Mormon Studies Commons^™

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Melvin L. Bashore

BYU Studies

Who would be more likely to survive in a wilderness setting, beset by starvation and extreme cold? Women or men? Single individuals or families? Would age make a difference? In Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail, Donald Grayson looks at who died and who lived in three mid-nineteenth-century emigrant groups. An emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Grayson began looking at patterns of death in the Donner Party, publishing his findings in 1990 and 1993. Curious if those same patterns of death were manifest in another emigrant group, Grayson began looking at the 1856 …

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Voice From The Dust, Darren Parry

BYU Studies

Darren Parry is the chairman of the Northwest Band Tribal Council of the Shoshone Nation. On November 8, 2018, at Brigham Young University, he presented this talk for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

He is working to create the Boa Ogoi [Big River] Cultural Interpretive Center, an educational center that will share the story of the Bear River Massacre. On January 29, 1863, the U.S. Army attacked the Shoshone encamped at the Bear River, near present-day Preston, Idaho, and slaughtered 250 to 500 Shoshone people, including women and children. Public reports of this massacre were officially given by …

She Will Find What Is Lost: Brian Kershisnik’S Artistic Response To The Problem Of Human Suffering, Cris Baird

BYU Studies

In March 2014, my wife, Janae, and I purchased Brian Kershisnik’s masterpiece She Will Find What Is Lost and immediately loaned it to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for display in the Church’s Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.1 In this essay, I tell the story of how we came to own the painting, what it means to us, and why I believe the painting has a spiritually important and universally applicable message.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Missionaries On A Pilgrimage, Or Pilgrims On A Mission? Elements Of Pilgrimage In The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints Missionary Experience, Elisha Mcintyre, Daniel H. Olsen

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ways in which proselytizing missions by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are pilgrimage-like. After outlining the historical and theological background behind the Church’s missionary efforts and discuss how this missionary work is organized both practically and social, the similarities between Church missions and religious pilgrimage are compared based on six themes: journeying and the sacred, liminality, communitas, hardships, status, and change and failure.

Finding Documents On The Joseph Smith Papers Website, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The Joseph Smith Papers website (josephsmithpapers.org) is a wonderful resource. With thousands of documents and hundreds of resource pages, though, it can sometimes feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how you might use the website to learn more about quotations and documents associated with the Prophet Joseph Smith. This article helps readers learn to use the Joseph Smith Papers website to find specific documents. It also teaches readers how to benefit from the numerous other resources available on the Joseph Smith Papers website.

Is Not This Real?, Joseph M. Spencer

BYU Studies

Latter-day Saints often take Korihor, the infamous Nephite anti-Christ, to be a fool, someone perhaps rightly struck dumb for stupidly demanding signs when he knew better. After all, he self-contradictorily trusted “an angel” who told him that “there is no God” (Alma 30:53). One popular commentary remarks: “Wickedness does not promote rational thought!”

Rod Tip Up!, Clark S. Monson

BYU Studies

The figure of a well-known and beloved fisherman is missing from the Provo River. When I turn off U.S. Highway 189 in Provo Canyon, Utah, and cross the bridge to enter Vivian Park, I look upstream and downstream for him, but he isn’t there. A few feet past the bridge, I cross a familiar double bump in the road—the tracks of the Heber Valley Railroad—but no person I might see walking along the weathered railroad ties walks with a stride I recognize. Sometimes I see numerous fishermen on the river, but they’re outfitted in modern gear—GORE-TEX waders, rubber mesh nets, …

Utah And The American Civil War: The Written Record, William P. Mackinnon

BYU Studies

There are two schools of thought about Utah’s participation in the Civil War: it was de minimis, unworthy of comparison to the blood-soaked contributions of nearly all other American states and territories; or, it was larger than the size of its troop commitment to the Union Army and has a record more complex than is often understood. With this book, Utah and the American Civil War, Kenneth L. Alford is squarely in the latter camp, arguing that “the common belief that Utah Territory ‘sat out’ the Civil War is incorrect. Although the territory was removed from the war’s devastation …

Front Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Creating The New Home- Centered Curriculum, Brian J. Hansbrow, Ted Barnes, Paul Murphy, Scott C. Esplin

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Esplin: Thank you for meeting with me to discuss your role in creating the new home-based, Church-supported curriculum. Please introduce yourselves, including how long you’ve been with the Sunday School curriculum or what your particular role is in the department.

Leadership Lessons From The Book Of Mormon: Nephi As A Case Study, Khumbulani D. Mdletshe

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Leaders and scholars in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have, at various times, attempted to identify what constitutes leadership traits. There are no universal leadership traits that predict a leader’s effectiveness in all situations. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, made the following comment: “While most of us can recognize good leadership when we experience or observe it, it is hard for us to isolate controlling traits in a clear-cut way.” Each situation requires specific traits relating to the task at hand. These traits will develop uniquely to individuals and …

Scripture Note: “Pointing Our Souls To Him”, Matthew L. Bowen

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

When the King James translators rendered the biblical Hebrew word tôrâ (often transliterated Torah) into English, they almost always did so using the Anglo-Norman word “law” (< Old English lagu¹ < Old Norse lög²/*lagu). The 1830 translation of the Book of Mormon into English appears to have followed that approach. However, the Book of Mormon’s ancient authors, in several instances, also exhibit a conception of “law” consistent with the most basic sense of tôrâ in Hebrew and in so doing, they reveal an important function of divine “law” as it relates to the divine Lawgiver

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Notice: The New Testament: A Translation For Latter-Day Saints, Jason R. Combs

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Thomas A. Wayment provides a new, accessible translation of the New Testament with notes that thoroughly integrate the New Testament with Restoration scripture. Why should religious educators use Wayment’s The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints? Before I summarize some of my favorite features, let me suggest just two possible answers to this question: (1) greater awareness of issues we might otherwise overlook, and (2) new avenues for personal study and research.

Agency And Same-Sex Attraction, Ben Schilaty

BYU Studies

I arrived at my parents’ home at eleven o’clock at night after twenty-six hours of driving. The trek from Tucson, Arizona, to Everett, Washington, had been miserable. My life had become unmanageable, and I didn’t know what else to do but go home. I sprawled out on the living room floor, exhausted from the drive and emotionally worn out. I was too tired to pretend to be happy and too sad to do much besides complain. I was thirty years old, and it felt like my life would be perpetually filled with loneliness.

Winter Rail Yard, Matthew Scott Stenson

BYU Studies

I hear the coal train’s organ note in the distance, remember the two pigeons circling together and pecking the open ground between ties near the tracks.

Moramona: The Mormons In Hawai‘I, Alec J. Harding

BYU Studies

Moramona is the quintessential history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hawai‘i. The book journeys from the first missionaries arriving on the islands in 1850 and their initial struggles to maintain a foothold there to the eventual success of the Church on the islands. The book concludes with a summary of the current prosperity of the Church in Hawai‘i, including the successes of Brigham Young University– Hawai‘i, the Kona Hawai‘i Temple, and the rich culture of faith among today’s members.