Peggy Fletcher Stack’s article this week comparing Jeffs and Joseph Smith (“Comparing Mormon founder, FLDS leader on polygamy,” Salt Lake Tribune, 08.19) was perfectly suited to the public appetite. The piece, headed by the provocative artwork below, pits the revulsion that many feel toward Jeffs’ foul crimes against the deep admiration that many Latter-day Saints feel for the Prophet Joseph Smith. It deftly exploits, as good journalists know to do, some of the strongest currents in the cultural atmosphere, and the effect is a visceral one. Stack unabashedly sits Joseph Smith and Warren Jeffs side by side in a parity that will make most Mormons flinch.

There are some eerie resonances in Stack’s comparison of Jeffs and Smith, at least it would feel that way from a contemporary perspective. As she points out, there are similarities in the young age of some of the brides that Jeffs and Joseph Smith married. Both presented a theological explanation for the polygamous practices in which they engaged, and the authenticity of these difficult to analytically verify. Likely due to social norms surrounding sexuality, these practices were not public in either circumstance, though Jeffs apparently involved his followers in ways that Smith did not.

The underlying question that Stack’s raises and skillfully leaves to tease is: Are these two men really akin to each other? Is one really a mirror image of the other, transposed over several centuries?

Stack’s article is simultaneously a remarkable piece of journalism and a sad piece of history, despite its attempts to engage more competent historians. Although the stuff of Mormon history is our raison d’etre here at the Juvenile Instructor, I’ll leave the corrective point-by-point comparisons of Jeff’s contemporary polygamy and Joseph Smith’s historical practice to others who are more fluent in both literatures and more interested in the topic. On a personal level, I think Stack’s comparison is gratuitous and wantonly provocative. But here I’ll just point out a few methodological considerations that she has neglected.

Cross-historical studies are fraught with peril and cause tremors in even the most stout-hearted historians (and anthropologists, and other competent scholars). That’s because historians are aware just what they face with such a project. It’s very difficult – in any venue – to work thoroughly enough in two widely divergent contexts to render the content of each so that it is even vaguely conversant with the other. The further apart these periods are, the more difficult that is to do. And it is certainly not so breezy as Stack’s piece would make it seem.

Naturally, treatment of the subject runs into trouble just by the fact that the piece is a newspaper article, which cannot hope to do historical justice to the topic. What the form necessarily excludes is all the contextualization and analysis that most scholars believe mandatory for any meaningful look into history.

Let’s not forget, though, that as piece of journalism, Stack’s piece is categorically different from academic history. Journalism operates under different rules, with different objectives, and through different means. Despite the fact that many of us while reading journalism perpetually cry out for closer analysis, not all journalism can take this form. The realm of popular media is a properly a distinct sphere, one that necessarily stands apart from academics. While it may often frustrate the thoughtful, journalism is a legitimate sphere of discourse, one that historians and academics should not merely bemoan, but visit and work to shape more often.

Perhaps more problematic for the article’s historical integrity even than its lack of historical context and sustained analysis, however, is the modern context in which the article is produced and received. To some extent, of course, all historical interpretations take place in a modern mindset. History is continually reinterpreted and meanings of the past are continually revised because interpretive priorities change over time.  But Stack’s article (like most other journalistic writing) is an artifact of a very particular temporal moment that is exceptionally hypercharged. It is a product of a news-cycle episode that is invisibly framed by some very powerful and focused tensions, themes, and interests. This sensationalized paradigm is the effect of fresh exposure to the images, video, accounts, and unvarnished opinions inherent to modern media exposure. And this is the world which journalists inhabit, navigate, and try to exploit. It is all but inevitable that a proximate and sensational present will oppress a passive and distant past.

To me, these are fascinating considerations that arise when history enters into the rough-and-tumble world of journalism. I hope to make a habit of writing about this from time to time in a series I’m calling Grub Street History, after London’s colorful journalism district of the late 17^th through the early 19^th centuries. In the world of popular media, history has different roles and functions. It is handled in different ways – journalists have their own historical methods. So just how do journalists who invoke history, specifically those who talk about Mormon history, engage and utilize historical information and narratives? Are there patterns in the efforts of those who write about Mormons and their past? What is the significance of those trends and how do they help shape discourse about Mormonism? With the current media interest in Mormonism and often in Mormon history, there will likely be ample opportunity to find out.

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.

For Mormons the significance of this issue was recently heightened as Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave a major address on Friday at Chapman University, urging the collective commitment of religious people of all faiths to the protection of religious freedom. To some extent, this address, the previous ones Oaks has given, and recent parallel comments of other Church leaders suggest the growing interest of the LDS Church in the cause of religious freedom and its significance for Latter-day Saints.

It is into this environment that Oxford University Press has recently published David Sehat’s new book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Sehat is an up-and-coming scholar of intellectual history at Georgia State University and a prominent blogger at U.S. Intellectual History. (Sehat’s name came up recently in Ben’s post on a Mormon comps list.) The thesis of Sehat’s new book is outlined clearly enough in its title; it argues against what he sees as the fallacious impression of a robust historical tradition of religious tolerance and freedom in the United States.

In outlining his work in a recent promotional piece at the Huffington Post, Sehat borrowed an line from Walter Lippman, who once suggested that “Nations make their histories to fit their illusions.” “The American celebration of our religious freedom,” Sehat argued, “is no exception.” His point was that neither the patchy episodes of true religious liberty in American history, nor the perennial praise of religious freedom by Americans constitutes the robust tradition we claim.

The impression that the US has exemplified religious freedom to the world may be widely held, but is fanciful, Sehat says, and it is this “detach[ment] from a true historical foundation” that his book seeks to remedy. [1] To this project Sehat brings an extensive, diachronic analysis of episodes where religious freedoms disappeared, working largely in the domain of law. Moving from the beginning of nation through the early twentieth century, he focuses on experience of nonconformists like William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene V. Debs. The study is essentially an investigation of what he characterizes as the “coercion” of these individuals by a tacit moral establishment.

Mormon historians may be inclined to agree with Sehat. Mormon history, after all, presents a number of instances where the institution of American religious freedom was seemingly absent, making Mormonism an important context for the discussion. The recent edited volume The Missouri Mormon Experience seems to endorse this. Though it falls short of its promise to demonstrate it, the volume observes that the periods of conflict between Mormons and non-Mormon Missourians in Missouri, at least, could “[teach] us a great deal about the true state of religious tolerance in the American frontier during the 1830s.” [2] I’ve suggested before that the broader version of this impulse strikes me as a promising idea; I likewise think that Mormonism has potential as point of entry to meaningful discussion on the broader history of religious freedom in American history. Indeed, in some scholarship such as Flake’s The Politics of American Religious Identity and Gordon’s The Mormon Question, it has already playing something of this role.

Sehat thinks that Mormonism is promising for this too, though he doesn’t exhaust it. Mormons were, he argues, one group that suffered under the informal moral establishment of Protestant Christianity, highlighting Reynolds v. United States. Since it involved a Federal territory, the case was the “first opportunity for the Court to clarify the meaning of the religious clauses of the First Amendment.” [3] (This opportunity, he notes, came ninety years after the Amendment was ratified – this delay because the Bill of Rights was not incorporated to the States until the first part twentieth century.) This aspect of Mormon history, at least, Sehat regards as a context ripe for discussion on the religious freedom topic.

It clear from the first that The Myth of American Religious Freedom has political entailments. Sehat is fairly transparent on this by saying that the book is “not just a work of history.” He invokes David Hofstadter, claiming that the project is “a ‘historical inquiry’ into the historical origins of our contemporary situation.” [9] In his approach, then, Sehat is unabashedly assessing history through the lens of modern politics – doing history, at least in part, for contemporary purposes. This is a surely valid method of inquiry, though of course it also involves significant risks.

But Sehat argues that his approach is needed not only for the correction it provides for the historical record, but because the several myths that exist in the public mind on the topic endanger political discourse. While these common myths about American religious freedom may serve civic interests and solidarity, they also fuel political animus and wrangling. His aim then is to “dispense with the historical myths” that have contributed to “unhelpful” public dialogue. [4] While any treatment of his subject would naturally impinge on political discussion, Sehat manages that effect.

Sehat’s book, then, is intended to influence political debate, somewhat like Jill Lepore’s work on “historical fundamentalism” and the Tea Party. (Indeed the projects are connected.) Sehat’s work  may not engage the issues of contemporary politics as directly; religious freedom is still largely a latent issue, while the historical imagination of the Tea Party is hard to ignore.

As a piece of historical analysis (rather than as a political intervention) my primary initial criticism is that Sehat relies on an outdated, crude model of the religious and secular. Religious conservatives are easy targets when we read a strict modern conception of secularism backwards and ignore the hybrid notions of the secular that prevailed at the time. Sehat gives this complexity lip service, but it does not influence his narrative. Much more can be said on the historical significance of this decision, but it may harm Sehat’s political objectives as well. Embracing the old dichotomy may do more to promote division and entrench political antagonists than it does to reframe and improve their conversations.

Still, there is no question that the book introduces important corrections and clarity in the historical record. Sehat is certainly right that these corrections can only serve to abate some of the posturing and put the debate on sounder, more informed footing. HIs ideas, as some have already noted, are not entirely novel, but insofar this book helps to actually install these important revisions it does a real historical service. Meanwhile, as religious freedom continues to come to the forefront of public discussion, Sehat’s history and others on the subject will have an ever greater influence both on the past and in the present.

[1] Sehat, 8; [2] Thomas M. Spencer, The Missouri Mormon Experience (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 17; [3] Sehat, 169; [4] Ibid, 9; [5] Ibid, 8.

Mormon group identity and its initial formation is something that I’ve seeking to better understand, and so far, these concepts have proved very helpful. In keeping with my interest in lived religion, I prefer thinking about identity in these terms because they give a phenomenological perspective. “Social imaginary,” for instance, implies an internal view of identity; identity as it was lived and experienced. Of course, that can only take us as far as our subjects’ consciousness before we need to adopt a different stance, but there’s much there that has not been explored or appreciated.

En route to sketching out an initial account of the formation of a Mormon identity, my MHA presentation had a few different parts: I tried to address, somewhat, a decline in American patriotism evident through at least the mid-1840s. I argued that that decline opened space for an alternative sense of sociopolitical identity (the “Kingdom of God”). I also suggested a few other factors: the fact that Mormons were “gathered” – relatively insulated from social contact and often at odds with state and national government; the fact that they were unfavorably viewed and underwent adverse collective experiences; the fact that they united under a very distinctive religious vision. All these factors (and many more) contributed to the formation of a unique identity. A “Mormon” identity was born and developed.

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification of the process, and I’m still trying to get my head around all the elements that fed it. In getting ready for a Sunday School lesson on Daniel and one of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar earlier this week, though, I was reminded of one of the these components that I cited in my MHA presentation and that appears to factor into this process one way or another.

David Whittaker wrote a very interesting article twenty years ago about “Book of Daniel in Early Mormon Thought.”[3] In it he traced the significance of Daniel typology for Christianity generally and for the LDS movement in particular. As he shows, the images, language, and concepts of the Book of Daniel became distinctively embedded in Mormon discourse, and that this happened relatively early on. They also, I suggested at MHA, influenced the way that Mormons understood their collective.

Images are vivid, powerful things, especially as they become imbued with symbolic meaning. The “great” and “terrible” image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 is one of the more striking images, perhaps, in Christian scripture, and (according to Daniel, at least) it has deep symbolic meaning. Some of this symbolism was transferred into Mormonism. Whittaker points out how Wilford Woodruff reported that Daniel 2 was one of the texts quoted by Moroni in his first visit to Joseph Smith. And the prayer revealed in October 1831 (now D&C 65) explicitly likened “stone…cut out of the mountain without hands” to the ongoing restoration of God’s truth. Whittaker continues to show how this imagery figured significantly in many contexts through early Mormon history. At MHA, I steered Whittaker’s thinking into the question of a “social imaginary” or a distinctive Mormon identity. Daniel’s kingdom and its presence in Mormon discourse represent, I think, one example and theater of this identity formation. This overlaps, of course, in many ways with the Zion paradigm and a number of other related concepts.

My questions to you: what are the other major influences, ideas, factors that contributed to a distinctive Mormon identity? I alluded above to factors beyond the powerful factor of religious ideology: spatial and geographical factors, political factors, a crucible factor, etc. There are aspects of identity that are derived by opposition (negative) and those that are positive and independent. But still, this is a very complex question, and I suspect there’s much more to take into account. I’d like to continue to isolate some of the most significant of these contributing elements. Your thoughts?

__________

[1] Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

[2] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983).

[3] David J. Whittaker, “The Book of Daniel in Early Mormon Thought,” in By Study and Also By Faith, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990): 155-99.

Back in September of 2006, historians of Missouri and of Mormonism met in Jefferson City, MO for a somewhat unusual conference co-sponsored by two local organizations: The Missouri State Archives and the Columbia Missouri Stake of the LDS Church. As its title suggests, “The Missouri Mormon Experience: A Conference of History and Commemoration” was intended to be simultaneously a historical venture and a social act – intended to “understand the troubles of the 1830s as well as to promote understanding between Mormons and non-Mormons in the state today.” It commemorated the 25^th anniversary of the rescindment of Lilburn Boggs’ Extermination Order by Gov. Kit Bond (1976).

Now the University of Missouri Press has now published the historical fruits of this conference in a volume, The Mormon Missouri Experience (2010). Thomas Spencer, a historian of Missouri culture and someone largely unknown to Mormon historians, is the volume’s editor. As all edited volumes do, the book attempts to assemble and relate an eclectic group of essays (a vexing task), addressing a variety of topics that revolve around the time and the place: mid-nineteenth century Missouri.

If preparing a collection of essays is difficult, reviewing one is hopeless. Still, this post attempts to offer a review and some brief reactions to the volume. It offers some thoughts on the editorial strategy Spencer has applied, and some initial reflections on the value of project. First, though, I’ve included (very) brief overviews of the individual essays. Naturally readers should look at them much more carefully and consider them on their full merits. My efforts to keep this overview short have largely failed; feel free to browse.

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Kenneth H. Winn, “The Missouri Context of Antebellum Mormonism”

Winn’s article perhaps best exemplifies Thomas Spencer’s broadest vision for the project (see below). As the author of Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846, Winn has written about Mormons directly, but here his interest in Mormonism here serves a different end. The fundamental argument he offers is that “the Mormon War (in Missouri) framed the thinking of an entire generation of young men in western Missouri, and helped frame it for violence.” Winn departs from conventional interest in how the violence surrounding the Mormons may have derived from its frontier culture. Instead he assigns conflict with the Mormons a formative role. Using it as genesis, rather than terminus, he asserts that it had a determinative effect in establishing a culture of violence in the Missourian paradigm that would play out later.

Ronald E. Romig and Michael S. Riggs, “Reassessing Joseph Smith’s ‘Appointed Time for the Redemption of Zion’”

Romig and Riggs’s objective is to address Mormons’ second, “lesser known” campaign to retake Zion (Jackson County) after their expulsion and after Zion’s Camp. Assembling a considerable body of evidence, they sharply outline the strategy of this effort, contending that it had coordinated political, propagandistic, financial, and other components. They argue forcefully that this campaign was concerted, “comprehensive,” and deliberate, and that it was something of which both Mormons and non-Mormons were well aware. The failure and quiet disappearance of this campaign was a consequence of a “failed prophecy” of Joseph Smith, and – like students of Millerism – the authors briefly attempt to employ theories on the social effects of failed prophecy. Their arguments about the functions of Joseph Smith’s prophecies pivots on a very strong reading of a revelation on September 11, 1831 which many will find contestable.

Grant Underwood, “Mormonism, Millenarianism, and Missouri”

Underwood brings his expertise on Mormon millenarianism to bear on the Missouri context, exploring the way that Mormons’ anticipations of apocalypse impinged on the period’s relations and conflicts. The article starts (very) broadly, but eventually comes down to an application of Mormon premillennial sentiments to the Missouri context specifically. It offers some lesser-known but potent evidence to demonstrate the strength of Mormon eschatology in the period on and its implications for their experience in Missouri; for instance, their experiences of persecution and their conceptions of other Missourians and Americans.

Richard O. Cowan, “The Great Temple of the New Jerusalem”

The historian of LDS temples, Richard Cowan, contributes a highly interesting account of the life of the idea of a temple complex at Independence, from inception to present. Starting from the initial conceptions of Zion, Cowan follows the idea through the platting of Independence in 1833, traces the commentary on the subject of Church leaders (especially Orson Pratt) from a distance in Utah, mentions the interest of Utah LDS in wranglings over the Temple Lot in Missouri, and concludes with the contemporary, somewhat conflicted interest in the “Center Place” and its Great Temple in the modern era and the global Church. The article is an excellent assemblage of the information related to the idea, though it is all only lightly handled. It is (as far as I know) reproduced from his essay of the same name in the 1994 edited volume, Regional Studies in LDS History: Missouri.

Alexander L. Baugh, “The Mormon Temple Site at Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri”

Baugh gives a straightforward history of the Far West Temple site, characterizing Far West as a vital if short-lived site of Mormon history. He relates how the movement for a temple there was locally initiated, then tempered by Joseph Smith. He also gives a full account of the ceremonious temple site dedication on July 4, 1838 (where Sidney Rigdon gave one of his assertive sermons), as well as the stealthy reconvention of the Twelve at the site before their departure to England. Baugh then watches the site as time moves on, describing how the disaffected John Whitmer and then his son deferentially kept the site unaltered and eventually sold it back to the Church. The personal passions of Joseph F. Smith, Alvin Dyer, and Samuel O. Bennion, the article relates, ultimately motivated reacquisition and then the improvement of the site. Baugh reflects on the reasons why the LDS Church has invested in and maintained a site that would appear remote and inconsequential.

Thomas M. Spencer, “‘Was This Really Missouri Civilization?’: The Haun’s Mill Massacre in Missouri and Mormon History”

Spencer’s sprawling article has many aims, including an even-handed narrative of the Haun’s Mill Massacre, a review of how it has figured historiographically in both Missouri and Mormon History, and an assessment of its significance for the broader question of Missouri cultural identity. Spencer offers a minute account of the event and its surrounding details, offering alternative interpretations on some points and constructing a narrative that often empathizes with but does not excuse contemporary Missourians. He draws the element of Mormons’ responsibility in the conflict into fuller light and also introduces new evidence based on an analysis of Missouri land claims, arguing that “land hunger played a large role in the Haun’s Mill Massacre.” Addressing the historiographical aspects of the massacre, the article works to dismiss lingering (Mormon) myths. It also reminds that Mormon histories, which have hitherto been the most prominent voices about the event, are highly partisan. Finally, it comments on how Haun’s Mill has taken on mythic proportions in the LDS mind.

Jean A. Pry and Dale A. Whitman, “But for the Kindness of Strangers: The Columbia, Missouri, Response to the Mormon Prisoners and the Jailbreak of July 4, 1839”

The article by Jean A. Pry and Dale A. Whitman is based on a close reading of two accounts of the jailbreak: that contained in Parley Pratt’s Autobiography and one written by Mary Phelps Rich, the daughter of another Morris Phelps, another prisoner. The authors highlight the contrast between the treatment that Mormons received in western Missouri and that received by the Parley Pratt contingent of Crooked River prisoners in Richmond and then Columbia. The article shows substantially different attitudes toward Mormons in different parts of the State, and speculates at the causes for the difference. It also proposes a counterfactual circumstance, suggesting that if the Saints had tried to settle in the center of Missouri, rather than in the west, their experience may have been dramatically different.

Richard E. Bennett, “Lessons Learned: The Nauvoo Legion and What the Mormons Learned Militarily in Missouri”

Bennett’s interest rests in how the Missouri conflict and Mormon militarism in that conflict (Zion’s Camp, the Danites) influenced later military efforts among the Saints. Missouri, he says, provided “models how not to run a militia.” Instead, it inclined Joseph Smith and other Church leaders toward transparency in their military initiatives and to act within the appropriate legal and administrative channels. Missouri experiences also induced Joseph to take a more prominent role of militia in Nauvoo, and reinforced the Saints’ commitment to undertake military action only in self-defense.

Fred E. Woods, “Between the Borders: Mormon Transmigration through Missouri, 1838-1868”

Building on his previous work on the explosion of the steamboat Saluda on the Missouri River in 1852, Woods’ article looks at Missouri in the wake of Boggs’ extermination order and after the Mormons’ exile. It examines post-exilic interactions between Missourians and Mormons, asking if antipathy continued between the groups, and how. By looking at a number of instances around the state, Woods determines that the extermination order was not enforced as a statute after the Saints left and that while the Mormons continued to receive ill-treatment from some, they generally went unmolested.

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Now just a few words on the volume as a whole. The editorial vision that Spencer brings to the book is a worthy one. He intends it, he says, to move past the blame and caricature that dominates historical accounts and has been perpetuated in previous scholarship, and to start to genuinely engage the “noxious blend of cultural and social causes” underlying the conflict. There is much to be gained if this can be done, Spencer suggests. For instance, the conflict can show the “true state of religious tolerance” on the American frontier during the period, which indeed seems promising.

At the same time, Spencer is also interested in the exceptional fact that the history of the Mormon-Missourian conflict has been written by its losers. Mormon historians, he observes, have dominated the historical discussion, and Spencer suggests that he also sees the volume as an effort to achieve a better balance. Given his view of the field, the effort to reinstate the voices of non-Mormons to the conversation becomes a major element, and his goal of broad cultural analysis encounters competition.

So while the book aims at balance and inquiry into the larger cultural conditions concerning both Mormons and non-Missourians alike, a good deal of the scholarship still carries the flavor of the old debate, and devotes its best energy into contesting the established narratives (righting historical wrongs). Ron Romig and Michael Riggs, for instance, give an energetically revised interpretation of Mormon attempts to return to Jackson County after the dissolution of Zion’s Camp Spencer. Spencer himself spends a good deal of time providing a revisionist account of the massacre at Haun’s Mill and reinterpreting its proximate causes. He spends less explaining how the aspects of the event can be read as symptoms of larger cultural pathologies. Whatever the merits of the revisions offered, they consume a great deal of the volume’s energy; as a result, the vision of broader, genuine cultural analysis is sometimes neglected. This is, naturally, more true of some essays than others.

Without question, the volume contributes important insights and even a degree of coherence to an area of Mormon history without definitive monographs. Missouri, for some good reasons and some not, is rarely regarded as a theater of Mormon history in its own right, and is instead often treated as a time and place of transition. Inspired by historians of Missouri culture, the volume attempts to approach a specifically Missouri history, a impulse that may be useful and stimulating for Mormon historians as well. The volume also represents an important step toward connecting two generally disparate literatures – the history of Missouri and history of Mormonism. Scholarship can only benefit when scholars from each group will read the other’s work. With a few Missouri historians working on Mormonism in Missouri, Mormon historians will now have someone to engage. This volume initiates that process.

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.

Taylor and Matt have explored the three broad topics of this series in a sort of cognitive dimension. Respectively, they have introduced discussion about underappreciated or misunderstood aims and merits of religious education and about the disparate conceptions of religion that often make dialogue about it challenging. I’d like to take a more spatial and atmospheric approach to the topic(s). Most of what I understand about religious education and the secular conceptions prevalent in the Academy is closely tied to the environments where much of the action takes place. Discourse along these lines can (and should, I think) take place generally between groups and people, but often the University seems to be the most visible and determinative arena.

Perhaps the most conflicted places in the academic realm are the Schools of Divinity that exist at many long-established Universities in the United States and elsewhere. Often Divinity Schools (and other religious spaces) are located at the heart of academic campuses; sometimes, though (as at Harvard), these schools have been exiled to the periphery. Unlike many of the chapels that are now more memorial and ceremonial than sacred space, some divinity schools are still struggling forward, trying to reorder and reconstruct themselves in the face of radical reconceptualizations of religion. Although some continue to maintain a traditional theological orientation (and slowly diminish), most have forsaken their theological anchors and embraced the academic study of religion. These now offer degrees that are grounded in a more secular, academic paradigm which conceives religion as a dimension of culture. While some schools continue to offer degrees in ministry, they now are in the wings.

In many ways, the Divinity School here at the University of Chicago epitomizes the evolution of the Divinity School. [1] In others it is relatively unique. Religion has had a special emphasis here from the beginning, when the first University president, William Rainey Harper proclaimed: “We will do religion” – a vague but forceful promise. Despite the fact that the Divinity School was among those that absorbed rigorous, independent academic inquiry from early on, it has stayed relatively close to its initial commission, unlike some other, older schools (in the US) whose original commitment to religion was even more emphatic. Much of this probably has to do with the prominence of scholars of religion that have worked at Chicago, including the likes of William Warren Sweet, Sidney Mead, Mircea Eliade, Martin Marty, Jonathan Z. Smith, David Tracy, and Martha Nussbaum. These scholars have preserved something of the sense of dignity that once widely attended the study of religion. Moreover, even as the School has extended its scope to include all the religions of the world, it has somehow not totally lost track of the beauty and vitality and promise of each.

Interestingly, my experience has also borne out the claim made by the Dean of the School when I arrived: he contended that students in the School enjoyed an “extraordinarily rich” relationship to the broader University. “To be enrolled in this School,” he averred, is to  “be enrolled in this University.” In general, I’ve found that he was right about scholars of religion being able to engage in genuine dialogue with students and faculty across other disciplines. Although religion finds more respect in some domains than others, it generally retains a certain measure of regard. To me this seriousness is the enabling condition that allows for genuine and continuing exploration of religion…an exploration that must respect the viability and humanity of belief. It prompts the question of whether it is possible to take religion seriously without giving quarter to those who believe in it, and if so, how long this seriousness can endure.

Steven Pinker’s comments about religion are understandable but silly. His objection to the presence of religion at Harvard is that religion is fundamentally unrelated to intellectual inquiry, and that the University as a category is not in the business of fostering belief. He may be correct about this, but his conclusions don’t follow. The mode of operation of Universities may now always be intellectual inquiry, but the subjects of that inquiry certainly are not, and yet they remain consummately human. To cut out religion because it strikes one as unviable would be to commit an act of terrific arrogance and to lop off a pulsing (if arational) part of the human experience. Scholars like Pinker embody the attitude that would potentially undermine the study of religion as a practicable enterprise, both for believers seeking a better understanding of how they are embedded in the world, or for scholars who attempt to study religion as a rich and unique dimension of culture. Secularism in the sense of trivialization of religion is hostile to religion in all its forms.

Maybe some of the modern Divinity Schools, far from being the embarrassments they can seem, help demonstrate what religious study should be like. By their heritage and the solemnity that lingers in their architecture and permeates their goings on, perhaps they support the study of religion in ways that are unavailable to modern Departments of Religion. Clearly, though, these environments are happy accidents of history. The key issue that lies before scholars of religion is how to build and preserve such a space and atmosphere with materials at hand today.

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.

Much of Shipps’ genius in Mormonism lay in her steady application of the insights of theorists, which she freely acknowledged. The work of Mircea Eliade, in particular, helped facilitate her treatment of Mormonism from the inside out. His meditations on the social psychology of religion informed her empathetic efforts to understand how the story of Mormonism could be so compelling.

In particular, Eliade’s insights into different appreciations of time in his crucial work The Sacred and The Profane gave Shipps clues about how Mormon history functioned. Eliade argued that with respect to religious belief, time did not function in the “homogenous, empty” way that it typically does in modern thought. Instead, he contended that religious belief could induce a sense of time in which temporal extensions into the past and present collapsed, and certain sacred events were brought into close association with one another. Sometimes this sense was so strong that believers could actually be “present” at these events. “Sacred” time was a concentrated variety, which retained everything “sacred” and eliminated everything “profane.” With this model, Shipps was able to look at world history through Mormonism and to see what was privileged, what was occluded, and ultimately what was said about the origins, the means, and the ends of human experience. In Eliade’s language, she was able to sense how Mormonism delineated between seasons of the world, both “sacred” and “profane.”

Here Shipps wedded Eliade’s insights to the emerging work of Hayden White on the textuality of history. If Eliade showed her how to access the Mormon mind through its collective psychology, White demonstrated how she could engage it through its historical record. Newly conscious that history was very much a construct, Shipps followed the implications of Eliadean theory into the particulars of Mormon history, regarding it as a flexible “text” that could bear analysis. She examined, for instance – in a way that has become commonplace – how the location for Joseph Smith’s First Vision shifted as Mormonism tinkered with its self-explanation. She acknowledged the forces at work behind this, but also pointed out that such a change could be misleading, that for instance it could obscure the “dynamism of the developmental process by which Mormonism’s theological system evolved.”[1] The adjustment tended to collapse time, she noticed, illuminating sacred moments, but leaving little account of interim periods where Mormonism developed, evolved, and unfolded.

Shipps would also identify this phenomenon in larger tracts of the Mormon story. She observed that authorized accounts of Mormon history contrasted periods of murky apostasy with others of blazing light. The result, she said, trying to characterize Mormon history broadly, was that Mormonism had “no recent past at all.” Such an account “left the Saints with an enormous 1,400 to 1,800-year lacuna in their religious history.”[2] In line with her Eliadean approach to history, this period seemed left out because it was “profane.”

In general, popular understandings among Mormons of unenlightened periods in world history seem to bear out Shipps observations. Most common historical narratives leap ahead dramatically after the ministry of the biblical Apostles. A few pause briefly to engage some the “preparatory” developments along the way, but many come to land only in 1830 in upstate New York, blocking out much time and much of the world. It is worth noting that this trajectory coincides with a roughly similar one that historians had long embraced about decline and “darkness” in the middle ages – a view that is only now being reconsidered. In any case, for Mormons, emphasis on the special events of certain periods leads to a remembering of those and a forgetting of others.

Perhaps it is worth asking, though – as Shipps did – what the implications of this version of history are. What are the consequences of cordoning off a period of time – along with its inhabitants – as “profane” or secondary? What injury does this do, if any, to the story? To their story? What richer ones might be told? In a theological sense, what might this practice imply about the worth of souls? The nature of God? Presently, how might this conception influence relations with adherents to other faiths – those with radically different economies of the sacred and profane? How might we be, as Elder Dallin H. Oaks has suggested in this context, “wiser if we could restore the knowledge of some important things that have been distorted, ignored, or forgotten”?[3]

[2] Ibid., 51.

[3] Dallin H. Oaks, “Apostasy and Restoration,” Ensign (May 1995), 84.

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).

To me, his account of their conversation raised questions that extend even beyond that important issue, questions that concern how Mormonism has acquired its present theological “shape.” In making their observations about LDS conceptions of grace, these scholars observed that Mormonism was not purely a response, but also a supplement to mainstream Christianity. While it often critiqued particulars of traditional Christianity, it embraced the theology generally and took much of it for granted. Mormonism may have clarified the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, but was largely an elaboration upon that Christian foundation.

The significance of this lies in the fact that as Mormonism developed in a climate of some Christian consensus, there was little need for it to integrate the established essentials of Christianity into itself. Mormonism was built upon an established understanding, the Spirit of the Age, a common Christian sense. Rather than reiterating what was widely known about Christianity, then, Mormonism sought to trace the implications of the Christian Gospel forward, treating the traditional Christian gospel as the engine of something larger. Naturally enough, then, the mainstays of Biblical Christianity went unemphasized in Mormonism. Much that was foundational and widely believed was not formally incorporated into Mormonism; instead it exerted an influence from its prominent place outside, in the public mind.

I’d like to try and trace two examples of this pattern, and I’ll stick to them to keep this short(er), but I’d like to hear about others.

First (to return to the subject of the discussion during the car ride), I’d like to look at the doctrine of grace. I’m not plugged in too well to developments in Mormon theology, but I do know generally that there has been something of a call for a return to grace among Latter-day Saints. For a while now people have expressed surprise (I think rightly) about how little play grace has gotten and gets in Mormon discourse. How could such a foundational element of “Christianity” be so neglected? I think the answer lies at least partly in the mold into which Mormonism was originally cast. There was, of course, an abundant emphasis on grace in both Puritanism and the evangelicalism that replaced it: it was a thoroughly embedded value. Those who came into Mormonism, then, came with an appreciation of grace preprogrammed. And it was against a stark backdrop of grace that works and ordinances were restored. But since there was no reason for Mormonism to restate the obvious, grace remained relatively uninscribed (unwritten, unrepresented) in Mormon discourse, even if it was written on the fleshy tables of Mormon hearts.

Now fast forward. Mormonism has become a standalone establishment. Many of those who participate in it now come from inside it, and many know only what has been said, thought, and written there. Despite teachings about grace in the Book of Mormon, it has had little institutional emphasis, and hearts that contained it formerly have long since gone. The result is something of a strange lacuna in a doctrine that is fundamental to – indeed, thoroughly undergirds – the faith. As it has matured, Mormonism has developed a common sense of its own, and the senses once common among nineteenth century Christians have disappeared.

The other example (and Bob Matthews could tell us a great deal about this, were he still here) is the Bible. It is clear that the Holy Bible played a critical role in early Mormonism, from its role in Joseph Smith’s First Vision to its prompting of revelations, to the subtle significance of its retranslation, and so on. General opinion is that it had much more theological influence in the early church than the Book of Mormon, although there are some calling this into question. As with grace, the original Latter-day Saints arrived on the scene with Biblical Christianity emblazoned on their minds. They were living, after all, in what it usually seen as a “biblical nation” [1]. The Good Book certainly needed no reiteration.

But the Biblical minds among Latter-day Saints are fewer now, and the purchase of the Bible seems diminished.  The deep subconscious sway the Bible once had is fading. In reading the title page of the Book of Mormon the other day I was struck by the subtitle added in 1982: “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” “Another” implies a precedent, a preexisting “other,” and yet – with the emphasis that the Book of Mormon has received – many Mormons today seem to have lost that initial order of precedence, or reversed it. The Bible’s unspoken centrality is edging toward invisibility, and with it goes the first and fullest account of Christ. The scenes and imagery of the Bible are fainter; presumably, they don’t inform readings of the Book of Mormon or conceptions of Mormon doctrines as vividly as they once did.

How else has Mormonism leaned on other Christian conceptions? What might some of these conceptions be? How has this process affected Mormonism’s subsequent theological “shape”?

Also, these examples stimulate thought, perhaps, about what is not emphasized or written at the present. What do we take for granted and central now that will become foreign and peripheral to subsequent generations? Now that conditions have changed and the pendulum has swung from the nineteenth, and even twentieth centuries, will Latter-day Saints have to reassert elements like grace or the Bible, which were once so much common sense?

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.

It was as a paradigmatic summary that I found Davis’ discussion of racism and its Christian iterations most interesting. Although it runs against other scholarly opinions and his own previous work, Davis gives great emphasis to the role of the “Curse of Ham” as unquestionably central in the way that racism was taken up into Christianity. (His argument is quite similar to that recently made here at the JI by David G.). Davis does not expend too much energy unpacking the text itself (which has been done exhaustively elsewhere; here seems dependent on secondary literature) or in demonstrating the way that it influenced Christian thought. He does not, for instance, show how the passage or other influences enabled racism to be taken up into Christianity.

Davis does, however, as part of his summary of racism in American Christianity, identify one group that he seems to regard as quintessentially invested in racist discourse: Brigham Young and the Mormons. As a result, Mormonism is situated rhetorically (and perhaps unconsciously), near the forefront of religious anti-black racism in the United States. Given as a solitary example, Mormonism appears to assume a position of prominence and high visibility.

Davis’ rendering, so far as I have been able to see, is representative of general narratives of American racism, which often use Mormonism in this way, typically seizing on popular (that is, widely recognized) statements made by Brigham Young or Joseph Smith to highlight the inroads that racism had made into Christianity. While the focused treatments of American religion, anti-black racism, and the Curse of Ham I have seen do not give Mormonism much play, for some reason broad-brush narratives like Davis’ not only include but highlight it. [2] It seems that for historians writing synthetically about racism and/or slavery, Mormonism is conceived in a uniform, normative way as representing the upper limits of Christian racism. The currency of this idea was demonstrated for me when my instructor, Curtis J. Evans, who published his The Burden of Black Religion with OUP recently and has no interest in Mormon history, invoked Mormonism in this way. [3] In fact, as one of his recommendations for research in the course, he suggested that Mormon anti-black racism might taken up.

Of course, Mormonism and racism have been thoroughly discussed in a number of inflammatory contexts. My interest here is not really to revisit those, but rather to investigate specifically whether Mormonism is fairly represented (in this respect) in broader, mainstream American social and cultural history. Does Mormonism deserve a singular or leading place in discussions of Christian anti-black racism in America? Is it fair to use Mormonism, as Davis and other modern historians seem to do (consciously or unconsciously), to epitomize or symbolize such racism? Might modern concerns with race influence retrospective conceptions of race in earlier eras of Mormonism?

[1] David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), see esp. 69-70.

[2] The works on the “Curse of Ham” and religious anti-black racism that I consulted include: David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Alan Davies, Infected Chrstianity: A Study of Modern Racism (Kingston, AB: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Stephen  R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

[3] Curtis J. Evans, The Burden of Black Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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.

Some scholars have tried to expand our understanding of the Nephite civilization by grounding them in ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament history. Whether by highlighting Hebraic poetry forms or identifying implicit references to Old Testament rituals and practices, they have teased out internal evidences from text in order to reaffirm the Nephites’ historical existence. Still, these studies reveal very little about who the Nephites actually were: their worldview, their culture, their general way of life.

To suggest one way we might write a “history” of the Nephites, I want to approach the issue of Old Testament roots in the Book of Mormon from a different angle. Rather than “proving” the Book of Mormon’s validity with the Old Testament, I want to explore what the Old Testament actually meant for the Book of Mormon people. The Nephites’ and Lamanites’ relationship with their Jewish heritage is never quite as static as we might assume. Tracing Judaism’s role through the book’s progression reveals how the Book of Mormon civilization steadily moved from a Jewish to a Nephite-centered self identity. It also demonstrates how Christ’s American ministry called them back from their ethno-centrism to a realization of their role as a branch in the larger House of Israel.

Throughout the Book of Mormon’s opening books, the Nephite prophets constantly reaffirm their people’s Judaic heritage, reminding them that they are an extension of the House of Israel. Nephi, for example, refers to the story of Moses a number of times as a template of faith to inspire his brothers and himself (see 1 Ne 4:2, 1 Ne. 17). When he describes his sweeping revelations of the Earth’s present and future, he places the Earth’s population into the two camps of “Jews” and “Gentiles.” He even applies Isaiah’s teachings about the Jews directly to his people, describing the Nephites as “a remnant of the house of Israel, a branch who have been broken off” (1 Ne. 19:24). Similarly, Jacob dedicates a significant portion of his writing to defending why the Nephites should keep the Law of Moses (see Jacob 45-6). He uses the Allegory of the Olive Trees to help his people understand their place in the broad shifts of human–and Jewish–history. As Jerusalem lingers in the Nephites’s collective memory, Nephi and Jacob remind their people that they are still part of their forefather’s religious tradition, and that they have a great history and future running through them.[1]

As time passes, however, there is a marked shift in how Nephite prophets discuss their people’s past and identity. Rather than heavily emphasizing their Jewish heritage, leaders like Alma and Helaman begin to draw on the histories of Nephi, Lehi, and the people of Alma the Elder to establish themselves as Nephites. Their Exodus story is no longer that of Moses and the Red Sea, but of Alma and the Waters of Mormon (see Alma 5:6) or of Nephi and the vast waters he crossed. Likewise, their prophetic instruction becomes much more focused on the specific, contemporary challenges that the Nephites face rather than sweeping revelations that narrate the Israelites’ past and future. To recover the Zoramites, Alma and Amulek do not prophecy about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon unto the Gentiles, but challenges their listeners to exercise faith, to pray mightily, be charitable, etc. (Alma 32-34).[2] As a spiritual analogy, Alma turns as readily to the Liahona as he does to brazen serpent of Moses (see Alma 37, Alma 33:19).[3]

This is not to assume, of course, that later Nephite prophets had completely forgotten their Judaic roots or cared nothing for the House of Israel broadly. Many Old Testament prophets are still referenced to after the Words of Mormon (e.g., Abinadi’s preaching, Alma 33, Alma 34:7, Hel. 8). Yet the purpose of these references are distinct from how Nephi or Jacob would comment on Isaiah, for example. While Nephi applied Isaiah’s words to his people in order to identify them as a branch of the House of Israel, later Nephite prophets turn to Old Testament writers as witnesses of doctrine and of Christ or draw on their teachings for everyday righteous living, like how to pray (see Alma 33). They are not drawing analogizing the OT’s emphasis on Israel with their own people, and they’re certainly not quoting Isaiah (for which Jesus will chastise them–more on that in a minute).[4]

That Nephi is intimately concerned with his people’s Judaic identity isn’t remarkably original, and that the Nephites would generally begin to lose sight of their roots in Jerusalem isn’t terribly surprising, either. What is most fascinating about this general shift is how it helps us reinterpret Christ’s visit to the Nephites. While his arrival in Bountiful is significant in so many ways (it establishes the Book of Mormon as another testament of Christ, it prepares the Nephites for the higher Christian law, etc.), we might forget that his mission was largely focused on recovering scattered Israel–not quite geographically, but spiritually. The Nephites were not only “lost” because they had separated themselves from Jerusalem, but because they had forgotten their role in the House of Israel, and their Shepherd had arrived to return them to the fold.

This restoration of an Old Testament identity might strike us as odd when we read passages of Christ declaring that “the law [of Moses] in me is fulfilled; for I have come to fulfil the law; therefore it hath an end” (3 Ne. 15:5). Surely Christ’s new law, and his end of animal sacrifices, only cemented the Nephites shift from their Judaic heritage to a New World identity? Rather, Christ reiterates, “I do not destroy the prophets…the covenant which I have made with my people is not all fulfilled” (3 Ne. 15: 6, 8). Even as he provides instruction for New Testament ordinances like the sacrament, Christ reminds his Nephite followers of their true heritage: “Ye are the children of the prophets; and ye are of the house of Israel [The last Book of Mormon prophet to use that term was Jacob]; and ye are of the covenant which the Father made with your fathers” (3 Ne. 20:25). He also prophesies about the ways in which their writings will help convert the Gentiles (first time the word has been used since 2 Nephi). He also quotes Isaiah extensively, commanding them to “Search these things diligently…for surely he spake as touching all things concerning my people which are the house of Israel” (3 Ne. 22:1-2). Christ’s connection with Jerusalem and his revival of Old Testament teachings bind the Nephites with the Israelite world that they had left behind and generally forgotten. His instructions and presence reassert their position as a lost but crucial branch in the House of Israel, even as he directs them to a more fully Christian society.

I’ll end with a concluding thought: how might tracing the shifts in Nephite identity reflect our own conceptions of own Mormon heritage? I think we conceptualize our identity in many different ways, whether as restoration of the New Testament church or as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy or as a faith built by the sacrifices of our pioneer ancestors. I’m particularly interested in how the opening lesson in Preach My Gospel about dispensations moves us from being a restoration of Christ’s New Testament church to a restoration of the true church of humanity’s history, linking Adam with Moses with Christ with Joseph Smith. Might we, like Alma and Aaron and Ammon, be reaching back to our earliest ancestor to help maximize the feeling of inclusion within a newly global religion? In any case, I’m anxious to see how we continue to reinterpret our heritage, our roots, and our future.

[2] While passing years will distance any people from its heritage, I believe part of this shift is due to the Nephite’s missionary efforts during this period. While Ammon, Alma, and the rest are trying to reach the hearts of the Lamanites and the Zoramites, the predominant Old Testament figure of the Book of Alma is not Moses but in fact Adam. This paramount symbol of universal humanity would be far more relatable to a crowd still bitter about their departure from Jerusalem, and this shift in seminal persona is marked by a demphasis in preaching about “tribal” themes, like the Israelite restoration and the Nephite’s mission to the Gentiles, and an upswing in “universal” topics like the resurrection, faith, and personal conversion.

[3] And unlike Lehi, they no longer name their children after Old Testament figures like Jacob and Joseph, but after their “first parents who came out of the Land of Jerusalem,” Nephi and Lehi (see Hel. 5:6).

[4] To understand this reshaping of Nephite heritage from a different perspective, note how major anti-Christ figures throughout the Book of Mormon often situate themselves in direct opposition to Old Testament practices, prophecies, or to Jerusalem altogether. From Sherem (who claims that Jacob has led the Nephites to “keep not the law of Moses” and “pervert the right way of God”) to Korihor (“I do not teach this people to bind down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests”) to the people right before Christ’s coming (who, with classic American enthno-centrism, can’t believe that Christ wouldn’t “show himself unto us as well as unto them who shall be at Jerusalem…a land which is far distant, a land which we know not”), the most wicked of the Book of Mormon are consistently reviling against or undermining the Law of Moses itself and the very land and heritage that they come from.