Digital Commons Network^™

A Brighter Future For Mormon Theology: Adam S. Miller’S Future Mormon, Jeff Lindsay

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

Adam S. Miller’s Future Mormon, his collection of “Essays in Mormon Theology,” is one of the most intriguing reads I’ve encountered in LDS studies. It is a book intended to make students of Mormonism, especially those within the Church, challenge lazy assumptions in our theological thinking and rethink our approach to help us build a stronger faith. Some of Miller’s work here will be readily grasped and appreciated by LDS students, while other parts may be more radical or opaque. From my perspective, the gems should make the book a valued addition to any LDS library, in spite of my …

Reclaiming Jacob, Duane Boyce

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

A chapter of Adam Miller’s Future Mormon concerns Jacob’s encounter with Sherem in Jacob 7. While novel, Miller’s treatment of Jacob and Sherem appears inadequate. He overlooks features of the text that seem to subvert his unconventional conclusions about them. This essay identifies a number of such matters, falling in four major categories, and shares thoughts on the need for perspective when discussing Jacob’s conduct — or the conduct of any prophet, for that matter. It also highlights the jeopardy we face of being the second group to fall for Sherem’s lies.

Reading 1 Nephi With Wisdom, Taylor Halverson

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

Nephi is the prototypical wise son of the Wisdom tradition. As Proverbs advocates that a wise man cherishes the word of God, so Nephi cherishes the words of the wise. Nephi’s record begins with a declaration of his upbringing in the Wisdom tradition and his authenticity and reliability as a wise son and scribe (1 Nephi 1:1–3). His is a record of the learning of the Jews — a record of wisdom. If the Wisdom tradition is a foundation for Nephi’s scribal capabilities and outlook, perhaps the principles and literary skills represented by the scribal Wisdom tradition constitute the “learning …

Integration Of English And Social Studies, Craig Jeppson, Kasie Payne

The Utah English Journal

One day while eating lunch in the faculty lounge, Kasie commented on a lesson that her students had learned in Craig’s class. As we started to compare notes, it occurred to us that we shared a lot of students. Over the course of that year, we continued to share thoughts, lessons, war stories and even engaged in a little competitive banter. What became increasingly clear was that our classes complemented each other. Craig could guide students to answer content-related geography questions such as: “How can countries grow economically and sustainably?”, “Why do people fight?”, and “How does the physical environment …

Colorful Conversations, Denee D. Tyler

The Utah English Journal

When the Common Core was adopted, it quickly became evident that the ELA sections are pretty heavily packed. Many English teachers feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of standards we are expected to cover. Teaching young readers and writers requires a significant investment of class time, and as a result, many of us end up using class discussions as the sole assessment for the Speaking and Listening standards.

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

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.

Edward Hunter Snow: Pioneer-Educator-Statesman, Benjamin A. Johnson

BYU Studies

Thomas G. Alexander. Edward Hunter Snow: Pioneer-Educator-Statesman.

Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2012.

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

BYU Studies

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 …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

A Reflection From An African Convert On Official Declaration 2, Khumbulani D. Mdletshe

BYU Studies

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will commemorate in June 2018 the fortieth anniversary of the coming forth of Official Declaration 2. This anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the priesthood ban and the 1978 revelation. The revelation came through the prophet of the Lord, Spencer W. Kimball, and has had critics and supporters. As a convert to the Church and especially as a black African convert, I have experienced a long journey but a worthwhile one. This essay will focus on this personal journey and how I came to understand the background history …

The Brigham Young University Football Program And The Analytics Revolution, Nelson Chung

BYU Studies

The Brigham Young University football program is the most visible component of the LDS Church’s flagship school. In 2010, it contracted to ESPN the broadcast of a majority of its games for a reported $800,000 to $1.2 million per home game through 2018. During the 2015 season, its eight games on the ESPN–ABC family of networks reached 14.8 million televisions, an average of 1.9 million each game. In terms of missionary value, the program rivals the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Along with publicity, the Choir has also invited a fair amount of scholarly attention, most notably a study of how its …

How Inflection Class Systems Work: On The Informativity Of Implicative Structure, Jeffery R. Parker, Andrea D. Sims

Faculty Publications

The complexity of an inflection system can be defined as the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes’ paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, relatively little work has explored how structural and distributional aspects of the inflectional system produce this outcome. In this paper we use the tools of information theory to do so. We explore a set of nine languages that have robust inflection class systems: Palantla Chinantec, French, Modern Greek, Icelandic, Kadiwéu, Nuer, Russian, Seri, and Võro. The data …

"A Kind Of Painful Progress": Contesting And Collaborating On The Mormon Image In America, Cristine Hutchison-Jones

Mormon Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Minutes Of The Afternoon Meeting Of The Council Of Fifty, April 11, 1844, Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaaat, Jeffrey D. Mahas

BYU Studies

In his essay “Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,” on the previous pages in this issue, Ronald K. Esplin overviews the history of the Council of Fifty and the three books in which William Clayton recorded its minutes. He tells what these minutes add to our understanding of Church leaders’ concerns about outreach to American Indians, Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, and the desire to claim religious liberty. The text presented and annotated below is excerpted from The Joseph Smith Papers, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846.

Nephi’S Use Of Inverted Parallels, Dennis Newton

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

Did Nephi intentionally use chiasmus in his writings? An analysis of fifteen multi-level chiasm candidates in Nephi’s writings demonstrates a high statistical probability (99%+) that the poetic form was used intentionally by Nephi but only during two specific writing periods. This finding is buttressed by further analysis, which reveals a clear and unexpected literary pattern for which Nephi seems to have reserved his usage of chiasmus. The nature of obedience is a major theme in Nephi’s writings, and he regularly employed chiasms to explore the topic early in his writings. After a period during which he discontinued use of the …

The Faith To See: Burning In The Bosom And Translating The Book Of Mormon In Doctrine And Covenants 9, Stan Spencer

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

Doctrine and Covenants 9:7–9 is conventionally interpreted as the Lord’s description of the method by which the Book of Mormon was translated. A close reading of the entire revelation, however, suggests that the Lord was not telling Oliver Cowdery how to translate but rather how to know whether it was right for him to translate and how to obtain the faith necessary to do so. Faith would have enabled Oliver Cowdery to overcome his fear and translate, just as it would have enabled Peter (in Matthew 14) to overcome his fear and walk on water.

“O Ye Fair Ones” — Revisited, Matthew L. Bowen

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

No abstract provided.

Vanquishing The Mormon Menace, Stephen O. Smoot

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

Patrick Mason has offered a fascinating look at the history of nineteenth century anti-Mormonism in the American South with his 2011 volume The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South. Situating nineteenth century Southern anti-Mormonism in its historical context, Mason narrates a vivid account of how Mormons at times faced violent opposition that stemmed from deep cultural, religious, and political differences with mainstream American Protestants. Mason’s volume is an excellent resource for those interested in Mormon history.

End Matter

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

How To Hold On To Hierarchy: Russia And The Near Abroad, Andrew Jensen

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

The smoldering wreckage of a commercial airliner in an Eastern Ukraine farm field signified so much more than just hundreds of innocent deaths; the downing was a bloody symbol of just how far Ukraine had fallen. Peace agreements between the rebels and government forged in Minsk in September 2014 and February 2015 failed to stamp out the persistent violence. Not simply a civil war, the rebels had been trained, armed, and assisted by the Russian military. While Russia flatly denied its contribution of men and munitions, few in the West believed the claims. Despite several rounds of sanctions by the …

Empathy And The Atonement, Tyler Johnson

BYU Studies

Even as an incurable optimist, I can see the world is often drenched in suffering.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Reception Of Tacitus’ Germania By The German Humanists: From Provence To Empire, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

It is well known he German Humanists (1490-1540) used Tacitus’ Germania to advance their notion of the German nation in response to Italian criticism. But less attention has been given to the German nature of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1509). I argue that Humanists after Conrad Celtis (Bebel, Wimpheling, Cochlaeus, Brant, Irenicus, Franck, Hutten) emphasized the Germanness of the empire by reinterpreting the traditional Translation of Empire, the Germanic migrations out of Germania after Constantine, and the designation of a new national purpose (the protection and expansion of the Church and the faith). They grafted the …

Reading 1 Peter Intertextually With Select Passages From The Old Testament, Taylor Halverson

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

Literary studies, especially intertextual approaches, are relevant for exploring how scriptures are constructed and interpreted. Reading 1 Peter intertextually reveals the thoughtful way that Peter selected suitable, relevant, and applicable Old Testament scripture to encourage faithfulness for his audience. Peter draws from Isaiah 40 in 1 Peter 1:24-25 to preach comfort; Isaiah 40 is one of the hallmark Old Testament chapters focused on comfort. 1 Peter 2:2-3 quotes from Psalm 34 which is a hymn dedicated to the salvation that God’s servants experience when they faithfully turn to Him during times of distress and persecution. And when 1 Peter 1:16 …

Prohibition Among Danish American Lutherans, Nick Kofod Mogensen

The Bridge

On January 17, 1920, a major change took place in American society. The Eighteenth Amendment went into effect and started the Prohibition Era, banning the sale of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was not a uniquely American idea. Under pressure from temperance movements, most Nordic countries banned or severely restricted the sale of alcohol around the same time as the United States did. The Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Finland all banned alcohol during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Although a narrow majority of the Swedish people refused an outright ban in …

Social Narrative And Sustainability Of A Danish Diaspora Community In The American Midwest, Craig A. Molgaard, Amanda L. Golbeck

The Bridge

This longitudinal study (1972-2015) focuses on the largest Danish American speech community in the United States of America, which is in Audubon, Cass, Pottawattamie, and Shelby Counties in western Iowa (the towns of Elk Horn, Kimballton, Audubon, Harlan, Exira, and Atlantic). The sociolinguistic mechanisms (code switching, speech acts, storytelling) of Danish social and cultural narrative are identified and examples are provided. We examine the social aspects of sustaining identity and heritage in a now globally linked community, and note lessons learned for other communities seeking to sustain their heritage in a healthy and productive fashion.

Saving The American Farmer: The Impact Of Danish Agricultural Practices On American Policy Direction, Byron Rom-Jensen

The Bridge

“We are not Denmark.” This assertion by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a national debate in early 2016 as a retort to Senator Bernie Sanders’ calls to learn from Denmark evoked little surprise. The greater surprise was, in fact, that the discussions of Denmark had gone this far. It certainly seemed remarkable when Sanders, shortly aft er announcing his presidential candidacy, praised Scandinavian social programs in areas such as childcare and education, and encouraged Americans to learn from these policies. Such a pronouncement ran counter to traditional path-dependent explanations for American domestic policy, according to which government programs …

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Religion Of A Different Color: Race And The Mormon Struggle For Whiteness; For The Cause Of Righteousness: A Global History Of Blacks And Mormonism, 1830-2013, Patrick Q. Mason

BYU Studies

W. Paul Reeve. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Russell W. Stevenson. For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013.

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014.

Road To Martyrdom: Joseph Smith's Last Legal Cases, Joseph I. Bentley

BYU Studies

In 1842, Joseph Smith looked back on the events of his life and said, “Deep water is what I am wont to swim in” (D&C 127:2). This was especially true of his experiences with the law. Starting with his first exposure to the judicial system in 1819, at age thirteen, he spent much of his next twenty-five years of life entangled with legal concerns. The Joseph Smith Papers Project team now can count about 220 cases involving Joseph as plaintiff, defendant, witness, or judge. Of those, approximately fifty were criminal cases capable of taking away his liberty, his resources, or, …