Religious Education Commons^™

A Local Faith, Nathan B. Oman

BYU Studies

On October 22, 1844, men and women across America were disappointed when the world did not come to an end. They were the followers of a lay Baptist preacher named William Miller. Beginning in 1833, Miller, a native of New York's Burned-over District, began producing elaborate biblical commentaries indicating that Christ's Second Coming was imminent. Working with these writings, his followers converged on October 22 as the day of the Savior's coming, much to their ultimate disappointment.

On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, And The American Landscape, Jill T. Rudy, Jared Farmer

BYU Studies

On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape tells the tale of a beloved mountainous landmark and a disregarded lake. Jared Farmer's penetrating and sweeping gaze invites readers to view connections between land, landscape, and peoples that have remained, like Poe's purloined letter, hidden in plain sight. Farmer's story of "Timp" relates directly to the story of Indians native to the land and Mormon settlers who became "neonatives," in part by creating a significant landmark in Timpanogos and seeing imagined Indians while forgetting and displacing Utah Lake and real Indians. By illuminating these interwoven narratives with interdisciplinary research involving …

Pastors’ Perspectives On Assimilating New Members: Part 2–Discipling Strategies, Jane Thayer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Temple Of Jerusalem: Past, Present, And Future, John M. Lundquist, Jared W. Ludlow

BYU Studies

John M. Lundquist is the Susan and Douglas Dillon Chief Librarian of the Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library within the New York Public Library. He has written many books and articles on diverse subjects for both general and Latter-day Saint audiences. The title of this book--The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future--captures well the scope of Lundquist's work. He addresses the role of the Jerusalem temple in ancient Israelite society, its role in the contemporary world, and the prophecies and apocalyptic notions about its future. The book mostly focuses on …

Christ The Mariner, Clinton F. Larson

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Mere Mormonism, Thomas B. Griffith

BYU Studies

Devotees of C. S. Lewis will recognize that I have adapted the title of my remarks from Mere Christianity, his classic exposition of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. An hour lecture is not the forum to attempt for Latter-day Saint Christianity what Lewis achieved for traditional Christianity. In any event, I lack the skill to pull that off. What follows is something much more modest. I will speak from my own observation and try to identify what is at the heart of the Mormon experience in an attempt to provide an introduction to the faith. A disclaimer is …

The Vision That You Have . . . Augurs Well For The Development Of Still Better Things: The Role Of Accreditation In Securing The Future Of Brigham Young University, 1921–1928, J. Gordon Daines Iii

BYU Studies

In 1921, Franklin S. Harris was appointed president of Brigham Young University, During his first visit to campus, Harris articulated his vision for the future of the young institution. He said, "The President of the Church Commission of Education, and all who have anything to do with Church schools are determined to make this 'the great Church University.'" President Harris had a different vision about what it meant to be "the great Church University" than did his predecessors. While they had focused on the importance of teacher education, Harris believed that the institution needed to equip students with the skills …

Faith And Inquiry, Justin F. White

BYU Studies

My wife's uncle recently, and somewhat smugly, said something to the effect, "It's too bad you're studying philosophy (or perhaps any subject) at BYU since you only get one perspective." For the most part, I've found this is simply not true. I've found professors and students not nearly as homogeneous as often portrayed. Though I agree with my wife's uncle that we should engage in dialogue with those of differing opinions, since there are, of course, disadvantages when only a single perspective is represented on a topic, I'd like to focus on one potential positive interpretation of the sameness he …

Robert J. Matthews And The Rlds Church's Inspired Version Of The Bible, Thomas E. Sherry

BYU Studies

Matthews' developing reputation as a scholar, along with his persistent interest in and efforts to gain access to the original New Translation manuscripts, occurred during a period in RLDS Church history that included evolving views relative to the publication, assessment, and use of the Inspired Version. Those developments, along with advances in archival preservation of the original manuscripts, resulted in the phone call with RLDS Church Historian Richard Howard, allowing Matthews to study the documents. Ironically, as the RLDS Church's interest in and commitment to Joseph Smith's revelations decreased, they rose to new prominence in the LDS Church.

Pastors’ Perspectives On Assimilating New Members: Part 1–Challenges And Needs, Jane Thayer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2010 Perihelion - Oru Yearbook, Holy Spirit Research Center Oru Library

Perihelion: ORU Yearbooks

The Oral Roberts University Student Yearbook, the Perihelion, is produced by ORU Media and Communications department.

The images and files are copyrighted to Oral Roberts University and cannot be reproduced in any form without permission from ORU administration.

Faith, Philosophy, Scripture, James E. Faulconer

Maxwell Institute Publications

Faith, Philosophy, Scripture is a collection of ten path-breaking essays informed by Professor James E. Faulconer’s work as a philosopher and his abiding faith as a Latter-day Saint.

“The confidence of my faith, a confidence that came by revelation,” Faulconer writes,” has allowed me to hear the questions of philosophy without fear, and philosophy has never asked me to give up my faith, though it has asked questions about it.” Faith is the starting point, scripture offers the data, and philosophy more supplement than competitor. Faith, philosophy, and scripture help make sense of each other.

These essays ask what it …

A Textual History Of The Book Of Abraham: Manuscripts And Editions, Brian M. Hauglid

Maxwell Institute Publications

In July 1835 at Kirtland Ohio, a traveling antiquities dealer brought to Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, four Egyptian mummies and several rolls of papyri. Upon inspection Smith determined that one of the rolls contained a lost record of the patriarch Abraham. After purchasing these artifacts for $2400 Smith generated through translation five chapters that appeared during March 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois in the Times and Seasons, a Mormon periodical, under the title “The Book of Abraham”. This book has since become a canonized text of scripture for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A Textual …

One Eternal Round, Hugh Nibley, Michael D. Rhodes

Maxwell Institute Publications

Preface

On 23 February 2005, I, along with a group of colleagues including John W. Welch, John Gee, and others, gathered in the front room of Hugh Nibley’s home. Hugh was there in a hospital bed, but was unconscious. His wife, Phyllis, and some of their children were also present. We were meeting to decide what to do with Hugh’s unfinished book, One Eternal Round. He had been working on it for more than f ifteen years before he became too ill to continue. A few months before, we had gathered together all the materials on the book from Hugh’s …

On Music Angels: God Only Knows, David M. Kirkham

BYU Studies

The trek from my office at the Air Force Academy history department to the faculty parking lot was long enough--about a ten-minute walk--sufficient time for some substantive thinking. One winter evening in about 1992, as I made the walk, my Comparative Revolutions course weighed on my mind. As I pondered how I might introduce the next day's discussion on causes of revolutions, I climbed into my 1987 red Dodge Colt more out of habit than deliberation. At the turn of the ignition key, the radio's boom broke my reverie and jarred me back to the reality of my immediate surroundings. …

The Misunderstood First Amendment And Our Lives Online, Cheryl B. Preston

BYU Studies

Certainly, we have always been warned about the harms of pornography. Jesus said, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matt. 5:27–28). But the prophets have become increasingly insistent in their warnings during the last several decades. This spike in prophetic warning corresponds to the development of technology.

Religion, Politics, And Sugar: The Mormon Church, The Federal Government, And The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921, Matthew C. Godfrey, Barnard S. Silver

BYU Studies

Matthew C. Godfrey. Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007.

The Five Books Of Moses: A Translation With Commentary, Roger G. Baker, Robert Alter

BYU Studies

There are Bibles aplenty in our world, hundreds if Amazon.com is any guide. In late 2009, Amazon listed over one thousand books on its Bible hit list that have not even been released yet. Over one thousand new books of the roughly 450,000 listed Bible hits portend heavy reading this year for those who try to keep up with things biblical. A beneficial search in this swim through the Amazon of books is for new Bible translations, which now seem plentiful, although there were very few in the years after King James. An almost three-century gap separates the King James …

One Good Man, Christian Vuissa, Director, Christian Vuissa, Jim Dalrymple

BYU Studies

I had high hopes but reserved expectations while driving to see Christian Vuissa's latest film One Good Man. Though LDS cinema seems to have cooled and matured somewhat in recent years, it is nonetheless a movement that has generally been hit-and-miss at best. One Good Man comes as a welcome transition to deeper, more complex filmmaking. The film is far from perfect--it includes its fair share of cultural cliches and clunky sentimentality--but it also marks an insightful and timely turn toward a more intimate, nuanced exploration of LDS themes and culture.

One Good Man portrays a few days in …

The Sermon At The Temple And The Sermon On The Mount: A Latter-Day Saint Approach, John W. Welch

Maxwell Institute Publications

The Sermon on the Mount has had greater influence on the history and character of Christianity than any other text in the Bible. Yet as biblical scholar Hans Dieter Betz has recently lamented, “New Testament scholarship up to the present has offered no satisfactory explanation of this vitally important text.”

The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount, by John W. Welch, offers, for the first time, a thorough Latter-day Saint interpretation of Jesus’ famous sermon. The author relies especially on crucial information and details that only the Book of Mormon can supply.

In New Testament Palestine, …

An Approach To The Book Of Abraham, Hugh Nibley

Maxwell Institute Publications

Originally published in 1957, An Approach to the Book of Mormon is Dr. Hugh Nibley’s classic work on the Book of Mormon. A gifted scholar with expertise in ancient languages, literature, and history, Nibley shows numerous details in the Book of Mormon narrative to be in accord with cultural traits of the Middle East.

He examines Lehi as a representative man of his time, the Jews and the caravan trade, Lehi’s Arab and Egyptian connections, politics in Jerusalem, the pioneer tradition, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha, Lehi’s dreams, proper names, Old World ritual in the New World, the Jaredite …

The Frontier Guardian: Exploring The Latter-Day Saint Experience At The Missouri, 1849–1851, Susan E. Black

BYU Studies

As the largest Mormon primary source from 1849 to 1851, the Frontier Guardian is crucial to understanding the Latter-day Saint experience at the Missouri River. Until now, historians have extracted only small sections of the paper, such as marriage announcements, obituaries, and advertisements, because of the Guardian's size. Although it is only four volumes, the newspaper contains eighty-one issues, each spanning four pages in length and divided into six columns. This translates into roughly four thousand single-spaced pages on 8.5" x 11" paper. Fortunately, the recent publication The Best of the Frontier Guardian along with its searchable dvd-rom of …

Twisted Thoughts And Elastic Molecules: Recent Developments In Neuroplasticity, James T. Summerhays

BYU Studies

During the twentieth century, many in the emerging fields of brain science operated under the assumption of absolute biological mate- rialism—the idea that all reality in life can be reduced to our natural, physical dimension. For example, some neuroscientists sought to explain the deep mysteries of human consciousness not as any cosmic intercon- nection of spirit and matter but merely as a series of chemical reactions in the brain. Such assumptions in reductive materialism and pure determin- ism may sometimes be necessary within the realm of controlled scientific inquiry; but when adopted as a way of life, determinism has profound …

The Tree House, Philip A. Snyder, Douglas Thayer

BYU Studies

Douglas Thayer. The Tree House: A Novel. Provo, Utah: Zarahemla Books, 2009.

Proclamation To The People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism And The Pacific Basin Frontier, Kimberly W. Reid, Reid L. Neilson, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

BYU Studies

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp (Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of Religion and Society in Frontier California) and Reid L. Neilson (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brigham Young University and author and editor of several books, including Taking the Gospel to the Japanese) combine their expertise in this latest volume, Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier. The Pacific Basin extends "from the west coast of the United States and South America, across the Pacific Islands from Hawaii to Tahiti, down to New Zealand and …

A Different God? Mitt Romney, The Religious Right, And The Mormon Question, Roger Terry, Craig L. Foster

BYU Studies

As can be expected from a book published by Greg Kofford, Craig L. Foster's A Different God? is well researched and engaging. This book begins by examining the rise of the religious right and the power it exerts on the current political landscape. Foster presents a good deal of information that most Latter-day Saints will not be well acquainted with, such as the difference between evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, the emergence of the charismatic movement, the rise and fall of the Moral Majority, and the subsequent establishment of the Christian Coalition. This background is particularly pertinent to the majority of …

In God's Image And Likeness: Ancient And Modern Perspectives On The Book Of Moses, Michael D. Olsen, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

BYU Studies

Author Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, PhD in cognitive science and a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), has written professionally on various topics in human and machine intelligence, has presented at meetings of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), and has published articles on Mormon themes appearing in 2009 and 2010. The central focus of this book is an exegesis of the "book of Moses, a revelatory expansion of the first chapters of Genesis" and "Joseph Smith's translation of the early narratives of Genesis."

At 1,102 pages, this tome is not for …

What's The Harm? Does Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Really Harm Individuals, Families Or Society?, Lynn D. Wardle, Paul A. Pratte

BYU Studies

Written by nineteen interdisciplinary authors and edited by BYU professor of family law Lynn D. Wardle, What's the Harm? responds to several questions concerning same-sex marriage: does legalizing same-sex marriage harm traditional families? Does it discourage responsible sexual behavior and procreation? How does it affect the meaning of marriage? Does it impair basic freedoms to citizens and institutions?

In this potpourri of scholarly and legal papers, attorneys, educators, family counselors, and even linguists document through scientific studies and court cases the consequences already inflicted on men, women, and innocent children through practices such as abortion and no-fault divorce. Because …

It Starts With A Song: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years Of Songwriting At Byu, Produced By Ron Simpson, Greg Hansen, Ron Simpson

BYU Studies

In the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus, a musician and composer tries to write one memorable piece of music to gain fame. He takes a job as a high school music teacher to pay the bills and over time discovers unexpected and even greater fulfillment during his thirty-year teaching career.

Such a story has parallels to that of Brigham Young University's Ron Simpson, producer of this CD, general manager of Tantara Records, coordinator of the Media Music Division of BYU's School of Music, and music director of the Young Ambassadors. Simpson left a career as a studio owner, producer, …

Kurikulum Pengajian Akidah Di Sekolah Menengah Atas Negeri Kabupaten, Kerinci, Jambi, Sumatera, Indonesia., Zainal Abidin Azhar

Student Works (2010-2019)

Studies of Aqidah is one of the important field of studies in Indonesia‟s educational system whether in a formal or informal education, for example in the traditional private school. The studies of aqidah in Indonesia started in the traditional private school and later developed and taught in the primary and secondary schools and tertiary institutions. This research is therefore to analyse the curriculum of aqidah in several secondary schools in Jambi, Indonesia that is Sekolah Menengah Atas Negeri (SMAN) Kabupaten Kerinci, Jambi, Sumatera Indonesia. The selection of the curriculum based on the Standard Competency Curriculum Studies of SMAN Kabupaten Kerinci, …