Part III in the JI’s ongoing series on secularism and religious education

In sifting through the thoughts that might be relevant to bring to this conversation, it quickly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to form any kind of comprehensive, useful model, or to get the satisfaction that comes with being able to see something as a whole. The differences that Matt articulated in the last post of the series run deep, and seem to impose considerable gulfs between all kinds of people that might try to talk about religion: we occupy largely different worlds. I also came to realize that the blog post is not terribly well suited to interdisciplinary analysis! All I can do here, I think, is try to illuminate a point of contact between the three broad categories we have been discussing – secularism, religion, and education. (more…)

Editors of the SSRC (Social Science Research Council) blog The Immanent Frame have produced a report on the blogosphere and religion. It is presented with this introduction:

Blogs have given occasion to a whole new set of conversations about religion in public life. They represent a tremendous opportunity for publication, discussion, cross-fertilization, and critique of a kind never seen before. In principle, at least, the Internet offers an opportunity to break down old barriers and engender new communities. While the promise is vast, the actuality is only what those taking part happen to make of it.

This report surveys nearly 100 of the most influential blogs that contribute to an online discussion about religion in the public sphere and the academy. It places this religion blogosphere in the context of the blogosphere as a whole, maps out its contours, and presents the voices of some of the bloggers themselves.

Alas, by some oversight the Juvenile Instructor was not among the 100 “most influential blogs” surveyed, but what might the survey imply for the presence of Mormonism in online presentation and dialogue? How does the digital engagement of Mormonism and Mormon history line up with that of that other aspects of religion, from Catholic gossip to church-state activism? Interested parties can investigate here.

One of the fresh insights provided by Jan Shipps’ Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition when published in 1985 was its argument that Mormon history was “not ordinary history.” Shipps explored the tensions surrounding interlocked, opposing construals of Mormonism. She also demonstrated how accounts of Mormon history and origins were the animating force behind the formation of Mormonism, which she characterized as a new, independent religious tradition. A self-supporting worldview, this tradition carried its own ways of understanding place, time, and human purpose. (more…)

This is an attempt to think about Mormonism and Christian ideology in the course of American history. By Christian ideology here I think I mean assumptions or understandings so predominant at a given time that they can actually go unrecognized. In other words, I’m thinking about a silent (yet influential) common or shared sense. Although common sense might be pretty uniform at a given time, it turns out that it isn’t held in common over time. Hence, this is an effort to see how these conditions evolve over time and to demonstrate how, in the long run, that evolution can reveal the influence of the invisible.  We find that predominant convictions turn over slowly, and they leave a wide trail behind them. It seems to me that Mormonism contains a number of interesting remainders as a result of being codified in a particular historical moment and amongst beliefs and convictions that just went without saying.

Part of the impetus for this informal post was a conversation I had with my grandfather – Douglas Tobler, retired professor of European History – a few months ago, not long after the passing of Bob Matthews. He reminded me then that he and Bob used to carpool from Lindon to work together at BYU. He related a conversation that they once had during their commute about Mormon conceptions of grace, and the reasons why grace has seen so little  emphasis (especially in comparison with, say, born-again evangelicalism). (more…)

As one of the assigned texts for my course this quarter in “Christianity and Slavery in America, 1619-1865”, I’ve engaged David Brion Davis’ latest work on American slavery, Inhuman Bondage. [1] Davis, for those unacquainted with the scholarship on American slavery, has held a prominent place in groundbreaking discussion in the field for many years. This latest work presents something of synthesis of the most recent relevant scholarship in a sweeping effort to see American slavery as part of a global practice and, most especially, to articulate its transatlantic contexts.

A small part of Davis’ purpose (and a central component of the course in general) is to understand how the practice and ideology of slavery became integrated to Christianity, and to understand the way it influenced both the development of Christian theology and the course of Christian practice. Although Davis’ work does not have a particularly religious orientation (he seems, here at least, to focus on the secular social), his work is comprehensive enough to give a summary overview of slavery in Christian thought. (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…)

Ben’s previous post was an effort to highlight the “personal agenda” behind Parley Pratt’s writing of his Autobiography. He outlined two chief forces behind its production: Parley’s desires (conscious or not) to relive and revive his preeminent influence in the Church, and to give a revisionist account of its history more favorable and forgiving to himself. To those two well-reasoned general motives, I would like to add a third fundamental impetus – one that was relatively unique to Parley as an individual. (more…)

A couple of nights ago I stumbled across the anecdote for all of you out there disillusioned with the attempts of LDS art to meaningfully engage with Mormon history: I saw Mahonri Stewart’s The Fading Flower, presented by New Play Project at Provo Theatre Company. I took along a date, so I was legitimately worried that the whole thing might flop. But I was pleasantly surprised: the play deals with the atmosphere surrounding Joseph III’s coming of age, his assumption of the leadership of the RLDS faith, and the heightening conflict between Nauvoo and Salt Lake – with the Smith family caught in between. It gives special attention to Emma Smith and her youngest son, David Hyrum, in a way serving as a stage adaptation of Valeen Tippetts Avery’s From Mission to Madness: Last Son of The Mormon Prophet.

Although aesthetics and empathy, not faithfulness to history, are the driving forces behind this production, it is compelling, even to the historical mind. And it’s especially significant for its intended lay LDS audience.

In any case, if you’re in Provo in the next week, it’s worthwhile. More information available at http://newplayproject.org/season/2009/fading-flower/.

If to some it seems presumptuous to call Joseph Smith a prophet, it will probably seem downright asinine to suggest that he was a poet too. And yet that’s the proposition I’d like to put forward in this post. The typical narrative renders Joseph as the unlearned ploughboy that he was, who could, as Emma assures us, hardly write a well-worded letter. But anyone who’s looked at how Joseph actually spoke and wrote (including anyone who’s followed along at all in the Gospel Doctrine course recently) knows that he used language in some interesting ways, ways that for some reason we do not often see language being used nowadays in the Church. (more…)

This post is loosely a continuation of my previous one (regarding Mormonism and Anglo-American cultural conflict); both are part of an effort to examine the dialogic relationship between early Mormonism and larger elements of early American culture.

The primary impetus for this post was my recent reading in Daniel Walker Howe’s “What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,” where Howe makes a claim that Mormons of that period “embraced a particularly extreme version of American exceptionalism.”[1] The claim is striking to me because it seems to casually (and perhaps uncritically) connect Mormon attitudes to the much larger and longer tradition of American claims to divine favor. (more…)

The prevailing ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States is of fairly recent vintage (1). It has grown out the close cooperation of the two nations during the World Wars and other political engagements since. Previous to this, there was much political jockeying and often animosity that has now been lost from public memory. The American Revolution (or The American Rebellion, I suppose) was, of course, not a time of harmony; the War of 1812 ensured that the separation between the two nations was permanent and reaffirmed their differences. (more…)