I don’t know a lot about Elder Snow, but I do know that Elder Jensen will be sorely missed. He has been a tremendous advocate for Church History and those who have had even the most passing personal contact with him know him to be a genuine gem of a person.

Back when I was an undergraduate and still very unsure about the course my life would take (I’m a little more sure now, but only a little), through an interesting series of events I was given the opportunity to have lunch with Elder Jensen and Rick Turley in Elder Jensen’s office. Their candor and compassion as well as the wisdom they shared on that occasion gave me some much needed encouragement and helped me move forward. Somewhere in there Elder Jensen made the remark that Rick Turley would be there for a while but he “was just passing through.” Now, that reality is at hand.

Please join me in expressing a heartfelt thank you to Elder Jensen for all of his labors and a hearty welcome to Elder Snow.

It’s time for the yearly round up of recently published and forthcoming Mormon history books. See last year’s list here. Be sure to also check out Ben’s recap of significant scholarship in 2011 and Stapley’s Christmas Gift Book Guide. Be sure to let me know what I missed in the comments. Rumors about book projects are always welcome! Finally, according to the WordPress stats, this is our 1000th published post. Not a bad milestone for any blog.

Arthur H. Clark & Oklahoma University Press

Gregory K. Armstrong, Matthew J. Grow, Dennis J. Siler. Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism. (AHC 2011)

James C. Work. Don’t Shoot the Gentile. (OUP 2011) “A witty memoir of a non-Mormon teacher’s rookie years in Utah”

Beth Moore. Bones in the Well: The Haun’s Mill Massacre, 1838. (OUP 2012) (new in paperback)

Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, Will Bagley (eds). Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West. (AHC 2011) Kingdom in the West series, vol. 13.

Jesse G. Petersen. West From Salt Lake: Diaries from the Central Overland Trails. (AHC 2012)

Thomas Alexander. Edward Hunter Snow: Pioneer Builder in Southern Utah. (AHC 2012)

Richard L. Saunders, ed. Dale Morgan and the Mormons, vol. 1. (AHC 2012) Kingdom in the West series, vol. 14.

Baylor University Press

LDS in the USA: Mormonism and the Making of American Culture. Lee Trepanier and Lynita K. Newswander (2012)

Bearhead Publishing

And Should We Die: The Cane Creek Mormon Massacre. Donald R. Curtis.

BYU Religious Studies Center

Salt Lake City: The Place Which God Prepared. Kenneth L. Alford and Scott C. Esplin, eds. (2011)

Under the Gun: West German and Austrian Latter-Day Saints in World War II. Roger P. Minert (2011)

Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library. Scott Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, eds. (2011)

BYU Studies

Father of the Prophet: Andrew Kimball. Edward L. Kimball (2011)

Jens Neilson: Bishop of Bluff. David S. Carpinter (2011)

Cedar Fort

Mormon Yankees: Giants on and Off the Court. Fred E. Woods (2012). See an article here for info on the documentary that I assume the book will follow.

Church Historian’s Press

The Joseph Smith Papers, Histories Volume 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844. (2012)

The Joseph Smith Papers, Histories Volume 2: Assigned Historical Writings, 1831-1847. (2012)

We may very well have a new volume of George Q. Cannon’s journals–the Hawaiian mission journals. I’ve heard a lot of great things about these journals, so I hope we’ll get to see them soon. I also hear that there are some other publications in the works which will be announced in due time. Stay tuned!

Covenant Communications

Against the Odds: The Life of George Albert Smith. Mary Jane Woodger. (2011)

Deseret Book

How We Got the Book of Mormon. Richard E. Turley, Jr., and William W. Slaughter. (2011)

Women of Faith in the Latter-days, Volume 1, 1775-1820. 2011. Richard E. Turley Jr., and Brittany Chapman, eds.  See the series website for submission and publication details.

Eborn Books

The Mendon Saints: Their Lives and Legacy, Volume 1.  Stephen G. Schwendiman. (2011) See here for more information.

William E. McLellin’s Lost Manuscript. Mitchell K. Shaefer, editor; Steven C. Harper, introduction. (2012) Word on the street is that Harvard Heath left the project in order to concentrate on editing the James E. Talmage journals (Signature?).

I’ve heard of a Wilford Woodruff autobiography that Eborn is hoping to publish, but I do not know about a timetable.

Murder of the Mormon Prophet (softcover). LeGrand L. Baker (2012).

The Mendon Saints, Their Lives and Legacy, Volume 2 (2012). This will be a 4 volume set.

Grandin Book Company

A Preliminary Inquiry into the Nature of the High Priesthood, 1831-1837: Remarks Presented by Lyndon W. Cook to Employees and Invited Guests of Grandin Book Company, Provo, UT Tuesday, March 23, 2010 (Volume 2 in the Grandin Lecture Series). (forthcoming–> ?)

Greg Kofford Books

Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again: Perceptions and Perspectives, Davis Bitton (2011)

This is My Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology. Charles Harrell. (2011)

The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon. Brant Gardner. (2011)

Saints of Valor: Mormon Medal of Honor Recipients. Sherman Fleek. (2011)

The Man Behind the Discourse: A Biography of King Follett. Joann Follett Mortensen (2011)

Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the Gathering to Zion. Stanley and Violet Kimball (2011)

Knowing Brother Joseph Again: Perceptions and Perspectives. Davis Bitton (2011)

From Tiki to Temple: The Story of the New Zealand Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1854-1958, Marjorie Newton (2012)

Mormonism in Transition, 3rd Edition. Thomas Alexander (2012)

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume 1. Brian C. Hales (2012)

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume 2. Brian C. Hales (2012)

The Lost 116 Pages: Recovering the Book of Lehi. Don Bradley (2012)

The Earliest Mormon Understanding of God (1829-1844): Modalism and Other Myths, David Paulsen, et. al. (2012)

Harvard University Press

John Turner’s biography of Brigham Young is forthcoming with HUP.

John Whitmer Books

Strangites: The Great Lakes Mormon Experience, edited by John Hamer and Vickie Speek (forthcoming)

An Illustrated History of Nauvoo by Steve Shields (forthcoming)

Let Contention Cease: The Dynamics of Dissent in the Reorganized Latter-day Saint Tradition by W. B. Spillman (forthcoming)

Hanging by a Thread:Joseph Smith and the White Horse Prophecy by Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster (forthcoming).

Manuscript

The working title is “Latter Leaves from the Life of Lorenzo Snow: An Administrative History and Biography”, by Dennis B. Horne and Orson F. Whitney. This is, from what I understand, a biography that Orson F. Whitney left unpublished. I do not have an updated timetable for publication or certain knowledge of the publisher.

North Highland Publishing

Latter-day Pioneers. George Stewart (2011)

Oxford University Press

In Heaven as it is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death. Sam Brown. (2012)

Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (Religion in America), by Reid Neilson (2011)

Terryl Givens has been hard at work on a history of Mormon Theology which would be published (IIRC) through Oxford UP, though I am not aware of a time frame for publication.

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism. Matt Grow and Terryl Givens (2011)

Paul Reeve’s second book is under contract with OUP. It will deal, basically, with how Mormons in the 19th century were constructed as racial others.

Princeton University Press

The Book of Mormon: A Biography. Paul C. Gutjahr (2012)

Random House

Our own Matt Bowman!

The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith. Matthew Bowman (2012). See also the Audiobook.  :)

Routledge

The Mormon World. Sherlock and Mosser (2012)

Signature Books

Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader. Stephen C. Taysom, editor. (2011)

The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes. John S. Dinger, editor. (2011)

The Midwife: A Biography of Laurine Ekstrom Kingston. Victoria D. Burgess. (2012)

The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition. (2012)

Lost Apostles: Forgotten Members of Mormonism’s Original Quorum of the Twelve, edited by Michael Marquardt (this was a John Whitmer Books project, but now has come to Signature apparently. Not sure if the title will remain the same.)

There is a 3 Volume Joseph Smith biography still in the works.

Smith-Pettit

Six Volume History of the Church by Joseph Smith, edited by Dan Vogel (forthcoming)

University of Minnesota Press

Chosen People, A Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i. Hokulani Aikau. (2012)

University of Utah Press

Henry Burkhardt and LDS Realpolitik in Communist East Germany. Raymond Kuehne (2011)

To The Peripheries of Mormondom: The Apostolic Around-The-World Journey of David O. McKay, 1920-1921 by Reid Neilson (2011)

Utah State University Press (descriptions courtesy of the publisher)

Claudia L. Bushman, editor, Pansy’s History: The Autobiography of Margaret E. P. Gordon, 1866–1966, vol. 12 of Life Writings of Frontier Women. (2011)

Richard Francaviglia, Go East, Young Man: Imagining the American West as the Orient. (2011)

Plural Wife: The Life Story of Mabel Finlayson Allred, vol. 13 of Life Writings of Frontier Women, edited by Martha S. Bradley. (2012)

[Originally posted Oct. 5, 2009]

While I visited San Benito, Texas this past May, a family friend, member of the church, and long-time resident of San Benito, Brother Maya, took me around town and showed me the different buildings where services of the San Benito Branch had been held in its history.  I’m still working on the details, and there’s a lot even from the interviews that I conducted that I haven’t mined yet, so I’ll offer a few points here as a very preliminary exploration of the locations and history of Sunday meetings among Spanish speaking members of the Church in San Benito.  In addition, there is more to unpack about the implications of what I’ll present here than I am able to treat at this time. Suffice it to say that the absence of a permanent LDS building for worship in San Benito, has affected worship and attendance among the San Benito Spanish-speaking Saints.

Spanish-speaking missionaries opened San Benito, Texas in 1957. Providentially, I have been able to speak with one of the elders who opened it, and am in the process of locating his companion. At the time of its opening, an English speaking branch met in San Benito in a three story building that was demolished at some point. A Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall now stands on the lot.

My dad remembers attending Church there, often going with the Garza children, who were a bit older than he. Brother Garza, Sister Garza’s son, said that his first contact with the LDS Church took place while attending a religious service across the street (at the corner where the picture was taken) and he heard singing from the 3 story building and went over and walked in on a service. That stuck with him, and not too long after, Spanish speaking elders came knocking at the door.

In addition, some early meetings, including relief society meetings, were held in the home of Sister Garza, the matriarch of the first (known) Spanish-speaking family baptized in San Benito in 1957. My grandma, one of the first Spanish-speaking people contacted in San Benito, and living just yards from the Garzas referred the elders to them. Sister Garza still lives in the same house and is now in her 90^th year.

At some point, this house on Crockett St. was rented for services. As I went by the house, not wanting to unnerve any current residents, I knocked on the door and asked if I could take a picture of the house as I was studying old religious meeting places in the area and had heard this had been a meetinghouse. The owner was very friendly and said that the house had been his aunt’s and that she once told him that she had rented the house to the Mormons back in the 50s. His wife seemed to think it was more recent, but a 50s, early 60s timeframe fits better with the data I have.

Likely in the mid to late 60s (maybe early 70s) the branch was moved to the Harlingen Building on M Street. Where the Harlingen Spanish branch held its meetings. San Benito’s and Harlingen’s Spanish branches were combined at this time. I talked with the owner of this meat market, and he was kind enough to let me walk into the back where some lighting fixtures were still in place. He identified them as old church lights.

I am a little ambiguous at this time about the chronology, but I understand that with the move, no Spanish meetings were being held in San Benito until the early 1980s when the Spanish Branch was reopened. The branch met in the old San Benito Library building on Stenger St.

After a while the San Benito Branch, reorganized by the Gibsons, a missionary couple, met in this home on Dick Downing St.  Approximately $10,000 was available from the previous building fund, which had been accumulated pervious to the reopening of the branch, and this house was bought and used for about a year and a half to hold meetings.  The double doors led to the room that was used as the chapel.

Apparently, the branch was moved again to Harlingen. This time, however, to the LDS Chapel on Haine Drive where my family was attending the English ward. My dad was called as branch president of the Spanish branch, so we began attending that unit.

More recently the branch was again opened, at least partially to see if members would attend in larger numbers in San Benito as opposed to Harlingen. They met here on Crocket and Heywood.

This did not last long and the branch was moved yet again to the Harlingen building on Haine Drive.

In 2008 the San Benito Branch was reopened and located in the old Water District Building.

This historic building, built in 1910, just a few years after the City of San Benito was founded, had just undergone a renovation and been placed up for rent when the Stake President, who had been looking for a place to house the soon-to-be-opened San Benito branch, got word of it and wasted little time procuring it.

This is probably the nicest building the San Benito saints have been able to call home (with the possible exception of the more apt Harlingen Chapel). In addition, its historic nature gives the place a distinctive San Benito identity, one that these saints could be proud of. However, like all the rest, this is still rented space. They know that this isn’t home, just another stop along the way.

However, the current Stake President, who procured this building and reopened the branch, mentioned that since opening last year, the branch has experienced strong growth, and his hope is that the time will come for an LDS chapel in San Benito.

The details and chronology of each of these moves is still sketchy to me, and as you might imagine, it’s hard to keep track of, and there’s more to unpack about the implications of this history than I have the time or ability to explore at present. This is complicated by the fact that at times the San Benito Saints were combined with the Harlingen Spanish Branch, thus having an English Ward and a Spanish branch. At other times, there were two English wards in Harlingen with Spanish translation in each. When meeting in San Benito, it was its own branch again. More recently, an English ward and a combined Spanish ward. And finally, currently, an English ward and a Spanish ward in Harlingen and a Spanish branch in San Benito.

As Brother Maya took me around, he himself took stock of the many moves and meeting houses. In quiet wonder, he said, Sometimes we feel like Moses, wandering in the desert for 40 years. I counted them up: 1957-2009, 52 years. I told him, actually I think it’s more than that. He laughed, Yea, you’re right.

In an interview not long after, Brother Garza, Sister Garza’s son, used almost the exact same words to describe the San Benito Branch: like Moses wandering in the desert. I was struck by the longing expressed for a building of their own and a permanent place to meet and worship. I had long taken for granted that building on Haine Drive, and most every other building I had met in since.

Hopefully, their sojourn is nearing its close. I can only hope that the Garzas, my dad, the Mayas, and a few others who remain that remember the first 3 story meeting place will be able to finally see an LDS meeting house in San Benito.

Richard V. Francaviglia, a former university professor and administrator, now an independent consultant and researcher, has been selected to present the 17th annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture.

The Arrington Mormon History Lecture is an annual event hosted by Utah State University’s Special Collections and Archives. The lecture is sponsored by Special Collections and Archives, USU’s University Libraries, the Leonard J. Arrington Lecture and Archives Foundation, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Utah State University.

The lecture is free and open to the public and includes a writing competition for the region’s university students.

Francaviglia presents “‘Like the Hajis of Meccah and Jerusalem’ — Orientalism and the Mormon Experience, 1820-1970” Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Logan LDS Tabernacle, 50 N. Main. The lecture begins at 7 p.m.

“Dr. Francaviglia is a cultural geographer who has long studied the Western landscape and Western development,” said Brad Cole, associate dean for Special Collections and Archives, USU University Libraries. “His dissertation and first monograph were about the ‘look’ of the Mormon landscape and he’s had a long interest in Utah.”

Cole said Francaviglia brings a different perspective to the topic of Mormon and Western history.

“He is very visually oriented,” Cole said. “I think his lecture will be quite enticing and different.”

Special Collections and Archives and USU’s University Libraries house the personal and historical collections of the late Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of the American West. As part of that gift to the university, Arrington requested that the historical collection also become the focus for an annual lecture on an aspect of Mormon history. Honoring that request, the Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture series was established in 1985.

Through its evolution, the Arrington lecture has become a popular and successful event.

“The Arrington lecture series has been highly successful over the years,” Cole said. “We’ve attracted top flight scholars from across the country to present the lecture. These individuals have included established names in the field of Mormon studies, plus scholars who are working on ground-breaking research.”

Over the years, the program has grown into an annual community lecture that attracts hundreds, Cole said.

Each year, the nine-member Arrington lecture board meets to select a speaker.

“We usually look at someone who is doing outstanding scholarly work in Mormon history,” Cole said. “Possible speakers are nominated and a discussion follows. We try to bring a speaker from outside the immediate region at least every other year.”

Francaviglia, the 2011 lecturer, became professor emeritus of history and geography at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2008. He is especially interested in the way cultures and places change through time and how that change is depicted in maps, literature, art and film. He now represents Geo-Graphic Designs in Salem, Ore., where he conducts private research and helps organizations develop proposals and secure outside funding for innovative projects. He recently began teaching courses in religious studies at Willamette University in Oregon.

As an author, Fracaviglia has penned ten books, and three — The Mormon Landscape (1979), Believing in Place (2003) and Go East, Young Man: Imagining the American West as the Orient (2011) — address the important role played by religion.

For information about the Arrington Lecture, contact Special Collections and Archives, (435) 797-2663.

Please join us for a lecture by 

Richard Bushman

“Mormonism and the Public Good”

Recent events in Washington have demonstrated once again how much Americans differ on how to resolve the nation’s problem.  The parties to the debate cannot even agree on the nature of the public good.  The lecture will argue that these conflicts arise out of basic contradictions in our national values and therefore will perpetually recur.  The question the lecture will pose is: Can Mormonism, a religious tradition of particular relevance to Utahns,  contribute to the resolution of these fundamental disagreements.  Can a religion that is authoritarian in nature help solve the problems of a democracy?

 Richard Bushman is among the most widely known and highly regarded historians of Mormonism and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University and recently finished his term as the Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His publications include: From Puritan to Yankee:  Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (1967), King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985), The Refinement of America:  Persons, Houses, Cities (1992), and Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005).

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

7:00 PM

Saltair Room – University of Utah Olpin Union

200 S. Central Campus Dr.

This event is free and open to the public.

No tickets are required, but please arrive early for seating.

Please call 801.581.7989 for additional information.

The David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts is administered by the Tanner Humanities Center in collaboration with the College of Humanities, the College of Fine Arts, and the Graduate School. The Gardner Lecture was founded in the University of Utah Graduate School in honor of former President David Pierpont Gardner. The Gardner Lecture features distinguished scholars and artists from the humanities and the fine arts in alternating years.

The lectures are free and open to the public. The lectureship is funded by the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

In 2003, faithful LDS member Stephenie Meyer dreamed of a girl and a beautiful, sparkly vampire boy, in love and having an intense conversation in a meadow. Meyer could not get the dream out of her head. Whenever she could get a chance, she wrote a story inspired by the dream. It became the first book in the Twilight series. Meyer described this experience: “To be honest, I felt like I was guided through the process.”[i]

Meyer stands in a long lineage of Mormon women writers who saw visions, dreamed dreams, and felt that they wrote their poems and stories under God’s inspiration. We could push this lineage back to the founding of the church and Joseph Smith’s visions and translations, but a more accurate origin might be the experiences of Joseph Smith’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith. Meyer’s dream scenario reminded me of a paper that Rachel Cope gave a couple of years ago at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. In it, she talked about how Lucy Mack Smith and other early women converts interacted with dreams and visionary experiences during their spiritual journeys. Rachel’s paper and Meyer’s dream got me thinking about the some one hundred and fifty intervening years between Smith and Meyer. I have researched Mormon women who wrote between the 1840s and 1960s, but who lived mostly in the 1870s to 1920s. Many of these women reported having intense dream experiences. This prompted me to go back and review the private writings of these women in their diaries, journals, autobiographies, as well as in their published work from in the Woman’s Exponent, the Relief Society Magazine, and the Young Woman’s Journal. I wanted to know: How were these women writers interacting with their dreams? How does Meyer fit into this visionary-literary lineage? By piecing together this information of LDS women’s experiences, can we learn something about the place of dreams within LDS culture as a whole?

As a first step, I categorized women and men’s dreams into six broad categories. Prophetic dreams make up one of the largest categories of dreams, so large I divided prophetic dreams into subcategories. For instance, there’s the subcategory of personal prophetic dreams that deal with overtly religious material. In 1900, Lydia Savage Peterson dreamed that she was speaking prophetically to Nora and Addie Savage, assuring them that “Brother Savage” would return and that they would find great glory in heaven. She wrote a letter to these women telling them of this dream, convinced that it was important because it seemed real to her and because she felt that morning dreams came true.[ii]

Sometimes these personal prophetic dreams would answer a specific religious question that the dreamer had asked or prayed about. In 1894, during a women’s meeting, an unnamed participant reported the dream of her mother. The mother had requested her dying son to return and tell her if Mormonism was true. Apparently in reply to this request Joseph Smith appeared to her in a dream: “Brother Joseph said, is there some thing you wish to ask me, she answer nothing, the question was repeated the third time.”[iii]

Another category of dreams consists of dreams that are other/unclassifiable: The dreamer sees these dreams as being religiously important but also confesses to confusion about their meaning. In one of these dreams, Elizabeth Ramsay Fraser dreamed in 1887 that her dead sister wife was disinterred, warm and uncorrupted, though missing a temple veil and apron. Fraser ends the description with: “I awoke much troubled and worried about the dream I told it to Mother and Sarah they both thought it strange but said no more.”[iv]

I could go on and on with categories and examples (and will as the project develops). They show that dreams were authoritative ways that Mormon women and men of this era accessed the spirit world to consciously and unconsciously receive life guidance for something mundane as a difficult algebra problem to something as profound and life-changing as plural marriage. Dreams were personal, internal, liminal spaces between the spirit and mortal worlds. The above unnamed mother received the answer from the spirit world she sought when she entered the state that was closest to that of her dead son in the spirit world.

Dreams had clear connections to other forms of communication with the spirit world. Up until about the late nineteenth century, LDS women’s premier revelatory expression was speaking in tongues. In his 1877 book, Edward Tullidge explains that while men have reason and the priesthood, women have faith and prophecy.[v] Tullidge gives us a good sense of the separate spheres gender assumptions within which Mormon women of this era were living. Speaking in tongues, women were overtaken by a prophetic power and articulated prophecies in languages they did not know. Their words needed to be interpreted by other women who were gifted with the prophetic ability to understand their meaning. This was an indirect, deflected, and “safe” prophetic behavior. Neither speaker nor interpreter claimed full prophetic power—each needed the other to create a dual, prophetic synergy that usually produced limited, personal prophecies.

As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth and the church was routinized, the gift of tongues waned among women. But prophetic dreaming continued and, if anything—from preliminary, anecdotal evidence—grew more common in public discourse. I would suggest that dreams were the routinized analogue of speaking in tongues. Dreams were forms of communication by which women and men could continue to receive prophetic messages, but in a way that shielded them from the public, as well as the rationalizing eyes of the leadership.

Dreams were “safe” because they went through a process of communal vetting. Many dreams never saw the light of day beyond the pages of a woman’s journal. Like the dream of Elizabeth Ramsey Fraser, these dreams became part of that particular woman’s journey to alternately inspire and puzzle her. These unshared dreams are often complex and contradictory with multiple layers of personal and religious meaning. Like the dream of the unnamed mother, public dreams usually have a clear narrative and message. Perhaps they became public precisely because they spoke clearly to their dreamer and her personal interlocutors. But they also likely had undergone a process of unconscious editing and redacting. Fraser wrote down her dream and told her close female relatives, whose only reactions were puzzlement and disinterest. Maybe if they had found and articulated a common interpretation of the dream, her relatives might have shared the dream in more public setting, as did the unnamed participant who revealed her mother’s dream during a women’s meeting. The reaction to the dream by those at the meeting was presumably positive enough that the secretary recording the meeting noted it down in some detail. And when the meeting minutes were sent to the Exponent, the editor, probably Emmeline B. Wells, thought it was of enough general interest to include it in the published minutes. The dream—or, more accurately, the redacted and interpreted dream—became part of the public discourse of the Mormon community. Just as the prophetic speaker in tongues had an interpreter to shore up her prophetic authority with an understandable and meaningful interpretation, the prophetic dreamer needed multiple interpreters to make her interface with the spirit world meaningful and authoritative to her wider community, to protect her from suspicions of prophetic arrogance—even make her anonymous.

Meyer’s experience fits with that of her literary foremothers. Like Peterson, she had a vivid dream that stuck with her in the morning. It had a kind of vividness and life that signaled it was important. Like Peterson, she was moved to share her vision by recording it on paper. She felt as though she was guided by, well, she does not say directly but she surely implies, God. She shared her story with her relatives, especially her mother and sister who, unlike Fraser’s loved ones, encouraged her to write and share it.[vi] A story about vampires and werewolves seems distant from Peterson’s prophetic, inspiring predictions, or the unnamed mother’s encounter with Joseph Smith, or even Fraser’s confusing dream of her buried sister wife. And yet, the match is closer than one might think. Meyer claims that she did not consciously put her religion in her story, but she also makes clear that a central purpose of her saga is to show the importance of free will and making good choices, both central elements of the LDS plan of salvation: “There’s something about overcoming the natural man. …Having free agency to decide what you’re going to do with yourself is a gift. I think kids pick up on that—it doesn’t matter if you’re a vampire. You can choose what to do with your life.”[vii] I am tempted to call Meyer’s dream and writing experience a secularized, assimilated, popularized version of the her foremothers’ prophetic and literary endeavors: a dream-fueled story, void of overt religious symbols, but rife with ethical, theological significance and directed toward an international, non-Mormon audience.

The History of Mormonism in Latin America and the U. S.-Mexico Borderlands

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for a conference on the history of Mormonism in Latin America and the U.S. Mexico Borderlands to be held in El Paso, Texas on July 28, 2012 in conjunction with a 100^th Anniversary Commemoration of the “Exodus” of settlers from the Mormon Colonies in northern Mexico to the United States.

Date & Time

July 28, 2012
8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Location

The El Paso Public Library
501 North Oregon Street, El Paso, TX

Proposals

We welcome paper and panel proposals relating to the conference theme and, broadly, to the following themes:

-Mormonism and the experience of Latino peoples in the United States
-Mormonism and immigration/migration issues
-Mormonism and indigenous peoples
-Mormonism in the American West
-Mormonism in world-wide frontier and borderlands regions

We encourage interdisciplinary and transnational approaches as well as submissions from a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, religious studies, etc. Interpretive approaches and papers that place Mormonism within broader perspectives are preferred.

Individual paper proposals should include the presenter’s contact information, an abstract of about 200 words, and a one page c.v. Panel proposals should include three individual paper proposals and a lead paragraph describing the panel’s scope and purpose. Panel proposals should also designate one presenter as the contact person. All proposals should indicate any audio/visual needs. Papers should be approximately 20 minutes in duration and may be in English or Spanish.

Please send panel or paper proposals to MormonExodus2012@gmail.com.

The deadline for submission is November 15, 2011. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by December 1.

Lodging

Double Tree by Hilton
600 N. El Paso Street
El Paso, Texas 79901
915-532-8733

We are in the process of securing a limited number of rooms at the Double Tree Hilton in downtown El Paso just across the street from the El Paso Public Library at a special conference rate. The Double Tree features a number of amenities including a free shuttle from the El Paso Airport, complimentary high speed internet, fitness center, rooftop pool, etc. Please check the “Conference” tab on MormonExodus2012.utep.edu for updates about pricing and availability along with other updates and information about the conference.

Also, consult the “Commemoration” tab at MormonExodus.utep.edu for updates and information about the July 28, 2012 evening commemoration program which will take place at the nearby El Paso Union Depot, the train station at which the Mormon colonists disembarked after their journey by train out of the Mexican Colonies. The Commemoration event will focus on the 1912 Mormon Exodus and feature historical presentations, remarks by city officials and local dignitaries, refreshments, and more.

To be placed on a mailing list for updates, please send an email entitled “Updates” to MormonExodus2012@gmail.com.

Finally, please feel free to use this page,  www.juvenileinstructor.org/MormonExodus2012, as a forum for discussing the conference, organizing panels, and general networking on Mormonism in Latin America, etc.

This book, a free review copy, has been sitting on my shelf for perhaps the last two years as I’ve done all I can to avoid a) reviewing it and b) paying for it. I think part of my trepidation was that the issues I had with it were so vast that I just didn’t know where to begin or how to possibly provide a glimpse of the web that the book weaves. I will not take the time to take you through all the twists and turns of the story the author tells, but will instead focus on some issues that make that story suspect. You’ll note in the picture that I read the book thoroughly (what can I say, the summer of 2009 must have been slow).

Perhaps 97% of those stickies (most of which have notes written on them) represent an issue I took with some interpretation or use or misuse of a source, or the lack of  a source all together. Some of those notes represent simple frustrations and three letter exclamations, some are a full sentence or so.

The other 3%, however, are positive comments such as “Fine” and “OK.”

Simply put, the book is significantly flawed from cover to cover. It purports to be an “academic” book about Mormon Fundamentalism (by which he means one that is logically consistent and gets the citations correct) and attacks the work of Brian Hales and others as being polemic, agenda-driven (apologetic), and misleading while affirming its own clinical objectivity. It is, of course, highly polemical in its own right and I would consider it an apologetic book toward Fundamentalist priesthood claims despite its insistence on being there just to find out the history.

One of the most glaring problems is the utter unreliability of Briney’s source criticism and his tendency to assign confusing and questionable dating to documents and accounts. Briney has the annoying habit of interrupting his text constantly with an excerpt, sometimes lengthy, from a document. He notes in the heading of the document the name of the person supposedly authoring it and the date. So many times I found dates that were clearly incorrect but which, if correct, would have bolstered the credibility of an item being discussed. For instance, one of the big issues is what Lorin C. Woolley said and when he started saying it. His first statement that introduced his claims about secret ordinations in 1886 by John Taylor came in 1929. To make a long story less long, Woolley’s claims over the next four or five years before his death in 1934 became more and more elaborate and detailed. The point is that, naturally, some suspicion immediately arises that Woolley, for whatever reason, found it convenient to talk about these things once the last person who could have contradicted him was safely dead (John Woolley, last of those Lorin said had been secretly ordained, died in 1928).  Immediately after quoting the 1929 account, Briney works quickly to try and paint this story as being much older. He writes, “Despite the lack of any public announcement concerning his priesthood commission, Lorin Woolley was apparently telling his family members about some of these claims only a few years after the events occurred. Lorin informed George E. Woolley that he had spent “a long time” with Joseph Smith when President Taylor was staying at his father’s home” (172). Then Briney  presents a document he calls “George E. Woolley Letter and dates it “9/22/1891.” So, the reader is left to think that only four years later (as opposed to almost 50) Woolley was talking about some of these events. The problem is that if you follow the end note to the back pages of the chapter it says, “The letter is dated May 20, 1921 and is found in Crec[?] 6 Journal As 123000 Box 3, Folder [?]. The ‘?’ material is illegible on the author’s copy (in his possession).”  So…ok, it is unclear how Briney came to date the letter to 1891. And the source for this letter is far from clear as well. Anyone familiar to any degree with literature about LDS Fundamentalist origins and authority claims knows that the waters are murky enough without any further help from an author.

One other of Briney’s interpretive strategies is to use a later account to confirm the validity of an earlier account on which the later account was based. Take this claim: In speaking of the later and second hand recollections others had of Lorin C. Woolley’s teachings (yes, we’re out in the realm of what people in the 1940s and even 1990s were remembering about Woolley’s teachings about what he supposedly witnessed in 1886), Briney remarks that these later accounts are vague, and “frequently refer the reader to the well known accounts of Lorin C. Woolley rather than supplying new details.” Briney says, “While this is disappointing because we have few newer details to consider and compare, it is also noteworthy because it implies that the major participants all concurred in the recitation of substantive events as portrayed by Woolley and Bateman. Consistency on these details lends greater credibility to the firsthand accounts.” So, we have these remembrances of Woolley’s teachings that are recorded after Woolley dies of his remarks about what he claims to have witnessed in 1886. And because people are remembering him talking about the same things, that means he was consistent in his story and thus it lends his story…credibility? If that weren’t enough, when there is a contradiction in one of these reminiscent accounts (and invariably there are several), instead of critically evaluating the sources, if it supports his thesis, Briney takes each statement at face value and tries to reconcile it with the larger narrative which inevitably leads to some remarkable mental gymnastics. By now, you see what we’re dealing with here.

So, what was that 3% about? Well, to his credit, despite his determination to take the reader down every possible rabbit hole of possibility of how Lorin C. Woolley’s story is 100% reliable, Briney admits that “There are no firsthand accounts from John Woolley or Lorin Woolley clearly explaining their claims to priesthood authority (and I think he’s actually a bit confused about what constitutes a first hand account as Lorin  is pretty well on record in 1929 and after about his claims to priesthood authority–I think he probably means no accounts contemporary to the events described).”  Briney concludes that for these areas, fundamentalists must rely on a spiritual witness for their belief. Other such admissions are sprinkled through the text. (It’s just that in spite of those, Briney will continue to his predetermined conclusions.) Also, Briney should be commended for, in a subject that is pretty well obsessed with details and documents, ferreting out new documents and presenting them, such as excerpts from John Woolley’s School of the Prophets Minutes (circa 1932-1934) which have not previously been used in research. I’m always up for ferreting out documents and presenting them for wider consumption. That’s to be commended.

So, the book is frustrating, tedious, and tangled. I suspect only the most devoted to the subject matter (or devoted to getting a free book) will have the patience to follow it. Because of the issues outlined, which are endemic, I cannot recommend this book as a reliable presentation or evaluation of early Mormon Fundamentalism. Further, as this genre typically goes (it deals in rampant speculation and faith claims), it does not deal with any issues that concern most mainstream historians. As this is entitled “Volume 1,” Briney has a volume 2 in the works. Back in 2009 it sounded like it was well advanced, so we’ll see. For that one, however, I may just have to pass.