Center for Communal Studies Travel Grant (from Matt Grow, sort of)

(Matt is apparently too busy guest-blogging at Big Brown to have remembered to send this our way, but I’ve cribbed this announcement from H-Net, which may be of interest to our readers doing comparative research on communalism.)

The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana
invites applications for a travel grant to fund research at the Communal
Studies Collection at USI’s David L. Rice Library. The Communal Studies

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Teaching Joseph Smith

I’m teaching a course this semester called “Prophecy in American History.”   We’re examining particularly the interaction between prophetic figures and the society around them.  How did they use religion to critique, affirm, or offer alternatives to the world they lived in?   In what ways does religion shape what it means to be an American, and vice versa?  After an introductory class in which we read Max Weber, Rodney Stark, Anthony Wallace, and Walter Brueggemann on the nature of prophecy, we have turned our attention to a series of American prophets.   We began with Anne Hutchinson; next week we’ll discuss Nat Turner.

The week following, we’ll visit Joseph Smith.

What I’ve reproduced below is the blog entry that I’ll post the night after the Nat Turner course, introducing the students to the readings they will do for Smith.

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Anglo-American Culture Wars and the Early Missionary Effort in England

The prevailing “special relationship” between Britain and the United States is of fairly recent vintage (1). It has grown out the close cooperation of the two nations during the World Wars and other political engagements since. Previous to this, there was much political jockeying and often animosity that has now been lost from public memory. The American Revolution (or The American Rebellion, I suppose) was, of course, not a time of harmony; the War of 1812 ensured that the separation between the two nations was permanent and reaffirmed their differences.

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Conference on Mormon Thought and Engineering

Although this is noted at MormonConferences.org, Dr. Bushman asked that I use the JI to advertise this interesting conference on Mormon thought and engineering to be held in March at Claremont Graduate University.  So, here’s the info…

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Avoiding the “Dupes of the Mormon Delusion”: An Antebellum Unitarian Weighs in on Mormon Success

(I am taking a break from Woodruff for a moment, and thought I would post something related to Unitarianism in honor of Ryan T’s guest-blogging.)

The quick success of early Mormonism came as a shock to many contemporaries. This left religious thinkers scrambling to find a way to account for this “heretical” movement’s growth, attempting to explain why so many people were finding the Mormon message so persuasive.

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New Guest Blogger Ryan T.

Please join us in welcoming the latest guest blogger here at the Juvenile Instructor. Ryan T. describes himself thus:

Hello Juvenile Instructor! I?m Ryan Tobler, an undergrad just winding up my degree in English/History at BYU and nursing ulcers while I wait to hear back on my applications to grad programs in religious and Transatlantic studies.  My areas of interest are still crystallizing, but broadly I study British and American 18th and 19th century intellectual history (generally with a Transatlantic paradigm). More specifically I?m interested in literature and literary figures as public intellectuals, secularization, and cosmopolitanism, especially as all these bear upon religion. These issues typically put me on the more ?liberal? and learned fringe of the religion of that period: Unitarians, Universalists, and so on. I enjoy travel and languages, cross-country skiing, ?canyoneering,? and play soccer at every available opportunity.

Thanks for having me aboard.

Mormonism’s Unbroken Past: Transcending the 1890 Rupture

1890 is a date that looms large in American history, thanks largely to Frederick Jackson Turner, who famously declared in 1893 that the frontier had “closed” three years earlier, and with it, a distinctive element of American identity had closed as well. Turner’s 1893 essay revolutionized how historians thought about the American past, as he pointed to the process of westward movement as being the core of American distinctiveness. The frontier was where civilization met savagery and the wilderness, where Europeans became Americans, marked by values of individualism and democracy. Turner’s essay also had the curious effect of creating a significant rupture localized at the year 1890, a chasm that left historians with few conceptual tools with which to frame the history of the American West during the 20th century. If American exceptionalism died in 1890, was there anything worth writing about after that date?

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“We Feel that it is due Joseph Smith…that We Embody Every Act and Word in the History of the Last Days”: A Glimpse into the Difficulties of Wilford Woodruff, Assistant Church Historian

Continued from a former post.

Wilford Woodruff was having a tough time in his new assignment as Assistant Church Historian. After his appointement at the 1856 April General Conference, he was anxious to get started and optimistic about his possibilities. The first couple months, however, ended up being more difficult than he had expected. First, he came down with a crippling disease that kept him away from the office for several weeks–in fact, he wrote that he couldn’t even leave his bed for quite some time. Finally, towards the end of May, he was able to put in his first full day’s work with his new duties, writing to George A. Smith (current Church Historian and on a mission in the East Coast), “I am now calculating to devote my time [to the history].”[1]

Prior to Woodruff’s call, George A. Smith, Thomas Bullock, and the others working in the Historian’s Office had worked on “compiling the History of Joseph Smith from April 1st 1840 to his death on June 27, 1844.”[2] In May 1856, the only thing left to be completed was the Prophet’s last day’s in Carthage. However, this turned out to be a lot more difficult than Woodruff had expected because of incomplete records. On June 24th, he noted in his journal that, “We find a great

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New JMH Editor: Martha P. Taysom

For those of you who received a MHA newsletter this week, this is not new. But, I figured I would transcribe it on here for those who haven’t heard yet.

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“Oh! Woman, thought I, where is thy shame”: William I. Appleby, Intermarriage, and the Ban

Although I have drafted this post, I acknowledge that the idea for it and one of the sources comes from frequent commenter and guestblogger Steve Fleming.

As Connell O’Donovan has shown in his brilliant research on Walker Lewis and the origins of the Priesthood ban, Brigham Young initially did not see black skin as an impediment to a man holding the priesthood (unless otherwise noted, all quotations come from O’Donovan’s article). In fact, as late as March 1847, Young is quoted as saying that

Its [that is, priesthood restrictions] nothing to do with the blood for [from] one blood has God made all flesh, we

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