Stuart Clark. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

So I though I’d post a summary of a few really great books I’ve read recently that I see as being useful to those studying Mormonism.

Thinking with Demons focusses on what intellectuals said about witchcraft and demons during the witch-hunt era (1400-1700). In some ways the topic is much bigger than witchcraft since demons were central to how early modern people saw the world operating generally. (more…)

I know this has been discussed around the blogernacle, but I just wanted to share a few historical anecdotes.

The first time I read the Nicene Creed (on my mission) I thought, “do we really disagree with this?” This thought has only been compounded as I’ve studied Christian history. (more…)

I’ve frequently seen complaints that Joseph Smith’s practice of marrying already-married women is “particularly troubling.” That is, that marrying married women is somehow worse than marrying single women. Why is that? Why is men sharing a wife somehow worse than women sharing a husband? (more…)

My daughter was diagnosed with Perthes yesterday. It’s a condition where blood doesn’t get to the hip bone and so it doesn’t grow, which causes all kinds of problems. She’s been having a lot of difficulty walking recently but the doctor says its very treatable and for this we are grateful.

Her condition reminded me of a few stories from the past that I’ve read recently. (more…)

The comments on my last post got me thinking about a few things, particularly the fact that the subject of the post studied under the venerable historian of the English Reformation, Eamon Duffy. In the second edition to Duffy’s monumental The Stripping of the Altars, which present the English Reformation as an unwanted destruction of the English people’s traditoinal religion, Duffy makes the following disclosure: (more…)

In thumbing through Gwenfair Walters Adams’s Visions in Late Medieval England (Brill, 2007), I was surprised to see the following as the last line of her acknowledgements: “And ultimately, I am most grateful to God.”

Having never seen this before my question are 1) has anybody else ever seen such a thing, and 2) would you ever consider doing such a thing? Why or why not?

The need of specialization has the drawback of limiting the scope of one’s work. As I’ve stumbled through the study of history, this has often been a frustration; the academic study of history is quite focussed. This is needed to gain the expertise one needs in historical writing, but as Richard Fletcher says in preface to his The Barbarian Conversion “Professional historians today are expected to know more and more about less and less.” (more…)

As a follow up to Mary Ann Jeffries’s letter that I posted, here is a comment in a letter form Caroline Grant Smith to her brother Jedediah Grant. Grant had been the presiding elder in Philadelphia but was back in Nauvoo.

“You must know the Church one and all are vary ancious to see you. The first inquery when any of the sisters come in is when do you think Brother Grant will come? Have your had any news? What no letter yet and sutch like expressions.” [1] (more…)

This is sort of a statement of contrition as well as an advertisement for the upcoming EMSA which probably none of us can make it to.

My first trip to MHA was at the end of my master’s program. My paper was on the early Mormon branches throughout North America and why we should study them. (more…)

So in my ever-stewing never-ending revisions of my work on Mormonism in the Philadelphia area, I’ve decided that I need to say more about women. This is a challenge since my sources are overwhelmingly written by men. I do have some detailed journals that I can mine better than I have though.

Anyway, up at the archives the other day and I came across another letter from a woman in the area (making a total of 5 letters by women in all). (more…)

So I was thinking about Edje’s comment on Russell’s “Why I am a Tory” post:

If the British had stuck to the Proclamation of 1763 indefinitely (forbidding English subjects from settling west of the Appalachians) I think it would have made it rather difficult to implement any sort of centralized gathering scheme. The reaction would have been similar to what actually happened in the US, but with centralized law enforcement and nowhere to go, the Mormons would have been eradicated.

If I recall the diggers attempted a commune in 17th century England and were eradicated. Yet, if I recall, a major reason for the Proclamation of 1763 was to keep the colonists from encroaching on native lands. Since Russell had us on the topic of 1 Nephi 13, I’ll quote verse 14: “And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it as upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten.”

If the Mormons needed to have a frontier to flee to, were they a part of the manifest destiny movement, or were they fleeing from it?

Today while going door to door collection money for our kids’ school with my almost eight-year-old daughter, I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. She said “I don’t know, maybe I want to be an artist or a student like you,” and she affectionately kissed me on the arm. While she meant it as a sign of affection I had to interject, “Wait honey, a student isn’t something you do when you grow up, it’s something you do in order to do something else. You see, I want to be a professor.” To this she responded in a very sympathetic voice, “Do you really think you’ll be able to do that?” To which I responded, “Yes, of course.” To which her reply (having lost the sympathetic tone) “Yeah right, in like 10 years or something.” (more…)

By Steve Fleming

I spent a chunk of my time in this year’s Bushman seminar insisting that I would not make any attempts at an empirical case about the subjects I was writing on (Swedenborg and DC 76 and Joseph Smith and magic). I would simply state how I saw the issue as a believer. In fact, that’s sort of how I’ve approached my scholarship: I’ve published articles with “academic” language in academic journals (Church History, RAC) and articles with “confessional” language in confessional journals (the Religious Educator). Though the academic articles come across as more sophisticated they are easier to write since in academic journals one does not speak of absolute truth but in confessional journals one does. (more…)

Stephen J. Fleming is a PhD. candidate at UC Santa Barbara in Religious Studies and a 2008 Bushman fellow. Steve received his B.A. in history from BYU and his M.A. from UC Stanislaus, also in history. He has been published in Church History and Religion and American Culture, as well as various Mormon journals. Steve has been gracious enough to share his thoughts on this year’s Bushman Seminar.

What is our obligation?

(more…)