Religious Education Commons^™

Sorting, In Evening Light, Dixie L. Partridge

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Ezekiel Mural At Dura Europos: A Witness Of Ancient Jewish Mysteries?, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

BYU Studies

One of the most stunning archaeological finds of the last century was the accidental discovery in 1920 of the ruins of Dura Europos, "a frontier town of very mixed population and traditions" located on a cliff ninety meters above the Euphrates River in what is now Syria. This Helenistic city had been abandoned following a Sassanian siege in AD 256–57 and was eventually buried by the shifting sands. Among the structures uncovered by excavation was a small Jewish synagogue with elaborately painted walls, preserved only because the building had been filled with earth as a fortification during the siege.

Understanding Same-Sex Attraction: Where To Turn And How To Help, John P. Livingstone, Shirley E. Cox, William C. Duncan, M. Gawain Wells, Kimberly W. Reid, Dennis V. Dahle, A. Dean Byrd, Doris R. Dant

BYU Studies

Readers looking for a book that supports the idea of homosexuality being an innate part of one's identity will not be interested in Understanding Same-Sex Attraction: Where to Turn and How to Help. Instead, the authors of this book assert the unpopular opinion, backed by scientific research, that same-sex attraction can be lessened or eradicated in those who desire change and are willing to try. Readers who empathize with the Church's position on homosexuality will likely find hope and useful ideas in this five-hundred-page compilation, authored by professional psychologists and scholars. The book presents three angles on the topic: the …

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Thomas L. Kane And Nineteenth-Century American Culture, Matthew J. Grow

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Kane's legacy has been passed down in LDS memory primarily as a "friend of the Mormons" and as their "sentinel in the East." Viewing Kane exclusively through a Mormon lens, however, has obscured the rest of his life as …

Liberty To The Downtrodden: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer, Matthew J. Grow, Charles S. Peterson

BYU Studies

In this heartening book, Matthew J. Grow examines the life of Mormon friend Thomas L. Kane in terms of the reform impulses that propelled America during the antebellum and succeeding decades of the nineteenth century. Born to a well-situated Pennsylvania family early in the Jacksonian era, Kane reached maturity before the economic and social opportunities of the "gilded age" opened the modern era of industrial urbanism and professional specialization. Like many of his contemporaries, he was almost forced to become a reformer, a career he later integrated with the development of an upstate Pennsylvania area where his family had long-standing …

Thomas L. Kane: A Guide To The Sources, David J. Whittaker

BYU Studies

This is a bibliography of published sources on Thomas Leiper Kane, Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane, and Elisha Kent Kane. It appeared in a special issue of BYU Studies that featured Thomas L. Kane and his relationship with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. Although Kane was not a member of the LDS church, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. The bibliography includes the manuscript sources found in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University as well as published sources on …

He Is Our Friend: Thomas L. Kane And The Mormons In Exodus, 1846–1850, Richard E. Bennett

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Bennett shows how documents from the Kane collection at Brigham Young University enhance, correct, or confirm our knowledge of the following: first, the attitudes of President James K. Polk and his cabinet and others close to him toward the …

Full Of Courage: Thomas L. Kane, The Utah War, And Byu's Kane Collection As Lodestone, William P. Mackinnon

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. MacKinnon explores the significance of Kane's role in helping to resolve peacefully the Utah War of 1857–58 by exploring what the Utah War was, when and how Thomas L. Kane became involved in it, what Kane's motives for involvement …

My Dear Friend: The Friendship And Correspondence Of Brigham Young And Thomas L. Kane, David J. Whittaker

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. This article focuses on the correspondence between Kane and the Mormon prophet Brigham Young. There are about 125 known letters exchanged between Young and Kane, beginning the year they met in 1846 and extending to 1877, the year Young …

Touring Polygamous Utah With Elizabeth W. Kane, Winter 1872–1873, Lowell C. Bennion, Thomas R. Carter

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Bennion and Carter consider the ideas presented by Elizabeth Kane, Thomas's wife, who expressed her dismay with plural marriage in her writings about her visit to Utah in 1872–73. The authors combine Elizabeth's views with their interest in Mormon …

Preface, David J. Whittaker

BYU Studies

The L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University has been acquiring manuscripts relating to the life of Thomas Leiper Kane for many years. The focus of searching out and collecting these manuscripts has been to discover more about Kane’s relationship with the Mormons from 1846 until his death in 1883. Over the years, items of significance have been catalogued in the Perry Special Collections’ Mormon Americana collection. In 1996, the Lee Library was able to obtain a significant Kane family archive consisting of journals, scrapbooks, letters, and other manuscripts and photographs that, …

Thomas L. Kane And The Mormon Problem In National Politics, Thomas G. Alexander

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. This essay explores instances in which Kane assisted the Mormons and the people of Utah in their dealings with the federal government. After the Mormons began to leave their temporary settlements on the Missouri River in 1847 to settle …

Tom And Bessie Kane And The Mormons, Edward A. Geary

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Geary examines representative elements of key episodes in which Thomas Kane and his wife, Elizabeth Kane, interacted with the Mormons. The article briefly discusses Tom's visit with the exiled Saints in 1846 and his subsequent activities that culminated in …

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Examining Our Roots: How Over 100 Years Of Religion Yielded A Secular Liberal Arts Program At Ursinus College, Karen Boedecker

Religious Studies Summer Fellows

Although Ursinus College is a fairly young institution, there have been many modifications that have occurred throughout its history. While we as students might be tempted to fixate on the changes that we find most relatable such as the price of an Ursinus education (it was $188 a year in 1885) or the clubs and organizations in which one could choose to be involved (in the 1880s the only options were the Zwinglian, Schaff, Ebrard, and Olevian literary societies which flourished here), the overall character of the College was most heavily influenced by the presence and eventual absence of religion. …

Spiritualized Recreation: Lds All-Church Athletic Tournaments, 1950–1971, Jessie L. Embry

BYU Studies

Historian Jessie L. Embry recounts the creation, growth, and eventual demise of churchwide sports tournaments organized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She uses as a framework the words of Thomas O'Dea in his book The Mormons (1957). As the tournaments grew from the 1930s to the 1960s, centralized planning and organization was required. The games and tournaments served spiritual and social functions: they provided a way to introduce people to the LDS Church and keep Church members involved, and they helped boys and men develop talents and good sportsmanship. Embry quotes many interviews that she and …

Constantine's Bible: Politics And The Making Of The New Testament, David L. Dungan, Carl W. Griffin

BYU Studies

The canon of Christian scripture has received much scrutiny since the rise of historical criticism in post-Enlightenment Europe. Nineteenth-century discoveries of new apocryphal gospels and epistles also fueled academic debate over canonicity, which has reached an even higher pitch since 1945, with the discovery of a corpus of Gnostic Christian "scriptures" at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. More recently, best-selling works by scholars like Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, as well as Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, have introduced to a wide nonspecialist audience the historical problems surrounding the formation of Christian scripture.

Into this crowded conversation enters David …

Happy Valley, Ron Williams, Director, James Willmore, Jenny Willmore, Ron Williams

BYU Studies

Producer and director Ron Williams began his film as an attempt to follow his ex-wife, Nancy, as she entered drug rehab. While filming, Nancy's daughter, MaCall Peterson, was involved in the accidental overdose and death of her friend Amelia Sorich and the subsequent attempt to hide the body. From this development, the filmmaker realized the scope of the movie had changed considerably. He began to wonder if there was a relationship between Utah County residents' reputation for overly blissful happiness and the struggles that addicts in Utah face. Thus was born the documentary Happy Valley, a title meant as …

Historical Headnotes And The Index Of Contents In The Book Of Commandments And Revelations, Steven C. Harper

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This article orients readers to two important features of the Book of Commandments and Revelations: its index of contents and its historical headnotes. John Whitmer began to compile "The Index of the contents of this Book" in the back, on pages 207–8. It covers only the book's first 94 pages, ending in the summer of 1831. In some instances, it is obvious that he was not recording the revelations in their order …

Revelation, Text, And Revision: Insight From The Book Of Commandments And Revelations, Grant Underwood

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR), a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This article explores how the textual revisions preserved in the BCR shed important light on the process by which Joseph Smith received, recorded, and published his revelations. It has long been recognized that revelations published in the 1833 Book of Commandments were revised for publication in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. Less well known is that those texts were also edited prior to publication in the Book of Commandments or The …

Making Space On The Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, And Southern Paiutes, W. Paul Reeve, Jay H. Buckley

BYU Studies

University of Utah historian W. Paul Reeve has written an intriguing and engaging monograph examining the dynamic interchange between Mormons, miners, and Southern Paiutes along the Great Basin's southern rim. Broadly covering the last four decades of the nineteenth century, Reeves focuses his lens most closely on southwestern Utah and southeastern Nevada during the turbulent 1860s and 1870s when the clash of cultures reached its zenith.

Paiutes, Mormons, and miners possessed quite different worldviews relating to their notions about identity. The "complicated and messy" story that unfolds tackles the economic, cultural, political, and religious clashes that intertwine (and entangle) these …

Introducing A Book Of Commandments And Revelations, A Major New Documentary "Discovery", Robert J. Woodford

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue of BYU Studies about the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR), a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) is the manuscript collection of revelations Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took to Missouri in November 1831 from which the Book of Commandments was to be published. Additional revelations were entered into the volume as they were received, and the BCR was also used as one of the sources for the revelations printed in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and …

From Manuscript To Printed Page: An Analysis Of The History Of The Book Of Commandments And Revelations, Robin S. Jensen

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR) is a surprisingly unpretentious document, judging by its physical condition. Instead of appearing regal and glorious as would befit its important contents, the Book of Commandments and Revelations looks ragged, worn, and somewhat fragile. But for anyone interested in historical artifacts, the Book of Commandments and Revelations provides a rich experience. This article discusses the physical description and provenance of the BCR—why, how, and when …

Response To The Book Of Commandments And Revelations Presentations, Ronald E. Romig

BYU Studies

This article is one of several in this issue about the Book of Commandments and Revelations, a foundational document of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this response to the four preceding papers, Ron Romig, the Archivist for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or RLDS), focuses partly on the provenance of the eight pages John Whitmer removed from the manuscript book that eventually found their way to the archives of the RLDS Church. While RLDS scholars made good use of their BCR manuscript pages, lack of access …

Book Of Mormon Stories That Steph Meyer Tells To Me: Lds Themes In The Twilight Saga And The Host, Jana Riess, Stephenie Meyer

BYU Studies

Publishing professionals call it a phenomenon. In 2008, Little, Brown sold 27.5 million copies of Stephenie Meyer's four vampire novels; the Twilight movie grossed $191 million in domestic box office sales; and Meyer's adult novel, The Host, sold an additional million copies. Publishers Weekly crowed, "A new queen has been crowned." USA Today reported that Meyer was the bestselling author in the world for the year 2008, accounting for one in five of the books sold from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

That's not bad for an author who, as the media incessantly reminds us, is little more than a "Mormon …

Yellow Shirt Riddles, Holly R. Hansen

BYU Studies

The essayist explores various issues surrounding her divorce as a young wife. The most intriguing is the pivotal argument she can't remember. Her brain has somehow blocked the memory of it, so she has to tell the story through the eyes of her ex-sister-in-law. Using images of falling off a snowy mountain, tying quilts, and breaking one of two identical pitchers, she tries to make sense of this life-changing experience.

Full Issue, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Matters Of The Mind: Latter-Day Saint Helps For Mental Health, W. Dean Belnap, Marleen S. Williams, James D. Macarthur, John P. Livingstone

BYU Studies

Mental health continues to be difficult for many people to understand. We seem to grasp physical ailments; bruises and cuts and headaches are pains we all have experienced. More serious health troubles--diabetes, cancer, or the physical pain associated with a broken arm or surgery--are still in the realm of the tactile and thus are fairly easy to grasp conceptually, even by those who have not gone through any such trauma. But when it comes to the realm of mental illnesses--bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or even more common ailments like dysthymia--we may find ourselves scratching our heads. What is the nature of …

The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, Dean C. Jessee, James B. Allen, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee, Richard L. Jensen

BYU Studies

Several years ago, when I heard that the Joseph Smith Papers Project was approved for publication, I was delighted for at least two reasons. First, I considered Joseph Smith's papers to be the most valuable resource extant for researching early Latter-day Saint history. Making them available to all would enhance the accuracy of future scholarship. Second, it would be clear that the Church had nothing to hide concerning Joseph Smith. For too long, stories had circulated that the archives were closed, and the Church History Department did not allow access to important documents. The stories were partially true, though scholars …