Mormon Studies Commons^™

"Tried Even As Abraham", Kevin L. Tolley

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In a revelation given through the Prophet Joseph Smith in December 1833, the Lord said that the persecuted Saints in Missouri “must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son. For all those who will not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:4–5). [1] The road to sanctification requires many steps and is not the result of a single Abrahamic trial. As Elder Richard G. Scott taught, an “absolute requisite of ‘a broken heart and a contrite spirit’ prescribes the need to be submissive, compliant, humble …

Expanding Our Gratitude For Jesus Christ, Bret Gundersen

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Some Latter-day Saints have an enduring appreciation for God and his Son, but others struggle to feel that strong sense of gratitude. As society moves away from religion in the United States[1] and elsewhere, if people want to increase their connection with Jesus Christ, the process may feel more elusive than ever. This essay is intended to help individuals expand their gratitude for Jesus Christ through an improved understanding of our deep individual need for his Atonement.

"The Lord Hath Made Bare His Holy Arm" Nephite Treatments Of Isaiah 52:7-10, Matthew Scott Stenson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The Book of Mormon deliberately draws its readers’ attention to the writings of Isaiah from beginning to end.[1] The Nephites had access to these writings by means of the brass plates obtained from Laban. Much of the book of Isaiah can be found quoted, paraphrased, or alluded to in the pages of the Nephite record.[2]

Adolescents, Mental Health, And The Benefits Of Private Religious Worship, Mark D. Ogletree, W. Justin Dyer

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Over the years, there has been a wealth of research on religious participation[1] among adolescents and their mental health.[2] The impact of public religious behaviors, such as attending church services and participating in church activities, has been beneficial to teenagers. However, are there benefits to private religious practices, such as personal prayer and personal scripture study, to adolescent mental health? Can private religious practices provide youth with the spiritual strength and fortitude to mediate anxiety or depression? These questions will be explored in our study on adolescent mental health and religion.

Biblical Hesed And Nephite Covenant Culture, Noel B. Reynolds

BYU Studies

The devastating late-nineteenth-century attack on traditional assumptions concerning the preexilic dating of the Pentateuch may have provoked the eventual explosion of twentieth-century scholarly investigation of the covenant culture of the Old Testament. Covenantal texts related to Abraham, Moses, David, and others had long been assumed to be foundational for the religion of ancient Israel, however limited modern understanding of that covenant culture might have been. But the new scholarly paradigm that dated those texts to 621 BC or later gave rise to a wave of skeptical scholarship about the whole tradition of divine covenants as the basis for ancient Israelite …

After Whose Order? Kingship And Priesthood In The Book Of Mormon, Avram R. Shannon

BYU Studies

The Book of Mormon represents itself as a strand of Israelite and Judahite religious tradition that flourished somewhere in the New World. Its acceptance by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as scripture means that the Book of Mormon forms part of the essential worldview of the Church. It certainly informs practice and liturgy in the Church, as the adoption of the sacrament prayers from Moroni 3 and 4 as the regular sacrament prayers for the Church indicates.1 The interpretive road is not one-way, however. Just as the Book of Mormon informs and undergirds much of the teachings …

Marrying Principles Of Religious Freedom With Equitable Teaching Practices For Latter-Day Saint Public Educators, Derek R. Riddle

BYU Studies

A couple of years ago, a colleague recommended I read a young adult novel titled How It Went Down authored by Kekla Magoon. This fictional novel tells the tragic story of Tariq Johnson, a sixteen-year-old fatally shot by a police officer. The story, written from a multicharacter perspective, creates an intentional effect through which the reader may find it challenging to discover the truth about the book’s pivotal event because of the varied perspectives and accounts of its many characters. As a former secondary-school English teacher who taught in settings where conversations regarding police brutality and racial profiling were prevalent, …

Sixty Years Of Byu Studies Quarterly, 1959–2019 The Narrative And The Numbers, Brad Wilcox, Timothy G. Morrison, Kyle C. Lyons, Jake M. Robins

BYU Studies

Publishing for scholarly audiences has a long history. Some propose that the first learned society on record was founded in Toulouse, France, in 1323. The Royal Society of London was established in 1660 and published Europe’s first scholarly journal five years later. In 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published the journal Science, and since that time, the number of academic journals has proliferated. According to Philip G. Altbach and Hans de Wit, over thirty thousand academic journals are in circulation today; Ben Mudrak mentions the appearance of many free open-access journals on the internet since 2006. …

In The Garden, John Alba Cutler

BYU Studies

Tumbling about in nervous flight still getting the feel for the lift— it flutters and keeps to shadow its blue eyes melting into dark. Papilio Machaon, after Asclepius’s son, or swallowtail because of its wings like feathers all geometry and movement the mute beauty of givenness.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

For Our Good, Lindon J. Robison

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

“Know thou, my son, that all these [hard] things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7)[1] Our faith can sometimes falter when we face hard times that are difficult to reconcile with a God who loves all his children infinitely and completely, both everywhere and all the time. We may sometimes feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, who complained to God, “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But [sometimes], can’t You choose someone else?”[2] How do we respond to Tevye and others who wonder why hard things happen— …

There Are Two Sides To Every Story, Keith A. Erekson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This article is the fifth chapter in his Real vs. Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-day Myths (Deseret Book, 2021), 62–76. Each chapter introduces a “Thinking Habit” that serves as an antidote to poor thinking. Along the way, the book also identifies applications for daily life in “Everyday Encounter” sidebars and each chapter ends with a summary section that identifies quick ways to identify poor thinking – the “Sniff Tests”—and restates important points from the chapter. Believing (and teaching) that “There Are Two Sides to Every Story” is an unhelpful mental framework—one of the “Myths within Us” that impede our thinking …

Mind The Gap What A Learner Needs To Experience To Learn Deeply, Kyle J. Patterson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

On September 6, 2011, Brigham Young University–Idaho president Kim B. Clark stood before his faculty and staff to detail his view of what learning and teaching should look like when it is done in the Lord’s way. In that setting, President Clark stated, “When I speak of learning today, I speak of it as an increase in the capacity or power to know, to do, and to become.”[1] This learning framework of know, do, and become, while not unique to President Clark,[2] appears to have played an important role in laying the groundwork for what he refers to as “deep …

“Same-Sex Marriage?! What Next Polygamy?”: Mormonism In Us Political Culture, K. Mohrman

Mormon Studies Review

In his dissent to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision

that determined marriage was a right that could not be constitutionally

denied to same-sex couples under the Free Exercise and

Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice

John Roberts queried, “if ‘[t]here is dignity in the bond between

two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to

make such profound choices,’ . . . why would there be any less dignity

in the bond between three people, who in exercising their autonomy,

seek to make the profound choice to marry?”1 In …

Margarito Bautista, Mexican Politics, And The Third Convention, Elisa Eastwood Pulido

Mormon Studies Review

In 1935, after a twenty-five-year residency in the United States, Margarito
Bautista, a well-known evangelizer of Mexican and Mexican American
Mormons on both sides of the US-Mexico border, repatriated to Mexico.
Bautista had converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
in central Mexico in 1901. Of particular appeal to Bautista and his family
were Book of Mormon narratives offering an exceptional spiritual identity
to Indigenous Americans as lost members of the House of Israel and
promising them a glorious future destiny. Motivated by a desire to know
more about the religious movement he had joined, Bautista relocated …

Does Being Liberal Push Some Members Out Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints?, Jana Riess, Benjamin Knoll

Mormon Studies Review

Conservative religionists’ political activism is pushing some Americans, particularly younger ones, out of religion altogether. Disgusted by what they see as an unholy merger between the Republican Party and the Religious Right, these people are voting with their feet—not only avoiding Republican affiliation but also wanting nothing to do with organized religion. Such is the argument, at least, of a growing number of scholars and researchers who track the intersection between religion and politics in the United States. Is this claim true? And if so, how does it play out with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day …

Review: Hayes Peter Mauro. Messianic Fulfillments: Staging Indigenous Salvation In America. Lincoln: University Of Nebraska Press, 2019., Sarah Dees

Mormon Studies Review

In Messianic Fulfillments: Staging Indigenous Salvation in America, art historian Hayes Peter Mauro analyzes images of Native Americans and non-Natives produced within the context of evangelical Christian movements in the United States. While some of the images he examines are what we would usually define as “art”—visual works created by artists for aesthetic purposes—he considers other examples of visual culture as well, including historical and scientific illustrations, photographs, and images found in government documents, forty-six of which are reproduced in the text. These images share a common theme: they depict different categories of people—of (Native) American, European, and African descent—and …

Review: Konden Smith Hansen. Frontier Religion: Mormons And Americans, 1857–1907. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Tammy Heise

Mormon Studies Review

Through a series of thought-provoking case studies, Konden Smith Hansen breathes new life into Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous (or, perhaps more accurately, now infamous) “Frontier Thesis” as a paradigm for examining Mormonism as a distinctly American religion. This historical survey revolves around a deft historiographical argument that the Frontier Thesis functioned and, in many respects, continues to function as a religion by defining American national identity and purpose not just for Mormons but for all Americans. Hansen’s attention to Turner’s theory serves to reopen an old frontier for historians of the American West, and by uncovering traditional and innovative forms …

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Becoming Zion: Some Reflections On Forgiveness And Reconciliation, Deidre Nicole Green

BYU Studies

Some years ago, I was confronted with the realization that other people’s betrayal and deception, which eventually crescendoed into blatant and dehumanizing cruelty, might result in the loss of much of what I had worked for in my professional, ecclesial, and personal life. This situation drove me to a deep need to understand forgiveness, which I pursued through studying philosophical and theological perspectives on the topic as well as through personal reflection. Through specific academic opportunities that included fieldwork in Rwanda and South Africa, I discovered the voices of Latter-day Saint women who had gained hard-won knowledge and wisdom about …