By August 6, 2019
On Friday, October 11, 2019, the Joseph Smith Papers Project will host the third annual Joseph Smith Papers conference. Due to the overwhelming public interest in past conferences, this year’s event will take place at the Conference Center Theater in order to accommodate all who wish to attend. The theater is located on the west side of the Conference Center (60 West North Temple St., Salt Lake City, Utah 84150).
By August 5, 2019
In the July 15, 1891 issue of the (original) Juvenile Instructor, Mormon apostle and editor George Q. Cannon penned an editorial entitled, “Obedience — Do not Kill.” As that title implies, Cannon’s editorial contains both advice to parents on raising obedient children (“the best family government is that in which the judgment of children is appealed to and they are shown, by kind words, that the requests made of them are for their benefit and happiness”) and a denunciation of violence and bloodshed.
Cannon’s aim is broad — he decries both murder and, in words that seem as foreign to modern Mormonism as polygamy — hunting for sport. But his primary focus is on the shedding of innocent human blood, and in light of additional mass shootings this past weekend, Cannon’s words are all too relevant:
The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase in our day. This is partly due to the increase of firearms and to their cheapness, also to the fashion which prevails in many quarters of carrying deadly weapons. The frequency with which shooting is done also has its effect to break down the feeling of sacredness which should surround human life.
George Q. Cannon, “Obedience — Do not Kill,” Juvenile Instructor 26:14 (July 15, 1891), 443
By July 31, 2019
Military chaplains are tasked with leading worship, teaching the faithful, and burying the dead, among other things. In her book, Ronit Stahl lays out a broad narrative that argues that the military chaplaincy was responsible for much more than the souls of soldiers; chaplains may have a distinct mandate of spiritual care, but the chaplaincy itself was involved in a much bigger project: that of reflecting and shaping modern American responses to religious pluralism, issues of race and gender, and the separation of church and state. As America changed and the hegemony of Protestantism waned, the chaplaincy underwent changes too. In eight chapters and an epilogue, Stahl demonstrates the shift in demographics and public life that took the chaplaincy from a generically Protestant institution to a tri-faith model accommodating Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, to the situation today where 221 faiths are recognized in one form or another.
By July 29, 2019
Juvenile Instructor is grateful for a JI-emeritus writer, Brett Dowdle, for writing this review! Dr. Dowdle is a historian for the Joseph Smith Papers Project and holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas Christian University.
Review, Thomas G. Alexander, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
Despite its immense popularity, few genres of historical writing are more complex than that of biography. Those figures who tend to merit the kind of biographies that will be widely read generally carry with them a host of popular perceptions and myths that either border on demonization or hagiographic adoration. In most cases, the best biographies must ultimately find someplace in the muddy middle, displaying the complexity and humanity of the subject. Thomas Alexander’s recent biography of Brigham Young does an admirable job of finding just such a place for the controversial leader. The result is a highly readable and fast-paced biography that is approachable to both trained historians and the interested public.
By July 23, 2019
UNITED STATES | UT-Salt Lake City
ID 239568, Type: Temporary Full-Time
POSTING INFO
Posting Dates: 07/22/2019 – 08/05/2019
Job Family: Human Resources
Department: Church History Department
PURPOSES
The Church History Library is seeking a candidate for a one-year, full-time (40 hours/week) paid internship opportunity working with archivists in arranging, describing, and preparing records for digitization which are related to the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members.
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QUALIFICATIONS
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Must be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently temple worthy.
POSTING NOTICE/MORE INFO.
Please Note: All positions are subject to close without notice.
Find out more about the many benefits of Church Employment at http://careers.churchofjesuschrist.org.
By July 12, 2019
So Universal Theosophy having recently put Thomas Taylor’s 1804 translation of Plato’s works online has made it a whole lot easier to go through the edition of Plato’s works that would have been available in Joseph Smith’s day. I’ve argued that Smith seemed to have used Taylor’s translation, but I was still surprised to have just discovered the striking similarities between certain passages in Smith’s 1832 account of his First Vision and Taylor’s translation of Plato’s cave allegory from the Republic, especially lines 515 to 517. As I argued last year that Smith seemed to have drawn on the passage just after this for the description of Christ in the Olive Leaf revelation (which he dictated the same year), I do see these similarities as evidence that Smith read, knew, and used Plato. And that fact that Plato showed up so prominently in this earliest account of this founding event, I would argue, is a very big deal.
Here’s a write up that I just put together.
By July 8, 2019
This post will focus on digitized periodicals and publications available through Utah archives related to Mormon history. All of these sources are very helpful for doing research, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular has a rich history of magazines, though many of these magazines ended in 1970 with the push towards correlation and consolidation. Even though this post is focused on publications, I will also include a few other helpful links and materials. Before I get going, I want to express my gratitude to all the archivists and employees at so many archives who worked to make this material available. These are such rich sources, and being able to access so many remotely is just awesome. And it wouldn’t be possible without all the labor these people put in.
By July 5, 2019
The Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Documents 5: October 1835-January 1838 provides an in-depth series of sources relating to building of the Kirtland Temple, economic collapse related to the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society, the expulsion of Mormons Missouri, and religious dissent. In this post, I’d like to highlight how a teacher might use documents from this volume in a broader American History class.[1]
By July 4, 2019
Quincy Newell’s biography of Jane Manning James is a significant and important piece of scholarship, not only for the field of Latter-day Saint history, but also for African American, women’s, Western, and the larger field of American religious history. Newell carefully takes readers through these histories and shows how Jane’s life connects all of them. This is a critical aspect of Newell’s methodology because even though Jane’s life is fairly well-documented, scholars must necessarily rely on the historical context of Jane’s life to help tell her story. Fortunately for her readers, this is something that Newell excels at. As J Stuart pointed out in an earlier round table post, Newell uses words like “perhaps” and “likely” when describing possible interpretations of the events in Jane’s life rather than imposing her own narrative. Indeed, Newell’s work serves as an example of how historians should approach subjects with limited documentary evidence while still connecting that subject to wide historical developments.
One of the merits of Newell’s work is that she provides us a view of Mormonism through Jane’s life, which in and of itself is a “history of Mormonism from below” (pg. 135). Mormon history has been told and retold through the lives and tenures of its leaders—important white males—and by subverting that structure, Newell illuminates the lived religious experience of an African American woman who made the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints her religious home in spite of all that she went through. This “from below” approach encourages research centering on how women of any and all races participated in Mormonism from the nineteenth century to the present. As Newell and others have demonstrated, scholars are only beginning to scratch the surface of Latter-day Saint history that incorporates source content created by women, particularly as it relates to women of color.
Newell’s Your Sister in the Gospel is not the final word on Jane’s story. Instead, it is a foundational monograph for future studies on other Latter-day Saints who were not in powerful leadership positions and whose experience as a member of the church was impacted by their race and gender. Indeed, the appendices included in the back of the book (including two patriarchal blessings) make it more of an initiative or starting point than an exhaustive conclusion. It’s fair to say that Newell hopes that these primary sources will help other scholars interested in black Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century and that scholars in other fields will benefit from the eased accessibility of these documents.
In the epilogue, Newell briefly mentions how Jane has been remembered by Latter-day Saints in the last few decades and especially in the last three years. Jane is a very interesting historical subject, but so is her legacy and the narratives that are claimed and told (or performed) about her at certain moments in time. I’m particularly intrigued by the possibilities for studies on the memory of Jane and how both black Latter-day Saints and the church at large have utilized her connection to the life of Joseph Smith and early church history. Your Sister in the Gospel provides a sound historical basis for such studies and will inform further memory projects about Jane in the future. And in its own way, Newell’s book is as much a presentation of historical research as it is a part of the zeitgeist in Mormon studies and more recent popular trends in Latter-day Saint culture. This timely biography of Jane Manning James succeeds in informing and participating in current memory-making developments.
By June 28, 2019
UNITED STATES | UT-Salt Lake City
ID 237835, Type: Regular Full-Time
POSTING INFO
Posting Dates: 06/28/2019 – 07/12/2019
Job Family: Library, Research&Preservation
Department: Church History Department
PURPOSES
The Church History Department announces an opening for a historian/writer with an emphasis on the global history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Duties will include researching and writing, in collaboration with others, histories of the global Church for both scholarly and member audiences.
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