No, this post is not meant to address Mormon history myths promulgated in Seminary or Sunday School, but rather the possible historical misconceptions that are accepted and presented among the academy. (more…)

This was announced last week, and I thought I’d post this as a reminder. It should be a great time. (more…)

Dallin Lewis is a graduate student in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame, having earned his BA in English from BYU. His interests surround eighteenth-century literature, religion and lit, environmental criticism, and literature and science topics broadly. He is also interested in Mormon Studies and analyzing scripture from a literary/textual lens. But given the option, he’d much rather just hang out with his wife and daughter.

Who are the Nephites? This question hovers over our many different encounters with the Book of Mormon, whether through personal study, group discussion, or scholarly analysis. We search and mine their record and histories for spiritual truths and gospel principles, but we still know very little about a significant civilization that lasted over 1000 years. In the words of Moroni, we speak as if they were present, but we know that they are not. (more…)

My battery is almost dead and my power cord is not working, so unfortunately, no notes will be taken tomorrow, and I won’t be able to follow up on this until Saturday evening, so if I made a mistake on these awards (doing them from memory), please leave a  comment so one of my cobloggers can correct it. Tonight at the awards banquet, the following awards were given (see past award recipients here): (more…)

What follows are some thoughts I’ve been tossing around for awhile now, but are offered pretty much off-the-cuff this evening. The subject of those thoughts is well-worn and exceedingly vague—Mormon studies. (more…)

The more I look at the development of Mormon thought, the more I’m convinced that the development of materialism drastically shaped late Nauvoo and early Utah (and beyond) theology. (more…)

In preparing my priesthood lesson on baptisms for the dead for tomorrow (lesson 41), I’ve been going through the omissions from the text. As JNS pointed out awhile back, some of these omissions are pretty interesting. Here’s the text of Joseph Smith’s October 1841 speech on baptisms for the dead (more…)

George U. Hubbard. When the Saints Came Marching In: A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Denton, Texas 1958-2008. Denton, Texas: Tattersall Publishing, 2009. x + 326 pp. $15.00. Hardback, ISBN: 978-0-9679775-3-9.

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While preparing my review (see here) of the recently published When the Saints Came Marching In: A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Denton, Texas 1958-2008 by George Hubbard, I came across a few items of local poetry that I’ll include here: (more…)

From the Utah State University website:

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Brian D. Birch is director of Utah Valley University’s Religious Studies Program and serves on the Board of Directors for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. He is director of the recently created Mormon Chapter of the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy, and a member of the steering committee for the American Academy of Religion’s Mormon Studies Consultation. His latest book, Mormonism and Christian Thought is forthcoming through Oxford University Press. Brian participated in the September 8, 2009 informal discussion on Religious Studies and Mormon Studies at the University of Utah (see this announcement) and, like Dr. Phil Barlow, has been kind enough to share a version of his remarks here at the Juvenile Instructor.

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Philip Barlow is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. Dr. Barlow has written Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991); as well as the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Oxford, 2000, co-authored with Edwin Scott Gaustad); and with Mark Silk co-edited Religion and Public Life in the Midwest: America’s Common Denominator? (Alta Mira Press, 2004). He is past president of the Mormon History Association, 2005-2006. On September 8, 2009 at the University of Utah, an informal discussion was held about the place of Mormon Studies in the larger field of Religious Studies. See this announcement. We’d like to thank Dr. Barlow, who has been kind enough to share his prepared remarks for that discussion here at the Juvenile Instructor. (more…)

This review, originally appearing in a slightly different version in Mormon Historical Studies 10:1, is reprinted here with the kind permission of Alex Baugh and Jacob Olmstead, editor and book reviews editor, respectively.

It is a mark of the fascination that Joseph Smith inspires in students of religion and religious history (the present author not excepted) to the present day that, despite the plentitude of biographies, specialized studies, movies, hymns, visual art and all the rest that his life has evoked even only in the past sixty years, this volume is still welcome. (more…)

Continued from Part 1. (more…)

This post wraps up the series on Parley Pratt’s influential autobiography. As a review, and also a reference, here are all of the intelligent and insightful contributions: (more…)

From Joseph Spencer:

A conference, “Latter-day Saint Readings of Revelation 21-22,” will be
held on September 25th on the UT-Austin campus, in the Theater in the
Texas Union (Room 2.228). (more…)

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18 ¶ And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. (more…)

Continued from Part 1.

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The need of specialization has the drawback of limiting the scope of one’s work. As I’ve stumbled through the study of history, this has often been a frustration; the academic study of history is quite focussed. This is needed to gain the expertise one needs in historical writing, but as Richard Fletcher says in preface to his The Barbarian Conversion “Professional historians today are expected to know more and more about less and less.” (more…)

Terryl L. Givens, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford’s Very Short Introduction Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 125 pp + appendixes and index.

If you are looking for a book that focuses on the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, what it tells us about antebellum religious culture, or even how it shaped (or was shaped by) Joseph Smith’s mind, then this is not the book for you. (more…)

David C. Knowlton is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Utah Valley University and author of a number of important studies of Mormonism in Latin America. We’re pleased he has agreed to provide some thoughts on Parley P. Pratt’s mission to Chile and the Latin/Anglo American divide which will be more fully articulated in a pair of forthcoming articles.

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