Review: Benjamin E. Park. Kingdom Of Nauvoo: The Rise And Fall Of A Religious Empire On The American Frontier. New York: Liveright, 2020.,
2022
Brigham Young University
Review: Benjamin E. Park. Kingdom Of Nauvoo: The Rise And Fall Of A Religious Empire On The American Frontier. New York: Liveright, 2020., Christopher Childers
Mormon Studies Review
Benjamin E. Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo integrates social, cultural, and political history to explain how the Mormon movement sought to build a community of believers on the western frontier and how the experiment at Nauvoo ultimately failed. This experiment, a radical reinvention of Christianity based on the revelations of a charismatic religious figure—Joseph Smith—and the building of a community of like-minded believers, reveals much about the history of the early American republic. Kingdom of Nauvoo shows how Smith’s church evolved in the context of early nineteenth-century America and how the structure of early American society struggled to deal with movements …
Review: William L. Davis. Visions In A Seer Stone: Joseph Smith And The Making Of The Book Of Mormon. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2020.,
2022
Brigham Young University
Review: William L. Davis. Visions In A Seer Stone: Joseph Smith And The Making Of The Book Of Mormon. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2020., Carolyn Eastman
Mormon Studies Review
William L. Davis has published an astoundingly good book, one of the best works of religious and intellectual history I have read in years. Visions in a Seer Stone engages a range of academic fields, historical methods, and exegetical close readings in examining the development of the Book of Mormon, and above all helps his readers understand the dynamics of American religious culture during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. In the end, he develops an argument impressive for both its conceptual rigor and its sweeping breadth: that the Book of Mormon is less a conventional text than an oral performance, and that …
Review: Gordon Shepherd And Gary Shepherd. Jan Shipps: A Social And Intellectual Portrait. Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2019.,
2022
Brigham Young University
Review: Gordon Shepherd And Gary Shepherd. Jan Shipps: A Social And Intellectual Portrait. Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2019., Amy Hoyt
Mormon Studies Review
As a young graduate student at Claremont, I was excited to meet Jan Shipps when she came to deliver a public lecture on Mormonism on campus. A few of us graduate students were asked to bring her to the event from her hotel room on the evening of the lecture. My overall impression of her was that she was down to earth, funny, and quick. And perhaps a little intimidating. I noticed that she was able to talk to anyone about anything and, at the same time, command the room when needed. After reading the biography of Jan Shipps by …
Reflections On The New Latter-Day Saint Temple In Bengaluru And Religious Gender Norms,
2022
Brigham Young University
Reflections On The New Latter-Day Saint Temple In Bengaluru And Religious Gender Norms, Debjani Chakravarty
Mormon Studies Review
There was recent publicity in Utah press about the new Mormon temple that will be built in Bengaluru, India (known as Bangalore until 2014), the first temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the country. There was a groundbreaking ceremony in December 2020, yet a survey of leading English-language newspapers in India reveals that this event was not widely reported. It was certainly not as widely reported as the groundbreaking of another temple in August 2020: the Ram Mandir, or the Ram Temple, which has been a violently contentious issue in India for the last three …
Review: Joanna Brooks. Mormonism And White Supremacy: American Religion And The Problem Of Racial Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.,
2022
Brigham Young University
Review: Joanna Brooks. Mormonism And White Supremacy: American Religion And The Problem Of Racial Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Nichole Renée Phillips
Mormon Studies Review
Race and religion scholar Joanna Brooks offers an atypical treatment of the imbrication of anti-Black racism and American Christianity in her book, Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence. While treatment of the subject is influenced by her background and membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, readers are given new language and the vocabulary to dissect and understand White supremacy and White racial privilege, particularly regarding how it has infiltrated and operated in the American Christian church. Brooks accomplishes this through content analysis of rare but significant documents and a historical …
Contemporary Femininities In Mormonism And In Ireland: Challenging And Confirming Essentialism In Online Spaces,
2022
Brigham Young University
Contemporary Femininities In Mormonism And In Ireland: Challenging And Confirming Essentialism In Online Spaces, Hazel O'Brien
Mormon Studies Review
How are gender identities negotiated within Irish Mormonism, and does this intersect with trends identifiable within Mormonism more generally? In this paper I use the examples of modern Ireland and modern Mormonism to speculate regarding the nature of gendered identities online. I suggest that Irish and Mormon cultures are both confronting serious challenges to traditional essentialist interpretations of femininity that have long dominated their cultural landscapes. I also suggest that social media (SM) and online spaces are facilitating these challenges. However, I observe that online spaces are also used in Irish Mormonism to conform to hegemonic Mormon understandings of gender …
Rise And Run Latter-Day Saint Women And Good Government,
2022
Brigham Young University
Rise And Run Latter-Day Saint Women And Good Government, Susan R. Madsen
BYU Studies
Thomas Jefferson believed that “the care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government.” According to Elder Wilford W. Andersen of the Seventy, one of the ways good government cares for human life and happiness is when it “protects religion and fosters religious freedom. And good religion encourages good citizenship and adherence to the law of the land.” If we are to ensure that human life, happiness, and religious freedom will thrive and be protected in the years ahead, women must be active in government. Women’s participation is essential …
Muster,
2022
Brigham Young University
Muster, Darlene Young
BYU Studies
It’s not that she’s been silent until now, though those who haven’t trained themselves to hear the creak of mountains, work of wind, might claim she hasn’t had a voice. It’s that she knows the power of slow growth, of listening.
Inequality And Narrative In The Book Of Mormon,
2022
Brigham Young University
Inequality And Narrative In The Book Of Mormon, Robert F. Schwartz
BYU Studies
speak unto you as if ye were present,” writes Moroni, “and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Morm. 8:35). Eyewitnesses to the end of their civilization, Moroni and his father, Mormon, address us, their modern readers, from the perspective of exiled visionaries. Like twentieth-century exiles Hannah Arendt or Czesław Miłosz, these editors and part-authors of the Book of Mormon write as refugees from a society in utter, violent collapse, left to piece together a narrative of how things came to such a bitter end and what the future …
"None That Doeth Good",
2022
Brigham Young University
"None That Doeth Good", Walker Wright, Don Bradley
BYU Studies
The First Vision has been a center of both faith and controversy. While millions of Latter-day Saints affirm it as the beginning of the Restoration, others see it as an ever-growing fish tale. The multiple accounts of the First Vision vary in detail, with Joseph Smith’s earliest written account (1832) lacking some of the elements found in his later accounts. However, some of these elements—particularly the appearance of God the Father as part of the First Vision experience—are laced throughout Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. These historical threads ultimately culminate in his translation of Psalm 14, which weaves together …
Full Issue,
2022
Brigham Young University
Full Issue,
2022
Brigham Young University
Front Matter,
2022
Brigham Young University
Front Matter
Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel
No abstract provided.
Jews In Ancient Egypt,
2022
Brigham Young University
Jews In Ancient Egypt, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
The Egyptian papyri acquired by Joseph Smith in 1835 can be confidently dated to many centuries after Abraham’s lifetime. Based on several factors, it can be determined that the papyri were written in a period when Egypt was governed by a dynasty of Greek rulers who reigned from circa 300 to 30 BC. A question that readers of the Book of Abraham might have is how a late copy of Abraham’s record originally written sometime around 2,000–1,800 BC could have ended up in the possession of an ancient Egyptian living many centuries later.
Full Issue,
2022
Brigham Young University
Full Issue
Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel
No abstract provided.
"That Ye May Have Hope" Nephi's Use Of Isaiah 49:22-23 In Teaching The Concept Of Hope,
2022
Brigham Young University
"That Ye May Have Hope" Nephi's Use Of Isaiah 49:22-23 In Teaching The Concept Of Hope, Matthew L. Bowen
Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel
Nephi and later Book of Mormon authors typically explain their uses of Isaiah’s writings in their own records. These statements occur in the framing material before and after lengthy quotations. Before Nephi’s first such quotation—the entirety of Isaiah 48–49—he offers a reason for reading this block of text to his family members, one that ultimately explains his including it in his small plates record: “But that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer, wherefore I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah” (1 Nephi 19:23).[1] This oft-cited statement of …
Covenants, Kinship, And Caring For The Destitute In The Book Of Amos,
2022
Brigham Young University
Covenants, Kinship, And Caring For The Destitute In The Book Of Amos, Joshua M. Matson
Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel
At the outset of the book of Amos, the Old Testament prophet captures the attention of the ancient Israelites when he condemns the inhabitants of Tyre, a port city north of Israel often used synonymously to reference the Phoenicians, for not remembering “the brotherly covenant” (Amos 1:9), or as it appears in a different translation, “the covenant of kinship” (1:9 NRSV). [1] The Israelites easily recognized and eagerly accepted this condemnation because they were the victims of the covenantal breach from one of their neighboring regional powers. [2] Amos, however, did not travel from the southern kingdom of Judah to …
The Abrahamic Covenant,
2022
Brigham Young University
The Abrahamic Covenant, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
One of the important doctrinal contributions of the Book of Abraham is its elaboration on the nature of the Abrahamic covenant (Abr. 2:6–11). While some details about the Abrahamic covenant can be read in the book of Genesis (12:1–5; compare 26:1–4, 24; 28; 35:9–13; 48:3–4), it is in the Book of Abraham where additional important aspects about this covenant are revealed. The main significance of the Abrahamic covenant as expanded upon in the Book of Abraham is that it involves a “right to the priesthood . . . as the essence of Abraham’s inheritance.” Indeed, the covenant Abraham entered into …
Potiphar's Hill,
2022
Brigham Young University
Potiphar's Hill, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson
BYU Studies
Besides Ur of the Chaldees and the plain of Olishem, one of the geographical features of the Book of Abraham is a location called Potiphar’s Hill, which is said to be “at the head of the plain of Olishem” in the land of Chaldea (Abr. 1:10). It was at this hill that “the priest of Pharaoh”— who was also in the service of a solar deity named Shagreel—made offerings on an altar (vv. 9–10). Other sacrifices were made at this site, and it also appears to have been the site of local idol worship (vv. 11–12).
Rebaptism In The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints,
2022
Brigham Young University
Rebaptism In The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Jonathan A. Stapley, David W. Grua
BYU Studies
The first day of November 1847 brought Patty Sessions a snowstorm that blew her tent down and shredded it. But life in Winter Quarters was never easy, and Sessions maintained her regular schedule despite the disruption. She was a midwife and had a central position among the women of the city. Over the next week alone, she delivered four babies and attended four meetings. She also sewed for hire, and she anointed and blessed in faith. And on Friday the 26th, as she wrote in her diary, “I was baptized.” In this short three-word entry, Sessions documented one of the …
