With Stephen J. Fleming

Normally articles take a back seat to monographs in terms of impact, but Lester E. Bush’s 1973 Dialogue article “Mormonisms’ Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview” stands as a master work of scholarship that not only revolutionized how historians, sociologists, and other academics view the church’s history of race relations, but was also a significant factor leading to OD 2. (more…)

Dale Topham is a 4th-year Ph.D student in American history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. His research interests include the American West, the Southwestern Borderlands, and environmental history. He received his B.A. and M.A. in American history from BYU, where he studied the fur trade (he was also my TA when I took US History, 1890-1945 from Brian Cannon as an undergrad, so we go back aways). While at BYU, he worked for two years as a researcher and writer for the Education in Zion exhibit. Dale is not only a top-notch historian but he’s also an Orem native, which adds to this review of Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, which we’ve discussed before on the blog. See also here. Farmer’s book has won a ton of awards, most notably the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians. Please welcome Dale and enjoy the review.

On Zion’s Mount, a derivation of Jared Farmer’s Ph.D. dissertation (more…)

If you were to design a graduate seminar on American religious history, and you were allowing yourself one book on Mormon history, what would you pick? It should be a work that extensively engages themes from the wider field, not just Mormon studies. (Since I know almost everyone will pick RSR, I’m going to exclude it from our options.)

And for the Westerners [edit: by this I mean western historians] who read the blog, what book [edit: on Mormon history] would you pick for a West seminar?

For the two Steves, would you pick something different for a history seminar v. a religious studies seminar?

I’ve written previously on ways Mormon historians can transcend the 1890 rupture and begin to conceptualize and integrate the twentieth century into narratives of Mormon history. I suggested that one way to do this is to historicize contemporary issues, such as those surrounding race, gender, and sexuality, and show how the past can illuminate the present. Some may protest that this approach is overly-presentist, but I would argue that all history is presentist to one degree or another, and as historians we should be writing histories that are useful and useable. (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…)

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…)

A few minutes ago I was reading a Talking Points Memo article on the guy who took an AR-15 rifle to an Obama event earlier this month. Apparently Chris Broughton attends a fundamentalist Baptist church whose pastor Steven Anderson has prayed that Obama die and go to hell, sentiments that Broughton shares. (more…)

A year ago, almost to the day, I found myself discussing my masters’ thesis on the role of memory and persecution in shaping Mormon identity during the 1840s and 1850s with Mary Richards, a professor of history at BYU. She mentioned wryly that she enjoyed my thesis a great deal, but that she had noted my heavy reliance on the writings of Parley P. Pratt. She suggested in a joking way that perhaps I should change my title to “Parley Pratt’s Memory of Persecution.” I laughed along with her, but defended myself by saying that Pratt had written far more about the persecutions than anyone else. Historian Ken Winn agrees with me, arguing in his Exiles in a Land of Liberty that Pratt was the foremost Mormon commentator on the Missouri conflict (147). (more…)

After months of anticipation, the JI’s Christopher has successfully completed his MA thesis at BYU. The thesis examines the influence of Methodism on early Mormon history, and will doubtless be a valuable contribution. It is available on-line here and I’ve reproduced the abstract after the jump: (more…)

June 8, 1978

To all general and local priesthood officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the world:
Dear Brethren: (more…)

After months of cajoling, Steve Fleming has finally agreed to join the Juvenile Instructor on a permanent basis. Here’s a short bio:

Stephen J. Fleming is a PhD. candidate at UC Santa Barbara in Religious Studies and a 2008 Bushman fellow. Steve received his B.A. in history from BYU and his M.A. from UC Stanislaus, also in history. He would like to write a dissertation on survivals of crypto-Catholicism and resistance to disenchantment from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution. He has been published in Church History, Religion and American Culture, and Max Weber Studies, as well as various Mormon journals and he is currently revising his MA thesis, which treats Mormonism in the Delaware Valley (Philadelphia and surrounding regions) for publication.

Here are the links for Steve’s guest posts:

http://www.juvenileinstructor.org/what-is-our-obligation-the-2008-bushman-seminar/

http://www.juvenileinstructor.org/science-as-a-vocation/

Join us in welcoming Steve.

Likely because the 2008 meeting of the Western History Association was held in SLC, the Spring 2009 issue of the Western Historical Quarterly contains two solid articles on Mormons and Mormonism.

Virginia Scharff, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? A New Turner Thesis” (5-22)

Virginia Scharff is a major historian of gender and women in the West at the University of New Mexico. In her presidential address, Scharff asks why historians tend to write small and safe books, when we should be pursuing interesting topics that matter historically. In answer to her question, Scharff presents a new Turner thesis, one that is perhaps less bold than the original, yet equally as relevant for young scholars seeking inspiration in the field. Rather (more…)

We recently had a stirring discussion over at BCC concerning the causes of the 1838 conflict in Missouri. Much of the discussion concentrated not on the historical evidence that has survived, but on the role of bias in determining what gets included and what gets left out when individuals narrate the past. (more…)

I suspect the FPR folks will accuse me of poaching a post from them, but this has popped up twice now in my email account, and I think it’s interesting. It comes from an interview with biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who grew up as a biblical literalist, went to bible school, and after years of studying the differences in the variant manuscripts of the New Testament, embraced agnosticism. In the interview, Ehrman mentions Mormons: (more…)

Periodically, historians conduct polls among themselves to determine the state of the field. I recently asked a couple dozen youngish historians what were, in their opinions, the top five books in Mormon history/studies today.  By “youngish” I mean under 40 and by “historian” I mean someone with academic training in history or a related discipline (I also included a couple ‘nacle participants who do not have academic training in history but are probably better read in Mormon history than most historians). (more…)

So, I am more than a little embarrassed that almost all of Women’s History month has passed and the JI has not published even one post on women and Mormonism. I was hoping to put together a more analytical post on how gender shaped some of the early Mormon narratives and poems written after the expulsion from Missouri, but that’s a project that will have to wait for now. But here is an Eliza R. Snow poem that describes the Haun’s Mill massacre. How does Snow use gender to shape the memory of the massacre? (more…)

I’m pleased to introduce JI readers to an old friend of mine from BYU, Brant E., who will be guesting with us for a couple of weeks. Here’s Brant’s bio:

I only recently discovered a deep-interest in Mormon history and have been frantically trying to learn as much as I can. I thank the contributors at the JI for keeping me current with some of the current thoughts in Mormon Studies. Currently, I am in the final semester of my MA in American Studies at Penn State. I received a BA also in American Studies from BYU in ‘06. My thesis explores the motivation of Mormon soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

Let’s welcome Brant.

I recently put one of my profs on the spot. He was bragging to the class about how he’s such great friends with the early American historian Alan Taylor, but when I asked if he was friends with Taylor on Facebook, my prof turned red, lowered his head, and confessed that Taylor had rejected his friend request (ok, not really, my prof said he didn’t have a facebook account . . . yet). Anyway, check the JI out on Facebook and become our fan.

http://apps.new.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/the_juvenile_instructor_a_mormon_history_blog/

In my previous post on Howe’s What Hath God Wrought, I discussed Howe’s treatment of Mormon history from the 1820s through 1838. This post will complete my analysis of Howe by examining his discussion of Nauvoo, the exodus, and early Utah history. Let me just reiterate the point of my earlier post-Howe, unlike other historians who treat Mormonism in synthesis histories, has taken the time to get the details right and to engage contemporary Mormon scholarship. Just as he situated early Mormonism in Chapter 8 (“Pursuing the Millennium”) with other millenarian groups in the Early Republic, Howe in Chapter 18 (“Westward the Star of Empire”) includes Nauvoo and Utah within the wider contexts of Manifest Destiny, California, Oregon, and the Mexican-American War. (more…)

You’ll see on our sidebar that Religion Dispatches has done a follow-up article on the debate over the relationship between Mormon Mom blogs and the ‘nacle. While I believe that the reporter misread the debate that occurred over her initial article (I’m not sure many people were really arguing that Mommy Blogs should be excluded from the ‘nacle, but rather that the initial article had ignored and obscured the origins of the ‘nacle), I’m not all that eager to revisit that debate.  Rather, I’m interested in interrogating some of the other claims made in the two Religion Dispatches articles. (more…)