This is a (very loose) continuation of the (very broad) series on reaching a broader audience. See also here and here.

“Bowman doesn’t shy away from the unsavory aspects of the Mormon faith, including a now-discredited belief in polygamy (as revealed in a revelation to Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion), as well as institutionalized racism. However, the ongoing controversies of the church and the stream of recent media describing Mormonism as a cult–from Jon Krakauer’s scathing non-fiction work Under the Banner of Heaven to HBO’s Big Love–is left entirely unaddressed in this work, which instead pays occasional attention to the inherently American aspects of the religion.” -Publisher’s Weekly

“Any discussion of Big Love, a complicated recent portrait of polygamy in a Mormon-like community, is left out. Nor is there a mention of Jon Krakauer’s forceful and very critical 2003 book, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.” -Dwight Garner, New York Times

Many people, correctly, have pointed out the obsession with Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven as one of the many oddities in these unfortunate reviews of Matt Bowman’s recent book. What, we wonder, made Krakauer’s caricatured telling of Mormonism’s “violent” past so crucial that to avoid it in a historical survey of the LDS Church is worthy of being charged with negligence? Few academics praised the 2003 book, it makes very few lists of “necessary” monographs on Mormon history, and almost anyone with more than a superficial understanding of Mormonism’s past recognize the sensationalistic aspects of its thesis. Put simply, it’s a shoddy work of history, and should have been destined to be another flash-in-the-pan sensationalist work that soon fell into insignificance. (The Mormon Murders, anyone?) (more…)

Dillinger, Johannes.  Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History.  Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

There’s no need to point out that treasure digging has been a major theme in the historiography of the early life of Joseph Smith for 40 years or more.  So it was with great excitement and high hope that I read the first book-length treatment of the subject.  This book exceeded my expectations.  In fact, although it technically dedicates only 4 pages to Mormonism, I found the book to be one of the most ground-shifting books I’ve ever read on Joseph Smith.  I hope readers will excuse my enthusiasm, but the first full treatment to the topic has yielded exciting results. (more…)

Coudert, Allison P.  Religion, Magic , and Science in Early Modern Europe and America.  Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011.

This book made my head spin.  Coudert sets about attacking cherished ontologies and historiographical dogmas in ways I’m overwhelmingly in agreement with, but the book still left me dizzy.  Coudert comes out swinging and doesn’t let up.   Most brilliant is the way Coudert blends these categories with each other and the social history of the periods she covers. (more…)

Fire and Sword: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri, 1836-1839, by Leland Homer Gentry and Todd M. Compton. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2010.

Leland H. Gentry’s 1965 dissertation “A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri, 1836-1839” was part of a wave of new Mormon scholarship of the 1960s that sought to reinterpret Mormon history in more academic terms, avoiding the polarities of the “traditional” anti-Mormon/pro-Mormon battles of the 19th and early 20th century. After reviewing the literature on Mormon Missouri during the late 1830s, Gentry noted in his introduction that (more…)

Anderson, Devery S. ed. The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011.

Continuing Signature Book’s strong tradition in documentary histories, this is a fascinating collection of documents relating to LDS temple policy from the end of Nauvoo to the modern day. Building from the earlier two volumes in this series, Devery Anderson presents a plethora of important sources for historians interested in the development of LDS ritual. With a serviceable introduction that outlines the main themes of the book’s contents, and helpful biographical overviews provided in the footnotes, The Development of LDS Temple Worship is a welcome addition to the Mormon history field. (more…)

Gardner, Brant A. The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon.  Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford, 2011.

Gardner seeks to understand the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon by a thorough examination of the text coupled with descriptions of the translation process.  Gardner compares the Book of Mormon translation to regular translations and argues for three types: literal (an exact, word-for-word translation), functional (a translation that conveys meaning instead of exact wording) and conceptual.  Gardener argues that the Book of Mormon translation fits the functionalist type: it is a translation of the concepts into the idioms of Joseph Smith’s world.  Gardner goes further, arguing that research on cognition suggests how Smith translated: revelation was given at a pre-language level and then translated into English by Smith.  Gardner argues that such is a “natural” account of the translation and that his description still posits Smith as the translator. (more…)

(I’ve closely followed Mormon history for only six years, but the previous twelve months were, by far, the strongest year in Mormon historical studies that I’ve seen yet. As always, JI is the place to be for looking at past and present scholarship in Mormon history. Besides the following recap of the 2011 year, Jared T’s perennially exhaustive “Recently Released and Forthcoming” list will appear later this week. Also make sure to check out Stapley’s Christmas Book Guide here.)

Continuing a tradition from the last two years, this post will give a quick run down of what I thought were important articles and books in Mormon history from the past twelve months. I like this format because it not only allows discussion of different media of publication, but it also encourages us to contemplate broader themes that are currently “hot” in Mormon historiography. (more…)

In The Mormon Menace, Patrick Mason adeptly traces the contours of anti-Mormonism in the late nineteenth-century South and explains how proselytizing, polygamy, and extra-legal violence shaped the South’s response to Mormonism. Mason attends to the ways in which southern honor, defined by a communal estimation of the individual and often deployed to protect or avenge the virtuous female, provided justification for illicit actions against Mormon missionaries. While granting that anti-Mormon violence paled in comparison to racial and political attacks against African Americans, Mason contends that “Mormonism was unique in the way it inspired southerners to set aside general norms of civility and religious tolerance” (13). (more…)

Though they haven’t held a “bloggernacle event” or “virtual launch” yet, the Joseph Smith Papers just released the most recent addition to their foundational series. Journals, Volume 2 (1841-1843) covers the first half of Smith’s Nauvoo journals, and includes many great gems that will help future researchers of this important period in Mormon history. While there is much to cover in the actual journals—I’ll leave that to J Stapley, who I hope will do another excellent review of the overall text like he’s done for the other volumes—I just want to comment on a single section of the introduction; in fact, only about seven pages of the introduction. (more…)

Before I dive into the substance of this review, it’s worth pointing out, I think, a few of the things which are going on beneath its surface. The first is me once again trying to work out the relationship between trained academic scholars and autodidact scholars, and to assess their ongoing discussion about the proper form and the structure of scholarship. This is a popular topic at the JI, which reflects more generally the state of Mormon studies. Many of the points I make below have to do with my judgment of the ways this book holds up as an academic work. A book of this scope and ambition would normally, in an academic setting be a synthesis, weaving together a vast array of work into a single whole by a scholar familiar with the field. But its author is neither a trained theologian nor a trained historian – and, of course, that wide array of secondary literature on the history of Mormon theology simply does not exist. This my mean that we should take its ambitions somewhat differently than we might otherwise. Furthermore – and second – while the work itself certainly has academic aspirations, it also reads in many places as prescriptive as well as descriptive – that is, this is a work of Mormon theology as much as it is a history of Mormon thought. Harrell thinks certain ways of believing are more useful than others, and he seeks to convince us of the fact. This is not bad; indeed, I think Mormonism needs more theology, not less, and I am delighted with Harrell’s contribution to that discussion. But again, it complicates how one might engage with the book as a work of scholarship: how should it be read? Those caveats noted, the review.

Additionally, this essay will appear in a slightly altered form in an upcoming issue of Dialogue. Subscribe!

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[Part I on the importance of narrative is found here. Also, see Blair's review of Harline's book at BCC yesterday, which gives an excellent overview of the book's narrative(s).]

Craig Harline, professor of history at Brigham Young University and noted Reformation scholar, has long been noted as a skilled author whose prose and approach reach a much broader audience than is typical for academic books. Whether it’s a Reformation archbishop, a seventeenth century nun, or a comprehensive history of Sunday, Harline is widely respected for making historical stories accessible for general readers.

But while finishing his book on conversion in seventeenth-century Europe—focusing on a family whose father was a Protestant minister, whose son was a convert to Catholicism, and how they balanced these tough issues of tolerance—Harline considered ways to make the book more relevant to contemporary readers. He narrates how he came to this conclusion in the epilogue to the book: during a chance meeting with some family friends at a local restaurant, he learned about their college-age daughter’s recent choices and the grief and disappointment it brought to their close-knit family. Trying to bring comfort to the troubled parents, Harline shared the story and lessons of his current book-in-progress. Satisfied with the (albeit limited) relief that this brought, he felt justified in his desire to use his book “to show explicitly how the distant past could possibly have meaning in the present, and vice versa.” History, he concluded, was too often seen as “something mostly suitable for school, or hobbyists, something to be discussed recreationally..rather than as something that might inform present experience” (269-272). Hoping to reverse this trend, and hoping to better reach people an audience like his friends with the wayward child, Harline re-envisioned the overall framework and methodology of what is now published as Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America (Yale UP, 2011). (more…)

Over at The Immanent Frame, the always insightful and provocative Jon Butler offers “a historian’s reaction to American Grace,” a sweeping treatment of  ”how religion divides and unites us” in contemporary America that has rightly gained a fair amount of publicity and praise since its release last October. Butler’s thoughtful critique wonders whether authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell allow the “many and complex “beliefs’” they survey to “float too free from their historical moorings.” (more…)

In order for the “Mormon Moment” (however you define it) to be successful, there must be able explicators. In the last half-dozen years, there have been few better faces of Mormonism than Richard Bushman. (See, for instance, the recent write-up here.) Whether the topic is Joseph Smith, religious fanaticism, or even the “Book of Mormon” musical, Bushman has been a go-to voice for reporters, and his insights are often poignant and insightful. He is the perfect blend of approachability, reasonable credentials (many of the highest academic awards, prestigious chair at an Ivy League institution), and brilliance. What makes him so likable in the public sphere is not just what he says, but how he says it.

Importantly, that is also one of the things that makes him so likable in academia. (more…)

Neilson, Reid L. Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901-1924. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010

Dr. Reid L. Neilson, managing director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s history department, has written a fascinating account of the Mormon Japanese Mission at the turn of the 20^th century. Neilson argues that the 19^th century LDS missionary experience in the United States and Europe had calcified Mormon evangelizing strategies to a degree that ultimately determined their failure in the rapidly modernizing Japanese nation. While Neilson’s trajectory often wades a little shallow and missionary-centric, his transnational gaze at Mormon mission policy and practice, while situating his study in a comparative Christian missionary framework, offers important inroads for scholars of Mormon history who have too often found themselves mired in the nineteenth century American origins story of a 21^st century global church. (more…)

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry surrounded a group of ninety Minneconjou Lakota men just west of Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The wives and children of the Lakota warriors were camped a few yards to the south of the council ground. The Cavalry was engaged in disarming the warriors, who military leaders believed were part of a wide-ranging indigenous conspiracy to push back white settlement. The Lakota men were known to be adherents of the Ghost Dance, a religious phenomenon that originated with the Paiute prophet Wovoka in Nevada and had spread from the Great Basin to the Plains in 1889-1890. During the disarming, a struggle ensued between the troopers and a young Lakota who thought he could hide his rifle under his blanket, and a shot fired into the air. Chaos—and death—followed, as the five hundred members of the Seventh Cavalry proceeded to slaughter not only the by-then largely disarmed men but also the women and children as they fled the scene. Although exact numbers are unknown, perhaps as many as three hundred Lakotas died. It was shown in the aftermath of Wounded Knee that the Ghost Dance was not a broad-based scheme to overthrow U.S. authority, and, more to the point, that most if not all of the Lakotas who lost their lives on December 29, 1890 had died innocently after surrendering without resistance.[1] Although Latter-day Saints had nothing to do with the massacre at Wounded Knee, since 1890 commentators have speculated that Mormons were somehow connected and even the primary movers behind the Ghost Dance movement. (more…)

Drew Briney. Silencing Mormon Polygamy: Failed Persecutions, Divided Saints & the Rise of Mormon Fundamentalism, Volume 1. Hindsight Publications, n.p., 2008.

This book, a free review copy, has been sitting on my shelf for perhaps the last two years as I’ve done all I can to avoid a) reviewing it and b) paying for it. I think part of my trepidation was that the issues I had with it were so vast that I just didn’t know where to begin or how to possibly provide a glimpse of the web that the book weaves. I will not take the time to take you through all the twists and turns of the story the author tells, but will instead focus on some issues that make that story suspect. You’ll note in the picture that I read the book thoroughly (what can I say, the summer of 2009 must have been slow). (more…)

Our own Chris Jones’ excellent article, “The Power and Form of Godliness: Methodist Conversion Narratives and Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” explores, first, the significance of the rebuke Joseph Smith related in his 1838 First Vision account that all other Churches had a form of Godliness but denied the power thereof. (more…)

It’s that time again. The latest issue of the Journal of Mormon History is rolling out to a mailbox near you (if you’re lucky enough to be a subscriber–if not–what are you waiting for?). (more…)

D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Salt Lake City: Signature, 1998.

In reassessing Quinn’s classic study, I’ll simply say that Stephen Ricks’s and Daniel Peterson’s review of the first edition still applies to the second. The book “reflects deep erudition” and “offers considerable evidence indicating that Joseph Smith, members of his family, and some of his early associates were involved in the use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, and parchments, as well as in the search for buried treasure.” In other words, Quinn effectively argues his chief assertions. (more…)

David F. Holland. Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 275pp. + index.

We spend a lot of time at this blog considering how Mormonism fits within larger frameworks in American religious history and what it uniquely reveals about the shape and contours of that past. Among the most obvious answers to the latter consideration is Mormonism’s prophetic tradition, with its adherence to a belief in continuing revelation and an expanded (and expanding) canon of scripture. In trying to tackle the complicated question of whether Mormonism can be accurately described as “Protestant” in any meaningful sense on a recent post, among the most significant reasons for those who answered “no” was Mormonism’s claims to revelation and scripture beyond the bounds of the Old and New Testaments.

But just how unique is Mormonism in this regard? What precedents are there in the American past for such beliefs and how do Mormon prophets and scriptures fit within the larger history of the (more…)