University in Religions in North America. He has never been to the North Pole, and thus can neither confirm nor deny that there are no Israelites there.
According to an 1831 revelation, when Christ returns to the earth the continents will join together and the ?great deep . . . shall be driven back into the north countries.? Then, the ten lost tribes of Israel who reside in the ?north countries? will ?smite the rocks? like Moses, ?and the ice shall flow down at their presence,? and a ?highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep,? and they shall march to Zion in glory. [1] A milder version of the same idea was communicated in a vision in 1836, in which ?Moses appeared before us, and committed unto us the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the Earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the North.? [2] These prophecies enlarged upon Jeremiah 31:8, which referred to a remnant of Israel being gathered from the north.
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By CarlMay 4, 2012
I know that too often church history after Joseph Smith gets shortchanged. I think there are a few reasons for this. Mostly, it?s just that Joseph is such a powerful figure it?s hard to look at anything else. Another reason, at least in the church, is that we focus on church history through and by the D&C, and the D&C gets really sparse after Joseph?s death. But I found myself falling into the same trap as I organized my class. Unit 1 was about Smith, and then we did an entire unit on ?everything else.? My reasons for doing so are basically academic-and are based on Max Weber?s idea of institutionalizing charisma. Even the devout Latter-day Saint must admit that, compared with Joseph Smith, his successors to the prophetic office were not as dynamic as he.
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By Ben PMay 2, 2012
If you haven’t noticed, there have been a plethora of fantastic books on Mormon history in the past few years. This year is no exception, and we have two fabulous and long-awaited books coming out this September, both written by friends of JI.
The first is Spencer Fluhman’s A Peculiar People: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press). Fluhman, formerly in BYU’s Religion Department but has since made the move to the history faculty, served as a personal mentor for each of the five founding members of JI, and I think several of us credit him for our interest in academic Mormon history; I can remember many of us excitedly passing around digital copies of his dissertation on which this book is based. His several articles that have led to the book are all fascinating and sophisticated–including one that earned MHA’s best article award–so we can be assured that the book will be tremendous. Here is the book’s synopsis:
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By Ben PMay 1, 2012
If you are a fan of the combustible blend of religion and politics that has played a large role in American history, then today is your Christmas. Religion & Politics, an online journal run by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, was launched this morning with a plethora of fascinating and sophisticated content. General information about the journal can be found here, and you can see that it boasts an impressive and wide-ranging staff and board. Our own Max Mueller serves as the associate editor, so we at JI like to claim a personal connection with the project.
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By Ben PApril 30, 2012
In the most recent issue of Journal of Mormon History, JI friend Rachel Cope put together a wonderful roundtable titled, “New Ways In: Writing Interdisciplinary Mormon History” (JMH 38, no. 2 [Spring 2012]: 99-144). “The writing of Mormon history,” she opined, “has undergone a series of transitions” (99). The most recent transition has been taking place in the past decade or so, as new interdisciplinary approaches have been introduced into the field of Mormon studies. The prior transition, what is typically called New Mormon History and whose shoulders we all stand upon, brought the academic study of Mormonism to new levels and will always deserve deep appreciation. But it was also, for the most part, dominated by the tools common during the New Social History that swept the historical profession in the 1960s and 1970s (when most New Mormon History practitioners experienced graduate training). While such an approach will remain critical to the field, new complimentary avenues are now being invoked, especially from the growing–if still nascent–field of religious studies. This roundtable, Cope explains, hopes to highlight more questions and possibilities by “asking several young scholars to explain how their particular disciplinary lens enriches approaches to and the evolution of Mormon historiography” (100). As with all thought-provoking and cutting-edge roundtables, this series brought a familiar feeling: conviction. I felt convicted in overlooking important questions and ashamed that I often maintain problematic and dated views of history, as I’ll explain below. But in that conviction, I am also enthused to thoroughly repent and correct my ways.
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By Edje JeterApril 29, 2012
Mormon missionary efforts within the United States prompted resentment beyond simple sectarianism. Most turn-of-the-century Americans thought of ?missionaries? as working with non-White non-Protestants, usually overseas. [1] Since they sent missionaries to ?inferiors? they tended to perceive missionaries at their own door as a racial insult.
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By Ben PApril 26, 2012
Continuing a semi-tradition I started in January, the release of MHA’s quarterly newsletter seems a good time to catch up on Mormon history-related news. I’m sure I’m missing some things, so feel free to mention them in the comments.
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By J. StapleyApril 24, 2012
[The following is Jonathan Stapley’s response to Christopher Smith’s post.]
First, I want to thank Christopher Smith for his critical reading of both my ritual adoption article and my article on last rites. His call for increased clarity and finer argumentation in my work is welcome and surely needed. As an example, the bulk of Smith’s comments relate to what I observed to be a declension in Brigham Young’s rhetoric surrounding adoption ritual performance in Utah, and the possible relationship between this declension and the transformative vision of Joseph Smith that Brigham Young received relating to adoption early in 1847. I’m grateful to respond to these comments as well as some particular questions which Smith raised.
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By Ben PApril 24, 2012
[This continues our new series “Responses,” which offers a venue to respond to and discuss recent Mormon scholarship, especially journal articles. We are pleased to have Christopher Smith here respond to two articles authored by Jonathan Stapley last year (found here and here), along with Stapley’s own response (posted tomorrow). Christopher Smith is a PhD candidate in Religions in North America at Claremont Graduate University. He is currently living in Provo while he works on his dissertation on Mormon and American Indian relations during the life of Joseph Smith. At least, that’s what he’s supposed to be working on…]
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By Ben PApril 24, 2012
Many of you may have already seen this, but it is worth repeating for those who either need a reminder or missed the announcement when it first hit the interwebz. As part of the lecture series for the John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Politics, based at the Washington University of St. Louis and ably led by the esteemed scholar R. Marie Griffeth, Laurie Maffly-Kipp delivered a brilliant presentation titled, “The Long Approach to the Mormon Moment: The Building of an American Church.” Maffly-Kipp needs no introduction in these circles–I’m sure we are all fans of her work, and I doubt I need to assure the presentation’s brilliance. But it is indeed brilliant.
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Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “Interesting, Jack. But just to reiterate, I think JS saw the SUPPRESSION of Platonic ideas as creating the loss of truth and not the addition.…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “Thanks for your insights--you've really got me thinking. I can't get away from the notion that the formation of the Great and Abominable church was an…”
Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “In the intro to DC 76 in JS's 1838 history, JS said, "From sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many important…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “"I’ve argued that God’s corporality isn’t that clear in the NT, so it seems to me that asserting that claims of God’s immateriality happened AFTER…”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
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