Sacred Language
By April 22, 2008
One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred.
By April 22, 2008
One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred.
By April 22, 2008
In honor of Earth Day, here is an excerpt from an 1860 sermon by Brigham Young. I’m intrigued by how his counsel to cultivate the earth figures into his eschatology.
By April 21, 2008
By Margaret Young
I won’t give his real name. Apparently, he is a remarkable man, a supremely talented jazz musician who has played with Duke Ellington’s orchestra. He joined the Church before the priesthood revelation in 1978 and so, as an African American, he understood that he would not have the same privileges as white Mormons. The Era magazine (precursor to the Ensign) did a story about him, which inspired at least one other Black musician to stay in the Church during some difficult times.
By April 17, 2008
This is not a verbatim report. It has been slightly reworked for clarity and smoothness from notes I took as I typed almost as fast as I could. Any errors in facts, or lack of grace in delivery are my responsibility. Enjoy!
By April 16, 2008
If you live practically anywhere on the Wasatch Front, you are within range of one of Bill MacKinnon’s speaking engagements in his whirlwind book tour, promoting his latest publication, At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858, volume one of a two volume history of the Utah War and the tenth volume in the Kingdom in the West Series.
By April 16, 2008
It is my pleasure to announce another big addition to the Juvenile Instructor…Matt Bowman. Matt joins Heidi, Stan, and myself as Bushman Summer Seminar alumni that blog at the JI. He joins us after a successful tenure at Mormon Mentality. Here’s what he has to say about himself.
Matt Bowman is a doctoral candidate in American religious history at Georgetown, and holds a master’s in American history from the University of Utah. He’s interested in Christian theology, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and, occasionally dabbles in Mormon history, noir, and the movies. He’s published in Religion and American Culture: a Journal of Interpretation, The Journal of Mormon History, the John Whitmer Journal, and the Utah Historical Quarterly.
Let’s welcome Matt.
By April 15, 2008
“I held those remains before they were buried. I saw the bullet holes in the bones. Until that point, it was just what people had told you about the massacre, but when you saw the bodies it became real and undeniable.”
-Robert Paul Wilson, grandson of one of the surviving MMM children, cited in Novak, xiv.
By April 14, 2008
I hope this isn’t a topic that has been discussed here before. I have been thinking lately about what it means to practice academic history. The recent post and comments about the new Emma Smith film, in correlation with my seemingly never-ending journey along the path of professionalization, have caused me to ask myself if the history undertaken by trained historians is any different than the study of the past by others. I hope that I am not constructing a straw man, but it seems that some people in the church have developed a sort of hostility toward those that focus their academic studies on Mormonism. My personal opinion about such hostilities is that they represent a reflection of how non-historians don’t really understand historians and their methods. This misunderstanding causes them to label such historians as threats.
By April 14, 2008
The following is a portion of my research from last summer’s Bushman seminar, in which I examined how Mormons between 1890 and 1940 vacillated between embracing and marginalizing their polygamous past.
With Protestants continuing to be suspicious of a possible attempt by the Latter-day Saints to bring back the practice of plural marriage, Mormons at times narrated their polygamous past leading up to the Manifesto to emphasize their loyalty to the nation. In this context, the potential to marginalize the importance of polygamy was evident. For example, in 1916 Talmage told a news reporter that “when the federal statutes prohibiting its practice were declared constitutional, plural marriage was forbidden by action of the Church, officially assembled in general conference.”[1] By arguing that Mormons immediately discontinued the practice of plural marriage when the anti-polygamy statutes were declared constitutional
By April 12, 2008
All of us have by now been made aware of the new movie about Emma Smith. If you’re not up to speed about it yet, please see here for David G.’s excellent review. This post is concerned, not with the film itself, but with the discussion of polygamy that was included in an article in the 11 April edition of the Deseret News.
© 2025 – Juvenile Instructor
Recent Comments
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…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”