Religious Education Commons^™

By Simple Yet Propitious Means: The Art Of Jorge Cocco Santangelo, Herman Du Toit

BYU Studies Quarterly

Inspired devotional art always strives for essential meaning, communicating across the widest range of cultural boundaries. This kind of art has always resisted the vanities of idiosyncratic expression, striving instead to subordinate the artist’s personal virtuosity to the sacral nature of its subject matter. There have been few artists of repute who have achieved this fine balance in their work. Jorge Cocco Santangelo, or “Cocco” as he is known, is one such artist who has devoted his professional career to the creation of art as an expression of his testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. His work recently …

Answering For His Order: Alma's Clash With The Nehors, Matthew Scott Stenson

BYU Studies Quarterly

From the beginning, Lehite culture was richly oral and often divided over the question of authority (see Alma 1–2, 8–14, 30). On one side of the conflict stood the prophets, and on the other side stood “popular” opportunistic figures, wise in their own eyes, who resemble in a general way classical sophists (Alma 1:3; see 2 Ne. 9:28). The classical sophists, some of whom were philosophic pretenders, sought to subvert on occasion the moral authority and epistemological methods of the actual philosophers. In contrast, the Nephite “sophists” (an encompassing term for our purposes that describes a certain kind of proud, …

To Live, Wendy M. Payne

BYU Studies Quarterly

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson

Almost A Psalm, About Inheritance, Benjamin Blackhurst

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Building Zion: The Material World Of Mormon Settlement, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies Quarterly

Thomas Carter. Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography, George L. Mitton

BYU Studies Quarterly

Michael Hicks. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography.

Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation And Publication Of The Book Of Mormon, Steven L. Olsen

BYU Studies Quarterly

Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat. From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon.

Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015.

Talking Doctrine: Mormons And Evangelicals In Conversation, Christine Wilkins

BYU Studies Quarterly

Talking Doctrine: Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation, edited by Richard J. Mouw and Robert L. Millet (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2015)

Last Laborer: Thoughts And Reflections Of A Black Mormon, Scott R. Parkin

BYU Studies Quarterly

Last Laborer: Thoughts and Reflections of a Black Mormon by Keith N. Hamilton (Salt Lake City: Ammon Works, 2011)

Conversations With Mormon Historians, Allyson Jones

BYU Studies Quarterly

Conversations with Mormon Historians, edited by Alexander L. Baugh and Reid L. Neilson (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015)

End Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Council Of Fifty And Its Minutes, Ronald K. Esplin

BYU Studies Quarterly

Students of early Mormon history have long known about the once-secretive Council of Fifty in Nauvoo and learned much about it.1 However, the records of the council were never available for research until now. The closest I came to the records of the Council of Fifty before the First Presidency made them available for the Joseph Smith Papers was in about 1977. Elder Joseph Anderson of the Seventy, then serving as executive director of the Historical Department, had served for decades as secretary to the First Presidency. When premeeting conversation around a conference table one day turned to the Council …

Theological Underpinnings Of Baptism For The Dead, David L. Paulsen, Roger D. Cook, Brock M. Mason

BYU Studies Quarterly

Lord, are there few that be saved?” (Luke 13:23). This question has troubled thinkers from Christianity’s beginning. The faithful readily accept that, save Jesus Christ, there is “none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Yet, the same loyal followers of Christ wrestle with the puzzling reality that countless persons have lived and died never hearing of Christ, let alone having had an adequate chance to accept the salvation he offers. What is their fate in the eternities? Are they forever excluded from salvation? Thomas V. Morris, former professor of philosophy at Notre …

Anatomy Of Invention, Larry L. Howell

BYU Studies Quarterly

BYU Studies has a long history of publishing the annual lecture given by the recipient of the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, BYU’s highest faculty honor. It is with great pleasure that BYU Studies Quarterly publishes this year’s lecture by Dr. Larry L. Howell, a professor of mechanical engineering. His speech was delivered as a forum address on May 17, 2016, at Brigham Young University.

Quds, Bentley Snow

BYU Studies Quarterly

The part that got me was that I had to take off my Chacos to enter the sanctuary. I was irked at first, drifting at the back of our group—apathetic, iPod on—deliberately detached and not in the mood for ceremonial inconveniences. I looked into the sanctuary’s square, open-air center. The floor, I had to admit, was beautiful—thin blue rivulets streamed deep within white marble—but imagine how many feet had mixed their oils with the dirt that faintly coated it. Red wooden poles lined the edges of the square, rising out of white pedestals to support the red tiles that sloped …

Silent Wednesday, Mark Bennion

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Cordwainer, Terresa Wellborn

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831; Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833; Documents, Volume 3: February 1833-March 1834, James B. Allen

BYU Studies Quarterly

Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 1: July 1828-June 1831.

Vol. 1 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richaard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow. Salt Lake City: The Church Historian's Press, 2013.

Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, editors. Documents, Volume 2: July 1831-January 1833.

Vol. 2 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman …

Full Issue

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Israelite Roots Of Atonement Terminology, T. Benjamin Spackman

BYU Studies Quarterly

When Latter-day Saints speak of atonement, they use vocabulary drawn from the scriptures, including common verbs like atone, save, and redeem, and the corresponding nouns atonement, savior, salvation, redeemer, and redemption. There are other, perhaps more vivid, words for salvific acts, such as the Book of Mormon references to being “snatched” (Mosiah 27:28–29; Alma 26:17).1 Such rare terms in scripture have not found place in LDS discourse, which tends to use the most common terms related to atonement interchangeably. While they are indeed at some level synonymous, their distinctive meanings gesture toward …

The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking At My Door?, Robert L. Lively Jr.

BYU Studies Quarterly

Robert L. Lively Jr. is dean emeritus at the University of Maine at Farmington and holds a master’s degree from Yale University Divinity School and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. The following are excerpts from his 2015 book The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking at My Door?, conceived after inviting missionaries to visit his religion classes and realizing that a non-Mormon had never written a book that tells the story of LDS missionaries. His research for this book involved over 275 interviews with past, present, and future missionaries, including individuals who served in every …

On Fear, Food, And Flight, Elizabeth Brady

BYU Studies Quarterly

I’m having trouble eating.

Way Below The Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled But Not Even Close To Tragic Confessions Of A Real Live Mormon Missionary, Lisa Torcasso Downing

BYU Studies Quarterly

Craig Harline. Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary.

Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2014.

Becoming Divine: An Introduction To Deification In Western Culture, Daniel C. Peterson

BYU Studies Quarterly

M. David Litwa. Becoming Divine: An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture.

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013.

Seer Stones, Salamanders, And Early Mormon "Folk Magic" In The Light Of Folklore Studies And Bible Scholarship, Eric A. Eliason

BYU Studies Quarterly

The 2015 publication of an Ensign article on, and especially photos of, one of Joseph Smith’s seer stones still owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints caused quite a sensation in the blogosphere. Many responses focused on the “weirdness” of the stone and its use, the ostensibly alien nature of this odd relic from the past, so out of place in modern religion, and posited it as a troubling problem in need of explanation. Mormon studies as a discipline has struggled to make sense of seer stones too. These responses are understandable, considering how often communities tend …

Motives And The Path To Perfection, Lindon J. Robison, David R. Just

BYU Studies Quarterly

Motives and the Desires of Our Hearts

The Prophet And The Reformer: The Letters Of Brigham Young And Thomas L. Kane, Alexsandra Foster

BYU Studies Quarterly

The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane, edited by Matthew J. Grow and Ronald W. Walker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Front Matter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.