New Article: “Salvation Through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment”

[The following is the introduction to my recently published article in Dialogue. I post it here with three goals in mind: 1) To get any feedback/corrections/accusations on the article, as well as to provide discussion for anyone else who finds the topic as fascinating as I do. 2) To fulfill my guilt and anxiety to post something of substance here, but doing so without much work on my part. 3) To remind everyone what a great resource Dialogue is, and how awesome they are for strengthening their online presence. For those who haven’t done so yet, go to their website right now and subscribe and/or donate!]

CFP: War and Peace in Our Times: Mormon Perspectives

A conference sponsored by the Latter-day Saint Council on Mormon Studies, and
the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame

Held at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
March 18-19, 2011

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Women in the Academy: Melissa Proctor

I am pleased to welcome fellow Yalie Melissa Proctor as the next participant in this series. Her academic journey has led her through the worlds of Near Eastern Studies, philosophy of religion, and Mormon women’s history. Her interview reflects her passionate pursuit of her interests as well as her significant contributions to the study of Mormon women.

Education

B.A. BYU Near Eastern Studies (1998)
M.A. Yale Divinity School (2001)
visiting scholar Princeton (2005­-2007)
visiting faculty Harvard Divinity School (2007-2008)
visiting faculty the college of the Holy Cross (2008-2009)
visiting fellow, Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah (spring, 2010)
Ph.D. candidate Brown University (2010)
Currently I’m a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fellow through the Reed Foundation in New York City.

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The Tea Party as a Religious Movement: A Response

(Cross-posted at Religion in American History)

Over at Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks has a two-part post asking ?Who Says the Tea Party isn?t a Religious Movement?? In challenging Lou Ruprecht?s answer of ?no,? Brooks notes that ?for the Mormon sector of the movement (including Tea Party icon Glenn Beck), ? the Tea Party taps into a powerful and distinctive complex of Mormon beliefs about the divinity of the U.S. Constitution and the last-days role of righteous souls from the Rocky Mountains in saving it from destruction.?

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Is Mormonism “understudied”?

I’m making my way through Jeffrey Williams’s Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism: Taking the Kingdom by Force (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), an admittedly revisionist challenge to the current scholarship on early Methodism that highlights the rhetorical violence in the sermons, conversion narratives, and personal writings of Wesley’s disciples in the early American republic. I may consider posting a brief review of the book (and noting any potential avenues for research in Mormon studies it may suggest) when I complete it, but for the time being, I want to focus in on one line from the book’s foreword, authored by Catherine Albanese and Stephen Stein, editors of the Religion in North America series of which this book is a part.

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Finding Mormon References in the Strangest Place

This summer I am doing some freelance research for a family on one of their ancestors who edited a small community newspaper in Marion, Ohio from 1877-1883. The man, George Christian Sr., was Warren G. Hardings’ neighbor and his son became Harding’s secretary during his senatorial and abbreviated presidential years. Although Christian probably is not particularly relevant to the readership of this blog, I have been surprised to see how often Mormons make an appearance in Christian’s newspaper, the Marion Mirror.

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Conference June 11-12 of the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy-Mormon Chapter (Program)

From Brian Birch, also see the event website for more information:

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Book Reviews: Eva Pocs, Between the Living and the Dead and Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk

Eva Pocs. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern World. Trans. By Szilvia Redey and Michael Webb. Budapest: Central University Press, 1999.

Owen Davies. Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.

As I mentioned in my review of Emma Wilby, there is a growing focus in the study of early modern witchcraft on trying to get at the actual folk practices behind the accusations. Some of the most important works on the topic come out of Hungary where the witchcraft trials generally lasted longer. Pocs?s book is one such; I also include a little summary of Owen Davies book on the cunning-folk, which is also very helpful.

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Why All the Brodie Love? A Little Historiographical Context

On Chris Smith?s post, in my attempt to defend ?the bracket? or experiential agnosticism as a historiographical method, I made the remark that Fawn Bordie had said very little that was new. I no doubt was engaging in hyperbole, sometimes that happens around the blogs.

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Mormon Utah in the Progressive-Era West: Reviewing Two Recent Works

Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921. By Matthew C. Godfrey. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007.

Necessary Fraud: Progressive Reform and Utah Coal. By Nancy J. Taniguchi. Legal History of North America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Most historians are familiar with the Turner Thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner’s once-dominant argument that American history was made on its margins, on the frontier, and that historians who put slavery and the east coast at the center of the nation’s past were off the mark.

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