This is, quite simply, the single most extensive canvass of American religious life ever achieved. (more…)

We at the JI are honored to host the esteemable Janiece Johnson for the next couple of weeks.

In her own words, Janiece’s biography relevant to this blog can be measured out in “BYU, BYU, Vandy, the U,” corresponding roughly to “poli-sci, history, theology, history.”   She’s currently PhD’ing in the University of Utah’s history department and writing a dissertation that will resolve everybody’s questions about the Mountain Meadows Massacre in a satisfying and logical way.  If we are all particularly lucky, perhaps she will have something further to say about that.

Welcome, Janiece!

There is no date, though a bit of research reveals that this hymnal was published in 1909. (more…)

Element: The Journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology is publishing a special issue dedicated to student articles. Submissions will be accepted by undergraduate or graduate students currently enrolled in a program of study related to philosophy, theology, or other areas of religious studies. Papers will be reviewed by selected members of the SMPT Executive Board and other outside reviewers as needed.

Authors of papers selected for publication will receive a $50.00 gift certificate for books at Amazon.com with a $100.00 award for the winning article as selected by the SMPT Executive Committee.

Submissions should be sent as attachments via email to brian.birch@uvsc.edu in Microsoft Word format. An abstract of no more than 150 words should accompany each submission along with full contact information, including name, institution, program of study, phone numbers, e-mail, and mailing addresses. All articles will be subject to blind review and editorial modification.

nformation about the Society and journal can be found at www.smpt.org. For further questions, contact Brian Birch at brian.birch@uvsc.edu.

I am here responding to panel 6E of the 2008 Mormon History Association Annual Meeting: “Scientific Mormonism: evolution, monism, and Mormon thought,” featuring the following papers:

“Transmutational Theology: An Unofficial Authoritative View, Mormon Responses to Darwin, 1859-1933,” Jordan Watkins, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA

“Marginal Dialogues: B. H. Roberts’s Reading of Science and Philosophy,” Stanley J. Thayne, Brigham Young University

“The Making of a ‘Mormon Modernity,’” John Dulin, Whittier, CA

An image: BH Roberts, hunched over a copy of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, pencil in hand, brow furrowed, looking for new ideas, new images, new ways to express and understand exactly what it was that his Mormonism was telling him about the universe and humanity.

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Before we can ask whether a Mormon theology of the movies is a viable idea, I suppose that making the case that a theology of the movies in general works would be useful.

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Five years before the 1920s, a decade in which he did a least as much as John T. Scopes to instigate warfare between Protestant liberals and fundamentalists, and fifty years before Martin Luther King praised him as the greatest preacher of the century, the Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick was appointed to the Jessup Chair in Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary. [1]

Fosdick was not really an original thinker, but he was a master teacher and popularizer. And, perhaps because of the agonies that he struggled through on his own route to faith, he had a powerful understanding of the anxieties that plagued his age. Because of the new Biblical criticism, Fosdick wrote,

The old use of the Bible became impossible to many preachers who, as much as ever was true of their fathers, believed in Jesus Christ as the world’s Saviour and wanted to proclaim his Gospel as the power of God unto salvation.[2]

In other words, these preachers - like Fosdick himself - believed passionately in God revealed in Christ. But they no longer accepted the accuracy of Biblical history. And they did not know what to do. (more…)

Harry Emerson Fosdick was among the most popular preachers and writers of the first half of the twentieth century. He’s particularly known for a trilogy of devotional works called “The Three Meanings:” The Meaning of Prayer, the Meaning of Faith, the Meaning of Service. These books have sold millions of copies; there are reports that Gandhi read them in prison; and they’re still in print today.

Despite Fosdick’s high profile,* however, it was the RLDS, not Harold B. Lee or J. Reuben Clark, who stepped up to the plate to represent Mormonism to Fosdick. (more…)