by V.H. Cassler
If you were not reading carefully, you may have missed an extraordinary bit of commentary by Elder Quentin L. Cook in the July 2020 Ensign. Speaking about how Church history can be a source of strength and inspiration, Elder Cook stated [I’ve added some highlights]: [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me Week 46 – Doctrine and Covenants 129-132
This volume of the Joseph Smith Papers contains 96 representative documents from the period of March – July 1841. During this time period, Joseph continued having legal problems with Missouri, the Kinderhook Plates were found, he led the Nauvoo Legion, construction continued on the Nauvoo House and temple, and he taught about the temple, eternal marriage, and plural marriage. Meanwhile Nauvoo continued to grow, and the church grew outside of Nauvoo and outside of the United States.
One document that I thought showed an interesting side of Joseph Smith’s personality was a response to a letter he had received from Abraham Jonas of Columbus, Illinois, asking to borrow a cannon. He wanted it for use in celebrating the failure of the establishment of a new county. Joseph’s response was to grant permission, along with a note at the end saying “Five hund[r]ed cannons you should have if I had them” (page 112). [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Volume 12: March-July 1843
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Valerie M. Hudson is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the George H.W. Bush Chair at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security. She has previously taught at Brigham Young, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. Her research foci include foreign policy analysis, security studies, gender and international relations, and methodology. Hudson’s articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, Journal of Peace Research, American Political Science Review, and Foreign Policy Analysis. She is the author or editor of several books, including (with Andrea Den Boer) Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (MIT Press, 2004), which won the American Association of Publishers Award for the Best Book in Political Science, and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Best Book in Social Demography, resulting in feature stories in the New York Times, The Economist, 60 Minutes, and other news publications. Hudson was named to the list of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009. Winner of numerous teaching awards and recipient of a National Science Foundation research grant and a Minerva Initiative grant from the US Department of Defense, she served as the director of graduate studies for the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies at BYU for eight years, and served as Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012. Hudson is one of the Principal Investigators of the WomanStats Project, which includes the largest compilation of data on the status of women in the world today. She is also a founding editor of SquareTwo, a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. She has testified before Congress on three occasions, is president of the Utah Valley Institute of Cystic Fibrosis, and co-founded the LDS National Security Society. Her recent books include Sex and World Peace, co-authored with Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad Emmett, The Hillary Doctrine, co-authored with Patricia Leidl, and The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide,co-authored with Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen, all three published by Columbia University Press. She and her husband David, an artist and landscape architect, are the parents of eight children.
Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She has interests in the interaction that the Greek New Testament has with the Septuagint as well as sacrifice in ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.
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Polygamy is a difficult concept for many to grasp, but Hanna dives into the Hebrew Bible and the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s to understand polygamy in a way that shows how it was not just acceptable– it was ordained and good for the time. She unapologetically explains how God consecrates everything for our good and how polygamy made sense for the time. She, then, dives into 1 Corinthians 13 and expresses love for the idea of love.
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 really good ice cream.
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
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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.
Jeffrey Bradshaw, Stories of the Saints in the DR Congo
Transcript available here.
Dr. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw is a Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has been the recipient of several awards and patents and has been an adviser for initiatives in science, defense, space, industry, and academia worldwide. He chairs the Scientific Advisory Council for the Nissan Research Center—Silicon Valley and is a former co-editor of the Human-Centered Computing Department for IEEE Intelligent Systems. He was a member of the Defense Science Board 2015 Study on Autonomy, the Board on Global Science and Technology for the National Academies of Science, and the National Research Council Committee on Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience Research.
Jeff serves as a vice president for The Interpreter Foundation and is on the Advisory Board for the Academy for Temple Studies. His articles on temple studies and the ancient Near East have appeared in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, Element: A Journal of Mormon Philosophy and Theology, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, Meridian Magazine, and BYU Studies. Jeff has written detailed commentaries on the book of Moses and Genesis 1-11 and on temple themes in the scriptures. For LDS-related publications, see www.TempleThemes.net.
Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975–1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France: once from 1993–1994 as a Fulbright Scholar and a second time from 2005–2006 as an unexpected “sabbatical” in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan. Jeff has served twice as a bishop and twice as a counselor in the stake presidency of the Pensacola Florida Stake. He and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and twelve grandchildren. In June 2018, they finished two years of service in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa Mission.
Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.
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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.
Lynne Hilton Wilson, Peter and Paul’s Paradoxical Passages on Women
Transcript available here.
Dr. Lynne Hilton Wilson lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband Dow R. Wilson. She is mother to seven children—all with red hair. During her under-graduate years at BYU in 1982 she studied nursing and the cello. She received an MA in Religious Studies from Cardinal Stritch University. Her thesis explored Christ’s birth narratives in the New Testament. She received a PhD in Theology and American History at Marquette University where she focused her dissertation on Joseph Smith’s doctrine of the Spirit compared to his contemporaries. She has been an adjunct professor at BYU and iis now the Stake institute director and teacher in the Menlo Park, California Stake for the Stanford single wards. She has written three books and published several papers. She is a popular speaker at BYU Women’s Conference, Education week, the Society of Biblical Literature, the Mormon History Association, Sperry Symposiums, and many others.
Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.
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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.
Jenny Lund, “We all must be crazy”: The Plight of a 19th-Century Mormon Missionary Wife
Transcript available here.
Jennifer L. Lund is director of the Historic Sites Division in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She received a BA in English from the University of Utah and a MA in American history from Brigham Young University. She has worked in the field of museums and historic sites for more than thirty years. The author of a number of articles and book reviews published in professional journals, she is currently editing a documentary edition of letters from the wife of a nineteenth-century Mormon missionary.
Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.
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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.
Taunalyn Rutherford, “For We Shall See Him as He Is”: Understanding Mormon Women in India
Transcript available here.
Taunalyn Ford Rutherford was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She earned a BA in History and an MA in Humanities from Brigham Young University and served an LDS mission in Stockholm Sweden. Recently she received her PhD in History of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. Her dissertation and her current book project focus on the growth of Mormonism in India. Her work has been published in academic journals and books, but her favorite works are her five children co-authored by her husband Jim Rutherford. She currently resides in Draper, Utah, and is an adjunct professor of religion at BYU.
Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.
William Wines Phelps (usually known as W. W. Phelps) is probably most often thought of in conjunction with some of the most beloved hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Praise to the Man,” “The Spirit of God,” “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain,” and “If You Could Hie to Kolob” are just a few of the fifteen hymns that he wrote that appear in the current hymnal. But there was so much more to his life, and Bruce Van Orden, an emeritus professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, has been researching it for decades. This research was recently given a boost by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, which gave greater access to materials that Phelps was involved with.
There is little known about Phelps’s early life, or where and how he was educated, but he grew into a very intelligent and articulate man. He joined the Church in 1831 at age 39, and his talents were immediately put to use. He served in church leadership councils, including the Council of Fifty (it was he that coined the term “theodemocracy”); he was a writer, poet, and printer, and actually did more ghostwriting for Joseph Smith than was previously realized. He was also very much a family man, as well as a close friend of Joseph (again, moreso than has previously been understood). This book concentrates on these facets of his life.
[Read more…] about Book Review: We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps
