“War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives”
Claremont Graduate University
March 18-19, 2011

Under the sponsorship of
The LDS Council on Mormon Studies
and the
Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
at the University of Notre Dame (more…)

…but vote for us anyway: Niblets Awards for 2010. Meaning, even though the judges aren’t separating the “best blog” voting into “big blogs” and “group blogs” (we either won or tied the latter category for the last three years, I believe), Juvenile Instructor is still deserving of some votes.

Also, several JI permas are up for “best blogger,” so vote for them as well!

It’s my opinion that the further we get from the publication of John Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire, a wildly inventive examination of Mormon origins through the lens of various esoteric European -isms (including occultism, the quest for hidden and often mysterical knowledge;  hermeticism, a particular brand of the occult supposedly derived from ancient Egypt and for Brooke basically a restorationist concept that sought to regain Adam’s access to God, and the non -ism alchemy, or the transformation of the mundane into the exalted) the more interesting a book it seems.  (more…)

I have been doing research in the Wilford Woodruff journals for a piece on Woodruff’s use of memory. Today I found an unusual entry from May 1887. On the 26th, Woodruff, along with Francis M. Lyman and John Henry Smith, were in the St. George Temple and decided to weigh and measure each other. (more…)

[This is a repost from March 24, 2010.]

Perhaps perpetuating a horrible stereotype about historians (stuck in the past, not up on the cutting edge of technology), the JI is finally on Facebook (I guess you can search for “Juvenile Instructor” and it’ll come up) and Twitter (@MormonHistoryJI). So take a second to  become a Fan or to follow us.

The British Library at St Pancras, London has a first edition Book of Mormon available for view in its rare book reading room. I initially discovered this as a BYU London Centre study abroad student in 2007. As I looked up sources on Sir Robert Walpole for British Politics research at the BL, I also decided to see what LDS sources the Library might also hold. I discovered the first edition in the catalogue. As a former BYU Nauvoo student, the prospect of holding and paging through a first edition Book of Mormon was extremely exciting. I quickly requested the item, as well as those for my other research, and then raced over to King’s Cross/St Pancras. (more…)

Wish I could be there. Our own Brett D. will be presenting. Congrats, Brett! (more…)

In the late 1960s, a black woman named Wynetta Martin joined the church in California, finding in Mormonism a loving God with whom she could identify. Martin moved to Utah at a time when the church was seeking to diversify its public face in response to boycotts of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and BYU. It was therefore a combination of her own tenacity as an individual (she drove all night from Los Angeles to make her audition) and the church’s need to adapt to changing circumstances that allowed Martin to become the first African American member of the Tabernacle Choir and the first black instructor at BYU (she taught classes on “Black Culture” in the Nursing department). (more…)

H/T: Keith Erekson.

[forwarded message] Please join us on Thursday, February 17, at 4:00 p.m., for a talk by Prof. Paul Gutjahr about his forthcoming book, The Book of Mormon: The Biography of a Book.  This book, which will be published by thePrinceton University Press in its series on “The Lives of Great Religious Books,” tells the story of The Book of Mormon from its publication in 1830 to the present day.  Professor Gutjahr states in his abstract: (more…)

Hitting shelves this April is this long-awaited collection of essays edited by Paul Reeve and Michael S. Van Wagenen and which features the work of two JIers: Matt and Stan. The book’s webpage states that,

Mormons gave distinctive meanings to supernatural legends and events, but their narratives incorporated motifs found in many cultures. Many such historical legends and beliefs found adherents down to the present. This collection employs folklore to illuminate the cultural and religious history of a people.

The contents: (more…)

(Part whatever of my ongoing investigation into the cultural intersections of religion and basketball; part I, on the intertwining cultural meanings of Mormonism and the Utah Jazz, can be found here; part II, a review of the religious pilgrimage of Cleveland Cavaliers bit player Lance Allred, here; part III, on the Puritan antecedents of LeBron James nemesis Dan Gilbert, here.)

The author of Holy Scripture is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves. So, whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal.   That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it.    Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division. For as the Apostle says (Hebrews 10:1) the Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and Dionysius says [Coel. Hier. i] “the New Law itself is a figure of future glory.” Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do. Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense.

- Thomas Aquinas,Summa Theologica 1.1.10.

Like Walt Whitman, and Holy Scripture properly understood, Jimmer Fredette contains multitudes.  (more…)

Sehat, David. The Myth of American Religious Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Once again, the issues of religious freedom and freedom of conscience have surfaced in public discussion and popular awareness, both in the United States and abroad. Though often invisible in modern democratic life, these major issues have continued to rise to prominence episodically in American history, and it appears that we may be in or coming into one of those episodes. Between the debates over the building of Islamic mosques in various parts of the United States, the emerging conflict of the prosecution of gay rights with religiously-informed resistance, and the likely prospect of another religiously-informed presidential election – the matter of religious freedom is increasingly at issue in the United States. This is, of course, to say nothing of other global developments like the recent persecution of Coptic Christians, the Pope’s consequent advocacy of religious freedom, and other religious freedom issues around the world. (more…)

This is a reminder that the deadline for submitting an entry for any of the annual awards from the Mormon History Association is fast approaching (submissions for each category must be received by February 15, 2011 at the respective email addresses indicated in the linked post).

For those students out there, please do submit your work for consideration in the Juanita Brooks Undergraduate and Graduate Paper Awards—someone needs to dethrone Matt Bowman. (more…)

One of the first references to the LDS Church in London’s newspaper The Times occurred on 6 November 1838, when The Times correspondent on Ireland made a passing derogatory remark on a “scene of uproar and confusion that would be sufficient to disgrace an assemblage of Mormonites.” The author also stated that these “Mormonites” were led “by that transatlantic ruffian who styles himself the true prophet of God.” [1] Nearly three years later, another article in the news section stated that “A good deal of curiosity has been excited in this city during the last few days by the departure of great numbers of deluded country people (Mormonites), old and young, for the ‘New Jerusalem’ in America.” The author believed that these “unfortunate dupes” were motivated by the idea “that on their arrival at the American paradise they shall be made young again and shall live for a thousand years.” [2] (more…)

As I worked on a hypothetical comps list for Mormon history, it quickly became apparent that there have been a large number of important articles over the decades—a point that was made even more vivid in the responses. This post aims to outline the most important, best written, required-for-a-legitimate-overview-of-Mormonism articles over the past half century. (more…)

The Journal of Mormon History 37:1 (Winter 2011) (more…)