Mormon History

Historical documents relating to early Mormonism suggest that Joseph Smith (1805-1844) employed entheogen-infused sacraments to fulfill his promise that every Mormon convert would experience visions of God and spiritual ecstasies. Early Mormon scriptures and Smith's teachings contain descriptions consistent with using entheogenic material. Compiled descriptions of Joseph Smith's earliest visions and early Mormon convert visions reveal the internal symptomology and outward bodily manifestations consistent with using an anticholinergic entheogen. Due to embarrassing symptomology associated with these manifestations, Smith sought for psychoactives with fewer associated outward manifestations. The visionary period of early Mormonism fueled by entheogens played a significant role in the spectacular rise of this American-born religion. The death of Joseph Smith marked the end of visionary Mormonism and the failure or refusal of his successor to utilize entheogens as a part of religious worship. The implications of an entheogenic origin of Mormonism may contribute to the broader discussion of the major world religions with evidence of entheogen use at their foundation and illustrate the value of entheogens in religious experience.

In 1917, Charles G. Patterson, a Utah attorney, spearheaded the organization of the Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers (IASBG) to serve as an advocate for beet farmers in the Intermountain West. With the advent of the First World War, the price of sugar had gone up, but Patterson believed that sugar companies were not passing the increased profits on to farmers and that someone needed to look out for the growers' interests. He had previously published pamphlets castigating leaders of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, many of whom were also high leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which held a large amount of stock in the company. Believing that Utah-Idaho Sugar leaders were using their ecclesiastical connections to force Latter-day Saint farmers into growing beets for the company for whatever price the corporation dictated, Patterson wanted the IASBG to fight for fairer beet prices. Although other organizations such as the U.S. Farm Bureau already represented farmers' interests in matters such as beet prices, Patterson believe they had largely been co-opted by sugar interests and that an independent organization was necessary. Born in the midst of a battle over beet prices in 1918, the IASBG lasted only a few years before folding. This was in part because it was painted by ecclesiastical and business leaders as a radical socialistic organization--a depiction that prevented it from ever gaining much influence over farmers. Yet even though it operated for only a brief period of time, the agitation the organization made over beet prices pushed Utah-Idaho Sugar to increase the amount it paid farmers for the crop. Its brief history thus provides a window into power relationships between farmers and industry in the 1910s and 1920s--relationships that were complicated in Utah and Idaho by the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the sugar industry. It also suggests that even farmers' organizations not heavily supported because of their "radicalism" could have an impact on the well-being of agrarians.

As most US servicemen drafted into the military during World War I headed east across the Atlantic bound for Europe, the men of the 31st Infantry boarded ships in San Francisco and sailed west across the Pacific, landing in Vladivostok in August and September of 1918 as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Siberia.  Unlike the war in Europe, military operations in Siberia and Northern Russia involving allied forces continued beyond the November 11 armistice, ending with the last US troops leaving Vladivostok in the spring of 1920.
A small but significant number of those servicemen were LDS, drafted from Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and other western states.  Many were returned missionaries, some with wives and children at home.  They quickly found each other in basic training, socializing on weekends, and organizing a formal branch of the church upon arrival in Siberia.  The LDS soldiers dealt with declining public support, poorly understood goals, and difficulties with allies and enemies alike.  Barely acknowledged and not well remembered, the Siberian campaign has many interesting parallels with more recent military conflicts.

Smith family typically began their narrative of the church's earliest history by recounting events connected to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. 1 Joseph Smith's immediate family also recollected more specific details about the 1823-1830 KYLE R. WALKER is a faculty member at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where he works in the Counseling Center. He is the author and editor of two volumes on the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith family. His most recent biography, entitled William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet (2015), won the best biography award from the John Whitmer Historical Association. He has served as a board member for the John Whitmer Historical Association and on the book awards committee for MHA.

This article analyzes the "conversion" of Anthony Uzodimma Obinna, an Igbo schoolteacher from the town of Aboh Mbaise in Imo State, and his extended family to Mormonism in southeastern Nigeria between the 1960s and the 1980s, from a historical perspective. I argue that the transition of Anthony Obinna and his family away from Catholicism to Mormonism can be explained by both the elective affinities that existed between Mormonism and indigenous Igbo culture, and socio-economic factors as well. This article bases its conclusions on a close reading of oral histories, personal papers, and correspondence housed at the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

By the early 19th century increased optical deceptions, like the phantasmagoria shows that could conjure up ghostly illusions, challenged biological and spiritual vision in novel ways. Ghosts also circulated with unprecedented ubiquity in printed stories of spectral appearances, from Gothic literature to spiritual visions. Within this constellation of developments Joseph Smith’s turn to print media to disseminate his own spectacular vision(s) should be understood as a cultural project to train vision and render it reproducible. The turn to publishing visionary accounts and instructions on avoiding deception coupled late romantic thought with modern practices of observing for early Mormons who were unsure if they could trust their eyes. Through a media archaeological approach to the religion’s initial reading network, this article argues that early Mormon texts taught readers how to properly see, discern, and become vigilant observers as a spiritual and modern necessity.

Recently leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) faith have called upon members to “sweep the earth” with positive religious messages through social media. This digital moment in Mormonism exemplifies the interrelation and concomitant tension between everyday lived religion, technology, and religious institutions. While studies on digital religion have emphasized the push of participatory culture into everyday lived religion, this research on religious memes contributes to an emergent vein of digital religion scholarship focused on institutional authority. In our analysis of the “doubt your doubts” meme and antimemes we theorize religious memetics as a space for the reconnection of the everydayness of religious practice, which boils down meaningful moments of faith into facile, nonthreatening avenues for sharing religion. While this is beneficial for institutions, the reflexive and metonymic function of religious memes ruptures routine, offering participants momentary pauses from the demands of orthodox religious life.

Religious institutions establish collective identities through the production of a usable past, and thereby provide adherents with a sense of heritage. This article examines how this process functions in a Mormon pilgrimage site, Nauvoo, Illinois, where not one but two competing institutions, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Community of Christ, have established alternative narratives of identity. I focus on the thousands of (almost exclusively) LDS pilgrims who visit the town each summer. I argue that the presence of multiple interpretations raises significant anxieties for many of these pilgrims. In an attempt to mediate these anxieties a vernacular religious site, a willow tree, is employed to point pilgrims to a Saint figure, Emma Smith, Joseph Smith Jr. 's widow, in order to fortify an alternative narrative existing outside of either official representation of Nauvoo's past.

This article examines the role of the Mormon Church in the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s.  While the historiography of the ERA has largely concentrated on the role of Phyllis Schlafly and Southern fundamentalists in defeating the proposed constitutional amendment, this article argues that the Mormon Church played a critical role in stopping the ERA in states as diverse as Utah, Nevada and Virginia.  In doing so, the Mormon Church proved itself a formidable, if overlooked, player in the emerging New Right coalition.  This article also highlights the critical role that Mormon women played in the church’s political efforts against the ERA.  In seeking to defeat a gain for women’s equality, the Mormon Church activated its women through their church service organization to work against the amendment’s ratification.  This work was often presented as a religious calling, and Mormon women opposed the ERA out of service to their church as much as from political conviction.  At the same time, the Mormon Church increased its emphasis on women’s proper role, stressing wifely submission and domestic duties – a marked change from the church’s historic encouragement of women as public figures.  In light of the growing constrictions, Mormon women found that the ERA battle provided an opportunity to challenge subtly the limited role their church advocated for them.  Mormon women worked to defeat the ERA, this article maintains, in part because of the chance it provided them to show the church they still had a useful public role.  By opposing women’s equality, LDS women showed the church and themselves that they could be more than housewives.  In defending women’s place in the home, Mormon women used the battle over the ERA as an opportunity to step out of their homes and take their place on the national political stage.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued an online statement in February 2012 rejecting all racism, in any form. The statement followed nearly two centuries of tortured struggles with racism promulgated by church leaders, instituted in everyday practices, and integrated into Latter-day Saint scriptures. While rhetoric renouncing racism from the LDS Church is a welcome step, religions need to compliment language undoing racism with concrete actions. This article examines ways that the LDS Church may work towards actually ending various forms of racism. It focuses attention on the role of settler colonial grave robbery, the loot from which was used in the production of Mormon scriptures advocating white privilege. These acts of violence against Native people continue into the present, as illustrated by the recent occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge by Mormon militiamen, extensive trade networks in antiquities in Mormon communities, unethical uses of Native American DNA, and ongoing efforts by Utah legislators to undermine tribal sovereignty. Current rhetoric condemning racism appears to serve as a mask for the continued imbalance of power in a land-rich institution in which the highest positions of authority remain exclusively in the hands of white men. Reciprocal acts of repatriation, initiated but never finished by early LDS Church leaders, need to be re-activated if Mormons are to effectively repudiate racism in its many forms.

During the period from 1890 to 1920, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) perceived a crisis in the lives of their boys. That sense of crisis in the lives of boys lay at the surface of an even deeper cultural upheaval taking place within Mormondom. Tensions with religious outsiders and the U. S. government over the practice of polygamy had led to a standoff in the late 1880s. If the Saints wanted to continue to practice their religion and maintain ownership of church property (including the temple that stood at the center of their worship), they had to give up polygamy, the religious practice that distinguished them from others and marked them as obedient followers of an ancient marital pattern that they believed was ordained of God. It was during this transitional period that members and authorities of the LDS Church sought to gain respectability in American culture by emphasizing the moral and value systems they shared with their middle-class Protestant contemporaries while simultaneously maintaining their distinctiveness.

This essay examines the ability of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to attract people of color in Mexico in the early twentieth century despite central teachings that associated a dark skin with a curse from God. Although Mormon theology is imbued with colonial metaphors and racially charged symbolism, the meanings that Mormons apply to those shared symbols are not predetermined by  church leaders or sacred texts. Instead, they reflect the instrumental needs of individual Mormons in particular times and places. Euro-American Mormons in the United States in the nineteenth century found rhetorical ammunition to condemn Indians during attacks, justify colonization, promote evangelization, chastise slackers, legitimate prosperity, and make attractive promises to potential American Indian and Mexican converts. Mexican converts to Mormonism have reinterpreted Mormon racial doctrine in self-affirming manners. They found a fountain  of imagery that made sense out of present difficulties, glorified ancient Mexico, promised a greater future, and justified challenges to religious authorities from Utah. Euro-American church leaders in Utah tolerated diffuse interpretations of Mormon racial doctrine only to the extent that such claims did not undermine their own positions of power.

When writing is viewed simply as a source of enlightenment it conceals a network of possibly exploitative social relations. In the case of Mormonism, writing both conceals and shapes social relations. The Book of Mormon was presented by Joseph Smith as a history of the American Indians, a bridge between the historical Judeo-Christian tradition and a people not originally part of that written history. Although the author of this new scripture proclaimed that God was impartial, the text masked disparate power relations between American Indians and European colonizers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints challenged the revelatory monopoly that the Protestant Reformation had assigned to the Bible and attached eternal significance to the written word. It thus reified the practice of writing, which has since shaped Mormon practice and belief through the production of new scriptures, extensive record keeping, and an emphasis on correlated instructional materials and genealogical production of salvation. In the past few years Mormon scholars, including feminists, have used the written word to challenge and limit the power and authority of male church leaders. In so doing they have offended those general authorities who claim to represent the God of the record keepers. The writings of scholars, like those of church leaders, also disguise contested social relations hidden within the written word. This contest over the written word is itself shaped by the reification or fetishization of writing as an administrative and an enlightening device of both humans and gods.

The Book of Mormon, first published by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1830 in Palmyra, New York, draws upon colonial and antebellum biblical hermeneutics and nineteenth century myths of the origin and fate of an ancient American civilization of Mound Builders to construct a textual image of people of Hebrew descent called Lamanites. The author casts Lamanites as the antithesis of civilized, Christianized, white Nephites and employs legends of a Semitic patriarchal seed and a Hamitic curse of a dark skin to naturalize the authority of white men. The text formulates a model of conversion that conflates religious with economic, political, social, and biological transformation. Mormons of European heritage drew upon the portrait of Lamanites from this sacred text to target American Indians for conversion, adoption, and assimilation while justifying the usurpation of Native American lands. Rather than facilitating the disappearance of Lamanites, Mormon evangelization fostered the emergence of a new and dynamic Lamanite identity. American Indian converts to Mormonism in the United States, Mexico, and beyond have adopted, contested, and creatively reconstructed Lamanite status in ways that often defied Mormon attempts to turn them white. Meanwhile, Mormon scholars have struggled with archaeological, historical, and biological evidence contradicting claims of a Hebrew origin of American Indians and offered new images of Lamanites that narrowed the geographical range of the Book of Mormon from a hemispheric view to more limited geographies in places like Central America. Recent development of DNA research into American Indian origins has undermined claims of Hebrew ancestry for American Indians in Central America and beyond. Some Mormon scholars are now claiming the Hebrews of the Book of Mormon left no genetic descendants while others are entertaining the possibility that the scripture may be inspired fiction.

lected to depict the many facets of the immediate Haun's Mill tragedy. Moore's book is, nevertheless, a contribution to Mormon history and to the history of American frontier violence. It offers readers a chance to study the words and experiences of those who lived through a traumatic western event. In the 175 years since the slaughter at the mill occurred, this is the only book that has attempted in any singular fashion to outline the documents specifically connected to that tragedy. Moore's book provides a ready reference to those most pertinent primary accounts from participants and survivors of the massacre. That is what makes this book valuable and useful.

This article documents one strain of Mormon thought concerning the Woman of Endor narrative in 1 Samuel 28, in which the woman was interpreted as a prophetess enabled to raise the dead through her spiritual gifts. Church leaders eventually condemned this narrative because of its similarities with Spiritualist exegesis and American Christianity's use of the narrative to condemn Spiritualism as necromancy. Through establishing an orthodox reading of the passage, leaders strengthened the boundaries separating the two faiths – boundaries that many Spiritualists had argued were at best blurry and overlapping.

Other Mormon Histories, narratives in which formerly passive objects of history become active subjects, draw attention to the power relationships in the production of Mormon history. The Book of Mormon and traditional Mormon history imagine and then subjugate American Indians as Lamanites in a story of Christian triumphalism. Nahua authors, Margarito Bautista Valencia and Agricol Lozano Herrera, adopt the label of a Lamanite other and then domesticate Mormonism through narratives of Mexican peculiarity. Bautista's domestication of Mormon theology and his deployments of a Lamanite identity in the 1930s provoked hostility from Church leaders but that of Lozano fifty years later did not. Bautista's writings threatened power relations within the LDS Church because the other not only became a self, but the original subject also became a stigmatized object. Lozano did not stimatize Anglo-Americans in the same manner as Bautista. He moved them from subjects of their own accounts to romanticized objects of his account. While romanticizing Anglo-Americans Lozano internalized negative characterizations of Lamanites and used this imagery to warn Mexicans to avoid strident challenges to the Church hierarchy.

This article analyzes the RLDS Church’s missionary efforts in southeastern Nigeria in the 1960s. Visits by Cecil R. Ettinger in 1962 and later by Percy Farrow and Duane Couey in 1963 emphasized the need for development work and advanced education for local church leaders like Gobert Edet. Despite delays in the establishment of the mission due to the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War, the RLDS Church supported its congregations with relief aid. The RLDS Church's mission strategy in southeastern Nigeria highlights the intersection of mission work, education, and postcolonial development.

In Glossip v. Gross, the United States Supreme Court’s most recent effort to review a state’s lethal injection protocol, the Court affirmed Oklahoma’s use of a drug called midazolam and also stressed that petitioners had failed to “identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain.” This Article proposes that the Glossip Court’s “known and available alternative method of execution” requirement, however objectionable, adds another dimension to execution method challenges that attorneys must address.  As Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in Glossip notes, the requirement also strengthens the viability and suitability of the firing squad as an appropriate means of execution.  For example, the firing squad has a long history and world-wide application, making it a “known” method; it is also an easily “available” method, given the pervasive use of firearms in our society for purposes such as law enforcement and self-protection. There is also ample evidence suggesting that the firing squad is currently the most humane and reliable method of execution and that it meets the “lesser risk of pain” standard.  Indeed, the primary hurdle faced by advocates of the firing squad is the method’s “primitive” or “violent” image.  Yet this Article contends that there is no evidence that such an image is deserved, quite the contrary.  Witnesses to modern firing squad executions describe a process that may be far more sterile in perception and procedure than lethal injection—a viewpoint that may come to be shared by the public and prisoners alike.  In Glossip, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent briefly yet convincingly touches on reasons why death row inmates may prefer the firing squad over lethal injection, marking the first time that a Justice proactively and favorably compared the firing squad—or any other execution method—to lethal injection.  Such practicality may with time trump perceived barbarity in favor of the firing squad as states are increasingly unable to obtain acceptable lethal injection drugs.

In 1830–1831, low-status Mormon converts in Kirtland, Ohio ecstatically acted out Book of Mormon promises concerning the “Lamanites,” or American Indians. Some of these performances depicted classic missionary fantasies. Actors climbed atop stumps and fences to harangue imaginary Indian audiences in what they believed were authentic native languages revealed through the gift of tongues. They then guided imaginary converts into the waters of baptism. Other performances dramatized standard white fears of Indian cruelty and violence. Actors tomahawked, scalped, and disemboweled invisible foes in an epitome of the imminent apocalyptic fate of unconverted white Americans. The performances anticipated a renewed American nation in which charismatic power would ameliorate differences of gender, race, and class, but they also followed a well-worn colonial pattern of cultural appropriation, racial stereotype, and missionary paternalism.

Some Latter-day Saints have expressed optimism that DNA research would lead to a vindication of the Book of Mormon as a translation of a genuine ancient document. The hope is that DNA research would link Native Americans to ancient Israelites, buttressing LDS beliefs in a way that has not been forthcoming from archaeological, linguistic, historical, or morphological research. The results, though, have been disappointing. This essay outlines two significant insights into the geography and history of human genes and their implications for Mormon thought. If the new embrace of DNA research has an impact on Mormon views of the world, it will likely propel new approaches to scripture and history already underway in Mormon intellectual circles. First, the genealogical data inscribed in human genes suggest to current researchers that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor that lived in Africa between five and seven million years ago. This genetic data adds to the abundance of archaeological, fossil, and anatomical data pointing to ancient human origins in Africa and adds to difficulties in upholding scriptural literalism. Second, genealogical data inscribed in genes of modern humans and ancient American skeletons not only helps researchers to identify ultimate origins but also provides clues to ancient migration patterns. Current genetic data suggest that ancestors of Native Americans separated from their Asian neighbors about 40-50,000 years ago and from each other in what may have been three or more separate waves of migration by 7-15,000 years ago. No support for Mormon beliefs linking American Indians to ancient Israelites is evident in the data.

BYU Studies 5, no.  (6) 121 D espite thoughtful attempts by Douglas Davies to situate death at the center of the Mormon "culture of salvation," the exploration of death in early Mormonism has been somewhat limited to date, particularly as it relates to the Smith family and the earliest years of Mormonism. Against this relative silence stands the testimony of the Smiths themselves, who were deeply concerned with questions of mortality. Joseph Smith was unequivocal on this point during his 1843 funeral sermon for James Adams: "All men know that all men must die. What is the object of our coming into existence then dying and falling away to be here no more? This is a subject we ought to study more than any other, which we ought to study day and night. If we have any claim on our Heavenly Father for any thing it is for knowledge on this important subject." 1. There are several treatments of the experience of death in Mormonism: Douglas Davies, The Mormon Culture of Salvation (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000); Klaus J. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of

One famous target of Progressive Era attempts to rein in monopolistic big business was the eastern Sugar Trust. Less known is how federal regulators also tried to break monopoly control over beet sugar in the West by going after the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a business supported and controlled by the Latter-day Saints church and run by Mormon authorities.

As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon church's involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support.

Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.

Mormons, or members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have a distinguished history of service in the U.S. government. During a forty-year period following World War II, Mormon politicians played vital roles in transitioning several islands in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from a quasi-colonial status into the self-governing Federated States of Micronesia. This article briefly traces the complicated transition through the public service of four key Mormon administrators: Elbert D. Thomas, John A. Carver Jr., Stewart L. Udall, and Morris K. Udall. They served respectively as first civilian high commissioner of the Trust Territory, Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the Interior, and chair of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee with oversight for the Pacific.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published an online essay entitled "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies" on January 31, 2014 that conceded the failure of DNA evidence to provide affirmative support for the scripture's historical claims. Yet, the essay insists on a priority of scriptural over historical claims and offers possible reasons for the lack of genetic evidence of the ancient migrations from the Near East described in the Book of Mormon. This chapter summarizes the church's essay, the historical context behind the issues it addresses, and offers constructive and critical analysis of its claims. The chapter examines the settler colonial context out of which the Book of Mormon emerged and considers Indigenous critiques of the Book of Mormon alongside scientific analysis. The church's essay fails to engage Indigenous perspectives, ignores historical anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and avoids a discussion of oral history, archaeological, ecological, and linguistic evidence contradicting the Book of Mormon's portrayal of a white race of Nephites in ancient America. A more forthright confession of a nineteenth-century origin of the Book of Mormon and a more explicit repudiation of its racism are still needed if church leaders hope to rebuild trust with skeptical members and to establish more diplomatic and equitable relations with American Indians.

As historians engage with literary texts, they should ask a few important questions. What is the text that I am using in my research? What is the manuscript tradition from which the manuscript or text evolved? How does that evolution inform the specific period I am studying? Did it evolve orally or in written form? And are there variations that have been handed down through time and through tradition that may provide greater context or clarity to my research? Implicit in these questions is an interest in authenticity and accuracy. As literary texts evolve and are shared over time, there are multiple factors that may lead a text away from its earliest forms, such as when a narrative is orally transmitted over multiple generations and then recorded in writing or when a manuscript is repeatedly copied by hand and errors are introduced into the text. The attempt to ascertain the earliest forms of a text is known as textual criticism. This branch of scholarship started in earnest at the beginning of the European Renaissance from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and led to the European Enlightenment of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this article I will argue that scholars of Mormon history have not yet taken advantage of the historical insights that textual criticism has to offer, as a means of persuading the academic community to embrace this important methodology.

The colonists living in the new United States after the American War for Independence were faced with the problem of forming new identities once they could no longer recognize themselves, collectively or individually, as subjects of Great Britain. After the French Revolution American politicians began to weed out the more radical political elements of the newly formed United States, particularly by painting one of the revolution’s biggest defenders, Thomas Paine, as unworthy of the attention he received during the American War for Independence, and fear ran throughout the states that an anarchic revolution like the French Revolution could bring the downfall of the nation. State, local, and regional organizations sprang up to fight Jacobinism, the legendary secret group of murderers and anarchists that fought against the French government.
This distressing situation gave rise to new literature that sought to describe the “real” origins and background of Jacobinism in the War in Heaven and in Eden, and a new movement against Jacobinism was established. Fears about the organization of secret societies did not wane in the decades after the French Revolution, but worsened in the last half of the 1820s when a Freemason, William Morgan, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in connection to an exposé of Masonry he had written. Most Americans assumed that Freemasons had abducted and murdered Morgan in order to keep their oaths and rites secret.
One influential early American who was influenced by this socio-historical context was Joseph Smith, Jr., the founding prophet of Mormonism. Smith interpreted the Eden narrative in light of the movement against secret societies, and literary motifs common to anti-Jacobin literature during the period provided language and interpretive strategies for understanding the Eden narrative that would influence how Smith produced his new scripture. Only a few months after the publication of the Book of Mormon Smith edited the version of Eden found there into the text of the Bible itself and made the biblical narrative conform to the version found in the Book of Mormon through his own revisions and additions.

2021 Best Book Award, John Whitmer Historical Association.
Finalist for Best Book in "Excellence in the Study of Religion, Textual Studies" by the American Academy of Religion.
Finalist for Best Book in Religious Non-Fiction, the Association for Mormon Letters.

Publishers Weekly, Starred Review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-46965-566-6

Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Pick for the Week of May 25, 2020: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/83347-pw-picks-books-of-the-week-may-25-2020.html

Roundtable Reviews by Dr. Elizabeth Fenton, Dr. Brian Hauglid, and Dr. Michael Austin, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought:  https://www.dialoguejournal.com/2020/05/dialogue-roundtable-william-l-davis-visions-in-a-seer-stone-joseph-smith-and-the-making-of-the-book-of-mormon/

The Association for Mormon Letters, review by Andrew Hamilton: http://associationmormonletters.org/blog/reviews/current-reviews/davis-visions-in-a-seer-stone-joseph-smith-and-the-making-of-the-book-of-mormon-reviewed-by-andrew-hamilton/

The University of North Carolina Press (2020).
https://uncpress.org/book/9781469655666/visions-in-a-seer-stone/ 

In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America.

Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith’s process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books—he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

About the Dissertation:  I wrote this thesis during what might best be described as "the information gathering stage" for my research on nineteenth-century oral culture and Joseph Smith's rhetorical skills.  It represents a portion of the work that I am still pursuing and developing for a book manuscript.

Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, who sat on the Court from 1922 to 1938, is the only Justice to come from Utah. He grew up in a Mormon and, although he was never baptized a Mormon, he became a popular political figure in the state. As a Supreme Court Justice, he was one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and yet aspects of his record are progressive on women's rights and freedom of expression. This article details the future Justice's education at Brigham Young Academy from 1879 to 1881.

The Word of Wisdom, a health code introduced by Joseph Smith in 1833, has a history of varied interpretations within the larger body of Mormon faiths. Among the lesser known of these interpretations is that held by the Peyote Way of Church of God, founded in 1977 by Reverend Immanuel P. Trujillo, Rabbi Matthew S. Kent and Right Sister Anne L. Zapf in Arizona. Leaders of the Peyote Way Church of God hold a special place in their faith for the Word of Wisdom and interpret it to endorse the use of peyote, a cactus with hallucinogenic properties, as an herb. This interpretation may be surprising to members of the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) but a review of the history of the health code in the LDS faith also demonstrates a remarkable fluidity of interpretation and innovation. This is  a two part series. Both are available for download and viewing here.

The history of Mormonism in Mexico reached a new landmark early in 1997 when Colonia Industrial, a United Order community founded by Margarito Bautista Valencia, achieved, its fiftieth successful year. Second, third, and fourth generations of Mexican Mormons in Colonia Industrial celebrated through sermons and activities that remind them of their legacy. Colonia Industrial, a small, unimposing, exclusive colony of Mexican Mormons, lies in the municipio of Ozumba at the base of Popocatepetl, an active volcano in the central valley of Mexico. While the growth of the LDS church in Mexico (claimed 720,000 members in 1995) dwarfs the small offshoot in Colonia Industrial, these Mexican Mormons' tenacious adherence to the socioeconomic principles of the United Order and plural marriage is a tribute to the testimony and fervor of their founder, Margarito Bautista Valencia.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is officially known, has emphasised the Christian vocation to mission almost since its founding in the USA in April 1830. While Mormon historians have written a great deal about the denomination’s success in West Africa very little has been written about Mormonism in South Africa. The present paper aims to fill part of the gap by relating the experience of one of Mormonism’s first missionaries to the continent i.e. Jesse Haven. In a conclusion the question is addressed whether Mormonism’s American origins or its drive to gather in an American Zion made it just too foreign or too un-Afrikaans to be compatible with the emerging identity of the Afrikaans nation.

In 1997 in the New Yorker, Sidney Harris published a cartoon depicting the “Ethel Mormon Tabernacle Choir” singing “There’s NO business like SHOW business...” Besides the obvious play on the names of Ethel Merman and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the cartoon, in an odd way, is a true-to-life commentary on the image of the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir (MTC) in the mid-1990s; at this time the Choir was seen as an entertainment ensemble, not just a church choir. This leads us to the central question of this dissertation, what changes took place in the latter part of the twentieth century to secularize the repertoire of the primary choir for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)?

In the 1860s, when the MTC began, its sole purpose was to perform for various church meetings, in particular for General Conference of the LDS church which was held in the Tabernacle at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. From the beginning of the twentieth century and escalating during the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the Choir’s role changed from an in-house choir for the LDS church to a choir that also fulfilled a cultural and entertainment function, not only for the LDS church but also for the American public at large. The primary demarcation for this change is seen through the Choir’s repertoire. Several major periods represent the change: (1) J. Spencer Cornwall’s tenure (1935-1957) in which there was a creation of a core repertoire of mostly sacred works, (2) The increasing secularization of the Choir’s repertoire during Columbia Records’ recording contract with Richard P. Condie (1957-1974), and (3) The period under Jerold Ottley’s direction (1974-1999) in which there was a struggle to control the recording repertoire—which eventually led to the separation of the repertoire by Jerold Ottley into secular albums dictated by Columbia and sacred albums of Ottley’s choice—which lasted until the end of the relationship between Columbia and the MTC.

801.422.8283 mi.byu.edu/bushman • • RICHARD L. BUSHMAN is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University and author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. He occupied the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California from 2008 to 2011. Bushman received his BA and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Bushman has taught at What does the future hold for Mormonism in the academy? How does personal faith impact one’s scholarship? How might scholarly women and men speak of faith in secular places and times?