Mormon Studies Commons^™

2019 Conference Schedule

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

No abstract provided.

The Building Of The Toyko Temple, Conan P. Story

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

This is a story of the building of the Tokyo Temple, the first temple built in Asia by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is not a history, although I hope it will shed some historical light on a few aspects of this magnificent temple. It is simply my story—what I saw and did, and what I learned about this House of the Lord as it rose from the ground and was dedicated in 1980. I like to tell this story starting in 1948 because that is when the Lord began to reveal His plan for where …

Indigenizing Mormonisms, Farina King

Mormon Studies Review

Over generations, scholars have emphasized the binary of “Mormons and Indians” using racialized terms.1 This language and approach often overlooks complex dynamics and locally specific identities of peoples and communities that engaged with Mormonism in North America and Central America.2 Since the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, many Mormons have identified Indigenous peoples of the Americas as “Lamanites,” comparable to how white settler colonizers categorized Natives as “Indians.” Although colonizers, including Mormon settlers, used such terms to shape Indigenous identities and populations, individuals and communities appropriated and adapted them.

Evolution Of The Research On Mormonism In Asia, Pierre Vendassi

Mormon Studies Review

The first Mormon attempts to put down roots in Asia date back to 1851. Today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as other Mormon denominations such as the Community of Christ are officially present in about twenty Asian countries. While many student dissertations and essays as well as testimonial or devotional books have been written on different aspects of Mormonism in Asia, including both the Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ traditions, the allotted space for this paper as well as my own resources prevented me from providing an exhaustive survey. Instead, I chose a few …

Faith Across Cultures: Research On Mormonism In Oceania, Ian Barber

Mormon Studies Review

Oceania describes the largely marine Pacific basin divided (on moot ethnographic grounds) between Polynesia in the east and Melanesia and Micronesia to the southwest and northwest respectively. The continent of Australia lies on Oceania’s southwestern border. T he first Oceanic settlers arrived in the western Pacific tens of thousands of years ago from Asia. Human settlement of the increasingly depauperate and largely noncontinental islands in eastern Melanesia to Polynesia and Micronesia was accomplished within the last five thousand years. The remote Eastern Polynesian islands were colonized largely if not entirely within the last millennium. These vastly different time scales of …

The Forms And The Power: Mapping Mormon Practice, Ryan G. Tobler

Mormon Studies Review

The waters of scholarship on American religion have been troubled over the past few decades, partly by a radical process of diversification, partly because of tremors within the concept of religion itself. More than ever before, scholars in the field have been forced to reflect critically on just what “religion” is. Is it something transcendent, something above and beyond the here and now? Does religion emanate from an internal condition of belief? Is its institutional and social history a story of creeds, writ large? These were, more or less, the assumptions of generations of church historians and scholars who studied …

Review: Joanna Brooks And Gina Colvin, Eds., Decolonizing Mormonism: Approaching A Postcolonial Zion. Salt Lake: University Of Utah Press, 2018, Jon Bialecki

Mormon Studies Review

It is no secret, even as Christianity appears to be waning as a cultural and demographic force in many of the North Atlantic nations that it is commonly associated with, that religion—or at least, certain forms of that religion—are very much waxing in other parts of the world. In regions such as Africa, South and Central America, Oceania, and even parts of Asia, modes of Christian practice, belief, and organization, some with ties to Euro-American denominations, but also many without, are spreading at such a pace that authors such as Philip Jenkins (2011) can speak about the churches there as …

Review: Carol Cornwall Madsen. Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2017., Catherine O'Donnell

Mormon Studies Review

In Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History, Carol Cornwall Madsen reveals the rich and painful inner life of a woman who was for decades the most famous female member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Drawing on an extraordinary “paper trail of thousands of pages from diaries, letters, newspaper articles and editorials, and a volume of poetry” (vii), Madsen offers an astute and sympathetic portrait of a woman who accomplished and suffered much.

Review: Brent M. Rogers. Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons And The Federal Management Of Early Utah Territory. Lincoln: University Of Nebraska Press, 2017., William Deverell

Mormon Studies Review

Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory accomplishes a number of impressive feats. In the hands of a less-skilled scholar, these objectives might clash and unduly complicate a book and its narrative. Not so in historian Brent M. Rogers’s fine study of antebellum tensions regarding the Mormon political and cultural experiment in the Great Basin.

Review: Richard E. Turley Jr., Janiece J. Johnson, And Lujean Purcell Carruth, Eds. Mountain Meadows Massacre: Collected Legal Papers. 2 Vols. Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2017)., Nathan B. Oman

Mormon Studies Review

The story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is much told, most recently in the comprehensive account produced by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard under the auspices of the Church Historical Department.1 Massacre at Mountain Meadows, however, ends with the mass murder of immigrants by Mormon militiamen in 1857. The authors’ original plan was to produce a second volume that would extend the story to include the subsequent efforts by Mormons to deflect responsibility for the massacre and the pursuit of the perpetrators by federal officials (pp. xi–xii). Much of the research for this effort was …

Review: D. Michael Quinn. The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth And Corporate Power. Salt Lake City, Ut: Signature Books, 2017., Thomas G. Alexander

Mormon Studies Review

D. Michael Quinn’s The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power is the third book in a series on the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first volume, published in 1994 and subtitled Origins of Power “emphasizes the development of ecclesiastical and theocratic powers in Mormonism, primarily during the lifetime of its founder Joseph Smith (1805–44), but also including Brigham Young’s transfer of the Mormon hierarchy to Utah in 1847.” (Origins of Power, p. x) Volume 2, published in 1997 and subtitled Extensions of Power, details the development of the spiritual and temporal power of Mormon …

Review: Matthew J. Grow And R. Eric Smith, Eds. The Council Of Fifty: What The Records Reveal About Mormon History. Provo, Ut: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City, Ut: Deseret Book, 2017., Janiece Johnson

Mormon Studies Review

Since the late 1960s, the minutes of the Mormon Council of Fifty in Nauvoo have been the Mormon documentary “holy grail” (p. viii). What Mario DePillis called “one of the most secret of the Mormons’ sub rosa organizations” and Klaus J. Hansen labelled the “most important key to an understanding of the Mormon past” was a topic for speculation over decades.1 Lack of prior availability did not inhibit prior commentary, but also spurred on attentive archival work. Code words veiling theocratic claims topped with rumors of a self-appointed king could only be met with great suspicion in a democratic republic. …

Neither Fairyland Nor Dystopia: Taking Western Europe Seriously In Mormon Studies, Julie K. Allen

Mormon Studies Review

Although Mormonism is intimately associated, externally and internally, with American history and culture, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has older ties to western Europe than to anywhere else outside the United States and Polynesia. Without the influx of approximately eighty thousand convert-immigrants from the UK and continental Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, the fledgling church would not have been able to successfully colonize the intermountain West. Although church membership levels in Europe have remained low in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, a robust network of Latter-day Saint congregations across the European continent and the British Isles supports …

Review: Julie K. Allen. Danish But Not Lutheran: The Impact Of Mormonism On Danish Cultural Identity, 1850–1920. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2017., Margit Egdal

Mormon Studies Review

America’s status as a land with a large and diverse immigrant population has long contrasted with the relatively homogenous populations of Europe. However, this situation has changed dramatically throughout Europe in recent decades. In Denmark, migrant workers and refugees from across Europe, Africa, and Asia have made for a more multicultural society.

Review: Terryl L. Givens. Feeding The Flock: The Foundations Of Mormon T Hought: Church And Praxis. New York And Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017., J. B. Haws

Mormon Studies Review

Terryl Givens has been calling, for some time, for a broader and more serious engagement with the theology of the Church of Latter-day Saints—and he has framed that call in memorable language, as only he can. Here’s what he wrote for the University of Chicago Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center in 2012: “In the century since the [1893] Chicago [World’s] fair, Mormons have been lauded for their choirs and their football. They are largely respected as good, decent, family-centered people, who are welcome to sing for presidents and dance with the stars—and everyone agrees to avoid theological questions.”1 Not if …

Faith-Promoting History/ History-Promoting Faith, Martin E. Marty

Mormon Studies Review

An excerpt from a long poem by W. H. Auden comes to mind as a framework for assessing these two publications featuring Mormon historian Leonard J. Arrington. He was poised—we might say surefooted—in his Mormon faith and by commitments to the church. At the same time, Arrington consistently made clear that his calling was to be a scholar who excelled in the writing of history in modes acceptable among university-based researchers and writers of many faiths, or of non-faith. There was never any doubt that he pursued his vocation imaginatively and steadfastly through the decades. While these books give evidence …

Review: Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Robin Jensen, And Sharalyn D. Howcroft, Eds. Foundational Texts Of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018., Michael Hubbard Mackay

Mormon Studies Review

In 2005, Robert Orsi argued, “The world of the text is really not the world.”1 In remarkably clear prose Orsi promotes a kind of praxis-oriented methodology that has similarly begun to emerge from within the Joseph Smith Papers Project and subsequent volumes produced by its editors. As Orsi explained, he is interested in “what people do with religious practice, what they make with it of themselves and their worlds.”2 This short review essay will briefly examine Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft’s edited volume Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources. As a by-product of the …

Review: Mette Ramstad. Conversion In The Pacific: Eastern Polynesian Latter-Day Saints’ Conversion Accounts And Their Development Of A Lds Identity. Kristiansand, Norway: Høyskoleforlaget, 2003., Amanda Hendrix-Komoto

Mormon Studies Review

Mette Ramstad’s Conversion in the Pacific: Eastern Polynesian Latter-day Saints’ Conversion Accounts and Their Development of a LDS Identity was published in 2003. Although it is over a decade old, it remains a refreshing, smart contribution to the field. Unlike many scholars of Mormonism, Ramstad is not a historian. Instead, she writes as an anthropologist of religion. The result can be a bit disconcerting for individuals used to narrative histories. Like many social scientists, she categorizes the experiences of her subjects and uses them as case studies for understanding concepts that have been important to the academic study of religion. …

Review: Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, David W. Grua, Elizabeth A. Kuehn, Brenden W. Rensink, And Alexander L. Baugh, Eds. The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Volume 6: February 1838-August 1839. Salt Lake City, Ut: T He Church Historian’S Press, 2017)., Angela Bell

Mormon Studies Review

The most recent volume of The Joseph Smith Papers, Volume 6 is a contribution long-awaited by students of Mormon history, members of faith traditions, and scholars of American religion. The collection chronicles the tumultuous time in Mormon history from Joseph Smith Jr., and Sidney Rigdon’s removal from Kirtland, Ohio, in early 1838 through the establishment and early settlement of Nauvoo, Illinois, during the spring and summer of 1839. In the tradition of the first f ive volumes of documents, this work compiles all known documents written, dictated, and received by the prophet from February 1838 to August 1839 and provides …

Review: Marjorie J. Spruill. Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’S Rights And Family Values That Polarized American Politics. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017., Colleen Mcdannell

Mormon Studies Review

With polarization in American politics possibly at an all-time high, historians frantically search the past for the origins of our current malady. When did we become so alienated as a people, and why is it that we seemingly cannot understand each other’s behaviors? Marjorie J. Spruill provides another reflection on how we came to be what we are in Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics. Spruill sees gender as the theoretical place where we need to begin our exploration and the 1970s as the defining years. Passing up the easy targets …

Faithful And Fearless: Major Howard Egan, Early Mormonism And The Pioneering Of The American West, Brett D. Dowdle

BYU Studies

As he did with his earlier biographies—My Best for the Kingdom: His- tory and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler, a Mormon Frontiersman and Stand by My Servant Joseph: The Story of the Joseph Knight Family and the Restoration—the late William G. Hartley reminds us of the value and importance of studying the lives of ordinary Latter-day Saints without ecclesiastical position in Faithful and Fearless: Major Howard Egan, Early Mormonism and the Pioneering of the American West. Similar to the stories of both Butler and the Knight family, Hartley shows that, when examined closely, Egan’s life was far …

The Book Of Mormon: Another Testament Of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition, Roger Terry

BYU Studies

The Maxwell Institute’s study edition of the Book of Mormon is both an update and an expansion of Grant Hardy’s The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, published in 2003 by the University of Illinois Press. Among the many differences between the two volumes, I find two most significant. First, the base text for the Maxwell Institute edition is the 2013 version of the Book of Mormon, used currently by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Reader’s Edition used the 1920 version because it was the most recent edition available in the public domain. The Church …

Kalaupapa: The Mormon Experience In An Exiled Community By Fred E. Woods (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center,, Emily Cook

BYU Studies

As Hansen’s Disease (also known as leprosy) spread rapidly throughout Hawaii in the nineteenth century, the Kalaupapa peninsula was selected as an “isolation settlement for confirmed cases” of leprosy and the location of “a receiving hospital where suspected cases could be treated” (20–21). These individuals were essentially exiled, and one might think that such an isolated community would be a place of loneliness, but Kalaupapa: The Mormon Experience in an Exiled Community explores how, instead, the community was built on love and inclusion and began to thrive and became a sacred space. According to author Fred E. Woods, professor of …

Remembrance And Return, Ted Vaggalis, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter Foundation Books

The essays collected here honor and celebrate our friend, colleague, and teacher, Louis Midgley. Many of us know him from his time at BYU, where he taught political philosophy in the Political Science Department. But he was a great friend and mentor, and his influence extended well beyond the campus. In my own case, after I left BYU to pursue graduate studies in philosophy, Lou made sure to keep in touch with me, helping me to negotiate the obstacles one encounters in graduate school, asking about my family, as well as sharing lessons and spiritual experiences in order to keep …

The Impact Of Sharing Temple Stories And Images In The Pacific Through Social Media, Dr. Jared Hansen, Paul Wilson

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

No abstract provided.

One Hundred Years Of The Art And Architecture Of The Laie Temple

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

PowerPoint slide notes from a presentation by Sharon R. Gray, November 16, 2019, for the Mormon Pacific Historical Society (MPHS) Conference celebrating the Centennial of the Dedication of the Laie Hawai’i Temple.

Slide 1. Title Page 100 Years of the Art and Architecture of the Laie Hawai’i Temple. Image of the Laie Temple watercolor drawing by Paul L. Anderson.

Review: David T. Smith. Religious Persecution And Political Order In The United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)., Charles Mccrary

Mormon Studies Review

In this careful comparative study, David T. Smith develops a useful framework for analyzing US state actors’ reactions to and participation in religious persecution. To set up the problem, Smith identifies three interlocking puzzles: (1) the United States has always valued religious tolerance and has had legal frameworks preventing persecution; and (2) these protections have worked, in large part; but (3) when state agents have persecuted religious groups or encouraged or at least allowed for their persecution, it has been against those we might not expect, namely Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Derived from these puzzles are two basic questions that …

Review: T Homas W. Simpson. American Universities And The Birth Of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2016., Ronit Y. Stahl

Mormon Studies Review

“Good for what? Good for whom?” It’s been a long time since I took historian of education Larry Cuban’s “Good Schools” class, but I will never forget the pair of questions he asked every meeting, about every reading. And it’s these two questions, “Good for what? Good for whom,” that I kept returning to as I read Thomas W. Simpson’s American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940. For whom were American universities good? For what purposes? Or, more specifically, “For which Mormons did American universities serve what purposes to what ends?”

We’Ll Sing And We’Ll Shout: The Life And Times Of W. W. Phelps By Bruce A. Van Orden, Donald Q. Cannon

BYU Studies

Latter-day Saints who know of William W. Phelps tend to associate him with the hymns that he wrote. In fact, the words in the title of Bruce A. Van Orden’s biography, “We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout,” are taken from one of his most famous hymns, “The Spirit of God.” As influential as his hymns have been to Latter-day Saints then and now, Phelps contributed much more than that in his efforts to build the Church. Van Orden’s book is a detailed biography of this interesting and influential writer and Church leader. The book provides insight into both his ecclesiastical contributions …

Trajectories In The Evolution Of Mormon Studies On Faith And Science, Steven L. Peck

Mormon Studies Review

The relationship between science and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been and continues to be a complicated story. Concerns and differing perspectives about science provided the underlying context for a number of formal and informal institutional directions taken by the church in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. Often, these were influenced by differences in opinion about science among various leaders of the church. Areas in which science played a role include: the relationship between secular and church education, a battleground in framing doctrinal questions about creation—including syncretic influence from the rise of Christian fundamentalism and …