Mormon Studies Commons^™

Outside Perspectives, Amber Taylor

BYU Studies

I think most of us are familiar with a recent trend in storytelling to revisit and tell a traditional tale from the perspective of the antagonist. The live-action Disney movie Maleficent, for example, provides an empathetic backstory to the terrifyingly evil, but otherwise flat, character of Maleficent in the iconic animated version of Sleeping Beauty. The popular musical Wicked, by Stephen Schwartz, does the same with the character Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Even children’s books have gotten in on the postmodern storytelling action. In The True Story of …

Connections Between The Jerusalem Center And The Local Israeli Academy, Jeffrey R. Chadwick

BYU Studies

It is a privilege to participate in this symposium marking the thirtieth anniversary of the 1989 dedication of the Jerusalem Center. It is also a privilege to have been a repeating member of the BYU Jerusalem faculty since 1982, two years before the ceremony which broke ground for the Jerusalem Center in the summer of 1984. I vividly remember watching the various phases of the Center’s construction (fig. 1) and being among the first to live and teach in the beautiful new building when it was occupied by students in 1987.

Understanding Covenants And Communities: Jews And Latter-Day Saints In Dialogue, Bradley J. Kramer

BYU Studies

Organized topically, this book’s sixteen essays provide a wealth of information about Jewish and Latter-day Saint perspectives, scripture, experience, worship, culture, and politics. However, at least for me, the true treasure of these essays is not so much informational as it is relational.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Editors’ Introduction, James R. Kearl, Dana M. Pike

BYU Studies

The Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was dedicated on May 16, 1989. Located on Mount Scopus, the Center offers an amazing view of Jerusalem and puts the Center’s students in the heart of Jerusalem within easy walking distance of the Mount of Olives and the Old City. During the past thirty years, the Jerusalem Center has made a significant impact on Jerusalem as well as on all those who have studied and worked there. Known locally as “The Mormon University,” this beautiful building with its many arches provides an inspiring venue for studying history, culture, and …

The Lead-Up To The Dedication Of The Jerusalem Center, David B. Galbraith

BYU Studies

I’ve been asked to focus on the construction period of the Jerusalem Center rather than the student program that, at this point in time, is the heart and soul of the Center. My wife, Frieda, and I lived for twenty years in Israel, where we also raised our family of five children. We were blessed to witness some marvelous miracles while living there, but none more marvelous than those that were intimately linked to the Center. I had the great opportunity to be personally involved with the story of the Center that follows here.

Breeze, Daniel Teichert

BYU Studies

What if our prayers were the wind to God, and carried our thoughts like the smell of cut grass and barbecued meat and skunk musk and cow dung and tire-kicked dust?

Peace Offering, Elena Jarvis Jube

BYU Studies

I killed a peace dove once.

It was spring. I was driving down a stretch of road lined with leftover remnants of apple and cherry orchards not yet bulldozed for new houses, new subdivisions. I don’t know where I was coming from, down that particular road, though one corner of my brain thinks it might have been the hospital, and that I was anxious and strung out from lack of sleep, which is why I didn’t see the dove in the road there, small, grey, invisible against the asphalt. I seem to remember it was early morning, the light just …

Faculty Perspectives And Experiences At The Jerusalem Center, Gaye Strathearn, Andrew C. Skinner, S. Kent Brown, Ed Stratford, Kent P. Jackson

BYU Studies

Strathearn: In 1985, my friend and I decided to backpack around the world. I said that if we were doing that, the first thing I wanted to do was get to the Holy Land. We were on a dime traveling, and we just had a Bible in one hand and a Let’s Go Europe in the other. That visit to the Holy Land started a fire within me, a love of that land. I was home about a year and a half when Elder James E. Faust spoke at our stake conference in Australia. He began by noting that “the …

Byu Jerusalem Center Timeline

BYU Studies

April 6, 1840 - Joseph Smith calls Orson Hyde and John E. Page on a mission to the Holy Land. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Elder Page returns to Nauvoo and, as a consequence, Elder Hyde travels to Palestine alone.

October 24, 1841 - Elder Hyde ascends the Mount of Olives and offers a prayer dedicating the Holy Land for the gathering of the Jews.

The Restored Church Of Jesus Christ And The Holy Land: Beginnings, David M. Whitchurch

BYU Studies

It is a privilege to be with you as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the dedication of the Jerusalem Center and the impact it has made on the lives of so many students, faculty, administrators, members of the Church from around the world, and those who currently reside in the Holy Land. A heartfelt welcome to all.

The Jerusalem Center In The Community, Eran Hayet

BYU Studies

It is great to be here with so many friends to celebrate this special event. When I first arrived at the Jerusalem Center in 1994 and assumed responsibility for, among other areas, the Center’s security, I inherited from my predecessor a file with policies for how to deal with potential threats. Here are some of those policies: Procedure to evacuate the building in case of a bomb threat

Procedure to deal with riots at the lower gate

Procedure to deal with ultra-Orthodox demonstrations at the upper gate

Student Panel Discussion, David Rolph Seely, April Giddings Cobb, Julie Jenkins Elcock, Heidi Hatch Gilbert, Christopher Meldrum, Raven Alard Ngatuvai, Richard Reber

BYU Studies

The Jerusalem Center has lots of different functions, but it was made for students. Our family has been there both at times when the Jerusalem Center was closed to students and when it had students in residence. There’s nothing emptier or sadder than the Jerusalem Center without students.

The Road To Dallas, Kimberly Webb Reid

BYU Studies

On November 21, 1993, the world dozed in watery light and I felt off-balance as the northern hemisphere listed away from the sun. Seasonal blues made watching PBS all day seem like a reasonable choice. Onscreen, a Ford Lincoln Continental zipped through Zapruder’s frame. Tomorrow would be the thirtieth anniversary. Old news footage aired to commemorate the assassination, and I watched as if America’s end of innocence were happening live along with my own. Seeing Jackie statuesque in bloodied nylons, I mourned like I’d discovered the thirty-fifth president was my long-lost grandfather. I was thirteen and had never heard of …

Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons And The Unfinished Business Of American Secularism, Michael Hubbard Mackay

BYU Studies

Borrowing its title from Joseph Smith’s far-reaching Nauvoo theology, Make Yourselves Gods is somehow even more provocative than its title. The average Latter-day Saint reader will chafe under its vocabulary, struggle through its detailed contributions to the study of secularism, and be at odds with its use of queer critique. Furthermore, to the average reader’s disdain, this book will be chewed and discussed for a generation to come. It is not likely to be forgotten.

Documents: The Joseph Smith Papers, Richard E. Bennett

BYU Studies

Almost fifty years ago, my wife, Patricia, and I had the distinct privilege to work for incoming Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington in combing through the archives of the Church History Library in Salt Lake City for source materials long since shelved, considered lost, or otherwise off-limits. Along the way, we also enjoyed working with a team of other dedicated scholars brought in to work under Arrington’s kind and learned tutorship. Among them was a talented archivist/historian named Dean Jessee, who was an assiduous student of the document, particularly the papers of the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. Owning a passion …

The Annals Of The Southern Mission: A Record Of The History Of The Settlement Of Southern Utah, Alec Joseph Harding

BYU Studies

Author James Godson Bleak (1829–1918) was a British convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and veteran of the Edward Martin handcart company. In the early 1860s, Bleak accepted President Brigham Young’s charge to be a clerk and historian for the Utah South Mission in St. George. The Annals of the Southern Mission is the result of decades of Bleak’s fulfillment of this commission.

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2020, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• A Feast of Fat Things
• And When He Came to Himself
• No Other Gods Before Me
• The Economics of Goodness

Read on Issuu

The Jerusalem Center At Thirty, James R. Kearl

BYU Studies

I first “met” James E. Faust in June 1989, when, a month after the Jerusalem Center was dedicated, he called my home. BYU president Jeffrey R. Holland had appointed me an associate academic vice president in late February, with a portfolio that included the university’s international and undergraduate programs, but this assignment was set aside when he was called to the Seventy in April and Rex Lee was named president of BYU. In June, Rex invited me to stay on in that same role with the portfolio President Holland had given me, which on the international side included administrative oversight …

The Pearl Of Greatest Price: Mormonism’S Most Controversial Scripture, Richard Lyman Bushman

BYU Studies

The Pearl of Great Price is the least intentional of Latter-day Saint scriptures. When British mission president Franklin Richards pulled together a fifty-six-page assemblage of miscellaneous writings in 1851, he showed no signs of thinking that it prefigured an addition to the canon. He thought the items would be useful for instructing missionaries and members in gospel doctrine. The writings were widely distributed as a pamphlet but not considered scripture until canonization was proposed, almost casually, in 1880, in the same meeting where John Taylor was sustained as Church President. Unlike the Book of Mormon, which arrived as another Bible …

“If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem”, Jeffrey R. Holland

BYU Studies

Thank you for allowing me to be with you today. In some ways, what I say today could be a precursor to the sermon someone might give at my funeral. Funeral or not, I am going to have these words written on my tombstone: “He did not fight at Hawn’s Mill, he was never incarcerated at Liberty Jail, he never pulled a handcart, but he did work on the BYU Jerusalem Center.” I have all the scar tissue, shared with a lot of other people, to prove that point. I am delighted to have the chance on this thirtieth anniversary …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Mormon Women Connected Suffrage Directly To Joseph Smith’S First Vision And The Restoration Of The Gospel: Reflections From The 1920 Relief Society Magazine, Ahsley Anderson Webb, Jay H. Buckley

Faculty Publications

On a cold Thursday in early February 1920, newly enfranchised women from across the nation huddled together in Chicago for a seven-day-long Golden Jubilee. The anticipated passage of the Nineteenth Amendment needed only three more states for ratification, which occurred a few months later. At the same time, women in Utah reflected back half a century to February 12, 1870, when Utah Territory granted women the right to vote. Female Utahns rejoiced with their sisters throughout the United States who anticipated the fruition of universal suffrage. Susa Young Gates, who attended the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association Convention in Chicago, …

Early Latter-Day Saint Missionary Training At The Church Academies, 1883-1925, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

View presentation recording here: https://youtu.be/tohMNqlwKhA?t=1366

As the American and European educational landscape progressed toward the end of the 19th century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to recognize that proselyting missionaries who “were taken from the plow, the anvil, the shoemaker’s shop and carpenter’s bench” would need general education in order to “keep pace ... with the rest of the world.” To address this emerging need, a training program was developed at Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah, to prepare Church members for missionary service through general education and courses on church doctrine. Many of the other …

Discussing Difficult Topics: The Book Of Abraham, Robin S. Jensen, Kerry Muhlestein, Scott C. Esplin

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

SCOTT ESPLIN: I’m interviewing Robin Jensen from the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Kerry Muhlestein from the Ancient Scripture Department of Religious Education at Brigham Young University to talk with them about scholarship relative to the Book of Abraham. Thank you for your willingness to help our readers understand scholarship on this topic. The two of you model how to pursue a faithful study of the Book of Abraham from different backgrounds and approaches. Will you introduce yourselves to our readers and share the lens through which you study this text?

“For The General Good Of Mankind”: Why Joseph Smith’S Presidential Campaign Matters, Derek R. Sainsbury

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president of the United States is much more than a curious footnote in Latter-day Saint history. Recent scholarship, including Storming the Nation, confirms that the campaign aligned with the Restoration’s goals to gather Israel, establish Zion, and protect the rights of all humanity. By examining the reasons, means, and outcomes of Joseph’s campaign, we can highlight truths of the Restoration that are central to our students’ covenant responsibility to gather Israel and prepare the world for the Second Coming.

Was The Earth Formed From The Debris Of Other Planets, Trent Stephens

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In the past, some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have believed that the earth was made from pieces of other worlds and that the fossil record can be dismissed because those fossils came from worlds that were broken up and reworked into our earth. I understand that sometimes this concept has been taught even in seminary, institute, and Sunday School classrooms. Because I have heard these ideas espoused, even recently, and because I have spent much of my career studying and teaching biology and the fossil record, I decided to initiate a search to discover …

Awakening To A Life Of Discipleship, Scott C. Esplin

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Because of publication schedules, an introduction like this for the Religious Educator is written months in advance of the issue appearing in print. Normally, that would not be a problem, as academic life typically has a predictable rhythm. But as all are keenly aware, the year 2020 has broken the pattern. “A virus 1,000 times smaller than a grain of sand,” remarked Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in the April 2020 general conference, has brought “entire populations and global economies to their knees.”1 Sadly, for those who love teaching, this has created empty classrooms. As scientists scramble for solutions to the …

God Grants Unto All Nations, Robert L. Millet

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Many years ago, I addressed a group of faculty and students at a university in New England. It was a fifty-minute presentation on “The Christ of the Latter-day Saints.” Questions and answers followed. One faculty member raised his hand and then made a comment: “I do have a question for you,” he said, “but first let me say that I have great difficulty taking seriously any religious group that dismisses out of hand two thousand years of Christian history.” His words jolted me at the time, and his choice of words still troubles me. His query brought to mind a …

Using Church History Documents In Your Classroom, Keith A. Erekson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Each of the standard works was compiled from previous historical documents. The Bible emerged from letters and writings selected and evaluated over hundreds of years. Joseph Smith received revelations for more than a decade before some were published in the Doctrine and Covenants. Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles selected some of Joseph Smith’s other writings for inclusion in the Pearl of Great Price. Mormon and Moroni abridged Nephite records to prepare the plates that Joseph Smith translated as the Book of Mormon.