This month’s Ensign contains a fascinating little article describing Joseph Smith’s seven journals. The authors, two friends of mine, are editors on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Mark Ashurst-McGee (MA, USU; PhD. candidate, ASU) is editing journals from the 1830s. Alex Smith (MA, BYU) is editing Smith’s journals from 1841-April 1843. Mark is also editing the journals from April 1843 to June 1844. They’re both excellent scholars and likely know more about these journals, in terms of content, physical description, and provenance, than anyone alive. Alex has worked directly with the Nauvoo journal, The Book of the Law of the Lord, which previous scholars such as Scott Faulring and Michael Marquardt have not had access to.

The 6 page article gives summaries of the seven journals and also includes images of the artifacts. We also get (more…)

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Sitting in front of the fireplace at my in-law’s this evening, I began chatting with my wife’s 93-year-old grandmother about her life growing up in San Juan County, Utah. She began by telling me again about the hole-in-the-rockers, the original Mormon settlers of the Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello region in southeastern Utah who had hacked their way through the desert in one of the most incredible colonization missions in Western history. (more…)

This previous week, while I was home in Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife and I attended the wedding of an old friend from high school.  This friend, who grew up a member of the Wesleyan Church, was married at Perkins Chapel (located on Southern Methodist University’s campus at the Perkins School of Theology).  The ceremony was beautiful, and it was fun to see old friends and catch up with each of them.  Much to my wife’s chagrin, though, I couldn’t set aside the aspiring religious scholar in me, and was fascinated with the chapel’s architecture and layout, the wedding liturgy, and everything else. 

The following are a few of my observations. (more…)

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Warning: Plot spoilers follow.  

Tonight my girlfriend and I attended an advance screening of the forthcoming movie, Emma Smith: My Story. It was, to say the least, better than we had expected. I’m not a film critic, so I cannot critique the movie based on editing, music, camera angles, or even dialogue. However, none of these more aesthetic characteristics stuck out as being “bad” to me, despite being told before hand that the movie was still very rough. If I came into this movie with little historical (more…)

Justin’s recent post at Mormon Wasp describes the latest Jack Chick anti-Mormon comic book, The Enchanter. Chick’s comic contains a picture of Joseph Smith, dressed in full Nauvoo Legion attire, saying: “If the people let us alone, we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion with the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood…from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a 2nd Muhammad, whose motto in treating for peace was ‘the Al-Qur’an or the sword.’ So sha (more…)

Recently released from Mercer University Press, Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, edited by Donald W. Musser and David L. Paulsen, promises to be a tome of interest to both Mormons and Christians alike who are interested in dialogue. Martin Marty seems to think so. “When I agreed to read the manuscript and write the foreword,” Marty writes, “I don’t think I anticipated the scope, detail, and depth of this one. Now I pass it along to other readers who will find that such scope, detail, and depth represent gifts to everyone who has interest and concern for ‘the (more…)

Continuing on a previous post from earlier this week, I would now like to discuss a specific example of Mormon folklore. In preparation for the Folklore Society of Utah Conference this Saturday, I have collected close to 100 interviews of college-aged students regarding the practice of polygamy. I have discovered that as a result of the Church being virtually silent when it comes to the purposes of polygamy in authoritative discourse and writings, the most common way of learning about it is through folklore. This has lead to a wide diversity on when it was initiated, why it was practiced, and what will happen with it concerning the future. (more…)

Over at Religion in American History, John Fea asks:

Which American religious historians are the best writers?

Being unimaginative today, we’re going to ask the same question at the Juvenile Instructor, but modified to Mormon history. Who’s the Joseph Ellis of Mormon history/studies?

I received in the mail yesterday the program for the Winter Meeting of the American Society of Church History, to be held January 3-6, 2008 in Washington, D.C.  Because of all of the discussion lately on how Mormonism fits into larger American historical frameworks, I was anxious to see how many sessions of the ASCH meeting discussed Mormonism. I knew of one already, and was pleased to find an additional session focusing on Mormonism, both of which look great.  Both sessions are (more…)

In 1884, William Jordan Flake, Mormon pioneer and co-founder of Snowflake, Arizona, was charged with unlawful cohabitation.  Because he pleaded guilty to the charge, he was sentenced to six months in the Yuma Territorial Prison (as opposed to other Arizona polygamists who fought the charges and were consequently sentenced to three and-a-half years in the Detroit House of Corrections in Michigan).[1]

Flake’s oldest son, Charles Love Flake, was serving a mission in the Southern States at the time of his father’s (more…)

Mark Ashurst-McGee is an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers, Journals Series. His M.A. thesis, which treats Joseph Smith’s involvement in folk magic, has received some attention here in the ‘nacle, and everyone wants to know when he’ll get around to publishing it. Mark is currently a PhD. candidate at Arizona State University, writing his dissertation on Joseph Smith’s political thought. He was kind enough to provide a writeup of the recent Princeton Conference for the (more…)

We have all heard the stories. Joseph never losing a game in stick-pull, the Japanese bomber who’s bomb wouldn’t release while flying over the Laie Temple during the attack on Pearl Harbor, the hundreds of Three Nephite Stoies, the thousands of J. Golden Kimball stories, etc. Our culture is absolutely filled with folkloric stories. This has been noticed by outside scholars, and almost every major folklore conference has several sessions discussing Mormon folklore. Some have even suggested the the Mormon Culture has more folklore stories than any other subculture in America. (more…)

Welcome to the new home of The Juvenile Instructor. We hope the new features make it easier and more convenient for all of our readers.  A big thanks to J. Stapley of Splendid Sun and By Common Consent for creating the new layout. 

Ok, it probably won’t be a debate. But today at 11 am (MST) Ron Barney, of the Church Archives, and Will Bagley of Blood of the Prophets fame will be discussing the John V. Long Papers on KUER’s Radio West, with Doug Fabrizio. Rare documents dealer Ken Sanders will also weigh in on the discussion. Here’s the description: (more…)

The latest John Whitmer Historical Association newsletter arrived in the mail this week, and it contained some exciting information about the future of JWHA. In addition to including David King Landrith’s summary of the Kirtland Conference in September (originally posted at Mormon Mentality), the newsletter discussed some of the new directions John Hamer is steering JWHA, including the advent of John Whitmer Books. I picked up a copy of Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism (ed. by Newell G. Bringhurst and John Hamer) at the conference in September, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It includes essays on various Latter Day Saint schisms by a variety of noteworthy authors, including Robin Jensen, Vickie Speek, Michael Marquardt, Craig L. Foster, David Howlett, and Roger Launius. All of the books printed thus far are available only in paperback, though I have heard rumors that there are plans to begin publishing hardcover books. (more…)

Carmon Hardy, in his article “Self-Blame and the Manifesto”, draws a parallel between elements of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and Mormon explanations for the Manifesto. After tenaciously clinging to “The Principle”, and after repeated affirmations of the justness of the polygamous cause, the Mormon people had to account for the cessation of plural marriage. Increasingly, Latter-day Saints looked inward and cited a failure on the part of the Latter-day Saints as the reason the promised protection did not come. An excerpt from the Anthon Lund diaries illustrates this view: (more…)

There has been considerable question concerning how we should interpret the omission of the phrase “as does the Bible” from the Introduction to the Book of Mormon. The phrase first appeared thus in the 1981 edition: “It is a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americans and contains, as does the Bible, the fullness of the everlasting gospel.” However, in the 1992 Spanish-language edition, the phrase “as does the Bible” was removed. The change was reflected in subsequent foreign-language (re)printings, and first appeared in English in the 2004 Doubleday edition. (more…)

As certain babblers in Zion shared everything but their testimonies from the pulpit in Church today[1] (we had stake conference last week so this today was fast and testimony meeting), I began flipping through the hymn book, reading some of those obscure old hymns we never sing. I lighted on Orson F. Whitney’s poetic little reverie “The Wintry Day, Descending to Its Close” and got a good dose of manifest destiny in the 4th verse:

The wilderness, that naught before would yield, (more…)

A friend of mine mentioned to me last week that he hoped that the John V. Long documents would be sold for a million dollars…and then prove to contain nothing of worth, just to prove the conspiracy theorists wrong. The discovery of two original and unpublished Eliza R. Snow poems in the collection may not shed light on Long’s mysterious death, but they do begin to confirm the tangible historical value of the collection. ABC4.com reports that the two poems were found in the scrapbook of Sarah Long, wife of John V. Long.  (more…)

One of the objectives for most Mormon historians today (including this blog) is to attempt to place Joseph Smith within his American framework. One author who has succeeded the most in this attempt is Richard Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling. However, in his address at The Worlds of Joseph Smith Symposium in the Library of Congress, he spoke about putting limits on this type of approach. In it, he makes several arguments as to why Joseph should be placed within a larger framework than just American religious history.

First, he stated why he feels this “transnational” approach is necessary. (more…)

Early Latter-day Saints saw the world through martyrological lenses. To suffer persecution was the ultimate sign of chosenness and the Saints themselves used the memory their persecutions to draw distinct boundaries between themselves and their neighbors that had not suffered. Given this persecution discourse, many Nauvoo Saints that had not been in Missouri in 1838 yearne (more…)

The news that the introduction to the 2006 Doubleday edition of The Book of Mormon contains significant changes seems to be all the rage on the bloggernacle today.  Peggy Fletcher Stack’s article in the SL Tribune this morning announced that the introduction’s previous claim that the Lamanites “are the principal ancestors of the American Indians” has been altered to read that the Lamanites “are among the ancestors of the American Indians.” (more…)

One word can speak volumes says this morning’s Salt Lake Tribune.  It carried a small story on a change to a single word in the introduction of the Book of Mormon in the recent Doubleday edition.  Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote the introduction in 1981 for the then new edition of the Book of Mormon and it contained this statement:

“After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the prin (more…)

On Saturday, November 17 at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, the Folklore Society of Utah will be hosting its Annual Conference.  The keynote speaker is William A. “Bert” Wilson, Emeritus professor of English at BYU and past president of the Association for Mormon Letters.  He will be speaking on “What’s True in Mormon Folklore?” The Contribution of Folklore to Mormon Studies.” 

In addition, two of our permabloggers–Stanley Thayne and Ben Park–will be presenting pap (more…)

Modern Mormons, it seems, are quite fond of ”romanticizing the Reformation,” meaning that Mormons often portray Luther, Arminius, and other Protestant Reformers as being sort of proto-Latter-day Saints.  In my experience, this tendency is not limited to seeing Reformers as such, but often extends to Christopher Columbus and America’s Founding Fathers.  However, this is far from being a recent development in Mormonism’s worldview.  Parley P. Pratt, noted apostle and editor of The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, included the following in the June 1841 (Vol (more…)

Scholars typically seek to locate Mormon history within two wide frameworks: that of American religious history and that of the history of the American West. Jan Shipps, in her review of literature on Mormonism in the West, describes the situation as a donut hole. In her essay, “Gentiles, Mormons, and the History of American West,” Shipps argues that historians of the West have skipped Utah, “circling all around the Great Basin, taking into account and telling (more…)

As a follow-up to the previous post on the latest in the Warren Jeffs saga, it appears that Jeffs attempted to hang himself while imprisoned in Purgatory Correctional Facility in January.  Brooke Adams of the Salt Lake Tribune reports that despite a motion opposing their release, court documents released today reveal that shortly after Jeffs’s confession to his brother that he w (more…)

Matthew N. Schmalz, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Holy Cross, has an article entitled “Meet the Mormons: From the Margins to the Mainstream”  over at Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics, and Culture (hat-tip to American Religious History blog).  Schmalz discusses his personal history with Mormonism (“It was Kolob and associated exotica that first drew me to the study of Mormonism” he says), as well as how his students at Holy Cross react to the study of Mormonism (“I’ve found that my stud (more…)

Tonight KJZZ featured an hour long documentary on the Joseph Smith Papers Project.  It was billed as a television foreward. 

The first 15-20 minutes of the documentary consisted largely of devotional material such as a series of interviews with LDS Church conference goers about how they felt about Joseph Smith.  We then proceeded to some discussion of past (and ongoing) efforts to compile and edit the pap (more…)