Bruce Jorgensen is looking for submissions for this year’s Mormon Letters session at RMMLA–a great opportunity to present at a conference, especially for anyone doing stuff in Mormon literature or film. I’ve posted Jorgensen’s CFP and submission details below: 

For about three decades, since shortly after its organization, AML has had a “conjoint” or (now) “affiliated” session at the annual Convention of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. This year, as of the program deadline for the RMMLA Convention, no program for the AML session had been filed. With permission from the RMMLA Secretariat, I’m attempting a rescue mission with this rather belated call for papers.

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  Tradition has it that Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, co-founder of the well-known Theosophical Society, had wanted to travel to Nauvoo to see the Mormons but was unable to do so due to their expulsion from the state of Illinois shortly before she arrived in the U.S. [1]. Though such a visit unfortunately never materialized (it could have been an encounter to rival Joseph Smith’s interview with the prophet Matthias in its historical delectability), tradition also has it that she did pass through Salt Lake City in the early 1850s, (more…)

In the Tanner Lecture at MHA this year, Philip Jenkins noted the substantial growth of Mormonism in Africa and asked the question: Why hasn’t it done better? (more…)

Roberts frequently noted where he saw resonance between his readings in philosophy ands science and the Doctrine and Covenants or other Restoration scripture. (more…)

 So I figured I’d follow Matt’s lead and post my MHA paper (in 2 parts) here. Since I already blogged my intro previously–on Joseph Fielding Smith’s reading of Darwin–I’ll skip that and proceed right into the Roberts library:

     The B. H. Roberts Memorial Collection is housed in the Church Archives, in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. This intact collection, included as a part of the B. H. Roberts Collection, contains over 1,300 items, including most of B. H. Roberts’s personal books, (more…)

The latest in the Redd Center lecture series at BYU was given by Jared Farmer, Professor of History at SUNY-Stony Brook, who we had as a guest blogger here at our very own JI a week ago. Farmer spoke about his latest book, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, recently published by Harvard University Press. As David G. pointed out in his introduction a week ago, the book is a cultural and environmental history of Mt. Timpanogos and Utah Lake–the jewel and the bog, respectively, of Utah County. At least, that’s how they are popularly perceived in the valley today. But things were, at one time, quite different.
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(continued from Part II) 

With the Mormon conception of a premortal council in mind, as Roberts continued reading Pragmatism he set about noting where James steered askew from a Mormon way of seeing things, filling in the gaps where James does not follow the Mormon line of reasoning all the way out as well as identifying other elements that resonate with Mormonism. Where James suggests–again, perhaps hypothetically–that some proto-individuals, at this pre-dawn of creation, might recoil from such a dangerous proposition and prefer rather to “relapse into the slumber of nonentity” from which they had “been momentarily aroused by the tempter’s voice,” Roberts demurs. In the bottom margin of his copy of Pragmatism–and later in the footnotes of his published works–Roberts offered this corrective of James’s implication that God brought human souls into being out of a nonentity to which they might at any time return: (more…)

(continued from Part I) 

Brigham Henry Roberts (1857-1933), LDS general authority, historian, and theologian–twice nominated as “the most eminent intellectual in Mormon history”[1]–owned copies of at least five of James’s works: Psychology, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, The Meaning of Truth, and Some Problems of Philosophy. Of those books, Roberts first read Pragmatism, which he finished reading, as indicated by an inscription on the last page of Roberts’s personal copy of the book, on the morning of March 16, 1908. In July of that same year he purchased A Pluralistic Universe and in October, Psychology.[2] These five books are now housed as part of the B. H. Roberts Memorial Library in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. Due to Roberts’s habit of writing in the margins of his books, an examination of the collection can be revealing of how he read, particularly where he saw resonance with Mormon thought and where he parted ways with certain ideas. (more…)

In the spring of 1914, at a bi-annual general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Levi Edgar Young, a relative of Brigham Young, stood at the pulpit of the Mormon tabernacle in Salt Lake City and declared that “if Dr. William James, of Harvard College, had come to Utah before he died, he would have found a society that, above all other human societies, illustrates better the theory of pragmatism, brought about by that great psychologist[,] than any other society on earth today.” [1] James almost had the chance to do just that-to visit Utah-having been invited by Brigham Young Academy president Benjamin Cluff to come to Provo, Utah, to lecture-an invitation James unfortunately had to decline due to his poor health. [2] But even though James never had the chance to see pragmatism in action in the Mormon West, he was no stranger to the faith. He had had several Mormon students at Harvard, including Levi Edgar Young, and had on one occasion dined with Benjamin Cluff during Cluff’s visit to Cambridge in 1892.

In his diary, Cluff described the conversation that took place during his dinner engagement with the renowned professor. “During the conversation,” writes Cluff, (more…)

If you’re reading a religious history blog–which you obviously are–you’ve probably heard of the hollow earth theory[1]–but have you heard of the hollow sun theory? (more…)

So I saw the movie Enchanted at the theater the other night. I know I am going to be subjected to merciless mockery by Chris and David for admitting that here, since I discount National Treasureras something quite below a farcical joke and yet will go with my wife to a children’s movie/chic-flic and actually kind of enjoy it…but alas, ’tis the truth. But what has this got to do with Mormon studies? Well, part way through the movie my wife leaned over and told me she had heard that the leading actress, Amy Adams, was Mormon. That piqued my interest. (more…)

I was in Special Collections the other day, going thru the diaries of Mark H. Forscutt, a Latter-day Saint who left the Brighamites and became a Latter Day Saint when the Josephite movement started up. I came across an entry in which he describes an interesting encounter with one Mr. Moore, whom he describes as a “Brownite.” I’m not sure who Brown is (any who can enlighten us on that, please do), but I found the passage quite intriguing, and so I quote: (more…)

The blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Romney has finally announced that he will be giving his long-awaited, much-anticipated “Mormon Speech” this Thursday at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. Thus, the question is no longer “Will Romney give the speech?” or “When will he give the speech?” but “What will he say?” and further, is it actually going to be a “Mormon” speech? The speech, titled “Faith in America,” leaves Romney open to spe (more…)

I was up at Church Archives recently and while waiting for the items I had requested to be pulled, I began browsing the shelves and noticed a volume of Darwin’s Descent of Man. I pulled it down off the shelf. It looked like an older copy, with marbleized paper for flyleaves. The title page revealed that it was an 1897 edition, printed by D. Appleton and Company. I opened it up to the first blank page and found stamped in purple ink: “Joseph F. Smith Jr.” Hopeful that I might find some good marginalia, I began flipping through. I was not disappointed. There was commentary on several pages–and it was characteristically Joseph Fielding Smith. “Argument of a fool!” he wrote in the margin of one page. “Booh!” on another. “Wrong again!” he wrote next to Darwin’s assertion that (more…)

Sitting in front of the fireplace at my in-law’s this evening, I began chatting with my wife’s 93-year-old grandmother about her life growing up in San Juan County, Utah. She began by telling me again about the hole-in-the-rockers, the original Mormon settlers of the Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello region in southeastern Utah who had hacked their way through the desert in one of the most incredible colonization missions in Western history. (more…)

Recently released from Mercer University Press, Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, edited by Donald W. Musser and David L. Paulsen, promises to be a tome of interest to both Mormons and Christians alike who are interested in dialogue. Martin Marty seems to think so. “When I agreed to read the manuscript and write the foreword,” Marty writes, “I don’t think I anticipated the scope, detail, and depth of this one. Now I pass it along to other readers who will find that such scope, detail, and depth represent gifts to everyone who has interest and concern for ‘the (more…)

As certain babblers in Zion shared everything but their testimonies from the pulpit in Church today[1] (we had stake conference last week so this today was fast and testimony meeting), I began flipping through the hymn book, reading some of those obscure old hymns we never sing. I lighted on Orson F. Whitney’s poetic little reverie “The Wintry Day, Descending to Its Close” and got a good dose of manifest destiny in the 4th verse:

The wilderness, that naught before would yield, (more…)

As a follow-up to my last post (see below “Going global but not imperial: conversion without deculturation”), and heading in what may seem to be the complete opposite direction, I’d like to qualify my concerns with the Americanization of foreign converts with what I see as a positive American influence. When living in Taiwan, I was surprised at how often Taiwanese Saints wo (more…)

 When I arrived in Taiwan at the beginning of a 5-month English-teaching stint, I was very curious about Taiwanese religion. After spending a few weeks in Taiwan, visiting a few temples, I determined that religion was very much a thing of the past–a distant relic that is no longer really practiced but is preserved as cultural heritage (sort of like Catholicism in parts of Europe). Over time, however, I realized how extremely superficial and simply false my initial impression was (sort of like the statement I just made about parts of Europe probably is). Despite the technological modernization of Taiwan, the country is soaked in religion. But Asian religiosity is (more…)