Religion Commons^™

Recorded In Heaven, Scott Hales

BYU Studies

Len and Mary Hope were African American Latter-day Saints who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alabama (Len in 1919, Mary in 1925) and later raised their children in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hopes’ story was recently featured in Saints, Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, introducing the couple’s experiences as Black Latter-day Saints in the early twentieth century to Church members around the world.

The Book Of Mormon Art Catalog, Jennifer Champoux

BYU Studies

You can learn much about a society from its religious art. Compare, for example, two images of Christ’s descent from the cross—one a Counter-Reformation Flemish painting and the other from just twenty years later in nearby Protestant Amsterdam. In the earlier piece, Peter Paul Rubens (fig. 1) creates a scene of movement, drama, vivid color, and swirling drapery and depicts the body of Christ as muscular and heroic. In the second, by Rembrandt (fig. 2), we see a somber, quiet, darkly monochromatic scene and Christ’s frail, sagging body. How might we account for such different visual interpretations of this pivotal …

"He Is God; And He Is With Them", Matthew L. Bowen

BYU Studies

The prophet Isaiah foretold to Ahaz and the house of David: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Latter-day Saints often interpret and teach the “Immanuel” prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 as a simple, straightforward messianic prophecy with a single fulfillment in the birth of Jesus Christ. Most pay little attention to the historical circumstances in which Isaiah gave the prophecy—namely, the Syro-Ephraimite crisis prior to the Assyrian invasion in the eighth century BCE. The idea of a more immediate, contemporary fulfillment …

That They May Be Light, Stephanie Hock

BYU Studies

When covenant women are together, they become each other’s shelter. The storms might be raging around them, but they don’t feel the rain or hear the thunder because they’re so busy laughing and loving each other. They carry burdens collectively as they walk forward toward the light. They encourage each other to keep going and lean on each other when it’s hard. I have found that walking through the storms of life with these women at my side has brought more relief than I could ever imagine.

Salad Days, Alixa Brobbey

BYU Studies

There used to be smoke standing on every corner and hovering just behind each shoulder, sitting politely at round tables ordering food from teenaged waiters.

Joseph Smtih And The Mormons By Noah Van Sciver, Scott Hales

BYU Studies

Readers have been anticipating Noah Van Sciver’s graphic novel Joseph Smith and the Mormons since 2011, when the cartoonist first published a story about Joseph Smith and Latter-day Saint origins in his indie comics anthology Blammo. In the story, Van Sciver offset a rather straightforward account of the First Vision and translation of the Book of Mormon with his signature visual style, an arresting combination of the primitive and the grotesque. The result was an artistically intriguing retelling of early Church history, and readers wanted more. When Van Sciver subsequently published graphic novels about Abraham Lincoln (The Hypo: …

Every Needful Thing: Essays On The Life Of The Mind And The Heart, Edited By Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye And Kate Holbrook, Susan Elizabeth Howe

BYU Studies

This important collection of essays is the result of the inspiration and insight of two generous and faithful scholars, Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye and Kate Holbrook. Melissa has an appointment as a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and is a historian for the Church History Department. Kate, who passed away in 2022, was also a historian, who worked on such important books as The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History and At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women. Together, Melissa and Kate have sought out essays “on …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

A Prophet’S Journey: The Journals Of Spencer W. Kimball, Jeffery L. Anderson, Brandon J. Metcalf

BYU Studies

The Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently released the journals of President Spencer W. Kimball online. President Kimball is well known for his advocacy of keeping personal journals and histories. He passionately preached about their worth and importance. “We renew our appeal for the keeping of individual histories and accounts of sacred experiences in our lives—answered prayers, inspiration from the Lord, administrations in our behalf, a record of the special times and events of our lives,” he taught. “Stories of inspiration from our own lives . . . are powerful teaching tools. I …

A Close Look At Scriptural Teachings Regarding Jesus Feeling Our Pains As Part Of His Atonement, Scott C. Woodward

BYU Studies

Scriptural teachings regarding the Atonement of Jesus Christ represent the most important and cherished doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Richard G. Scott emphasized its importance, stating, “The atonement of Jesus Christ is the single most significant event that ever has or ever will occur.” Elder Neal A. Maxwell called it “the central act in all of human history” and “the hinge on which all else that finally matters turned.” And Elder Bruce R. McConkie declared it to be “the center and core and heart of revealed religion.”

The Place—Or The Tribe—Called Nahom? Nhm As Both A Tribal And Geographic Name In Modern And Ancient Yemen, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

For decades, Latter-day Saint scholars have argued that “the place . . . called Nahom” in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:34) is the Nihm region in Yemen, located northeast of Sanaʿa, west of Maʾrib, and south of the Wadi Jawf. The location fits well both with the directions provided for getting to and from Nahom in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:13–14, 33; 17:1) and with inscriptions dated to Lehi’s time referring to a person called a nhmyn, translated as “Nihmite,” confirming that the name goes back to the right time period. Publications by Princeton, Oxford, …

“Show Them Unto No Man”: Part 2. The Book Of Moses And The Early Jewish Christian Esoteric Tradition, Barry R. Bickmore

BYU Studies

There can be no question but that the Restoration was in many ways strange for its time and place, and this can make life difficult for anyone attempting to track the history of Latter-day Saint religious beliefs. Its very strangeness makes it difficult for historians who do not believe Joseph Smith’s teachings were divinely inspired to pinpoint plausible, mundane sources of inspiration.

A Register Analysis Of Public Prayers, Lindsey Newton, Brett Hashimoto

BYU Studies

Prayer, as defined by scholars Corwin and Brown, is “a form of ritual language . . . [that] affords humans the possibility to communicate with non-human others.” As a linguistic register (that is, a variety of language defined by an area of use, such as academic research articles, text messages, sermons, or blog posts), it denotes communication with an unseen being, primarily in a religious context. However, “despite the importance of religion and ritual in anthropology, prayer, a key component of religious practices and institutions, has received very little empirical attention.” This is partially because the complexity of religion as …

“The Gospel Of Intelligence And Culture”: Literature And Literary Instruction In The Twentieth-Century Mia Curriculum, Michael Austin, Rachel Meibos Helps

BYU Studies

In his journal for April 29, 1888, Bishop Orson F. Whitney recorded a curious meeting that he had with an Apostle. “Had a long conversation in the morning with Apostle Moses Thatcher,” wrote Whitney. “He gave me a blessing and set me apart to deliver a lecture on Sunday, June 3rd next, at the Mutual Improvement Conference in the Tabernacle. My subject is Home Literature. I consented to deliver it, though very busy and overworked, at the request of the Authorities.” This remarkable assignment— he was called and set apart to give a speech in the way men at the …

Embracing Our Highest Worship: Some Thoughts On Our Approach To The Temple, Tyler Johnson

BYU Studies

I understate the matter when I say the temple strikes different Church members differently. I have friends who entered the temple for the first time many years ago and felt immediately at home. Indeed, they resonate with President Henry B. Eyring, who once said, “The first time I walked just a few feet into the temple I had the feeling that I had been here before. In an instant, the thought came to me that what I recognized was a sense of peace beyond anything I had felt before in this life, but that I seemed to recognize, and almost …

The Baptismal Chair, Ellis William Leroy Jr.

BYU Studies

It was a cool cloudy day when I arrived at his home some years past. His hospice nurse was attempting to console his family. He was nearing the end of his life. He was frail and partially conscious but knew we were there. He had always been a stoic man and had worked until disability forced him to retire. He had been confined to a wheelchair for several years. There were no complaints that day, and he was comfortable. He had no desires other than to be with his wife, who had preceded him in death. Now he lay in …

Weaving, Christine Bird

BYU Studies

Morning enters and splits the Hogan

and she wakes from dreams of mountains,

hungry for offerings tall for maize

her eyes hold visions until she sees

patterns her mother taught her

What If I’D Not Been Raised To Know You?, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

I think I would have noticed.

Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre And Its Aftermath By Richard E. Turley Jr. And Barbara Jones Brown, Kent P. Jackson

BYU Studies

September 11, 1857.

Thirteen years earlier, the Prophet Joseph Smith was murdered while in state custody. The Latter-day Saints had been driven from their homes in Missouri and Illinois, with no protection from those states or from the United States. The U.S. Army was on its way to the Utah Territory to put down a rebellion that didn’t exist, and Utahns thought they might be driven from their homes once again. Because of the anticipated military invasion, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had recently told settlers in Utah not to sell food, including grain, to …

Documents, 1 January–15 May 1844: Vol. 14 Of The Documents Series Of The Joseph Smith Papers, Richard E. Bennett

BYU Studies

Having grown up on a diet of Joseph Fielding Smith’s Essentials in Church History, B. H. Roberts’s Comprehensive History of the Church, and the six-volume History of the Church, which for me and so many others was once the gold standard for the study of Church history, I am convinced that the Joseph Smith Papers are a shaft of incredible new light, a welcomed revelation of sorts, a coming-out party to document Joseph Smith’s life and ministry.

End Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

I Have Dreamed With Her: The Fruitful Relationship Between Minerva Teichert And Alice Merrill Horne, Laura Paulson Howe

BYU Studies

Minerva Teichert was asked to give the eulogy at the funeral of her agent, mentor, and friend, Alice Merrill Horne, in 1948. “I think one of the greatest things [Horne] did,” Teichert mused in her speech, “was to insist that I get a washing machine. I had lived too long in Fort Hall Bottoms. I looked open-eyed, almost horror stricken, as I said—‘You don’t mean an electric washer, do you?’ ‘Of course I do,’ she answered, ‘why not? No one deserves one more than you. I’ll sell some thing and help you out. You’d have your washing done in an …

Building An Innovative “Latter-Day Saints Without Borders” Organization, Warner Woodworth

BYU Studies

This article is a reflection and a call to action for many readers who may share a concern about how to reduce human suffering and empower the poor around the world. It is an attempt to describe stories of Latter-day Saints who became social entrepreneurs by laboring to practice our religion—that is, people willing to help the poor, feed the hungry, serve the homeless, and bless the sick everywhere. Attending sacrament meetings on Sundays, accepting a Church calling, doing weekly temple service, being a neighborhood ministering brother or sister, holding daily prayer and scripture reading—all are well and good. Yet …

“Life And Death, Blessing And Cursing” New Context For “Skin Of Blackness”: In The Book Of Mormon, T. J. Uriona

BYU Studies

For many readers of the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 5 can prove rather challenging. Not only does this chapter contain the actualization of a curse and the apparent genesis of an outgroup, but it also states that “the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon” this group because of their iniquity (2 Ne. 5:21). Given the prevalence of racial thought in society today, this passage has been interpreted as a hurtful reference to a phenotypic change in skin color brought on by a divine curse, leading many researchers to propose alternatives to a purely racialized …

Mary’S Assumption, Christopher Bissett

BYU Studies

On resurrection morning

surely He appeared to you,

His mother.

Thoughts, In Threes, Isaac James Richards

BYU Studies

Between husband and wife, a vow.

Between past and present, the now.

Boxwoods, Andrew Maxfield

BYU Studies

Your canvas drop cloth pressed like guest linens

even for yard work,

pungent green bits collecting at your knees

as you worked the hedge flanks

with the gray rechargeable clippers.

Restless Pilgrim: Andrew Jenson’S Quest For Latter-Day Saint History By Reid L. Neilson And Scott D. Marianno, Matthew B. Christensen

BYU Studies

Restless Pilgrim: Andrew Jenson’s Quest for Latter-day Saint History, written by Reid L. Neilson and Scott D. Marianno, is a captivating biography that delves into the remarkable life and passionate quest of Andrew Jenson, an assistant church historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1886 until his death in 1941.