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Review Of Sacred Space: Exploring The Birthplace Of Mormonism, Daniel H. Olsen

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

When I was asked to read and review Michael MacKay’s Sacred Space: Exploring the Birthplace of Mormonism, I was expecting to read a straightforward history of Fayette, New York, the story of the founding of Mormonism in Fayette, and the efforts of the LDS Church to purchase and restore the Peter Whitmer Sr. home where, Church members have been told, the Church was organized on 6 April 1830. However, I was quite surprised, as I imagine most Church members would be, to read that the location of the establishment of Mormonism is highly contested within some Mormon history circles. Some …

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Review Of Lengthening Our Stride: Globalization Of The Church, D. Brent Smith

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Lengthening Our Stride: Globalization of the Church, published in January 2018 by the BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, builds upon the landmark 4 April 1974 address of President Spencer W. Kimball to LDS regional representatives in which he, in the initial months of his presidency, called upon the Church and its leaders to “lengthen our stride” and “enlarge our vision” in taking the gospel to “all nations.” Edited by Reid L. Neilson, assistant Church historian, and Wayne D. Crosby, director of Global Support and Acquisitions in the Church History Department, the book includes twenty-one addresses presented in …

Somatic Movement Education, Marin Roper

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Areas of Interest: Somatic Movement Education

Sacred Time In The Work Of Makoto Shinkai, Kassandra I. Schreiber

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis looks at two works of anime director, writer, and producer Makoto Shinkai and examines how they create sacred experiences through the visual and narratological construction of time. Mircea Elaide’s concept of eternal return is joined with Gilles Deleuze’s film theory of Time-Images and time crystals to analyze the creation of sacred moments: moments of rejuvenation and reorientation. Not only are the two films, 5 Centimeters per Second and Your Name, read through the lens of these theories but these movies also illustrate how anime is unique art form that is well suited for the manipulation of time and …

"The Family That Prays Together . . .": Relational Processes Associated With Regular Family Prayer, Joe M. Chelladurai, David C. Dollahite, Loren D. Marks

Faculty Publications

In the present article we explore how family prayer reportedly influenced family relationships. We conceptualized family prayer as a family ritual in religious families and used a qualitative methodology to interview a religiously, ethnically, and geographically diverse sample of 198 families (N = 476). Analysis of data revealed 7 related themes. Family prayer served important functions and influenced relationships in various ways including (a) as time of family togetherness and interaction; (b) as a space for social support; and (c) as a means for intergenerational transmission of religion. Further, family prayer (d) involved issues and concerns of individuals and …

Early Latter-Day Saint Martyrs: The Jesse Woods And Armela Shanks Berry Family, Shauna Timpson Johnson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

On 10 August 1884, three Mormon missionaries, Elders William S. Berry, Henry B. Thompson, and John H. Gibbs, met at the house of James Condor in Cane Creek, Tennessee, for Sunday worship services. They had just finished singing a hymn when a mob rushed up to Condor’s front gate. Historian B. H. Roberts described the dramatic scene:

Elder Gibbs had just taken up his Bible . . . when a man disguised—which afterward proved to be David Hinson—came in at the front door, crossed the room, took down a shotgun suspended on hooks over the back door, and then took …

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Dealing With Difficulty In Scripture: Divine Violence In The Book Of Mormon, Andrew C. Smith

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Latter-day prophets have implored and continually encouraged members of the Church to make daily and habitual study of the scriptures a priority in their lives. One of the most important reasons for this is the fact that it is through the scriptures that one learns the most about the life and teachings of the Savior and how to follow him. “What manner of men had ye ought to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” is Jesus’s scriptural call to each of us (3 Nephi 27:27).1 When we consider our relationship with Jesus, especially as our exemplar …

“After This Manner Did He Speak”: Mormon’S Discourse On Faith, Hope, And Charity, Charles Swift

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Literary scholar Richard Dilworth Rust calls Mormon’s discourse in Moroni 7 “one of the most tightly woven and forceful sermons in the Book of Mormon.” It is a masterful example of a prophet not simply stating doctrinal truth but building a case for it. Mormon creates an argument that begins with teachings that seem almost completely unrelated to what he ends up saying in his conclusion, yet the argument is so tightly constructed that each step beautifully and powerfully leads to the next.

Front Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Getting To Know Saints: The Story Of The Church Of Jesus Christ In The Latter Days, Steven C. Harper, Scott Hales, Casey Paul Griffiths

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Griffiths: The purpose of this meeting is to explain a little bit about what Saints is and how teachers can use it. Scott, can I start with you? Can you tell us a little bit about Saints and what it is intended to do?

Hales: Saints is a new four-volume narrative history of the Church. It covers Church history from 1815 to the present. Each volume culminates in the completion of a temple and shows Latter-day Saints making and keeping sacred covenants. The first volume covers the organization of the Church and the early years of the Restoration. It begins …

Using Religious Themes And Content To Affect Cultural Sensitivity In Russian Language Learning, Paul Tristan Gallo

Theses and Dissertations

Specifically oriented towards Russian culture, this study addresses the need in diplomacy for deeper cultural understanding. As research suggests a link between the inclusion of religious perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) and student motivation and cultural empathy, this study examines how Russian language classrooms could leverage an understanding of Russian religious themes to foster cultural sensitivity. The study invited 24 second-year university students of Russian to complete a previously-validated assessment of cultural sensitivity: the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI). Divided into a control and a treatment group, the participants also watched a short video depicting a story from Russian history …

"Come Unto Me" As A Technical Gospel Term, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

In this paper I have reconciled the well established six-element gospel of salvation taught by Christ and his prophets throughout the Book of Mormon with the recurring invitation to come unto Christ and be saved. Once we can understand that most statements of the gospel in the Book of Mormon are formulated meristically—that where only a few or even just two of the gospel elements are mentioned explicitly, the full set of six is implied—the door is opened for a more precise account for the invitation to come unto him. In this detailed survey, I have shown that in almost …

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

“Torah In The Mouth”: An Introduction To The Rabbinic Oral Law, Avram R. Shannon

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

One of the primary characteristics of modern Judaism, as it developed from its earliest forms, is the acceptance of what is commonly known as the oral law. Over the thousands of years of Jewish/Christian interaction and discourse, Christians—including Latter-day Saints—have tried to understand the oral law and how it relates to their own beliefs and practices. In the historical relationship between Christianity and Judaism, this has sometimes led to the propagation of anti-Semitic beliefs, even unknowingly. When teaching about Judaism, whether in the context of the New Testament or world religions, it is important for Latter-day Saint teachers and religious …

'Fashionable Piety': Theological Modernism In Evelyn Waugh's Decline And Fall And Vile Bodies, Deirdre Murphy

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

“Sprinkled, Cleansed, And Comforted”: The Early American Jail, Jacob Johnson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Workload For University Core Courses Taught In Regular Semester And Time-Compressed Term Formats, Lyndell Lutes, Randall Davies

Faculty Publications

This study compared student workload and perceived value of coursework assigned for a matching set of semester and term general education courses at Brigham Young University. Statistically significant differences in workloads were found between most semester and term courses. While term workloads were slightly lighter in general, both could be called “university lite,” in that students did not spend the expected two hours outside of class per hour in class. Math and physics courses came closest to meeting the expected workloads, which tended to remain constant between semesters and terms. Differences in the value students reported for homework varied significantly …

Strategies For Addressing Student Learning Objectives In The Renaissance And Reformation Classroom: Tone, Historical Context, And Kinetic Learners, Vincent V. Patarino Jr.

Quidditas

Like other higher education institutions, Colorado Mesa University has fully embraced modern assessment goals and strategies, especially SLOs (Student Learning Objectives). In HIST 350, Renaissance and Reformation, I focus on two: use of primary sources and historical context. Meeting these objectives with aural and visual learners is met using traditional PowerPoint, laden with images of art and architecture. What about kinetic learners? How does one comprise their learning strengths? When analyzing documents, discerning tone is especially challenging, given our social media age. One strategy is to have students work in groups of two, taking turns reading each other’s emotions. Through …

Review Of The Bible, Mormon Scripture, And The Rhetoric Of Allusivity, By Nicholas J. Frederick, Cory Crawford

Mormon Studies Review

In this monograph Nicholas Frederick tackles the directional literary relationship between canonical Mormon scripture and the King James Bible with a methodology more secure and transparent than has been applied in the past. He advances substantively the study of Latter-day Saint sacred texts by trying to get an analytical handle on what attentive readers detect easily, namely, that the rhetorical space created and occupied by Joseph Smith’s canonized writings, produced in English, is inseparable from the English of the King James Bible in ways that complicate the question of historicity and translation. For Frederick, detecting and decoding allusion in LDS …

Review Of Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, And God-Making Heresy, B Y Adam J. Powell, Stephen C. Taysom

Mormon Studies Review

Adam J. Powell’s Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy is not a book for the faint of heart or those allergic to theoretical musings. In just over two hundred pages, Powell manages to produce not only a fascinating comparison between Joseph Smith’s nineteenth-century Mormonism and the religious thought of second-century church father Irenaeus, but also introduces an innovative application of the work of Max Weber and Hans Mol to the question of religious conflict management. This is a book about the dynamic nature of religion—how it makes and remakes itself while colliding with ever-present cultural forces.

Front Matter

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies Of The Emergence Of New Spiritual Paths, By Ann Taves, Seth Perry

Mormon Studies Review

When Ann Taves’s last monograph came out, in 2009, the journal Religion ran a review of it by Finbarr Curtis entitled “Ann Taves’s Religious Experience Reconsidered is a sign of a global apocalypse that will kill us all.”1 Curtis was worried about the effects of Taves’s unapologetically reductive approach to religion. Taves is well known as a proponent of using cognitive science and related methodologies to explain what really happens when people have religious experiences. This sort of thing, as indicated by Curtis’s title, rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Minds, Bodies, And Objects, Samuel M. Brown

Mormon Studies Review

As I wander ever more deeply into the semantic labyrinths of early Mormon translation, I find myself confronting ubiquitous objects that matter for more than their mere physicality. Seer stones, interpreters, gold plates, Egyptian papyri, locks of hair, underclothing, and scores more. Mormonism is saturated with such objects, pregnant with what some scholars call “abundance” or “real presence.” Mormons don’t call them “relics,” afraid to conjure (that fraught word!) Catholic altars, corpses, and catacombs. Mormons are no idolaters, so there must be no relics. But we who think academically about Mormons may do well to acknowledge the deep kinship Mormons …

Full Issue

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Natural Born Seer: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1805–1830, By Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Mark L. Staker

Mormon Studies Review

Around the turn of the century, Signature Books planned a series of three volumes that would cover Joseph Smith’s life in detail. Richard S. Van Wagoner was commissioned to write the first volume of the trilogy, treating the period from Smith’s birth to his move to Ohio. Van Wagoner’s Natural Born Seer: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1805– 1830 engages Smith’s family and cultural background, his childhood and formative years, his visionary claims, his translation of the Book of Mormon, and the organization of the Mormon church. Much of the work of Mormon history is done by amateur scholars who contribute …

Review Of What Is Mormonism? A Student’S Introduction, By Patrick Q. Mason; Mormonism: The Basics, By David J. Howlett And John Charles Duffy, Jennifer Graber

Mormon Studies Review

Two introductory texts on Mormonism have much to offer scholars, like myself, who are not specialists in the tradition yet regularly return to it when teaching undergraduate classes in American religions and American history. Mason’s volume, What Is Mormonism? A Student’s Introduction, focuses on the Latter-day Saints and explores the tradition’s historical development, global expansion, daily practice, and function as a response to existential problems. Howlett and Duffy’s book, Mormonism: The Basics, surveys the Latter-day Saints, the Reorganized Latter Day Saints (RLDS, now Community of Christ),

and fundamentalist groups with an emphasis on Mormon history, relations with non-Mormons, ritual life, …

Too Little Or Too Much Like The Bible? A Novel Critique Of The Book Of Mormon Involving David And The Psalms, Jeff Lindsay

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

A recent graduate thesis proposes an intriguing new means for discerning if the Book of Mormon is historic or not. By looking at Book of Mormon references to David and the Psalms, the author concludes that it cannot be the product of an ancient Jewish people and that it is, instead, the result of Joseph Smith’s “plagiarism” from the Bible and other sources. This paper examines the author’s claims, how they are applied to the Book of Mormon, and proposes points the author does not take into consideration. While the author is to be congratulated for taking a fresh perspective …