Religious Education Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

“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 …

Papers Of Edmund W. Robb Arc 2002-004- Finding Aid, Ats Special Collections And Archives

Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

Records Of The Office Of The President: Julian C. Mcpheeters Arc 210-002 - Finding Aid, Ats Special Collections And Archives

Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

Debunking The False Dichotomy: Developing And Applying Trans Quantcrit At The Intersection Of Trans/Non-Binary Identities And Religious, Secular, And Spiritual Engagement In College, Kate Curley

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Discrimination towards people who identify as trans/non-binary (NB) is still extremely well documented and pervasive across many different demographics. Discussions on religious, secular, or spiritual (RSS) identities and trans/NB identities are often fraught with difficult conflicts between the two. In student affairs published standards, practitioners are expected to serve “regardless” of gender in RSS programs and “regardless” of religion in LGBTQ+ programming. This study sought to explore how RSS campus climate influences students’ attitudes towards trans/NB people and how trans/NB experience their RSS campus climate. Informed by critical theory and using critical consciousness and ally identity development conceptual frameworks, I …

The Emergence Of A Lay Esprit De Corps: Inspirations, Tensions, Horizons, Christopher Pramuk

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Likening the Ignatian tradition as embodied at Jesuit universities to a family photo album with many pages yet to be added, the author locates the “heart” of the Ignatian sensibility in the movements of freedom and spirit (inspiration) in the life of the community. There are no fixed entry points or criteria of inclusion and exclusion for Ignatian lay educators save a desire to share in the questions proper to all the university disciplines that pull us toward a horizon beyond ourselves. Nevertheless a number of creative tensions endemic to Jesuit apostolic life from the beginning and also new challenges …

“And He Was Anti-Christ”: The Significance Of The Eighteenth Year Of The Reign Of The Judges, Part 2, Daniel Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap, Daniel Belnap, Dan Belnap

Faculty Publications

For the Nephites, the sixteenth year of the reign of the judges was tremendously difficult. The arrival of the people of Ammon, in itself an incredible disruption of Nephite society, precipitated a battle, which Mormon describes as a “tremendous battle; yea, even such an one as never had been known among all the people in the land from the time Lehi left Jerusalem” (Alma 28:2). The dead, we are told, were not counted due to their enormous number. These events compounded the pre-existing struggles that resulted from the sociopolitical fallout from the reforms of Mosiah2 . 1 Though Alma 30:5 …

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Better And Worse, Hollie J. Wise

BYU Studies

"Is it just me, Miss Wise, or are your eyes getting really big?” Walker says as he looks all the way up at me. It’s mid-September of my second year of teaching, and all around us the other kindergartners buzz about the room. Nice Miss Wise is trying to contain Crazed Miss Wise as I reprimand Walker for the umpteenth time. Apparently, my eyes give me away.

Converting The Saints: A Study Of Religious Rivalry In America By Charles Randall Paul, Ronald E. Bartholomew

BYU Studies

Charles Randall Paul, the founder and president of the Foundation of Religious Diplomacy, has established himself in the academy as an expert in religion and philosophy on engaging differences. Paul’s book Converting the Saints looks at religious conflict by analyzing encounters between early-twentieth-century Protestants and Latter-day Saints. During this time, Protestants served several missions to Utah in an attempt to convert Latter-day Saints back to mainstream Christianity. Paul looks at the conflicts that inevitably arose between the two religious traditions and through his analysis proposes a new theory of conflict engagement that turns destructive conflict into constructive, peaceful engagement. In …

How Dead Cats, Your Siblings, Eighteenth-Century English Clergy, Making Lists, Ted Talks, Evolutionary Biology, Susa Young Gates, And My Mom Can Save The World From Being Utterly Wasted, Amy Harris

BYU Studies

I’m going to tell you two stories today; a short one about dead cats and a long one about dead people.

Administrative Records: Council Of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, James B. Allen

BYU Studies

Everything You Could Ever Want to Know about the Council of Fifty in Nauvoo” would be a well-suited subtitle for this highly anticipated volume. As the editors note, Joseph Smith and his closest associates saw the Council of Fifty “as the beginning of the literal kingdom of God on earth” (xxiii). It functioned secretly in Nauvoo from March 1844 to January 1846 and then later for three short periods in Utah. Historians have long been aware of this council, also called the “Kingdom of God,” and some have pieced together from various journals and other reliable sources considerable information about …

Sarah Louisa Bouton Felt: Thousands Called Her Mother, Roseann Benson

BYU Studies

A tribute to Sarah Louisa (“Louie”) Bouton Felt declared her “a beautiful lady whose name we all should know.”1 Although many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are familiar with two names important to the organization of the Primary Association, Aurelia Spencer Rogers (1834–1922) and Eliza R. Snow (1804–1887), the name Louie B. Felt (1850–1928) is relatively unknown. However, Louie was the second person called to be a ward Primary president and at age thirty was selected to preside over all the Primary Associations in Utah Territory, serving as the first general superintendent of the Primary …

Barriers And Solutions For Indigenous Leadership Development: An Outline For Equipping A New Generation For Dynamic Mission Among The Poor, Don Davis

Essays

No abstract provided.

Ethel Lorraine Webb Small Papers, 1960-1980, Ethel Lorraine Webb Small

Center for Restoration Studies Archives, Manuscripts and Personal Papers Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

Heber J. Grant: A Study Of Gospel-Oriented Family Relatonships, Robert Richard Pommerening

Theses and Dissertations

Heber J. Grant: A Study of Gospel-Oriented Family RelationshipsRobert Richard Pommerening IIIDepartment of Religious Education, BYUMaster of ArtsUnder the direction of President Gordon B. Hinckley, the fifteenth president of TheChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church released the document, The Family: AProclamation to the World. The Proclamation outlines core values of family life, which ifconsistently practiced can lead to successful family relationships. Through a study of hispersonal journals, letters, and recorded anecdotes from his life, these values can be identified inHeber J. Grants life. As one studies the Proclamation alongside President Grant (particularly theinteractions he had with his …

Combining Faithfulness With Learning: Avoiding The Path Of Secularization At Brigham Young University, J. Gordon Daines Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Most research universities in the United States began as religiously affiliated institutions. Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing over the course of the 20th century, the vast majority of these institutions engaged in a process of secularization through which faith moved from the center of academic life to the periphery. This paper elucidates a conceptual framework for understanding how and why Brigham Young University did not follow the path of secularization that so many research universities, originally religious in nature, pursued. It examines the steps that the university and its sponsoring institution (The Church of Jesus Christ of …

Worry In The Pews: Exploring Levels And Causes Of Worry Among Church-Goers, Jennifer Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large body of research indicates that worry, anxiety, and depression are present in the modern American psyche at increasingly high levels. Everyday worry can lead to further mental health issues, interpersonal problems, and reduced physical wellbeing and should be reduced when possible. Previous research has examined the benefits of church attendance with varied results; however, understanding the relationship between church attendance and everyday worry could be useful in reducing the effects of worry on this population.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to measure self-reported levels and causes of everyday worry among church-goers from three congregations and to …

The Law And The Gospel, George R. Knight

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

2018 Children's Leadership Conference, Esther Green

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

No abstract provided.