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Full-Text Articles in Mormon Studies

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 Jan 2019

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?”

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We’Ll Sing And We’Ll Shout: The Life And Times Of W. W. Phelps By Bruce A. Van Orden, Donald Q. Cannon Jan 2019

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 …

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Trajectories In The Evolution Of Mormon Studies On Faith And Science, Steven L. Peck Jan 2019

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 …

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Review: Rachel Cope, Amy Easton-Flake, Keith Erekson, And Lisa Olsen Tait, Eds. Mormon Women’S History: Beyond Biography. Madison, Nj: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017., Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp Jan 2019

Review: Rachel Cope, Amy Easton-Flake, Keith Erekson, And Lisa Olsen Tait, Eds. Mormon Women’S History: Beyond Biography. Madison, Nj: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017., Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

Mormon Studies Review

“Women shaped Mormonism from its outset.” Simple, isn’t it? With all that scholars now know about the distinctive emphasis on family and childbearing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint tradition, it seems obvious that women have played a crucial role in the development of Mormon history and community life. Yet, as the framing essays in Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography so amply demonstrate, the broader narrative histories of the tradition remain willfully fixed on its patriarchal organizational structure and male leadership. Despite an abundance of work in social and cultural history beginning in the 1970s, women’s roles …

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Review: Max Perry Mueller. Race And The Making Of The Mormon People. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2017., Brandi Denison Jan 2019

Review: Max Perry Mueller. Race And The Making Of The Mormon People. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2017., Brandi Denison

Mormon Studies Review

Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People argues that “for early Mormons, the construction and deconstruction of what it meant to be, to act, and to look black, white, and red were as much literary projects and they were literal ones” (p. 8). Mueller positions his book as both a case study of how nineteenth-century Americans wrote about and constructed race through text as well as a “particular case unto itself” (p. 9). Through the book, Mueller aimed to capture the voices of nonwhite Mormons in the nineteenth century and how they “resisted, acquiesced, and sometimes …

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Review: Kerry William Bate. The Women: A Family Story. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2016., Francesca Morgan Jan 2019

Review: Kerry William Bate. The Women: A Family Story. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2016., Francesca Morgan

Mormon Studies Review

Bate brings the stringent methods of trained historians and scholarly genealogists to bear on the sometimes-fanciful genre of the family genealogy: a publication focusing on only one set of interconnected lineages. His result is a warts-and-all portrayal of everyday life in isolated desert and mountain towns in southern Utah, throughout Mormonism’s f irst century up until the Second World War. His scrutiny of forebears extends to levels of schooling, disease, infant mortality, old age and the end of life, poor financial decision-making, sex before wedlock, and marital tensions. He describes uncongenial personalities when he finds them among his kin. The …

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Who Is Leaving The Church?, Stephen Cranney Jan 2019

Who Is Leaving The Church?, Stephen Cranney

BYU Studies

Who is leaving the Church? The blogosphere and informal ward council discussions have no shortage of speculation on this point, but there is surprisingly very little representative research to help shed light on this issue in a clear, systematic way. Because members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up a small fraction of the total population, most random surveys that ask about religion and former religion pick up only a handful of people with a Latter-day Saint background or affiliation in any wave. (For example, the 2016 General Social Survey reported only twenty-three members.) Numbers like …

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Name As Key-Word: Collected Essays On Onomastic Wordplay And The Temple In Mormon Scripture By Matthew L. Bowen, Jennifer Hurlbut Jan 2019

Name As Key-Word: Collected Essays On Onomastic Wordplay And The Temple In Mormon Scripture By Matthew L. Bowen, Jennifer Hurlbut

BYU Studies

The ancient world’s use of names to represent meanings, symbols, prophecies, and memorials is foreign to us today, and Matthew Bowen’s book bridges that gap to tell us what we can learn from understanding the use of names in ancient scriptural narratives. The volume’s sixteen essays delve into the names of persons and places in the Book of Mormon and Bible. Bowen’s thorough and careful research into these names provides helpful background for these scriptural texts: for example, the essay on the place names Zarahemla and Jershon draws parallels between these names and a naming practice in the Bible seen …

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Doing Business In The World Without Becoming Worldly, Lindon J. Robison, David R. Just, Jeffery R. Oliver Jan 2019

Doing Business In The World Without Becoming Worldly, Lindon J. Robison, David R. Just, Jeffery R. Oliver

BYU Studies

Doing business in the world consists of, among other things, exchanging goods and services. One way people reflect who they are and what they love most is by what they exchange and by the quantities and terms with which they exchange goods and services.

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Limitation, Liberation, And The Latter-Day Saints: The Establishment Of Mormon Womanhood In The Woman’S Exponent, 1872-1890, Meaghan Harrington Jan 2019

Limitation, Liberation, And The Latter-Day Saints: The Establishment Of Mormon Womanhood In The Woman’S Exponent, 1872-1890, Meaghan Harrington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Navigating the establishment of Mormon womanhood from 1872-1890 in the Exponent shows how Mormon women related to their outer world, their inner world, and themselves. This thesis analyzes the thoughts, feelings, and desires of a complex sociocultural grouping, and asks the reader to question their own attitudes towards gender and culture. The rhetoric of Mormon womanhood in the Exponent and the culture from which it stemmed have implications for understanding both “the rights of the women of Zion, and the rights of the women of all nations.”

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Full Issue Jan 2019

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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From The Editor, Steven C. Harper Jan 2019

From The Editor, Steven C. Harper

BYU Studies

I have some exciting announcements to make in this inaugural issue of volume 58. First, I am delighted to announce that Susan Howe has been named associate editor of BYU Studies. Susan served previously on our Arts and Sciences Board. She is a poet and an emerita faculty member of the BYU English Department. Her most recent poetry collection, Salt, was published by Signature Books in 2013, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Shenandoah, and other journals. She received the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association for Mormon Letters. She is a reviewer …

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Six Afterlives, Scott Hales Jan 2019

Six Afterlives, Scott Hales

BYU Studies

These poems belong to a series called “Famous White Men in Mormon Afterlives.” They are thought experiments about eternal life and progression. I wrote them (and several others) in May 2018 after reading Mary V. Dearborn’s Ernest Hemingway: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 2017). Reading about Hemingway’s life reminded me of a presentation I attended several years ago on the many times proxy ordinances had been performed for Hemingway and his four wives in Latter-day Saint temples. Latter-day Saints perform these ordinances because we believe that life continues after death, and that the experience of life after death is virtually …

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The Demands Of Poetry: A Review Of Collections Published In 2018 By Latter-Day Saint Authors, Susan Elizabeth Howe, Casualene Meyer Jan 2019

The Demands Of Poetry: A Review Of Collections Published In 2018 By Latter-Day Saint Authors, Susan Elizabeth Howe, Casualene Meyer

BYU Studies

During the nineteenth century, poets had the celebrity status of today’s most famous singers. Most of today’s educated readers (including educated Latter-day Saint readers), however, can’t name five poets who are highly regarded in our generation. But readers may not be completely to blame for this shift. Early in the twentieth century, poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, poets later grouped under the term Modernist, took poetry, which had been one of the most popular genres of literature, and made it so difficult—so full of allusions, voices, and fragments of thought not necessarily connected to each …

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Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since The End Of Polygamy By Colleen Mcdannell, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Jan 2019

Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since The End Of Polygamy By Colleen Mcdannell, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

BYU Studies

Because of its freshness and clarity, I predict that Colleen McDannell’s Sister Saints, a history of modern Latter-day Saint women, will become a standard in religious studies courses and perhaps in book clubs among Latter-day Saints as well. It is unquestionably a “crossover” book. General readers will appreciate its lively stories and well-balanced arguments, and students at any level will profit from its detailed endnotes and chapter-by-chapter bibliographic essays. The book is fair-minded but never wimpy. It will provoke discussion in and out of the academy.

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Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking After The Dead By Megan Sanborn Jones, Melissa Leilani Larson Jan 2019

Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking After The Dead By Megan Sanborn Jones, Melissa Leilani Larson

BYU Studies

I believe strongly in the communal nature of the theater. Live performance allows for an exchange between performer and audience member that is immediate and electric on both sides of the conduit. Audience members, swept away by a powerful scene, shift in their seats and hold their breaths; on stage, the actors feel that pleasant anxiety and feed off of it, using it as fuel to go further and deeper with their characters. Theater can be an intense conversation between actor and audience, with the playscript providing a plan for that conversation.

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Danish But Not Lutheran: The Impact Of Mormonism On Danish Cultural Identity, 1850–1920, Jason A. Kerr Jan 2019

Danish But Not Lutheran: The Impact Of Mormonism On Danish Cultural Identity, 1850–1920, Jason A. Kerr

BYU Studies

In keeping with the title Danish but Not Lutheran, I will begin by saying what Julie K. Allen’s book is not. It is not a history of the Latter-day Saint mission to Scandinavia; see Andrew Jenson’s 1927 History of the Scandinavian Mission for that. Nor is it a history of the mass emigration of Latter-day Saint Danes to Utah; see William Mulder’s 1957 Homeward to Zion for that. Rather, as the subtitle advertises, it is a history that studies “The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity”—that is, this book uses The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints …

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“To Seek The Law Of The Lord”: Essays In Honor Of John W. Welch, Alec J. Harding Jan 2019

“To Seek The Law Of The Lord”: Essays In Honor Of John W. Welch, Alec J. Harding

BYU Studies

To Seek the Law of the Lord is a collection of twenty essays, composing over five hundred pages of Latter-day Saint scholarship. The collection is a tribute to John W. Welch, who established the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies in 1989 and served as editor-in-chief of BYU Studies from 1991 to 2018. Welch has published extensively (521), making significant contributions with his studies on, for example, chiasmus in the Book of Mormon and law in the Bible. This collection was organized and edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson, who are both associates of Welch. All …

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Early Missionary Training At Brigham Young Academy And Byu, Rebecca A. Wiederhold Jan 2019

Early Missionary Training At Brigham Young Academy And Byu, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

Early missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were expected to prepare themselves for missionary work by gaining their own scriptural understanding and knowledge of gospel doctrine. As the Church grew, schools were founded in the latter half of the 19th century. Some of the pre-cursors to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) as we know it today were administered by Brigham Young Academy and later Brigham Young University. This exhibit details missionary training efforts here from the 1880s through the 1920s, when the Salt Lake Mission Home was established.

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The Use Of Gethsemane By Church Leaders, 1859–2018, John Hilton Iii, Joshua P. Barringer Jan 2019

The Use Of Gethsemane By Church Leaders, 1859–2018, John Hilton Iii, Joshua P. Barringer

Faculty Publications

Many commentators have noted that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (herein referred to as “the Church”) has a distinctive focus on Gethsemane.1 For example, Douglas J. Davies has written that the “LDS interpretation of Christ’s garden experience involves a most interesting relocation of the act of atonement within Christian theological accounts that have, traditionally, seen the cross as the prime site of assuming human sin”2 and that “Mormonism relocates the centre of gravity of Christ’s passion in Gethsemane rather than upon the cross and Calvary.”3

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The Dead Sea Scrolls And The New Testament, Dana M. Pike Jan 2019

The Dead Sea Scrolls And The New Testament, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

Since their initial discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have generated a great deal ofinterest, ranging from responsible scholarly inquiry to public sensationalism.1 During the years 1947–1956, local Bedouin and eventually archaeologists found scrolls and primarily scroll fragments (many thousands of them) in eleven caves proximate to the small archaeological site of Qumran, near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Stories of the initial discovery of major scrolls by Bedouin cousins in what is now called Qumran Cave 1 vary in certain details and have been often recounted, as have stories about the intrigue involved in the authentication …

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Beyond Justice: Reading Alma 42 In The Context Of Atonement Theories, Mark D. Ellison Jan 2019

Beyond Justice: Reading Alma 42 In The Context Of Atonement Theories, Mark D. Ellison

Faculty Publications

In Alma 42, Alma teaches his son Corianton about the atonement in a statement laden with legal vocabulary. Terms such as law, judged, just, justice, injustice, punishment, probationary, and penitent dominate the message, in company with such concepts as the execution of the law, the infliction of punishment, and punishment being affixed to violation of law. By all appearances, Alma sets forth what theologians call a juridical view of atonement (one concerned with the administration of justice). The problem as Alma states it is that “all mankind were fallen” and because of disobedience were “in the grasp of justice” and …

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Depression, Religiosity, And Parenting Styles Among Young Latter-Day Saint Adolescents, Mark D. Ogletree, W. Justin Dyer, Michael A. Goodman, Courtney Kinneard, Bradley W. Mccormick Jan 2019

Depression, Religiosity, And Parenting Styles Among Young Latter-Day Saint Adolescents, Mark D. Ogletree, W. Justin Dyer, Michael A. Goodman, Courtney Kinneard, Bradley W. Mccormick

Faculty Publications

This study examines depression among Latter-day Saint teens, particularly how religiosity and the parent–child relationship are associated with depressive symptomology. Although there is an abundance of research on adolescent depression and on adolescent religiosity, there is less research addressing the connection between the two. The research questions include: Does religiosity among Latter-day Saint teens reduce their rates of depression? What aspects of religiosity affect depression most significantly? How does religious coping influence depression? How does the parent–child relationship affect depression rates among Latter-day Saint teens? Being a sexual minority and living in Utah were related to higher levels of depression. …

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"And Now My Son, I Have Somewhat More To Say": Corianton's Concerns, Alma's Theology, And Nephite Tradition, Dan Belnap, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap Jan 2019

"And Now My Son, I Have Somewhat More To Say": Corianton's Concerns, Alma's Theology, And Nephite Tradition, Dan Belnap, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

Comprising sixteen chapters of the book of Alma, the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges—at least from the perspective of Mormon—seems to have been one of the more significant years of Nephite history. Marked by such events as the emergence of Korihor, the Zoramite rebellion, and the ascension of Amalickiah, these chapters depict a Nephite community undergoing social unrest and uncertainty.1 Among this block of scripture are Alma’s sermons to his sons. Though their personal and intimate structure is in marked contrast to the larger, historically minded chapters, the theological concerns that Alma addressed with his sons, particularly …

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Teaching The Scriptural Emphasis On The Crucifixion Of Jesus Christ, John Hilton Iii Jan 2019

Teaching The Scriptural Emphasis On The Crucifixion Of Jesus Christ, John Hilton Iii

Faculty Publications

A colleague recently shared with me how, when teaching missionary preparation classes, he would role-play with students. When students pretending to be missionaries would ask him (acting as an investigator) if he knew about Christ’s Atonement, he would say, “Yes, I saw that Mel Gibson movie about Christ dying for our sins on the cross.” At least half of his students would correct him, stating that Christ atoned for our sins in Gethsemane, but not on the cross. This not only indicates a lack of the interpersonal skill of building on common beliefs but is also doctrinally incomplete. It also …

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Review: Lincoln A. Mullen. The Chance Of Salvation: A History Of Conversion In America. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2017., Ben Wright Jan 2019

Review: Lincoln A. Mullen. The Chance Of Salvation: A History Of Conversion In America. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2017., Ben Wright

Mormon Studies Review

This bold and exciting book convincingly demonstrates how the crucible of the nineteenth century transformed American religion from something inherited to chosen. Conversion drove this rise of religious choice, and Lincoln Mullen asserts that despite the great variety of conversion experiences, “conversions have created a common understanding of religion as choice” (p. 9). Mullen even acknowledges that most Americans in the nineteenth century remained in the religious tradition into which they were born, but by the end of the century, Americans came to think of even this stasis as a conscious choice. Whether they changed traditions or remained, by the …

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Mormon Studies In Africa, Amy Hoyt Jan 2019

Mormon Studies In Africa, Amy Hoyt

Mormon Studies Review

Mormon studies, as understood by scholars, includes the scholarly examination of all of the traditions that have stemmed from Joseph Smith Jr. This essay will review the state of the field of Mormon studies in Africa and pay particular attention to two of these traditions, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Mormon Studies In Latin America And The Caribbean: State Of The Field As Of 2018, Carter Charles Jan 2019

Mormon Studies In Latin America And The Caribbean: State Of The Field As Of 2018, Carter Charles

Mormon Studies Review

Renewed interest in a global approach to Mormon studies calls for an assessment of the scholarship available on Latin America and the Caribbean in order to provide direction for future research in this subfield, which is still in its infancy. After some remarks on methodology, existing contributions to the subfield will be introduced, followed by a subjective conclusion.

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Ancient Hawaiian Temples In LāʻIe, Cy Bridges, Tēvita KaʻIli, Brooks Haderlie, 'Ulise Funaki, Nakia Nae'ole Jan 2019

Ancient Hawaiian Temples In LāʻIe, Cy Bridges, Tēvita KaʻIli, Brooks Haderlie, 'Ulise Funaki, Nakia Nae'ole

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

No abstract provided.

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Review: Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power Of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy And Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018., Matthew Bowman Jan 2019

Review: Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power Of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy And Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018., Matthew Bowman

Mormon Studies Review

Jonathan Stapley’s new book is only 129 pages of text, but it feels much longer. This is not, happily, because the prose slogs. Rather it is one of those books that makes every word count. There is no fluff here, only finely sanded insight after insight, with all redundancy polished away. Stapley’s strengths are twofold. First, his archival work is unparalleled. For every assertion he has an anecdote. He meticulously marks fine nuances in opinion among his subjects, and those subjects are as frequently obscure figures like Steven Markham, John Steele, or Margaret Anderton as they are more familiar Mormons …

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