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LDS History

FAIR Voice Podcast #9: Interview with Chris Blythe on the Terrible Revolution

August 13, 2020 by Hanna Seariac

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Christopher Blythe, a research associate at the Maxwell Institute and co-editor of the Journal of Mormon History, released a new book Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse. In this engaging interview, he discusses with Hanna some of the foundational sources that construct LDS theology on last days prophecies.

Hanna Seariac

Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She is writing a book on the history of the priesthood and another one that responds systematically to anti-LDS literature. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a producer on a news show. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.

Filed Under: FAIR Voice, Hanna Seariac, Joseph Smith, LDS Culture, LDS History, Podcast, Prophets

Q&A with editors of Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity

July 24, 2020 by FAIR Staff

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

This book includes a mixture of scholarship about all of Joseph Smith’s translation projects, including the highly anticipated paper by Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon on the use of the Clarke Commentary in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. We had the opportunity to discuss the book with Michael Hubbard MacKay and Mark Ashurst-McGee. A review of the book will be forthcoming.

Q1: What is the purpose of the book?

Mike and Mark: The book was conceived as an attempt to cover all of the various Joseph Smith translation projects—not only the Book of Mormon and the “New Translation” of the Bible and the Book of Abraham but also the excerpt from the new account of John (D&C 7), the excerpt from the “record of John” (in D&C 93), the Kinderhook plates, and anything else. This had actually never been done before—at least not at this depth. [Read more…] about Q&A with editors of Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Book reviews, Joseph Smith, LDS History, LDS Scriptures, New Testament, Prophets

Vaughn J. Featherstone’s Atlanta Temple Letter

June 13, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

[FairMormon has received several questions about this recently, so we were pleased to see Interpreter publish this essay by Christopher J. Blythe. It has been cross-posted with permission.]

Abstract: In this essay, I examine a letter written by Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone in 1983 and deposited in the cornerstone of the Atlanta Georgia Temple. The letter is addressed to twenty-first century members of the Church and is written with the expectation that these future Saints will have been alive for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. I consider the claims made about this letter from a recent viral video entitled “7 Year Tribulation in the SEVENTH Seal TIMELINE.”

On March 12, 2020, the video “7 Year Tribulation in the SEVENTH Seal TIMELINE” was released on YouTube.1 Six weeks later it had 375,000 views and had made the rounds on various Facebook groups, including one devoted to discussion among seminary teachers. The video presents a last days timeline that places the Second Coming in the very near future. The video’s creator, Masayoshi Montemayor, makes his points largely through official Church sources, including the Church’s website, institute manuals, and conference reports. However, in other instances, he points to obscure sources, including an April 1983 letter written by Seventy Vaughn J. Featherstone. This letter serves as Montemayor’s final piece of evidence for an imminent second coming. In this essay, I examine this document to understand its limitations for the argument Montemayor makes. My goal is not to criticize Elder Featherstone or to disparage sincere Latter-day Saints — among them presumably this video’s creator — who like myself are eager to be present for our Savior’s coming. [Read more…] about Vaughn J. Featherstone’s Atlanta Temple Letter

Filed Under: Doctrine, LDS Culture, LDS History, Perspective, Prophets

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

May 18, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Nauvoo is getting busy. This volume contains 623 pages but covers only a four month timespan. Two of the biggest things that happened were the excommunication of John C. Bennett and rumors of Joseph Smith’s involvement in an assassination attempt on Lilburn W. Boggs. When Bennett left Nauvoo, Joseph became the mayor which made him even busier. For further context, this time period is covered in pages 453 – 477 of Saints, Voume. 1.

This volume features 105 documents out of nearly 400 available for this time period. Other documents are available at the Joseph Smith Papers website. However, as always, the footnotes and editorial information on each document make the book well worth having. Some of the items featured in the book are Nauvoo city scrip signed by Joseph Smith, a poem written by Eliza R. Snow for Joseph Smith, and the only known revelation giving instructions for performing a plural marriage. There are also notes from a number of sermons he gave. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 10: May – August 1842

Filed Under: Book reviews, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Polygamy, Temples

FairMormon Conference Podcast #57 – Brian C. Hales, “Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon”

May 8, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Brian C. Hales, Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon

Brian C. Hales is the author or co-author of seven books dealing with plural marriage—most notably the three-volume, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology (Greg Kofford Books, 2013) He and his wife Laura are the current webmasters of JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. Presently, Brian is working on two book-length manuscripts dealing with Joseph Smith’s treasure seeking and the authorship of the Book of Mormon. He served a mission to Venezuela for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for fourteen years. Brian is also past president of the Utah Medical Association (2013) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (2015).

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

Interpreting Scripture, History, Science, and Creation

May 4, 2020 by Ben Spackman

Ben Spackman is a Latter-day Saint scholar who works in American religious history, history of science, and Biblical interpretation. He is writing a dissertation at Claremont on LDS creationism/evolution conflict in the 20th century, and has spoken at the FairMormon Conference in 2017 and 2019. This is cross-posted at his site, BenSpackman.com

May 4th holds significance in LDS history: it’s the day Joseph Smith introduced temple ordinances in the upper room of the red brick store in 1842. The temple ties together a number of questions, like: [Read more…] about Interpreting Scripture, History, Science, and Creation

Filed Under: Bible, LDS Culture, LDS History, Prophets, Science, Temples

FairMormon Conference Podcast #56 – Matthew C. Godfrey, “Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church”

April 23, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Matthew C. Godfrey, Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church

Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor and the managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers. He holds a PhD in American and public history from Washington State University. He has contributed to several Joseph Smith Papers volumes, including Documents, Volume 2; Documents, Volume 4; Documents, Volume 7, and the forthcoming Documents, Volume 10, and Documents, Volume 12. He is the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (2007), which was a co-winner of the Mormon History Association’s Smith-Petit Award for Best First Book. He is also the co-editor of The Earth Shall Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (2019). Matthew has published articles in Agricultural History, The Public Historian, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, Mormon Historical Studies, and various collections of essays. His research interests and expertise include environmental history, business and financial history, and the history of Zion’s Camp.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #54 – Larry Morris, “The Eight Witnesses”

April 3, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming. (Use coupon SPRING2020 and get the entire conference for $10!)

Larry Morris, The Eight Witnesses

Larry E. Morris, an independent writer and historian, is the author of A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). He was previously an editor with both the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and the Joseph Smith Papers. He is the co-editor, with John W. Welch, of Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness (Maxwell Institute, 2006) and has published articles on Mormon history in BYU Studies, the FARMS Review, the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, the Journal of Mormon History, the Ensign, and the New Era. He is also quite interested in early Western history and is the author of In the Wake of Lewis and Clark: The Expedition and the Making of Antebellum America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); and The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition (Yale University Press, 2004). Larry and his wife, Deborah, live in Salt Lake City and have four children and eight grandchildren.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #52 – Elizabeth Kuehn, “The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841”

March 2, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Elizabeth Kuehn, The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841

Transcript available here.

Elizabeth Kuehn received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Arizona State University and her Masters of Arts from Purdue University in History, with a focus on religious history and women and gender studies in early modern European history. She entered a doctoral program in History at the University of California, Irvine, and became a PhD candidate there in 2011.

Since 2013, she has worked as a documentary editor and historian on the Joseph Smith Papers Project based at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a co-editor of several documentary editions of the Joseph Smith Papers, including Documents Volume 5: October 1835-January 1838 and Documents Volume 6: February 1838 – August 1839, both of which were published in 2017. She is currently the lead editor on Documents Volume 10: May to August 1842, forthcoming in spring 2020.

For the last six years her research has specialized in the Latter-day Saint community in Kirtland, Ohio and the financial records of Joseph Smith. More recently she has worked on controversies in Nauvoo in 1842, including Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy proceedings and plural marriage. She has worked to bring greater inclusion of women and representation of their experiences to the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Women

Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

February 18, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

Newel Knight lived from September 13, 1800 to January 11, 1847. He met Joseph Smith in 1826 and remained close friends with him until Joseph’s death. He was directly involved in some of the early events in church history, so his autobiography and journals are valuable to historians. However, these have only been available in manuscript form, in several different versions, which have made them difficult to use. This book amalgamates them in a coherent form and provides a transcription that can be better understood and cited.

The book splits Knight’s writing into five parts, covering different chronological periods of his life. Each section has an introduction with a biographical summary. Editorial remarks are given in footnotes, and spelling and punctuation are generally retained, except in cases where the editors felt clarification was necessary (which to me seemed inconsistent, and in at least one case, possibly incorrect[1]).

There are many things included that are important, such as a letter from Joseph Smith that has not been published in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Christ’s appearance in the Kirtland Temple[2], many accounts of healings, the aftermath of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the exodus from Nauvoo. Despite his human imperfections, Knight comes to life as a role model worth emulating with his tremendous faith, even during discouragement, and always remembering to be grateful for the blessings that followed.

I found this particular episode of 1839 in Nauvoo to be very interesting, involving his wife Lydia: [Read more…] about Book Review: The Rise of the Latter-day Saints: The Journals and Histories of Newel Knight

Filed Under: Book reviews, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Marriage, Priesthood, Prophets, Resources, Temples, Testimonies, Women

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