Juvenile Instructor » SC Taysom

Joseph F. Smith: Prophet, Seer, Sleuth

SC Taysom — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:38:48 +0000

From The Archives:

In July last, a large brass pail was stolen from my gate. I found it today at Mrs. [Redacted]. She was no doubt the thief. I suspect that she also stole a three-quarter rope 32 feet long, with iron picket pin which I had my calf staked with. I have good circumstantial proof of it.

Joseph F. Smith Journal, 9 November 1871

Measuring Church History, One Apostle At a Time

SC Taysom — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 01:47:19 +0000

I have been doing research in the Wilford Woodruff journals for a piece on Woodruff’s use of memory. Today I found an unusual entry from May 1887. On the 26th, Woodruff, along with Francis M. Lyman and John Henry Smith, were in the St. George Temple and decided to weigh and measure each other. According to Woodruff, the men measured up as follows:

Woodruff: Weight: 172 lbs; Chest: 42.5in; Waist: 43; Height: 5’7
Lyman: Weight: 245 lbs; Chest: 48in; Waist: 44; Height: 6’2
Smith: Weight: 236 lbs; Chest: 44in; Waist: 40; Height: 6’1/2

Discuss.

A Review of Lu Ann Faylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder, eds., Post Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff.

SC Taysom — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:24:30 +0000

HBO’s popular Big Love series and David Ebershoff’s bestselling novel The 19th Wife stand as evidence that polygamy remains a perennial topic of interest for Mormons and non-Mormons alike. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that scholarly presses with heavily-Mormon themed catalogues continue to publish serious work on the subject. Utah State University Press’s excellent Life Writings of Frontier Women series has once again offered a sterling piece of documentary history with the publication of Post Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, edited by Lu Ann Taylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder. Historians of Mormonism such as D. Michael Quinn and B. Carmon Hardy have been documenting high-level Church involvement in post-Manifesto polygamy for decades, but this is a unique glimpse into the intimate workings of one such relationship. Owen Woodruff, the youngest son of LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff and Woodruff’s third wife, Emma, became an apostle in 1897 at the age of 24. In January of 1901, nearly 11 years after Owen’s father had issued the Manifesto, 28 year old Owen married 18 year-old Eliza Avery Clark as a plural wife. Owen and his first wife, Helen May Winters, died in Mexico of smallpox in 1904 after refusing to be vaccinated. Post Manifesto Polygamy contains the correspondence between Owen and Avery as well as that between Owen and Helen. Supplementing these 85 letters are several short autobiographical excerpts written by Avery and other brief journal entries written by people closely connected to the Woodruffs. Although a slim volume, the material opens a window into a strikingly wide variety of issues important to the study of turn of the century Mormonism. The issue of plural marriage, while representing the main subject with which the materials are concerned, is far from the only topic of interest. The letters touch on other issues, which should be of interest to scholars interested in the study of religion broadly construed, the dynamics of gender and family relationships, and social hierarchies in the American West. Sharpening the contemporary appeal of the collection is the persistent subtext regarding the proper role of the government in public health issues—specifically the question of vaccination.
Before exploring the letters themselves, a word or two about the introduction and annotation is in order. The introduction to the collection is generally strong, and admirably performs the tasks of describing and contextualizing the primary materials and resists the temptation to burden the reader with heavy-handed interpretations that would be more appropriate for a monograph. The editors’ judicious use of excerpts from Owen’s unpublished journals to fill in gaps left in the correspondence lends a particularly strong hand to the introduction. At 50 pages, however, the introduction could probably have been shortened without blunting its impact. Similarly, the annotation is generally well executed, with ample descriptions of persons and events that appear in the letters and journals. Only once or twice was I wishing for more explanation than was provided in the notes. USU Press, no doubt due to the high cost of providing footnotes on the same page as the main text, has chosen to place the notes at the end of the book. For documentary collections such as this in which the reader will likely need to refer frequently to the annotations, the arrangement is inconvenient.
The documentary section of the book opens with an account of the “courtship” of Owen and Avery. According to Avery’s reminiscence late in life, she was struck by Owen’s charisma when he visited a church conference in Wyoming. As the apostle assigned to oversee settlement in the Big Horn Basin, there was nothing unusual about Owen’s visit to the area in 1899. However, before this particular trip Owen, according to his journal, received permission from Joseph F. Smith to find a plural wife. Following a tradition dating back to the time of Joseph Smith, Owen first broached the issue with Avery’s father who expressed shock at this “new polygamy.” According to Avery’s later reminiscence, her father questioned Owen about the legitimacy of such unions in the eyes of the church. Owen responded by pointing out that “several of the brethren [sic] in high positions had been advised to take plural wives” (50). Satisfied that Owen’s request was not a rogue maneuver, Avery’s father presented the proposal to his young daughter. Avery reported feeling “frightened and puzzled” but determined to “keep on praying” to determine “what is right” (51). Avery’s decision to accept Owen’s offer of marriage followed in short order.
From the time of Owen’s and Avery’s engagement until the end of Owen’s life in 1904, a concern with secrecy wove itself throughout their correspondence. Owen counseled Avery before the marriage to “be careful” and “true as steel.” (52). On another occasion, Avery reported to Owen that she would “keep all secrets,” “guard my words and actions,” and that she had “burned all letters and will continue to do so, although it seems like destroying valuable literature” (61). Owen and Avery referred to one another by codenames in their letters, and they employed a code system for the names of places that Owen visited. Third parties mentioned in the letters also came in for the code-name treatment. Joseph F. Smith, for example, is referred to in several letters as “President Roosevelt.” Although the need for discretion on the subject of plural marriage had long been the case when dealing with the prying eyes of government officials, post-Manifest unions required that secrets be kept from other Mormons. A letter to Owen from his first wife, Helen, indicates the difficulty of keeping plural marriages secret, especially when the subject remained a popular subject of conversation among Latter-day Saints. Helen wrote that, while she was resolved to “not speak about” plural marriage in the months leading up to Owen’s marriage to Avery, “invariably someone starts it up.” She also reported somewhat nervously that Owen’s mother “surmises something” but “doesn’t ask any questions” (56). In 1901, Avery proudly reported to Owen that she was able to avoid detection as a plural wife in a particular situation because “few questions were asked me and all stories connected very well”(73). The flavor of post-Manifest polygamy that one takes away from exchanges such as this is reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding the introduction of plural marriage in Nauvoo in the 1840s.
The correspondence also highlights the tensions inherent in polygamous relationships, and the materials are replete with references, at least from Avery and Helen, to the sanctifying nature of self-sacrifice and the need to subdue individual desires and pride in the service of what they clearly believed to be a heavenly ideal. As one might expect, the two women relate to their shared husband in very different ways. Helen frequently teases Owen and occasionally chastises him for his failure to write with greater frequency. Avery, by contrast, is writing to a man ten years her senior—a man she barely knows—and her letters are predictably deferential and self-deprecating. In this respect, Owen’s family life is very similar to polygamous relationships throughout the nineteenth-century. The need for secrecy, however, placed additional strains on the family. Avery, in particular, faced a difficult task. She never lived with Owen for any significant period of time, saw him only on rare occasions, and in his absence had to keep up the illusion of her status as a single woman.
As useful as the book is in providing a fine-grained look at the experiential dimension of plural marriages in the ambiguous years after the Manifesto, it is important to note, even if only briefly, the many areas in which the book ranges beyond the issue of plural marriage. The Mormonism that dominated the lives of Owen, Helen, and Avery was a peculiar mix of what we would now recognize as “early” Mormonism and “modern” Mormonism. For example, Avery wrote that she “enjoyed going through the Temple and will go again if I can.” Mormons today will immediately identify with such a sentiment, but the idea of repeatedly visiting the temple for spiritual contemplation was a relatively new concept in the early 1900s. At other times, the correspondence bears witness to the final glimpses of some early practices. Helen joyfully recorded the fact that she had received from Zina D.H. Young and Bathsheba Smith a “lovely blessing [in which] they made me some beautiful promises” (55). Women performing blessings through the laying on of hands, like the communal chalice from which Avery drank her sacramental water and the polygamous unions that defined the lives of the Woodruff family, would soon disappear completely from Mormon practice and nearly completely from Mormon consciousness.
Few documentary collections have captured the essence of the lived religious experience of turn of the century Mormonism as deftly and adroitly as Post Manifesto Polygamy does. The richness and texture of this ambiguous and under studied period in Mormon history shines through on every page of this collection. Phillip A. Snyder and the late Lu Ann Faylor Snyder and have done a commendable job of shepherding this important assembly of documents onto library shelves and into the hands of many interested readers.

NB: A version of this review was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 43:2 (Summer 2010).
Also, please see Jared T’s review, for another take on this book.

From the Archives: Joseph Fielding’s Dream

SC Taysom — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:45:00 +0000

I read lots of Reformation sermons for my forthcoming book, but I had no way to use this extract from Heber C. Kimball’s 9 November 1856 address. I found it so wonderfully strange that I felt compelled to share it. I quote here the very end of the sermon.

I will tell you a dream that brother Joseph Fielding had in England, about the time that brother Brigham and I went back on our second visit, for it will apply to many in this congregation. Brother Fielding dreamed that he had a sharp sickle, and that he hung it up on a bush, but when he returned and took down his sickle, he found the edge all taken off from it. This will apply to many others. You remember it, do you not, brother Joseph?–and is it correct? It is, and his sickle has not cut from that time to the present, and the reason is he has had a woman straddle his neck from that day to this. Amen.

Discuss.

Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: Pratt and the Enervating Power of Evil

SC Taysom — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:23:43 +0000

In my spare moments this summer, I returned to Pratt’s Autobiography just to see what would strike me. Probably because of my continuing work on Mormon theodicy, my interest in the changing Mormon conceptions of evil and the accompanying shift in apotropaic ritual, I was most interested in several passages dealing with Pratt’s view of evil in the world. I did not find lengthy ramblings about the devil or demons, but I did find a few short asides which were no less important and insightful for their brevity. Pratt clearly beleives that the world is not only a fallen place, but a place that is still falling. He employs the common tropes of darkness and light with some regularity to depict the difference between those with the Truth and those without it. More interesting to me, however, is Pratt’s accounts of the physicality and materiality of evil. The first instance bearing examination here is a case of demonic possession and exorcism that Pratt encountered in the early summer of 1836 while serving a mission in Toronto, Canada. The excerpt is lengthy, but worth quoting in full.

Now there was living in that neighborhood a young man and his wife, named Whitney; he was a blacksmith by trade; their residence was perhaps a mile or more from this Lamphere’s, where I held my semi- monthly meetings. His wife was taken down very suddenly about that time with a strange affliction. She would be prostrated by some power invisible to those about her, and, in an agony of distress indescribable, she would be drawn and twisted in every limb and joint, and would almost, in fact, be pulled out of joint. Sometimes, when thrown on to the bed, and while four or five stout men were endeavoring to hold her, she would be so drawn out of all shape as to only touch the bed with her heels and the back part of her head. She would be bruised, cramped and pinched, while she would groan, scream, froth at the mouth, etc. She often cried out that she could see two devils in human form, who were thus operating upon her, and that she could hear them talk; but, as the bystanders could not see them, but only see the effects, they did not know what to think or how to understand.

She would have one of these spells once in about twenty-four hours, and when a period of these spells were over she would lie in bed so lame, and bruised, and sore, and helpless that she could not rise alone, or even sit up, for some weeks. All this time she had to have watchers both night and day, and sometimes four and five at a time, insomuch that the neighbors were worn out and weary with watching. Mr. Whitney sent for me two or three times, or left word for me to call next time I visited the neighborhood. This, however, I had neglected to do, owing to the extreme pressure of labors upon me in so large a circuit of meetings–indeed, I had not a moment to spare. At last, as I came round on the circuit again, the woman, who had often requested to see the man of God, that he might minister to her relief, declared she would see him anyhow, for she knew she could be healed if she could but get sight of him. In her agony she sprang from her bed, cleared herself from her frightened husband and others, who were trying to hold her, and ran for Mr. Lamphere’s, where I was then holding meeting. At first, to use her own words, she felt very weak, and nearly fainted, but her strength came to her, and increased at every step till she reached the meeting. Her friends were all astonished, and in alarm, lest she should die in the attempt, tried to pursue her, and they several times laid hold of her and tried to force or persuade her back. “No,” said she, “let me see the man of God; I can but die, and I cannot endure such affliction any longer.” On she came, until at last they gave up and said, “Let her go, perhaps it will be according to her faith.” So she came, and when the thing was explained the eyes of the whole multitude were upon her. I ceased to preach, and, stepping to her in the presence of the whole meeting, I laid my hands upon her and said, “Sister, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven, thy faith hath made thee whole; and, in the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke the devils and unclean spirits, and command them to trouble thee no more.” She returned home well, went about her housekeeping, and remained well from that time forth.[1]

Exorcisms, of course, have found homes within the ritual complexes of most religious cultures from the beginning of time. Exorcisms directed specifically at human demoniac subjects occur in the New Testament and became codified into the ritual structure of proto-Roman Catholicism in the third century CE. Pratt’s account certainly supports historian Jeffrey Burton Russell’s observation that “underlying exorcism is the assumption that Satan retains some power over the fallen world as well as over the souls of fallen humans.”[2] It is tempting to move glancingly over this story in the Autobiography, categorizing it as one of many miracle stories that Pratt includes as evidence of the restored power of Christ’s Priesthood to the earth. Certainly the story was designed to do that. A close reading of the text, however, suggests yet other themes. Evident just below the surface of the account is Pratt’s emphasis of the enervating effect of the power of evil on human beings. Pratt, unlike most others offering accounts of possession from the early modern period until the present, does not mention ventriloquism as part of the manifested behavior of the victim, but instead focuses entirely on the painful physical contortions visited upon the woman. She fears at one point that she might be destroyed physically by these horrors. She reports feeling physically weak and near the point of collapse. But the physical draining does not stop with the victim. Pratt reports that the woman’s neighbors, dozens of them apparently, were literally “worn out” by the process. The entire scene is one of bodily exhaustion and physical pain. It is perhaps significant that the exorcism leaves the woman free and energetic enough to “return to her housekeeping.”
In two other places in the book, Pratt uses nearly identical language to describe the oppressive feeling that evil exerted on him. In April of 1852, Pratt wrote

Oh, when will the time come? When shall the veil be rent and the full powers of the apostleship be permitted to be exercised on the earth? It must be before long or no flesh be saved–for the powers of darkness prevail abroad to that degree that it can even be felt physically. [3]

Describing a scene that occurred five years later in New York City, Pratt commented “the darkness which broods over this country can be felt–it is no place for me.” [4] As with the account of the exorcism, these two brief snippets raise issues and questions that may yet be important to fully understanding Pratt’s thought. What, for example, is the limit of evil when it comes to inflicting physical suffering on human beings? Is Pratt’s view of evil influenced by his opinions of divine embodiment? By what mechanism(s) did Pratt believe evil could manifest itself as a physical drain on a person, and was it related to his views on the Holy Ghost? I don’t have the answers, but for the moment, I’m happy with the questions.

************
[1] Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography, 153-154.
[2] Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 125.
[3] Pratt, Autobiography, 403.
[4] Ibid., 444.

From the Archives: Brigham Young on Joseph Smith’s Last Mistake

SC Taysom — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:50:41 +0000

The following comes from a meeting of a “Special Council” held in Salt Lake on 21 March 1858. It is evidence, among other things, of Brigham Young’s contrarian streak. I’m sure it raised eyebrows 150 years ago, although probably not as many as it would raise today:

I will deviate from my subject a little, and say a few words with regard to br. Joseph that some, perhaps, have not undrestood. If Joseph Smith, jun., the Prophet, had followed the Spirit of revelation in him he never would have gone to Carthage. Do you understand that? A great many do, and some do not….[Joseph] said ‘I can see life and liberty and salvation in that course [fleeing Nauvoo and heading west], but if I return to give myself up, it is death and darkness to the full; I am like a lamb led to the slaughter,’ and never for one moment did he say that he had one particle of light in him after he started back from Montrose to give himself up in Nauvoo. This he did through the persuasion of others. I want you all to understand that.
With regard to myself I cannot say what I will do. I do not know precisely in what manner the Lord will lead me, but were I thrown into the situation Joseph was, I would leave the people and go into the wilderness, and let them do the best they could. Will I run from the sheep? No. Will I forsake the flock? No. But if Joseph had followed the revelations in him he would have ben our earthly shepherd today, and we would have heard his voice and followed the shepherd instead of the shepherd following the sheep. When the shepherd follows the sheep it reverses the natural order, for the sheep are to follow the shepherd.

I find this interesting on many, many levels. I personally doubt very seriously that Joseph Smith ever said what Young attributes to him. I think it tells us a great deal about Brigham Young’s difficult position that he maintained in the Shadow of Joseph, even 14 years after Joseph’s murder.

Other thoughts?

John Demos on Joseph Smith. Was he “lynched”?

SC Taysom — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:52:25 +0000

Occasionally we like to provide our readers who may not have the time or inclination to read widely in the scholarly literature of American history or other disciplines with a sampling of what scholars are saying about Mormonism. Today John Demos is in the spotlight. Demos, for many years the Samuel Knight Professor of History at Yale, has recently published a historical survey of witch-hunting that covers two millennia. Demos is a major figure in the world of early American scholarship. He has published a variety books, many of which are regularly required reading on PhD comprehensive exam bibliographies (e.g., Entertaining Satan, A Little Commonwealth, and The Unredeemed Captive were all on my exam list). In his new book, he has a brief section on Mormonism in which he follows the standard historiographical convention of lumping the movement in with Masonry and Catholicism as the major targets of intolerance and violence in antebellum America. Here is what he has to say about the Mormonism from 1820-1847:

Mormonism–a new and wholly indigenous religious movement, founded by Joseph Smith in the 1820s and growing rapidly thereafter–evoked a similar kind of alarm [as Masonry and Catholicism]. Public pressure, up to and including mob violence, soon forced the Mormons to leave their original home ground in upstate New York and New England for the wilderness territory of Utah. en route, Smith was seized and murdered by a lynching party and his followers subjected to repeated harassment.*

I found this passage striking. To quote one of my least favorite persons on this or any other planet, “what say you?”

* John Demos, The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World (New York: Viking, 2008), 255-256.

“What an Excellent Day for an Exorcism” Part 1

SC Taysom — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:15:38 +0000

David O. McKay performed his first exorcism when he was 25. It was, he wrote in his journal, a day “long to be remembered.” I have been collecting Mormon accounts of exorcism for some time as I have worked on a project comparing approaches to this phenomenon in different religious traditions. McKay’s account is very useful for a variety of reasons. In a subsequent post, I will offer my comments on the text. In this post, I am reproducing the materials and inviting your comments on it.

3 September 1898, Newarthill, Lanarkshire, Scotland:

Went to Newarthill to see the young girl [Charlotte] who is sick. Found her in a nervous or spasmodic fit. Brother Orr said she was possessed of evil spirits, and indeed it did appear that such was the case. She would laugh and talk [and] tell the priesthood to go home and not torment her, ask their name, etc. Sometimes she would try to rise out of bed and although she was but a lassie weighing less than 100 pounds, it was all I could do to hold her and put her again in a quiet position. She seemed to be entirely unconscious when in this state. Her eyes were closed, and when she spoke, the sound came from her throat–not a lip moved. Just before regaining consciousness, her body became rigid, her hands clenched so tightly that the nails penetrated the skin, and her whole body–every muscle it seemed–became stiff as a board. She would lie in this state and then awaken, weak and limp, entirely exhausted. These attacks came on every few minutes, each one lasting about five minutes or more. We administered to her and she obtained peace for about an hour and half, during which time she sat up and talked as intelligently as anyone. She had another spell before we left. (We were then fasting for her relief).

4 September 1898:

After meeting [in Airdrie] we walked five miles back to Newarthill where, after a forty-eight hour fast, we were going to rebuke the evil power–whatever it was–afflicting the girl. The fast meeting was held in Sister Major’s house. As we entered, Charlotte was suffering from another attack. She had walked from Brother Orr’s–about a quarter or half mile. As the meeting commenced, the attacks became more frequent. One elder had to hold her all the time. These spells continued until after she partook of the sacrament. She then had peace during the meeting until we were about to unite in prayer before administering to her. Just as we began to consecrate the oil, she went into one of these fits–or had another attack. This was a long one. I told the saints (the house was full) that we would all kneel around her and unite with the one who was mouth in prayer. Taking her in my arms, I took a seat in the center of the room. When she regained consciousness, I told her we were all going to pray for her and asked her to unite with us. She feebly answered that she would. Brother Leatham was mouth. At the conclusion she said ‘I can walk now.’

McKay reported several days later that the “fits” had not returned. But the story didn’t end. At the center of this drama is Brother Orr, the branch president at Newarthill who surfaces multiple times as a troublesome actor in McKay’s life and who was the first to suggest that Charlotte’s symptoms indicated demonic possession. on 21 September, McKay reports that Orr came to see him and to apologize for “refus[ing] to carry out [McKay's] counsel in regard to taking Charlotte home after the administration.” McKay apparently told Orr to take Charlotte into his home, but Orr sent Charlotte to her sister’s instead where she was “again suffering from the attacks.” “I am afraid,” McKay wrote “Brother Orr is working the saints up to an apostate heat.”

Now it’s time for you to become textual critics. What does a close reading of this account yield in terms of an understanding of fin de siècle Mormonism? Does the text itself display internal tensions that may be enlightening? I’m looking for any reactions you might have.

[The quotes are drawn from Stan Larson and Patricia Larson, eds., What Ere Thou Art Act Well Thy Part, The Missionary Journals of David O. McKay (Salt Lake: Blue Ribbon Books, 1999)]

“What’s with this ‘Joseph’ stuff? Can you imagine Lutherans calling their guy ‘Martin?’”

SC Taysom — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:14:56 +0000

Many Mormon scholars have a funny quirk. They refer, in formal scholarly work, to the founder of their faith by his first name. When I was a history major at BYU, one of my professors there said that she simply could not bring herself to refer to Joseph Smith as “Smith”–it felt to her like an insult. I disagreed with her on this, but I knew from my own reading in Mormon history that I was in the minority on this issue. When I got to graduate school and working on my dissertation, my adviser (a very senior and well regarded scholar of religion in America) was reading an advance review copy of Rough Stone Rolling and we were chatting about in his office. He really liked the book, but he said it reminded him of puzzling habit that Mormon historians of Mormonism had. “What’s with this ‘Joseph’ stuff?” he asked. “Mormons are the only ones who do this. Can you imagine Lutherans calling their guy ‘Martin.’” This wasn’t the first time I had heard him say this. When I first started the program he had mentioned it, and although I always had been uncomfortable calling Joseph Smith “Joseph” in papers, I had made a concerted effort never to do it in something my adviser would read. These incidents have sensitized me to the nuances involved in choosing how to refer to Joseph/Smith.

Is there anything to this? Can we tell anything about the way scholars feel about Joseph/Smith by which name they choose? Does scholarly consistency oblige me to call everyone in my writing by his or her first name? If not, then on what rational grounds is one justified in bestowing this honor on one person?

Mormon Studies at the AAR (2008)

SC Taysom — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:55:21 +0000

The American Academy of Religion has just released its program for the 2008 annual meeting, to be held in Chicago in November. The Mormon Studies Consultation will be holding two sessions this year.

The first is a session co-sponsored by the Afro-American Religious History Group, entitled “African-Americans and the Latter-Day Saints Church: A Historical Examination.” No speakers or panelists are listed for this one yet.

The second session, chaired by Phil Barlow, is entitled “Media, Religion, and Politics: Mitt Romney’s Campaign for the US Presidency.” It is described, in part, as follows

This session probes the intersection of religion, politics, and contemporary American culture through the revealing prism of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

This session features the following presenters

Mark Silk and John Green, “Anti-Mormonism and the Romney Campaign”

Doe DAughtrey, “Vocal Mormons Meet Mitt Romney: The Impact of a Mormon Presidential Candidate on Mormon Self-expression”

Michael Paulson (Boston Globe), “Media and the Mormon Candidate: One Reporter’s View.”