[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] This last post covers Chapters 9 through 13 of John G. Turner's excellent Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012). This section of the book covers events from the Mormon Reformation, the Utah War, and Mountain Meadows in 1857 through the completion of the St. George Temple and Brigham's death in 1877. Those are twenty eventful years.
Chapters 9 and 10 start with the Mormon Reformation of 1856/57. Here's Turner's account of a typical sermon:
In mid-September 1856, Young delivered a fiery sermon in Salt Lake City, forcefully condemning a multitude of sins, ranging from adultery to dishonesty to a failure to tithe. Mincing no words, he complained that some Saints kept their "brains ... below their waistbands." He warned that the "whole people will be corrupted if we do not lop off those rotten branches." At the same time, he held out the prospect of forgiveness and spiritual empowerment, calling on the repentant to repeat their baptisms and "receive the Holy Ghost and then live in it continually." Sinners could choose between repentance and flight. Otherwise, they deserved excommunication and possibly death. (p. 255.)
[Part 1 | Part 2] This post covers Chapters 5 through 8 of John G. Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012). This section of the book covers Brigham's assumption of leadership of the Church upon the death of Joseph Smith, his successful relocation of the main body of Mormons from Illinois to unsettled Utah, and the difficult first few years there, punctuated by the 1852 public announcement of the practice of plural marriage by the LDS Church.
[Part 1] This post covers Chapter 2 through 4 of John G. Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012). Topics covered in this fast-paced section of the book are Brigham's early preaching as an LDS missionary, his call to the Twelve and mission to England, followed by his return to Nauvoo and initiation into polygamy as practiced under Joseph Smith.
I'm a little late to the party for John G. Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, which has of late blazed through the Bloggernacle. I've read both Arrington's American Moses and Bringhurt's Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier, so this is familiar ground, but it's clear from other reviews that Turner uses a lot of archived letter and journal material that were either not accessible or not prominently featured in earlier books. In this post, I look at Brigham's pre-LDS religious experience as a Reformed Methodist. All quotations are from Chapter One, "A New Creature."
Turner's Book
It is hard to grasp the variety of early 19th-century sects, even within just one denomination. Brigham and his family were attracted to the Methodists but, being unhappy with the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church, gravitated toward the more congregational Reformed Methodists. Turner notes that "the Reformed Methodists exhibited several of the impulses later central to early Mormonism."
It is published as a reference work, but you can read it like a book, albeit a book of essays: Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2010; publisher's page), edited by W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall. Listing at $85 ($68 on Kindle), it might not find its way onto your bookshelf until a trade paperback version comes out in a few years, but at the very least it puts a very accessible LDS history reference on the shelves of America's libraries and newsrooms, featuring 140 entries covering individuals, places, events, and issues. I stumbled across a library copy that was in the stacks and could actually be checked out rather than being secured behind the librarian's firewall (that is, placed in the reference section). If you are so lucky, do the right thing and take it home for a few weeks.
Joanna Brooks is the Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She is the author of several books, most recently The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories From an American Faith (2012). The book is available at Amazon and at the author's website. A short couple of hundred pages, the book is at various turns both enjoyable and troubling, as the author recounts growing up LDS in Southern California, informally leaving the LDS Church then returning to activity, then rather suddenly emerging as a leading voice of what might be termed the progressive Mormon agenda which takes issue with traditional Mormon positions on race and gender. As such, she is on her way to becoming controversial (not generally a compliment in Mormon circles), so I need to start out with a couple of disclaimers.
The latest book to digest Mormon doctrine for the popular LDS audience is LDS Beliefs: A Doctrinal Reference (Deseret Book, 2011), by four BYU religion professors: Robert L. Millet, Camille Fronk Olson, Andrew C. Skinner, and Brent L. Top. Entries are alphabetical, with authorship and cited sources listed following each and every entry. It's out just in time for Christmas and will no doubt find its way under the tree in many LDS homes, as well it should. The best way to summarize the strengths of this one-volume reference work is to compare and contrast it with other modern attempts to summarize LDS doctrine: Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine, True to the Faith, and The Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
This is the fourth in a series of reviews of Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide (OUP, 2010) that we are posting this week at Times and Seasons. It says something about the book that there is still a lot to talk about.
The Prosperity Gospel (which the linked Wikipedia article defines as "the notion that God provides material prosperity for those he favors") is often associated with Evangelical megapreachers. [Note 1.] But we all know there is a Mormon variation of the Prosperity Gospel lurking behind the ubiquitous references to blessings and how to earn them that populate LDS books, sermons, and discourse. So when I started reading my review copy of What the Scriptures Teach Us About Prosperity (Deseret Book, 2010) by S. Michael Wilcox, I was hoping that at some point the author would distinguish the Mormon view of prosperity from the Evangelical version of the Prosperity Gospel.
Here's a second post [see Part 1] on Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (OUP, 2009). I didn't find the second and third sections quite as strong as the first section, although I liked Richard Bushman's essay "Joseph Smith and the Creation of the Sacred." But I'll talk a bit about Richard J. Mouw's essay "The Possiblity of Joseph Smith: Some Evangelical Probings." Some of what Mouw has to say rubs me the wrong way, but at the same time I'm grateful that this Evangelical theologian continues to make sincere attempts to engage with Mormonism.
I posted a new Now Reading book: Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (OUP, 2009), a collection of scholarly essays edited by Reid Neilson and Terryl Givens. [Doesn't it seem like Givens publishes about three books a year?] The quality of the essays seems quite good, with the volume as a whole being yet another attempt to make progress on "the prophet puzzle." That puzzle concerns how historians can reconcile two glaringly different views of Joseph Smith — as prophet or charlatan — each supported by some historical evidence. I'll post on a couple of the essays when I'm a little farther along.
A lot happened in Nauvoo that doesn't get covered in Sunday School or the one-volume treatments of LDS history. But Glen Leonard's Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise tells the story in detail from start to finish.
This is the third post on Richard L. Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2008). [See Part 1 and Part 2.] In Chapter Three, Bushman reviews the several meanings of the term "Zion" in LDS doctrine and thinking.
This is a second post on Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2008). [See Part 1.] Every faith and denomination has an approach for balancing faith and reason. In Chapter Two of the book, Bushman briefly outlines the LDS approach.
I finally secured a copy of Richard L. Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction. Bushman, a historian, is the author of Rough Stone Rolling, the definitive biography of Joseph Smith, as well as the Howard W. Hunter Professor of Mormon Studies in the School of Religion at Claremont Graduate Univeristy in Southern California. This is the first of several posts covering some of the chapters in the book. The introductory chapter raises the persistent and somewhat puzzling issue of the widely contrasting public views of Mormonism.
So your mission call finally arrived (see here, here, or here) and you suddenly realize that it starts in 44 days but you don't know that much about Mormonism or what it is you are supposed to teach for two long years. You are suddenly serious about "missionary prep." What book should you read?
I dropped a new book into slot one of my Now Reading list, Nauvoo Polygamy: "... but we called it celestial marriage", by George D. Smith. The title is certainly an orthographic challenge. I'll save my own substantive comments for a later post (after I've read more of the book), but here are several posts from other blogs that have already discussed the book.
Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants: A Guided Tour Through Modern Revelations by Steven C. Harper has just been published by Deseret Book, just in time for the 2009 course of study in LDS adult Sunday School. I haven't read it through yet, but I did run some benchmarks on it (see below) to see just what kind of book it is. I'll give it a thumbs up.
After hearing Ron Walker conduct an hour-long Q&A on the book last month, I quickly finished Massacre at Mountain Meadows a couple of weeks ago. The narrative moves quickly, first laying out the historical context of the Utah War and the events in Southern Utah leading up to the massacre, then focusing on the grisly few days at Mountain Meadows. The authors reject the idea that the emigrants incited the attack and also clear Brigham Young of any direct role, placing responsibility squarlely on the locals, especially John D. Lee.
The LDS Newsroom posted more comments on the just-released book Massacre at Mountain Meadows, noting that it provides an "in-depth" and "unflinching look" at the tragic events of 1857. Several scholars are quoted making positive comments on the book, including one who describes it as a "model for how historians should do their work."
Note: The article references a panel discussion of the book by several historians. The hard-working bloggers at Juvenile Instructor posted extensive notes (Part 1, etc.) of that panel discussion, as did Keep-a-Pitchinin.
I recently finished Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier, by Newell G. Bringhurst. Published in 1986, it still reads well and does a nice job of integrating the story of Brigham Young and the early LDS Church into Western history. Denominational histories are too often written in a vacuum and Western history for too long ignored religion. This is an early and successful attempt to bring the two together by way of a fair and balanced treatment of Brigham Young's life. Joseph Smith remains a controversial figure for historians and many readers, but everyone loves Brigham.
Just last week I heard a familiar comment at church: Brigham Young's policy was to feed the Indians rather than fight them. The actual record of relations between Pioneers and Indians was a bit more complicated, especially in Utah Valley, the watery jewel of early Utah.
I posted a review of Bart Ehrman's new book God's Problem, then promoted a new book to the coveted Featured Book spot: Jared Farmer's On Zion's Mount. I've already read half of it — I can guarantee it is worth your time if you are a fan of Mormon history. Of the Big Four themes in the New Western History (environment, race, class, and gender), Farmer explores in depth two of them (place and race) as they relate to Mormon-Indian relations in Utah Valley. You'll never look at Timp the same again after reading this book.
I finally dragged myself through to the end of The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Force, Grace and Glory (2000) by Douglas Davies, an English scholar of Mormonism. Odd subtitle, as there was precious little discussion of force, grace, or glory in the book. The author's focus was on Mormonism as a religious system providing an assurance of death transcendence to believers, which didn't turn out as downbeat as one might expect. The last two chapters (weighing Mormonism as a possible world religion) were fairly accessible, but the first six were pretty tough going. An eclectic mix of religious studies and sociology of religion terminology and "models" makes the book feel more like a collection of essays than a book.
Once upon a time, The Great Apostasy by Elder James E. Talmage was on every Mormon's reading list. But somehow that topic went out of fashion for a couple of decades -- no LDS books treated the subject and it received considerably less attention in General Conference talks. Suddenly, the Great Apostasy seems to be back.
I'm slowly working my way through Terryl Givens' People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (OUP, 2007). Chapter 13 is on music and dance in the 20th century. There's plenty to work with, from the Choir to the Osmonds to Saturday's Warrior (the first of the Mormon pop musicals). But what really caught my attention was the paragraph on Gladys Knight's Saints Unified Voices ("SUV") choir.
I recently brought to a successful conclusion a one-month, eight-hundred-mile odyssey that had a simple and straightforward object: to purchase a copy of Richard L. Bushman's On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary at Deseret Book. I didn't think it would be such a challenge.
This is the third and final installment reviewing Richard Bushman's On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary, covering the main part of the book, including a lengthy section recounting interaction with LDS blogs. I'm going to keep this short, as I rediscovered Daniel Peterson's lengthy discussion of the book in his Editor's Intro to a recent FARMS Review, which covered the same things I noted. I suspect he said it better than I would, so I'll let you read the good stuff there and keep my comments here brief, again with quotes from the book in italics and my comments to follow.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling ("RSR") was published and available for sale to the public on September 25, 2005. The first section of On the Road with Joseph Smith is titled "Preparations" and covers July and August of 2005, a period in which Bushman reviewed the RSR galleys from his publisher, spoke with journalists and book reviewers, and fretted more than a little over how the book was going to be received by its two primary audiences, Mormons and non-Mormons. Here are a few quotes (in italics) from this section of the book, with my comments following.
I recently acquired a copy of the paperback edition of Richard L. Bushman's On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary (Greg Kofford Books, 2007), and I plan to put up several posts as I read through it. Here are a few quotes (in italics) from the six-page Introduction, along with my comments.
And just where is the dustbin of history these days, you ask? It's at Amazon, where the pitiless laws of supply and demand are on full display in the "used books" queue attached to every book title. That's where I rescued a like-new copy of Claudia and Richard Bushman's Building the Kingdom of God: A History of Mormons in America (OUP, 2001) for the price of $0.03. [And that's three times what the lowest-priced copies are selling for today!]
This is the third and final installment reviewing Richard Bushman's
Just finished Mormons & Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion (U. of Illinois, 2001), a collection of essays and book excerpts edited by Eric Eliason, a BYU English prof. In a world where media misinformation and even comedy shows define truth for a disturbingly large segment of the US population, it's important to have reliable resources at hand. This book seems to be intended as a supplementary text to accompany an undergraduate religious studies course on religion or on Mormonism, with essays by a wide variety of LDS and non-LDS scholars from several fields. [I wonder if the book is used for any courses at BYU?] Surprisingly, the only one of the essays I'd read before was "Is Mormonism Christian?" by Jan Shipps. I'll comment on a few of the essays, although I could easily discuss every one of them (sorry, this is a hobby, not a profession).
As noted in a prior post, here's a short discussion of the first two chapters of Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy by O. Kendall White, Jr. The first chapter, "The Development of Crisis Theologies," gives a short introduction to the sociology of religion and an interesting analysis of how social and cultural crisis seems to lead to certain theological responses. I'll try creating my first-ever HTML table to display that typology graphically. Chapter Two reviews Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy as a prelude to assessing how Mormonism matches up (an exercise undertaken in chapters 3 and 4, which I'll cover in my next post in this series).
Last night at Miller-Eccles, I held in my hand a copy of On the Road With Joseph Smith, the pricey "Year in the Life" diary of Richard Bushman as he toured the country from mid-2005 to mid-2006 giving lectures on Rough Stone Rolling, his celebrated biography of Joseph Smith, Jr. And when I say pricey, I mean it: the limited printing of 100 went for $150 a piece and are reselling at a significant premium in the secondary market. Wow, I haven't paid that much for a book since ... college. Even so, a buck a page. That's enough to make anyone start keeping a journal.
Just finished The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (U. of Illinois Press, 1994) by Armand Mauss. It is an exercise in the sociology of religion, looking at the experience of the LDS Church in the 20th century and particularly the second half of that century. I can summarize the thesis of the book in one sentence: After spending the first fifty years of the 20th century striving for and largely achieving assimilation with and acceptance by mainstream America, the Church then spent the next fifty years partially de-assimilating and reasserting its unique and conservative religious identity in order to keep itself and its members visibly distinct from mainstream and Evangelical Protestantism. [I didn't say it would be a short sentence.] Mauss terms that de-assimilation process retrenchment.
Just finished my advance copy of The Mormon Way of Doing Business (2007) by Jeff Benedict. It is subtitled "leadership and success through faith and family." The book has received a fair amount of attention: I've seen a write-up on the book in the Deseret News; a report on a panel discussion with the author and several of the CEOs featured in the book; and a long excerpt from the first chapter. [And don't miss the fine review posted at Straight and Narrow, Jettboy's blog.] So I'll keep my comments short and maybe give longer comments on one of the chapters in a later post.
Just finished Kathleen Flake's The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004). The long title pretty much explains the whole book: Reed Smoot, a Mormon Apostle, was elected in 1903 to represent Utah in the US Senate, but a groundswell of opposition from women's groups and Protestant clergy led the Senate to refer the whole matter to its Committee on Privileges and Elections. The Committee then spent four years holding hearings as part of its "investigation" into Smoot, which was, in fact, largely a political attack on the Church as an institution. In the end, it failed, and Smoot took his seat, serving until 1933 and going on to become one of the most powerful and respected members of the Senate. The author uses the book and the Smoot hearings to investigate not the LDS Church but American religion in general during this period. In particular, the book uses the politics of the Smoot hearings to illustrate and highlight the change from 19th-century moral reform movements to 20th-century secular politics dominated by politicians who supported governmental neutrality over Protestant moralizing. God moves in mysterious ways: He used Smoot, TR, and the Republican Party to get the Protestants out of politics and Utah into the Union. Amen and amen.
Just finished Between the Testaments: From Malachi to Matthew (Deseret, 2002), by S. Kent Brown and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel. I put the book on the front panel at the DMI Bookstore (which you really ought to visit if you haven't). This isn't what you'd call a heavy doctrinal or historical book, but it's quite useful for bridging the disconnect between the end of the Old Testament and the dawn of the New Testament some 500 years later. In an earlier post I noted a couple of interesting items from Section I of the book, which reviewed the history of Judea during this period. Here I'll pick a theme from each of the other three sections, which cover sacred writings; parties or sects that emerged among the Jews in Judea; and doctrinal developments that arose during the period.
When it comes to history, a 500-year gap leaves a jarring discontinuity in the narrative. But that's what the modern Protestant (and LDS) Bible gives us, with Malachi signing off around 450 BC when Jerusalem and Judea were under the political control of the Persians, then Matthew and his fellow evangelists picking up the story 500 years later when Judea was under the political control of the Romans. And the casual reader might never even know that, in between, the Greeks ran the place for almost 200 years! To help me out a bit with all this, I picked up Between the Testaments: From Malachi to Matthew (Deseret Book, 2002) by S. Kent Brown and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, a couple of BYU profs. I don't normally spring for correlated titles, but I was wandering through the BYU Bookstore a couple of weeks ago, and with hundreds of LDS books on display I felt like I just had to buy something.
My first regular issue of BYU Studies arrived this week. Nice semi-glossy paper. It's like Dialogue without the poetry. Oh, and it's correlated. Really; it says so on the inside back cover: "BYU Studies is dedicated to the correlation of revealed and discovered truth and to the conviction that the spiritual and the intellectual can be complementary and fundamentally harmonious avenues of knowledge." I don't care, I'm going to read it anyway. I'll start with short comments here about James B. Allen's review of Prince and Wright's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, presently my featured LDS history book (sidebar, top left).
Just finished Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (U. of Illinois Press, 1992) by B. Carmon Hardy. Like every story, the story of Mormon polygamy has a beginning, middle, and end. This book gives the definitive account of the end of official polygamy as practiced in the LDS Church, and the end is at least as interesting as the beginning. But for modern Latter-day Saints, it is, in many ways, a painful tale. In fact, most of you are probably better off simply not reading this book. Just stick with the "Wilford Woodruff got a revelation in 1890 that ended the practice of polygamy" story (what I'll call the "Manifesto Myth") and get on with your life. Here are three reasons you probably shouldn't read this book.
I recently finished an advance copy of "God Has Made Us a Kingdom": James Strang and the Midwest Mormons (Signature, 2006) by Vickie Cleverley Speek, a former journalist. Her book retells the improbable story of Jesse James Strang, a relatively recent convert to Mormonism who put forth a claim to be Joseph Smith's successor following his death in 1844. While it seems odd to modern Mormons, some Mormons of that day took Strang's claim seriously, and he gathered hundreds of scattered post-Nauvoo Mormons to him, first in Wisconsin, then later on Beaver Island in the remote northern waters of Lake Michigan. His death at the hands of an assassin (who was immediately given refuge in a US warship docked at Beaver Island) cut short his "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (commonly known as the Strangites). What are we to make of this strange episode in LDS history?
I finally finished it, the mother of all Joseph Smith biographies. There has been more than enough posted on RSR the last several months, so I'll just make a few summary comments rather than attempt a longer review. Rough Stone Rolling will certainly be the authoritative biography of Joseph for many years to come. They ought to make it the Priesthood/RS manual next year. It is a book that anyone who takes Joseph Smith seriously should read. In the following paragraphs, I will note just a few things I really enjoyed about the book.
I just finished Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England (Signature, 2005), edited by Robert A. Rees. And "writings" is the right term, as the book covers every genre: there are poems, essays, stories, articles, and even a short dramatic script. This is appropriate, I suppose, to celebrate the BYU prof and writer who was apparently a moving force in pushing hundreds of LDS writers and students to develop their writing talents in diverse directions. England co-founded Dialogue when he was still a graduate student, at Stanford. Later, he also co-founded the Association for Mormon Letters. If he'd done nothing else, that would have been a substantial legacy. For more biographic details, you can look up the Sunstone issue devoted to England's memory. In the balance of the post, I'll talk about a few of the more interesting entries in the book.
I just completed Adventures of a Church Historian, Leonard Arrington's professional memoir that focuses on his tenure as LDS Church Historian from 1972 to 1982. He speaks frankly about both the challenges and the accomplishments of the History Division of the LDS Historical Department during the period when he was directly involved with it. The book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in LDS history, both to get an informed account of the "official" LDS position vis-a-vis the writing of history by trained LDS historians and to get a sense of how much Arrington and his co-workers managed to accomplish.
On my recent fishing trip, I reeled in a few big ones that should get me through the winter. First, Rough Stone Rolling, the new Bushman biography of Joseph Smith, which I immediately bumped up to my "Featured Book" slot. I'm about 70 pages into it — it's a winner. Still don't like the title though. Second, I finally pulled the trigger on Prince's David O. McKay biography. Seems like I ought to get to know Mormonism's "kinder and gentler" prophet. Third, I bought Arrington's Adventures of a Church Historian. He lived the adventure, the only historian to serve as Church Historian. Makes you wonder how many Church Prophets were prophets. Finally, Carmon Hardy's Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, the story of post-1890 LDS polygamy.
After Theory Terry Eagleton on whatever it is that comes after postmodernism. My Post
Experiments in Ethics A moral philosopher's surprisingly entertaining critique of traditional philosophical ethics using modern experimental data. • My post
Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique The prolific astrophysicist and science writer John Gribbin reviews where Earth came from, why it is here, and how it will end (in a rain of cometary chunks from the Oort Cloud in about a million years). Read all about it in my post The Fate of the Earth.
Ancient Israelite Religion Susan Niditch explores myth, ritual, experience, and ethics in the Hebrew Bible and using surviving archeological artifacts, revealing a surprisingly diverse ancient Israelite religion. • My Post
Davies: The Mormon Culture of Salvation Uses a variety of models to look at LDS doctrine and cultural practice related to death and salvation, with a lengthy consideration of the "world religion" question. My Post • Pub Note
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