Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Everything You Make With Your Hands, John Alba Cutler

BYU Studies

Todo lo que haces con tus manos tiene valor she said, and we knew what she meant. That Christmas card of glitter glue and crayon. That yarn potholder born from a tiny loom like a lute. Even the Pinewood Derby car, blue with a white stripe down the middle, wobbling its way into seventeenth place. We knew the making of it was the point, what gave it worth.

Book Notice: The Ancient Order Of Things: Essays On The Mormon Temple; Why I Stay 2: The Challenges Of Discipleship For Contemporary Latter-Day Saints; Real Vs. Rumor: How To Dispel Latter-Day Myths , Brooke James, Roger Terry, Matthew B. Christensen, Christian Larsen, Editor, Robert A. Rees, Editor, Keith A. Erekson

BYU Studies

The Ancient Order of Things: Essays on the Mormon Temple presents a variety of academic discussions on different aspects of temples. In the introduction, the collection’s editor, Christian Larsen, explains that the essays focus on historical perspectives of significant and “unique facets” (x) of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The essays cover themes such as histories of ordinances, the role of temples beyond mainstream LDS tradition, and the position of temples within wider cultural contexts.

A Short Tribute To My Genealogical Butcher Chart, Linda Hoffman Kimball

BYU Studies

If you were to parse me Like meat on a banner You’d find all my ancestors In parts or in manner.

Birth Of Discernment, Julia Hathaway

BYU Studies

“Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. We may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence even in disagreeable things, not in an exemption from suffering.” —François Fénelon

The Danite Constitution And Theories Of Democratic Justice In Frontier America, Benjamin E. Park

BYU Studies

Most modern Americans define liberty as the freedom to do things: freedom to speak, freedom to congregate, freedom to vote, freedom to worship. That is, we define it in proactive terms. But in early America, many citizens were just as likely to define liberty as freedom from things: freedom not to be taxed without representation, freedom not to be unjustly imprisoned, or freedom not to be oppressed. In other words, they defined it in preventive terms. And among Americans in the 1830s, per- haps the most poignant political discussion concerned the freedom to not be forcibly removed from the land …

Remnant Or Replacement? Outlining A Possible Apostasy Narrative, Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph M. Spencer

BYU Studies

Since early in the twentieth century, it has been common for Latter- day Saints to speak of a “Great Apostasy” that occurred in the centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such a general apostasy has been viewed as providing the basic motivation for the Restoration, begun in earnest with Joseph Smith’s First Vision in 1820. The traditional apostasy narrative has centered on the argument that the church founded by Jesus Christ once possessed the same organization, doctrine, and authority restored in the nineteenth century but that, over time, these crucial components were either lost or corrupted. It …

Gospel Ethics, Hinckley A. Jones-Sanpei

BYU Studies

Unavoidable ethical and moral decisions permeate our lives. From the personal (how we treat our family members and the people we interact with) to the political (what we do about the increasing number of mass shootings in our country and refugees at our borders or how we behave during a worldwide pandemic), our decisions have moral and ethical implications that reveal our priorities and values. Traditional approaches to ethics and economic policymaking emphasize isolated rational individuals and their direct interactions with other self-sufficient, rational individuals. Yet at different points in our lives, all of us are dependent on others—some we …

Signs Of The Times: Racism, Tribalism, And Disinformation Before The Comings Of Christ, Luke Drake

BYU Studies

Each of the major narrators/compilers of the Book of Mormon evince varying degrees of understanding that their work is destined for modern readers who would face a set of modern concerns.² This essay suggests that Mormon’s editorial hand—on display both in the redaction of the words of Samuel the Lamanite and in the narration of the events surrounding Samuel’s ministry—can be understood to address pressing issues faced by latter-day readers: specifically, the perils posed by racism, “tribalism,” and disinformation.

Wake Up And Dream, Eva Koleva Timothy

BYU Studies

The cover piece, Star Stretching, was inspired by a favorite saying of my mission president, Elder Ronald Rasband: “It is better to aim for the stars and drag your feet in the treetops than to aim for the treetops and drag your feet in the mud.”

My Stepdad Was A Bank Robber, Billy Wilson

BYU Studies

I remember standing on the back porch of our rental in Meadow Vista, California—the steady gurgles of a running creek in the backyard, the faint smell of dry firewood in the cardboard box behind me. Dad (the con- tract killer, not the bank robber) wore a tank top and jeans with the pant legs cut into very short shorts. He was six foot two, an anomaly in our lineage of shorter men. I don’t recall him ever yelling at me, and he was naturally amicable, but he did raise his voice on occasion and could crack granite with his eyes. …

Aguas Vivas, Thea Jo Buell

BYU Studies

"So, was there anything you just couldn’t find there?” I asked the newly returned missionary. He had been home from Guatemala for a few months, and I would be leaving for the same country soon.

He looked puzzled at my question and thought for several seconds before answering. “Balloons,” he said.

His Body Breaks, James Goldberg

BYU Studies

His body breaks long before he hangs on the cross.

All Things Sing Praise, Susan Elizabeth Howe

BYU Studies

The anteater’s tongue licking praise in the tunnels of the termite mound.

The alpaca spitting praise, olé!

Serrano peppers’ praise in perspiration.

Plastic praise: the Taj Mahal, a million interlocking Lego blocks.

Bayou, Pamela J. Hamblin

BYU Studies

Slowly the rain plays thin strings, plucking.

Life And Times Of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses Of The American West, Adam Oliver Stokes

BYU Studies

In recent years there has been a growing effort to expand the definition of “Mormonism” within Mormon studies. “Mormonism,” in twenty-first-century scholarship, refers not only to the largest organization in the restoration tradition—namely, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Utah—but also to other branches and movements within the restoration tradition. Joseph Smith’s movement includes the Reorganized Church (RLDS, now known as the Com- munity of Christ), the Bickertonite church (Church of Jesus Christ), the Strangite church, and the Elijah Message church, among others. In large part, this expanded understanding of what qualifies as “Mormon” has come …

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

“In Their Promised Canaan Stand”: Outlawry, Landscape, And Memory In C. C. A. Christensen’S Mormon Panorama, Jennifer Champoux

BYU Studies

What do Robin Hood and Joseph Smith have in common? This article examines C. C. A. Christensen’s Mormon Panorama according to themes of outlawry in Anglo-Saxon literature, revealing insights into the nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint understanding of exile and sacred space in relation to both the landscape and to America. In Christensen’s paintings, the moral rightness of Latter-day Saints is contrasted with injustice by both government officials and local vigilantes, thereby equating outcast status with righteousness and true justice. In collating early stories of persecution and miracles, and presenting them with an aura of objective truth, the Mormon Panorama helped shape …

Latter-Day Saints And Images Of Christ’S Crucifixion, John Hilton Iii, Anthony Sweat, Josh Stratford

BYU Studies

In his classic 1897 work The Ministry of Art, Frank Bristol proclaimed, “Art has glorified Christianity. It has set forth her doctrines, portrayed her saints, and even her very God and Savior. Limited only by the necessary restrictions of her powers, art has been a teacher of things divine.”¹ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (herein referred to as “the Church”) also employs the power of visual art to portray its central doctrines and perpetuate its sacred history. Religious paintings adorn hallways and classrooms of Latter-day Saint meetinghouses, fill the walls of sacred temples, and accompany …

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Contents

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Lost Sheep, Lost Coins, And Lost Meanings, Jenny Rebecca Rytting

BYU Studies

Three of the best known and most loved of Jesus’s parables occur together in the fifteenth chapter of Luke as a response to the Pharisees’ disapproval of Jesus’s association with sinners: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin (also known as the lost drachma or lost groat), and the lost (or prodigal) son. In the teaching and preaching traditions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these parables (especially the first two) have primarily been interpreted as a call for missionary work, particularly reactivation. For example, President David O. McKay suggested that the three parables represent …

Visualizing Temples Through Time, Litian Zhang, Geoffrey M. Draper

BYU Studies

The large number of temples dedicated in recent decades has rendered it impossible to draw a linear timeline of all temples on a standard printed page. We propose an interactive timeline that can run on mobile devices. Rather than display the entire timeline at once, our visualization renders a subset of the temples on an interactive spiral and provides controls for the user to navigate forward and backward through time. Below we will present a mobile app prototype of this visualization, called Temples Timeline, and discuss its implementation and reception.

The Early Development Of Latter-Day Saint Women’S History An Interview With Jill Mulvay Derr, Cherry Bushman Silver

BYU Studies

This piece is half of an interview conducted by Cherry B. Silver on August 8, 2019, in the BYU Studies offices. The second half of the interview was published in BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 3. Many thanks to Laurel Barlow for transcribing the recording.

Joseph Smith’S Translation: The Words And Worlds Of Early Mormonism, Samuel Morris Brown, Kent P. Jackson, Reviewer

BYU Studies

Samuel Morris Brown’s Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism announces a sweeping objective: to place all of Joseph Smith’s prophetic projects under a single heading: translation. The thesis of the book is that “translation as a source of scriptural texts” is mirrored in “translation as a process by which humans became assimilable to the divine presence” (ix). “Translation was about more than words and sentences. Translation was also concerned with the transformation of human beings and the worlds they were capable of inhabiting. These twin senses of translation run together in early Latter-day Saint thought” (4).

Prophetic Authority: Democratic Hierarchy And The Mormon Priesthood, Michael Hubbard Mackay, Roger Terry, Reviewer

BYU Studies

Considering how central the concept of authority is in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is somewhat surprising that so few scholarly examinations of this topic have been attempted, which makes this book by Michael Hubbard MacKay a welcome and overdue contribution to the short list of publications on authority in the Church. And for the most part, MacKay does not disappoint. Although much of what he presents is not new and the writing can at times be challenging to digest, his exploration of the topic is both surprisingly thorough and notably insightful.

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.