The amount of scholarship on early modern witchcraft is huge, but Wilby’s book represents an interesting trend. The cunning folk or what Wilby calls “magical practitioners” are the individuals in British society who were seen as having special gifts of healing, divination, and counter-witchcraft charms. “Although historians have produced a number of perceptive studies which bear testament to the sophistication and efficacy of popular magical traditions in this period, and which extol, in particular, the value of ‘cunning’ or ‘wise’ folk as policemen, detectives and doctors—something remains missing from the picture. An experiential or ‘spiritual’ dimension” (5).

To determine what this spiritual dimension is, Wilby takes a new look at British (particularly Scottish) witchcraft trials coupled with the complaints against the common people by British elites. Scholars had been dismissive of these kinds of sources as a means of uncovering folk beliefs, by Wilby represents a movement that now looks at these sources much more favorably. While prosecutors and clerical polemicists cannot be seen as ethnographers, Wilby sees some interesting trends in these sources.

The major theme that Wilby finds in these sources on the cunning folk is the familiar; that is, some type of spirit being that converses with and aids the practitioner. These familiars could go by all sorts of designations: fairies, elves, dwarves, animals, or the dead. Yet Wilby warns, “Trying to make any hard and fast distinction between categories of spirits in early modern Britain is impossible because supernatural beings were labeled differently, depending on geography, education and religious perspective and definitions overlapped considerably. The term fairy, for example, is a misleadingly broad generic term which, in the period, covered wide range of supernatural entities. On a popular level there was often little difference between a fairy and an angel, saint, ghost, or devil” (17). Wilby gives a number of examples of how these designations could overlap in popular descriptions, but concludes “The most consistent association to be found, however, is the link between fairies and the dead” (18). Of course the dead were often ambivalent, from terrifying, to helpful, to saints and angels.

Familiars, Wilby notes, gave guidance to the cunning folk in terms foreknowledge and supernatural abilities, and helped in traversing the fairy realm (called by the Scots “elfhame”), which was generally also seen as the land of the dead. Wilby then notes the degree to which these themes show up in both Siberian and Native American beliefs, arguing for common “shamanistic” practices. (Wilby notes that “it has been argued that while this indiscriminate use of the term ‘shaman’ has rendered the word almost meaningless, in the absence of any viable alternative, it will still be used here” [127].)

Wilby thus suggests that the practices of the cunning folk represent pre-Christian animistic beliefs, but her last section muddies that conclusion. This is because Wilby argues for the degree to which medieval mystics also fit the trends she notes. In her chapter “Greedigut and the Angel Gabriel,” Wilby asserts, “From this perspective, a Christian contemplative at her prayers who hears the voice of Jesus (whether through her ‘bodily ears’ or, more profoundly, through the ‘ears of her soul’) in response to her supplications, could be said to be communicating with her spiritual guide” (220). Thus Wilby is happy to equate the experiences of cunning folk and Christian mystics. The division between orthodox vision and the false/demonic is extremely important to religious boundary making and thus Wilby’s assertions can be hard to us moderns to swallow. Says Wilby, “Both the modern western mind (however secular, and however uninterested in mysticism), and the early modern elite mind, inherit Christian preconceptions about the moral nature, visual appearance and behavior appropriate to a spiritual guide. Both find it difficult to imagine Greedigut drinking from the same cup as the Archangel Gabriel” (220). Ultimately, the practices of the cunning folk, says Wilby, “could be interpreted as expressions of a popular mysticism” (217).

Contrary to Wilby, who ends her book by talking about neopaganism as revivals of these practices, current scholarship has attacked the notion of “pagan survivalism,” because 1) we don’t really know what the Germans and Celts were doing and 2) Christianity needs to be defined by those who practice it and we can’t simply accept definitions of the clerical elite as absolute. That is, timeless and normative definitions of Christianity cannot work for historical analysis: Christianity has to be understood according to time, place, and social group. Thus practices become Christian when people who see themselves as Christian see the practices as Christian. Of course, definitions of practices are always contested among Christians, but scholars ought not to take sides. Judging what particular practices really are is an ontology historians ought not to engage in. Nevertheless, Wilby’s analysis and data are certainly thought provoking and with Joseph Smith as both visionary and folk practitioner, have a number of implication for studying early Mormonism.

Fair enough. It’s been amply demonstrated by now that Beck is largely ignorant of the deep, deep roots that the phrase “social justice” has in the soil of Christian theology. To cite merely one example: In 1891 the landmark papal encyclical Rerum Novarum argued the phrase demanded “some opportune remedy . . . for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.” [1] But the Catholics did more than merely say it would be nice to relieve the squalor of the poor – they rooted the call to do so in a theology of natural rights; an anthropology which insisted that humanity’s true worth lay not in possessions and earthly success, but in moral virtue gained through the metaphysical encounter with Christ in his Atonement; and the conviction that humanity bound together by the mystical bonds of the Church was a single body rather than a collection of individuals. These ways of defining “social justice” are not historical or legal or economic but theological. They imagine human society as first the kingdom of God, and only secondarily a community based on democracy or capitalism or whatnot. And theology is not Glenn Beck’s native tongue.

To cite another: Martin Luther King, Jr, an underrated theologian, argues in his book Stride Toward Freedom that “no historian or sociologist could understand” the meetings that led to the Montgomery bus boycott. This was because, King argued, “history is guided by spirit, not matter.” The imperatives which guided the civil rights movement were to him not simply political; rather, the political manifestations of the Movement were the outworking of God’s grace in human history. The transformation of America from a segregated to a desegregated society was not a political activity but a religious one, and it happened not because of the political but the religious imagination of the African American community.[2]

Beck’s great failure, then, is his insistence on reading religion through the lens of his politics, or perhaps his confidence that the two are so perfectly blended that the seams are invisible and the language of one blends effortlessly into that of the other. This is the mark of a man too at ease in the world. His demand that Christians whose churches subscribe to “social justice” should abandon their denominations indicates that Glenn Beck’s cosmos seems entirely framed by his conspiratorial politics, and that he may, perhaps, have trouble thinking outside the box.

But this is the sort of gotcha that’s quite easy to play. One could, without much trouble, find Beck’s scarlet letters emblazoned on the dress of virtually every Christian denomination in America (including his own). And of course in a larger sense it’s generally easy to catch Beck dabbling in inconsistency, hyperbole, and all sorts of related fallacies. This is, though, where we come to the second failure of imagination.

Jim Wallis’s response to Beck consists, more or less, of ‘nuh-uh.’ And that’s a fatal slip. He insists that “social, economic, and racial justice are at the heart of the gospel,” which is nice, and may even be true. But that’s a thesis statement, not a conclusion, an argument, not evidence. This is, unfortunately, typical of Wallis, who frequently uses religious words like “Biblical” and “grace” while talking about contemporary politics. He argues quite frequently that Jesus commanded us to care for the poor, so if we are to be Christians, we must therefore pursue the planks of what appears to be a fairly typical Democratic political platform. Wallis favors penalizing big banks, promoting grassroots poverty relief programs, immigration reform to benefit poor immigrants, campaign finance laws and so on. This is fine, as far as it goes. But it does not actually go very far.

Wallis, and other advocates for something called the “religious left” seem to be trapped in much the same paradigm that Beck is – that is, they tend to use religious language within an already existing economic and political paradigm. Their religious imagination is structured by contemporary American politics; religion matters to them to the extent that it translates into political positions. This guy is not only a pretty good example of one who wields religious language as a weapon in ongoing partisan warfare; he cites a lone, paltry, out of context verse in Isaiah to justify his pro-choice policies – showing mad prooftexting skills that any fundamentalist would be proud of. The frequently vacuous Sally Quinn, and more, the entire Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” website which Quinn helps to edit, stand as a shining monument to this failure of imagination. “Religion” for whoever it is that maintains the front page of On Faith, is primarily “Whatever religious people are doing vis-a-vis the controversial political issue of the day.” “Religion” for Sally Quinn means “Whatever religious activity or language I can muster to lend gravitas and impressive-sounding Biblical language to my left-wing politics and vague and sentimental sense of cultural inclusivity.” Witness, for instance, her poorly-thought-out recommendation that the Obamas become Episcopalian in order to better promote Sally Quinn’s cultural politics.

This is catastrophically depressing. The savagely brilliant religious imaginations that Martin Luther King, or Walter Rauschenbusch, or Dorothy Day mobilized behind social reform worked because of their comprehensiveness. They began with a vision of the world in part inspired by but not bound to the contexts they found themselves in. And the social reforms they advocated for were not merely an end in themselves, or to satisfy our basic human impulse toward charity, or to pursue greater egalitarianism as a self-contained good. Rather, their calls for social reform were bound inexorably into the most basic and primal aims of Christianity – to, through the atoning acts of Christ, attain for humanity salvation. Their theologies of social transformation were based upon their imagination of the Kingdom of God. They were radical, then, in the best sense, not merely political. They knew that the world that Christ calls us to is not the world we live in; that the things Christ asks of us cannot be fully embodied in the tools of politics. One does not get that same sense of the incarnation of Christ in the politics of Jim Wallis. And that, because, like those of Beck, they are simply politics.

So, I feel an incessant, nagging suspicion that perhaps Beck’s salvo is a justified one. This is not to endorse his somewhat staggering ignorance, bluster, and paranoia; indeed, Beck suffers acutely from the same problem he diagnoses; he believes God is on his side rather than engaging in that constant struggle that should afflict every Christian – worrying that he is on God’s. It is, though, to point out that as in every age, idolatry may be the most pervasive sin of our own.

______________________
[1] Rerum Novarum, section 3.
[2] Martin Luther King, Stride toward Freedom: the Montgomery story (New York: Harper, 1958) 64, 92.

Name:

Sheila Taylor (Though online I usually go by my middle name, which is Lynnette.)

Education:

B.A., History, BYU; M.A., History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; MTS, Theology, University of Notre Dame; PhD candidate, Systematic Theology, Graduate Theological Union.

How did you become interested in your area (s) of expertise/specialization?

I started out in history; that was my undergrad major, and after my time at BYU, I headed to a PhD program at the University of Illinois, planning to become a historian. I was particularly interested in the Reformation. But the more I dug into that, the more I found that I was far more interested in the theology of it than the history, and I finally realized that probably history wasn’t the field for me. So I left the program with an MA, and headed to Notre Dame to see what theology would be like. In a lot of ways it seemed like an odd choice; Mormons didn’t do theology (as far as I knew, and I got some strange looks when I mentioned my plans!). Academic theology had hardly been on my radar screen—the field doesn’t exist at BYU, of course, and I was only vaguely aware that people did it. And I was nervous about coming in without much of a background in the subject, except what I’d kind of picked up while working in history. But I absolutely fell in love with it. In retrospect, I can see that I’d been fascinated with theological questions since I was a teenager; it just hadn’t ever occurred to me that you could go to school and study them!

What are you currently studying, or what are some of your current projects (papers, books, dissertations, etc.)?

Right now I’m finishing my dissertation, which is titled “Re-Orienting Our Life Stories: Salvation as Narrative Transformation.” It looks at salvation from the perspective of the self as a narrative construction; in other words, if the way we understand who we are is through the stories we tell about our lives, what does it mean in that context to talk about the traditional Christian notions of redemption or liberation? I’m drawing on work from contemporary psychologists and philosophers on narrative, and from a range of theologians.

Theological anthropology has always been my primary area of interest—what does it mean to be human? What is the imago Dei? What are we talking about, really, when we talk about grace at work in a human life? I’m interested in connections between psychology and theology—what might psychological explanations of human behavior contribute to theology? What about mental illness? And I keep coming back to questions involving religious pluralism, which is one of the most pressing challenges for contemporary theologians. Assuming that I do finish this dissertation someday, I’m sure I’ll come back to these kinds of questions.

I also keep getting sidetracked by entertaining Mormon-related projects. I’ve been co-editing a special feminist issue of Element (the journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology), and I’m also currently working on articles having to do with LDS perspectives on the atonement and grace.

What has your experience been like as a woman in the academy?

On the whole, my own experience has been quite positive. Though I did struggle with the climate at BYU, even there my (male) professors encouraged me to go to grad school. And in grad school, I don’t feel like I’ve encountered many situations in which my gender was an issue in terms of feeling like professors and colleagues took me less seriously or like I had fewer opportunities. I suspect the fact that I’m single has also played a significant role in shaping my experience, in that I haven’t had to navigate the challenges which arise from balancing academic work with raising children. (On the other hand, I’m not sure quite what to think when people comment, as they often do, that they never could have made it through grad school without the support of their spouse!)

Because I’m in a field that is still male-dominated, I have, however, been in a lot of situations where I’ve felt very aware of my gender. I went to my first area meeting at the GTU and looked around and was quite stunned to realize that I was one of maybe two or three women in the room—almost all the professors and grad students were male. I hadn’t been expecting it to be quite that skewed. It’s actually evened out some since then, but almost all of my professors have been men. I’ve been in more than one seminar where I was one of two women. I’ve found such situations challenging both in terms of the way that set-up impacts the conversational dynamics, and because I’ve felt a kind of implicit pressure to prove that I could keep up. It’s striking to me, as I’m thinking about it right now, how different it feels to be in a class that’s more evenly split, versus one that’s almost entirely men; the former feels friendlier, an easier place to be.

Last fall I presented at a small conference, to an organization that is made up almost entirely of older white males, and the very senior professor who responded to my paper really went after me. Needless to say, it was not the most welcoming of environments. I don’t know that it would have made much difference if I were a young male scholar, but I did have a sense of being very out of place. (It ended well, though, because I felt good about the way I responded to him and I got a lot of positive feedback about the whole thing.) It’s hard to untangle to what extent this is tied up with gender, and to what extent it’s simply temperament, but I don’t have much patience with the kind of old-school highly contentious style of interaction that seems more about argument for the sake of scoring intellectual points than actual discussion of ideas. Looking at how this plays out, I think to some extent it might also be a generational thing—though that’s probably also related to the ways in which the field has been impacted by having more women in it. In any case, I’ve found that situations like that conference have been more the exception than the rule.

I do some feminist theology (particularly in relation to Mormonism), but it’s not actually my primary focus, and I don’t like it when it gets assumed that of course the women will do the feminist stuff, work on the “women’s issues.”  I’m always cheered when I see my male colleagues wanting to do feminist work themselves! I work with a lot of dead white males, and I’m okay with that, because they have exciting and thought-provoking ideas. However, I also often find that feminist perspectives have a lot to add to those ideas. My dissertation isn’t about feminist theology, but a lot of the stuff I’m saying is influenced by insights from feminist theologians. And that’s ideally how I think feminist theology should be operating, rather than being placed in a corner by itself, so to speak.

I also have to add that in many ways as an LDS woman I’ve found the academy, for all its many flaws, to be a refreshing change from LDS culture—as a place where my credibility doesn’t hang on my marital status or my gender, where I don’t keep crashing into ideals of femininity that simply don’t connect with my life experience. I’m neurotic enough to have spent plenty of time feeling like I’m on the verge of failing out, my dissertation makes no sense and I should simply incinerate it, etc. I don’t want to romanticize academia; there are plenty of frustrating aspects, all sorts of politics and general craziness. But still, that sense of being taken seriously, feeling like I have something to contribute, being in an environment where it’s simply assumed that of course women should have a voice—those things have been a real positive in my life.

In your field who are some women (living or dead) whom you admire? Why?

Though I don’t always agree with them, I owe a lot to people like Rosemary Radford Ruether and Mary Daly and Valerie Saiving and other early second-wave feminist theologians who raised a lot of really important questions and laid the groundwork for many things that I take for granted as a female theologian working in the early 21st century. Elizabeth Johnson’s work (She Who Is) has given me a lot to think about, especially because as a Catholic she’s also working within a somewhat authoritarian ecclesiastical context—I’m always interested to see how women in other patriarchal religious traditions have navigated various challenges. I’ve definitely been influenced by Catherine LaCugna’s work (God For Us) on relational trinitarianism. Though I don’t do process theology, I’ve been intrigued by some of Marjorie Suchocki’s ideas, especially her thinking about sin and relationality.

More historically, I’m intrigued by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who is kind of a pioneer in feminist biblical studies. And going back even further, I love Julian of Norwich. (But who doesn’t?)

For someone who is interested in studying what you do what are some books you would recommend on the subject?

If you don’t know much about systematic theology, and you want to get a sense of what it’s generally about, you could have a look at Alister McGrath’s Christian Theology: An Introduction, which is quite accessible and often used in intro courses.

On grace and theological anthropology, Roger Haight has a nice little book called The Experience and Language of Grace that gives a brief overview of some of the issues. For something more in-depth, I like Stephen Duffy’s The Dynamics of Grace.

Theology, alas, is not always known for its clear and accessible prose. As an alternative to volumes of systematic theology, it can be fun (when they’re available) to look at the sermons of some of the more influential thinkers—for example, Karl Rahner’s The Great Church Year, or Paul Tillich’s The Shaking of the Foundations.

For feminist theology, I really like Johnson’s She Who Is, mentioned in the previous question.

And if you’re interested in the growing field of contemporary LDS theological work, you should definitely read Musser & Paulsen’s Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies. And join the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology (see www.smpt.org).

Also, for those unable to attend, there will be blog reports of each presentation accessible from the BYU Studies homepage. Buen provecho!

From the tour blog:

What place do “Mormon” women writers have in the 21st century? Join poets, novelists, memoirists and non-fiction authors from California to Canada to explore the question in Our Visions, Our Voices: The Mormon Women’s Literary Tour to university campuses throughout the Southwest, the week of March 22 – 27, 2010.

Project founders Dr. Joanna Brooks of San Diego State University and Dr. Holly Welker of Salt Lake City have tapped into a range of denominations that share historic roots with the greater Mormon and Latter Day Saint traditions.

“This is about creating common ground,” says Brooks, a professor of English. “We want to create a space for women to share their writing and reflect on what it might mean to be a Mormon woman in the 21st century.”

The ground-breaking project brings women writers face-to-face with audiences that recognize the need for a vibrant writing culture beyond the bounds of orthodoxy. The Utah Valley University Department of English is sponsoring the tour, with additional support from the Claremont University Mormon Studies program. Audio will be podcast at mormonmatters.org. Women writers who want to contribute to the tour’s archive at the University of Utah Marriot Special Collections Library can bring their own writings to the readings.

Here is an abbreviated tour schedule.

Monday, March 22, 7 p.m.

Claremont Graduate University
Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall
Featuring: Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Joanna Brooks, Holly Welker, Elisa Pulido

Tuesday, March 23, 7 p.m.

Arizona State University
Coor Building 170
Featuring: Judith Curtis, Whitney Mower, Whitney Nelson, Danielle Dubrasky, Joanna Brooks, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Holly Welker

Thursday, March 25, 5 p.m.

Southern Utah University
Sharwan Smith Student Center Theater
Featuring: Zoe Murdock, Judith Curtis, Whitney Mower, Whitney Nelson, Danielle Dubrasky, Joanna Brooks, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Holly Welker

Friday, March 26, 12 noon

Utah Valley University
LI 120 (Library Auditorium)
Featuring: Julie Nichols, Lee Mortenson, Terisa Humiston, Whitney Nelson, Whitney Mower, Judith Curtis, Elizabeth Pinborough, Kathryn Lynard Soper, Cassandra Eddington, Joanna Brooks, Zoe Murdock, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Susan Scott, Danielle Dubrasky, Laura Nielson Baxter

Saturday, March 27, 7 p.m.

University of Utah
Fort Douglas Honors Center
Featuring: Holly Welker, Elizabeth Pinborough, Lisa Van Hadley, Victoria Burgess, Kathryn Lynard Soper, Joanna Brooks, Zoe Murdock, Cassie Eddington, Susan Scott, Judith Curtis, Whitney Nelson, Whitney Mower, Terisa Humiston, Danielle Dubrasky, Laura Nielson Baxter

For specific directions to the readings and biographies of the tour participants, visit the Mormon Women Writers blog. For an engaging interview with one of the tour organizers Joanna Brooks, conducted by Kathryn Lynard Soper, check out By Common Consent. And come!

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. This is a work of intellectual history and Clark makes it clear that he is only looking at what elites thought (the people who could write). Yet the amount of people that Clark examines is huge and I agree with the quote on the cover from History Today: “one of the most impressive works of intellectual history for many years.”

In addition to only looking at the thought of the elite, Clark also makes it clear that he is avoiding what he calls “realism,” meaning that he is only interesting what the intellectuals thought was going on, not in trying to figure out what was actually going on. Clark breaks his nearly 700-page book up into 5 sections: language, science, history, religion, and politics. Because of the length of the book (well worth it) I’ll only focus on what I consider the two most important sections: science and religion.

First though, “Language” is a useful introduction, in which Clark demonstrates the dualist thinking of the early moderns. Clark argues that early modern thought, drawing upon a long tradition, was steeped in notions of binaries and inversion. Binaries between good and bad and that evil would cause disorder by inverting societal roles. “There can be no better way to know God than by the contrarie,” (138) Clark quotes King James I saying. Thus the witch was the inversion of the good in society, who mimicked holy rites and inverted all roles. Clark’s analysis reaches its peak in this section when he discusses the issue of women and witchcraft. Clark challenges the notion that witchcraft accusation were simply attacks on women despite the fact that women were the majority of witchcraft accusation and that witchcraft treatises were often grossly misogynistic. Clark notes that early modern thinkers really did believe in witchcraft and that those who challenged the notion were often as misogynistic as the witchcraft writers. Instead Clark proposes that the woman as witch was all part of the binary and inversion model in which witchcraft fit. Women were the opposite of men who were deemed superior; thus the witch, the antithesis, needed to be female. “Witches were women on top par excellence” (132). Yet women as witches were just the ideal; in reality many men were accused of witchcraft.

In “Science” Clark challenges the idea that witchcraft disappeared as the result of the triumph of science over superstition because 1) many leading scientists were witchcraft believers and 2) because it was more a shift in worldview, one cultural fashion to another.

I wish to combat the conceit that early modern intellectuals attributed effects to devils only so long as their true causes were unknown to them and that the only story worth telling about these attributions concerns their overthrow. On the contrary, to attribute effects to devils was to know their causes—to know them perhaps uncertainly and fragmentally (for such was the problem with occult causes), but still to know them. Thoroughgoing scepticism, when it finally came, was not a victory over ignorance but a corollary of knowing nature according to different rules. Until that point came, demonology worked as well as any other branch of physics—ant it therefore seems important to find out how this was so (160).

How this was so, Clark explains was that the devil and his demons were a part of nature and worked according to natural causes. Yet these were occult causes, things that were not fully understood. The devil was the great magician, knew how to manipulate nature to his own ends. The devil did not work supernatural effects, only God could do that, but preternatural ones. Demonology was thus related to early modern notions of magic, which Clark reminds us was not a pejorative term in the era. Instead Clark works to understand how natural magic was understood that the time. “In these circumstances, its later connotations are quite out of place, along with the many modern attempts, from Frazer and Malinowski to D. L. O’Keefe, to define just what magic essentially is. Magic is not, essentially, anything; it is what, in particular cultural settings, it is construed to be” (216). This is an extremely important statement. Magic at the time was believed to be the whole of all knowledge, knowledge that the devil had access to. Thus demonology was a branch of physics and most of the leading scientists of the late seventeenth century defended the belief. They were often skeptical of most witchcraft stories, but demonology fit their view of how nature worked, though most of them were against witchcraft trials. Quoting Simon Schaffer, “there was ‘no correlation between endorsement of the reality of spirits and support for witch trials” (310). To Clark the decline of witchcraft belief was the product of pluralism of thought brought about by the Reformation (144-47).

In “Religion,” Clark lays out his most powerful arguments. Building on the work of Jean Delumeau and Robert Muchelbled, Clark argues that the early modern reformers undertook a program that they believed to be the “Christianization” of the laity. Under attack by these reformers was the common people’s “superstition,” defined as false practices attributed to false causes. Like “magic,” “superstition” must be understood in its cultural context, and cannot be used as a scholarly descriptor. To early modern intellectuals, when the common people attempted to ward off demons through various unofficial means, they were in actuality calling upon the power of the devil, who would lead their souls to destruction. Worse still were the white witches who aided the common folk and protected against witchcraft. To the reformers, white witches were worse than the black witches, because there were so seducing. The program that the reformers instead hope to implement was based on the Book of Job. God allowed the devil to torment Job and Job bore his afflictions with resolution and was ultimately blessed. To the reformers, misfortune and even maleficium, were signs of God’s providence and opportunities for introspection, and they were not to be subverted through “popular magic.” Those who would not be as Job often made the errors of Saul in seeking after witches.

Clark is sympathetic to Muchelbled’s argument that these reforms were at the heart of inspiring the witch-hunts and that the whole program may be terms “acculturation” by the elites with a number of similarities to colonization of foreign countries. Clark acknowledges the problems with this view but nonetheless argues for what he calls “acculturation by text”; that is they sought to impose the worldview described above on the masses. For my purposes, the “acculturation by text” and attacks on “superstition” of the early modern era is fundamental to understanding the clashes between the religiosity of the elites and common people in the nineteenth century. I would argue that popular prophets like Joseph Smith not only rejected the disenchantment of the enlightenment but also the whole “acculturation” program of the Protestant reformers.

Clark then examines Catholic and Protestant attitudes toward witchcraft, finding them similar. Protestant saw Catholicism as full of demonic superstition, while Catholics equated heresy with witchcraft. Finally, Clark notes that the real division in confessional beliefs about witchcraft was between the church- and sect-types. Sectarians displayed little belief in witches and England’s most prominent witch skeptics (Reginald Scot and Weyer) had sectarian associations. Clark argues that this skepticism was a result of the sectarian worldview that did not link their religiosity to the state, thus the witch was not seen as a social evil. “One of the reasons,” Clark reiterates “for the decline of witchcraft prosecutions and of witchcraft beliefs in general was the coming of a religions pluralism that permitted the members of all types of churches to coexist and spelt the end of the confessional state” (545).

BYU Studies 48:4 (2009)

This issue, recently arrived, is a special issue on Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons, 1846-1883 and is edited by David J. Whittaker. From the preface and the BYU Studies website:

“In 1996, the [Harold B.] Lee Library [at BYU] was able to obtain a significant Kane family archive consisting of journals, scrapbooks, letters, and other manuscripts and photographs that when combined with the university’s existing Kane materials, for the first time allowed scholars an in-depth look at the life and work of this influential friend to the Later-day Saints…During the 2008-9 school years, staff at Perry Special Collections prepared a public exhibition of significant manuscripts focusing on Thomas Kane and his relationship with the Mormons. During the exhibition, the library sponsored a lecture series by prominent scholars on various aspects of Kane’s interactions with the Latter-day Saints. These public lectures have been transformed into essays that appear in this volume…Finally, this volume includes a bibliography of published material on Kane that will lead serious readers to the literature on this interesting individual and his family” (8-11).

Matthew J. Grow, “Thomas L. Kane and Nineteenth-Century American Culture”

“Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Kane’s legacy has been passed down in LDS memory primarily as a “friend of the Mormons” and as their “sentinel in the East.” Viewing Kane exclusively through a Mormon lens, however, has obscured the rest of his life as well as his motivations for embracing the Mormon cause. Immersing Kane into his own social and cultural contexts, particularly nineteenth-century social reform, illuminates both his life and the lives of other reformers of his era.”

Richard E. Bennett, “‘He Is Our Friend’ Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons in Exodus, 1846-1850″

“Bennett shows how documents from the Kane collection at Brigham Young University enhance, correct, or confirm our knowledge of the following: first, the attitudes of President James K. Polk and his cabinet and others close to him toward the fleeing Latter-day Saints; second, the federal government’s request for a five-hundred-man Mormon Battalion; third, the Mormon settlement at Winter Quarters at the Missouri River in winter 1846–47; and fourth, Kane’s lecture titled “The Mormons,” given and published in Philadelphia in 1850.”

Thomas G. Alexander, “Thomas L. Kane and the Mormon Problem in National Politics”

“This essay explores instances in which Kane assisted the Mormons and the people of Utah in their dealings with the federal government. After the Mormons began to leave their temporary settlements on the Missouri River in 1847 to settle in Utah, three key events marked Thomas L. Kane’s experience with the problems of the Mormons in national politics: (1) the Mormons’ quest for statehood or territorial organization in 1849 and 1850; (2) the dispute over federally appointed officials in 1851 and 1852; and (3) the conflicts created by the judicial administration of James B. McKean in the early 1870s.”

William P. MacKinnon, “‘Full of Courage’ Thomas L. Kane, the Utah War, and BYU’s Kane Collection as Lodestone”

“MacKinnon explores the significance of Kane’s role in helping to resolve peacefully the Utah War of 1857–58 by exploring what the Utah War was, when and how Thomas L. Kane became involved in it, what Kane’s motives for involvement were, whether Kane was a Latter-day Saint, and what was the significance of Kane’s efforts. In dealing with these five areas of inquiry, the author discusses the Kane collection at Brigham Young University and shows how it is a sort of compass essential to navigating Kane’s very complex psyche as he, in turn, maneuvered through a murky and still poorly understood federal-territorial conflict.”

Edward A. Greary, “Tom and Bessie Kane and the Mormons”

“Geary examines representative elements of key episodes in which Thomas Kane and his wife, Elizabeth Kane, interacted with the Mormons. The article briefly discusses Tom’s visit with the exiled Saints in 1846 and his subsequent activities that culminated in the delivery and publication of his influential lecture that was published as The Mormons in 1850 as well as his reaction to plural marriage in 1851. Then the article explores Tom’s assistance during the Utah War in 1857 and 1858 and Bessie’s journals from the Kanes’ 1872–73 visit to Utah, published as Twelve Mormon Homes and A Gentile Account of Life in Utah’s Dixie.”

Lowell C. (Ben) Bennion and Thomas R. Carter, “Touring Polygamous Utah with Elizabeth W. Kane, Winter 1872-1873″

“Bennion and Carter consider the ideas presented by Elizabeth Kane, Thomas’s wife, who expressed her dismay with plural marriage in her writings about her visit to Utah in 1872–73. The authors combine Elizabeth’s views with their interest in Mormon architecture and historical geography through an examination of one of the homes that Elizabeth portrayed in her book Twelve Mormons Homes. This article aids in current understanding of the everyday lives of Latter-day Saints participating in plural marriage.”

David J. Whittaker, “‘My Dear Friend’ The Friendship and Correspondence of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane”

“This article focuses on the correspondence between Kane and the Mormon prophet Brigham Young. There are about 125 known letters exchanged between Young and Kane, beginning the year they met in 1846 and extending to 1877, the year Young died. The number of letters averaged three or four per year, with more frequent exchanges during times of crisis. The Brigham Young–Thomas L. Kane letters are an important source for understanding both men, as well as various aspects of Latter-day Saint and American history. The letters also provide a window into one of those rare, enduring friendships that help reveal the times in which the writers lived.”

Added to the essays and the bibliography is a review by Charles S. Petersen of Matt Grow’s book, Liberty to the Downtrodden: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer. Petersen agrees with Grow’s evaluation of the importance of Kane in Mormon history. Petersen recounts that in his own past work, Kane surfaced again and again, but Petersen consistently avoided studying Kane in greater depth. He writes, “In the main, “Liberty” opens new doors of understanding about the Civil War, Jacksonian Democracy, and Sectionalism’s impact on the West. In terms of Mormon studies, it is refreshing partly because it helps bring Brigham Young back into the forefront of Mormon history after two decades of emphasis on Joseph Smith and his era…The voice of cultural studies as reflected by Grow offers a promising approach” (228-229).

[I'll be posting next about the Journal of Mormon History's 35:4 issue]

In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds and the massive wave of anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons offered in Reynolds, a theory grounded in the natural law tradition. It then shows how the Court rejected this theory by using British imperial law to interpret the scope of the first amendment. Unraveling the work done by these international analogies reveals how the legal debates in Reynolds reached back to natural law theorists of the seventeenth-century such as Hugo Grotius and forward to fin de siècle imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt. By analogizing the federal government to the British Raj, Reynolds provided a framework for national politicians in the 1880s to employ the supposedly discredited tactics of Reconstruction against the Mormons. Embedded in imperialist analogies, Reynolds and its progeny thus formed a prelude to the constitutional battles over American imperialism in the wake of the Spanish-American War. These constitutional debates reached their dénouement in The Insular Cases, where Reynolds and its progeny appeared not as Free Exercise cases but as precedents on the scope of American imperial power. This Article thus remaps key events in late nineteenth-century constitutional history, showing how the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds must be understood as part of America’s engagement with Great Power imperialism and the ideologies that sustained it.

I was lucky enough to read a slightly-earlier version of the paper, and Nate’s argument is both provocative and convincing. Nate builds on Sally Gordon’s research that situates Reynolds within the context of what immediately proceeded it (abolitionism and Reconstruction) by exploring how the decision handed down in the case “also drew on international narratives, using analogies to British imperial law to interpret the scope of the first amendment” (p. 4). As part of this budding imperialist reasoning, Mormons, along with Catholics, Jews, and Italians, were racialized as something other than white. As Nate notes, though, “The logic of Mormon racial identity, however, was slightly different. According to the standard racial logic, behavior resulted from racial identity. … For Mormons, however, the logic moved in the opposite direction. A new race arose precisely because of the unnatural behaviors of the Latter-day Saints” (p. 22). Nate’s exploration of the legal implications of the racialization of Mormons dovetails nicely with Paul Reeve’s current research (as well as JI’s own Ed Jeter). Collectively, these scholars are taking Mormon history in new, exciting, and important directions.

So take the time to download the article and give it a read.

____________________________

* In addition to being a well-known bloggernacle veteran, Nate is currently Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School, Associate Professor at William & Mary Law School, Mormon legal historian, and all-around thoughtful guy (as well as my home teaching companion).

2010 Restoration Studies Symposium

Thursday, April 8

All Thursday events will take place at the Graceland University/Independence Campus, 1401 West Truman Rd., in Independence, Missouri.

(1) 7:00 – 8:30 pm — Welcome and Wallace B. Smith Lecture, Plenary Session

“Who is a Christian? The Perspective of Ecumenical Christianity.”

Presenter: Don Compier

(2) 8:30 – 10:00 pm — Opening Reception, First Floor Lobby

You are invited to attend an opening reception with refreshments in honor of the publication of Volume XI of Restoration Studies.

Friday, April 9

All Friday events will take place at the Graceland University/Independence Campus, 1401 West Truman Rd., in Independence, Missouri.

(3A) 8:30 – 9:30 am — Concurrent Session

“‘Open Thou My Eyes’: Joseph Smith’s First Vision as an Invitation into Seership”

Presenter: Don Bradley

(3B) 8:30 – 9:30 am — Concurrent Session

“Community of Christ as Emergent/Emerging Church”

Presenter: Steve Shields

(4A) 10:00 – 11:00 am — Concurrent Session

“Hispanic Ministerial and Leadership Formation in the Community of Christ”

Presenter: John Glaser

(4B) 10:00 – 11:00 am — Concurrent Session

“Early Mormonism and Arminianism”

Presenter: Seth Bryant

(4C) 10:00 – 11:00 am — Concurrent Session

“God, Sex, and the Torah: Men, Women, and Homosexuality in a Biblical Context.”

Presenter: Carol Cease Campbell

(5A) 11:15 am – 12:15 pm — Concurrent Session

“Religion and Cultural Antecedents of the Latter Day Restoration”

Presenter: George D. Smith

(5B) 11:15 am – 12:15 pm — Concurrent Session

“One Lord, One Faith, Many Olive Branches”

Presenter: Michael Humiston

(6) 12:15 – 1:15 pm — Lunch Break

(7A) 1:15 – 2:45 pm — Concurrent Session

“How Christian are Mormons?”

Presenter: Marcello Jun de Oliveira

“…And how Mormon is the Community of Christ?”

Presenter: Ron Dawbarn

(7B) 1:15 – 2:45 pm — Concurrent Panel Session

“Mormon Cosmology, Theology and Culture in Contemporary Popular Culture”

Panelists: Stuart Palmer and others TBA

(7C) 1:15 – 2:45 pm — Concurrent Panel Session

“Studies of Twentieth-century Utah Mormon Sects”

Panelists: Phil Barlow (chair), Ryan T. Roos, Christopher Blythe, and Christine Magula

(8A) 3:00 – 4:00 pm — Concurrent Session

“Prophetic Discourse in RLDS Patriarchal Blessings”

Presenter: Gordon Shepard

(8B) 3:00 – 4:00 pm — Concurrent Session

“The LDS Bible Dictionary, 1979-2009″

Presenter: Ryan Combs

(8C) 3:00 – 4:00 pm — Concurrent Session

“The History of the Community of Christ in Continental France”

Presenter: Chrystal Vanel

(9A) 4:15 – 5:15 pm — Concurrent Session

“The Mormon Cross Taboo”

Presenter: Michael Reed

(9B) 4:15 – 5:15 pm — Concurrent Session

“Pelagian Theology and Joseph Smith’s Conceptions of Free Will”

Presenter: TBA

(9C) 4:15 – 5:15 pm — Concurrent Session

“Needed: Civil Discourse in Church and Society”

Presenter: Bill Russell

(9C) 5:30 – 6:30 pm — Closing Panel, Plenary Session

“Joseph Smith’s July 1843 Revelation Known as Section 132 in the LDS Doctrine and Covenants: Two Different Perspectives”

Panelists: Newell Bringhurst and Craig Foster

Mitch Horowitz has written an often gleefully fascinating book. Horowitz is editor in chief of the Tarcher imprint of Penguin Books, which publishes volumes on topics like the Mayan apocalypse, interpreting your own dreams, “energy medicine,” the “Human Potential Movement,” the investing secrets of King Solomon, and other such esoterica. He built a career writing for such classic publications as The Fortean Times, each issue a veritable encyclopedia of frogs falling from the sky, crop circles, and cryptozoology. The journal is named for Charles Fort, the World War I era prophet who wrote vast compendia of strange phenomena with titles like Lo! and The Book of the Damned, and is generally credited with coming up with the idea of alien abduction, coining the term ‘teleportation,’ and, crucially, suggesting that there are vast untapped powers available to the human mind–powers that can make you rich, find your keys, and let you see into the future.

In this volume, Horowitz argues that Charles Fort is not, in fact, a crank but rather that Fort had his finger on the American zeitgeist. Horowitz makes his case thus: “Whether the occult changed America, or the other way around, certainly this much is clear: The encounter between America and occultism resulted in a vast reworking of arcane practices and beliefs from the Old World and the creation of a new spiritual culture. This new culture extolled religious egalitarianism and responded perhaps more than any other movement in history to the inner needs and search of the individual. At work and at church, on television and in bookstores, there was no avoiding it: occult America had prevailed.” (258)

Horowitz believes that what he calls the “occult” was a radically optimistic movement in America, built around a very American exaltation of “an unlikely ethic of social progress and individual betterment” (3). It flourished outside the folds of the churches, driven forward by the eccentricities, genius, and spiritual hunger of individuals as diverse as the dentist’s wife Mary Baker Eddy, the cobbler’s son Andrew Jackson Davis, and the druggist Frank B. Robinson–self-made prophets with followings of thousands all. And it was this very confidence in the potential of the average American to access and understand esoteric spiritual knowledge and to use it for individual betterment and empowerment which makes the occult, according to Horowitz, America’s true religion.

Befitting such an argument, the bulk of Horowitz’s book consists of mini-biographies of figures like the ones above. The great Depression-era psychic, theologian, medium, and healer Edgar Cayce gets his own chapter, which emphasizes the coherent structure of Cayce’s mystic thought and argues: “If there was an inner, or occult, philosophy behind the world’s historic faiths, Cayce had come as close as any modern person to defining it” (235). Similar homage is paid to Manly Hall, the eccentric genius who sat for most of his twenties in the New York Public Library’s Reading Room, composing a vast work reconciling virtually every genre of esoteric thought; to Timothy Drew, the North Carolinian who renamed himself Noble Drew Ali and invented “Moorish Science”; and the magician Paul Foster Case, whose 1909 encounter with a mysterious person calling himself the “Master of Wisdom” propelled him into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and eventually into developing a systematic theory of the Tarot.

Yet, despite the tantalizing promises of the dust jacket that Horowitz will explore the “supernatural passions that marked the career of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith,” he uses a cursory three-page recapitulation of D. Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (2nd edition, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998) primarily as a springboard into a subject that seems to interest him more: Masonry.

This sort of frenetic leap from oddball to oddball embodies the basic weaknesses of Horowitz’s book. First, it is weirdly organized. Awareness that Horowitz seems to have intended a chronological approach only gradually emerges after the reader has been spun through two opening chapters which leap from person to person and movement to movement with only the barest thread of argument or transition tying them together. The first chapter after the introduction is entitled “The Psychic Highway,” referring to the Burned-Over District of antebellum upstate New York. In considering this location, Horowitz in the span of thirty pages deals with, in order, the Shakers, the mysterious “Dark Day” in 1780 when the sun failed to rise, various Indian mythologies, the Millerites, the Mormons, Masonry, the resurrected Quaker prophetess Jemima Wilkinson, Mesmerism, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the great Spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis. One’s head spins, and Horowitz’s book seems so bursting with facts and besotted with the obscure and quirky that it threatens to come apart at the seams.

The second chapter is not much better. Fuzzily titled “Mystic Americans,” it begins with the late nineteenth century, vaguely Hindu Theosophical movement, leaps back in time to Transcendentalism and the occult traditions of Europe, touches on Mary Todd Lincoln’s enjoyment of séances, and concludes with the psychic proclivities of the late nineteenth-century feminist Victoria Woodhull. Parsing a coherent argument or narrative thread out of such a patchwork is difficult.

Fortunately, Horowitz then calms down and most of the following chapters have a great deal more focus, though his propensity toward narrating the lives of such fascinating figures as Henry Wallace (Theosophist and Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-president for one term) or William Fuld (the stodgy Presbyterian who made the Ouija board into a board game), rather than drawing out evidence to support his argument continually threatens to dismember the book into a collection of anecdotes.

This tendency also illustrates Horowitz’s second great weakness. One gets the sneaking sense that “occult” means anything Horowitz finds novel, interesting, or appropriately weird. At one point, he defines it as that which “deals with the inner aspect of religion; the mystical doorways of realization and the secret ways of knowing. Classical occultism regards itself as an initiatory spiritual tradition” (8). This is, though charmingly mystical itself, not a terribly precise definition. Indeed, monastic Roman Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism might well qualify. Elsewhere, occultism emerges as that which deals with the spiritual or hidden world and how it affects the present and material. That definition is clearer, sort of. However, such obscurity allows Horowitz to place Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy in the same pages with the Maharishi Maresh Yogi, which is an achievement not to be sneezed at.

MATTHEW BOWMAN is a graduate student in American religious history at Georgetown University, the assistant editor of Dialogue: a journal of Mormon Thought, and author of several articles on Mormon and evangelical history.