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Polygamy

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 9: December 1841 – April 1842

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Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

As we reach the last few years of Joseph Smith’s life, the Documents series volumes cover decreasing amounts of time while still requiring a significant number of pages. This volume covers five months in 595 pages. I’ve been told volume 15 will cover a mere five weeks.

Volume 9 takes place between December 1841 and April 1842. During this time, Joseph Smith opened a store, became vice mayor of Nauvoo, took over as editor of the Times and Seasons, joined the Freemasons, and helped start the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, all while continuing to sell land to incoming Saints, lead the church, and command the Nauvoo Legion. An estimated 70 percent of the documents in this volume were not published prior to the Joseph Smith Papers Project. The documents consist of letters, revelations (many of them personal, so not canonized), discourses, legal and business documents, minutes from meetings, and selections from the Times and Seasons. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 9: December 1841 – April 1842

FairMormon Conference Podcast #44 – René Krywult, “Fear Leads to the Dark Side: How to Navigate the Shallows of (Mis)Information”

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

René Krywult, Fear Leads to the Dark Side: How to Navigate the Shallows of (Mis)Information

Transcript available here.

René Alexander Krywult, a native of Vienna, Austria, Europe, has been a member of FairMormon for over eighteen years and has been instrumental in founding the German-speaking FairMormon group. He is a software developer and project manager for a European financial institution. He is married to Gabriele Krywult, and they have four children and three grandchildren. His first publication was “Mormon Deification Compared to Orthodox Christian Theosis” in the magazine Spirituality in East and West of Dialog Center International, a Protestant network of organizations engaged in researching new religious movements. More articles on the FairMormon website followed. He organized four FairMormon conferences in Germany from 2009 to 2015 and spoke at all of them.

Rene’s particular focus is on comparing the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with those of both traditional Christians and the early Christian centuries. He had his first contact with anti-Mormonism at age 14, and from that time on one of his major interests has been to understand how anti-Mormon literature works, how to discern the reliability of information provided, and how to grow in faith while studying arguments made by the opposition.

Brother Krywult served, among other callings, as ward Sunday school president, ward mission leader, elders quorum president, Seminary and Institute teacher and counsellor in a bishopric: Currently he serves as a High Councilor in the Vienna-Austria Stake. His native language is German.

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.

FairMormon Conference Podcast #30 – Jenny Lund, “‘We all must be crazy’: The Plight of a 19th-Century Mormon Missionary Wife”

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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.

Jim Bennett: Standing My Ground

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[Jim Bennett is the author of “A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter from a Former CES Employee“]

So it’s been a few days since Bill Reel published our twelve hours of recorded conversations we had for his Mormon Discussions podcast. And since then, I’ve been wading through the comments and finding that the consensus seems to be that in our Historic Podcast Battle for Church Trueness, Bill won handily, and I, and the Church, lost.

That assessment comes from the regular audience for Bill Reel’s podcast, which I’d be willing to bet includes far more disaffected or former church members than it does active Latter-day Saints. I expected their reaction to what I said to be interpreted through a far more skeptical lens than my own, and it doesn’t surprise me to see them giving the victory to “their guy” instead of me. Even so, I don’t think their interpretation is a fair or objective assessment of the discussion that took place.

I did not know Bill Reel prior to these podcasts, but a mutual friend thought it would be fun to see the two of us go “toe to toe” about the response I’d written to the CES Letter. My reply, perhaps naively, was that I was happy to speak to anyone about it, but I wasn’t interested in a debate so much as a discussion. Bill agreed to that, and we had the first of six early-morning recording sessions a few weeks ago. I thought the exchanges were respectful; I thought Bill gave me ample opportunity to represent my position, and I was overall pleased with the conversation as a whole.

Then they were published, and comments like the following started rolling in:

[Read more…] about Jim Bennett: Standing My Ground

Book Review: We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps

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Available at a discount at the FairMormon Bookstore

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

FairMormon Conference Podcast #20 – Brittany Chapman Nash, “An Act of Religious Conviction: Mormon Women and Nineteenth-Century Polygamy”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This episode is a presentation from 2015. If you would like to watch the presentations from our most recent conference, you can still purchase video streaming.

Brittany Chapman Nash, An Act of Religious Conviction: Mormon Women and Nineteenth-Century Polygamy

Transcript available here.

Brittany A. Chapman Nash is a historian at the Church History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She received a BA in Humanities from Brigham Young University and an MA in Victorian Studies from the University of Leicester. She specializes in nineteenth-century Mormon women’s history and is co-editor with Richard E. Turley Jr. of the seven-volume Women of Faith in the Latter Days series, which features the life writings of Latter-day Saint women. She serves on the executive committee of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team (MWHIT). She and her husband, Peter Nash, live in Salt Lake City.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2015 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Book Review: Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth 1815-1846

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Available from the FairMormon bookstore

One of the tactics that critics have used recently to try to destroy faith is to describe a lesser known event in church history in a way that is intended to shock the reader. By sensationalizing and removing it from its context, and often even misrepresenting what actually happened, the victim is left feeling betrayed by the Church, thinking they have been lied to or that the Church has been hiding or whitewashing its history. Sadly, much of this history has been available (though perhaps not readily accessible), but not emphasized in the curriculum that is taught, requiring independent study, which has not been happening as much in recent generations.

The Church has recognized this problem and is producing a solution. The first volume of a projected four-volume series has now been published in 14 languages and is available in paperback and e-book, as well as online text and audiobook formats. It is written in an easy to understand style, which although entirely factual, draws you in like a novel. This was done intentionally by having literary writers on the project, not just historians. For those who want more information, there are extensive footnotes that point you to online resources, including both in-depth essays and videos, as well as original documents from the Joseph Smith Papers.

The book begins with a message from the First Presidency and a preface explaining the purpose of the series. The body of the book continues, contained in four parts, which are broken up by historic periods. There are also maps, but no other illustrations beyond the small ornaments at the head of each chapter. The back of the book has Notes, a Note on Sources, Sources Cited, Acknowledgements, and a fairly good 15-page Index.

The first volume covers the period preceding the First Vision up to two years after the death of Joseph Smith, when the Saints were able to receive the endowment in the Nauvoo Temple. It covers nearly every criticism and puts them in their proper context, where they can be more easily understood. It concentrates on telling stories of the actual men and women involved, rather than just the institutional church, as previous official histories produced by the Church have done. The result is a detailed history of the Church that includes the sensitive issues while building faith, which already has some critics worried that their work will become irrelevant.

An example is the story of how the Word of Wisdom was received: [Read more…] about Book Review: Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth 1815-1846

FairMormon Conference Podcast #14 – Special Episode on Saints #2 of 2 – Steve Harper, “Making Saints: A Look into the Writing of the New Church History”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This is a special episode that contains the second of two presentations given at our conference earlier this month about the new book series being published by the Church, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. The first volume will be released on Tuesday, September 4. (If you would like to watch the video of this and the other presentations from the 2018 conference, you can still purchase video streaming.)

More information about Saints is available in the April 2018 Newsroom story and at saints.lds.org. A review will be posted here after the book is released.

Steve Harper, Making Saints: A Look into the Writing of the New Church History

Steven C. Harper is a historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has served as an editor of The Joseph Smith Papers, working on volumes in the Documents series and the Revelations and Translations series. He taught religion at BYU from 2002 to 2012 and religion and history at BYU–Hawaii from 2000 to 2001. He earned his PhD in early American history from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Joseph Smith’s First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (2012), Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants (2008), and Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares 1600–1763 (2006), as well as multiple published articles on early Mormonism and the early American republic. Two of these were awarded the T. Edgar Lyon and Juanita Brooks awards by the Mormon History Association.

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.

Book Review: 1,001 Facts About the Prophet Joseph Smith

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Available at a discount from the FairMormon bookstore

This is a short (151 pages) paperback book that contains 1,001 numbered paragraphs that chronologically narrate the life of Joseph Smith, essentially constituting a simple biography. “One of the main goals of this book is to tell the real story, while making it simple to read and understand. 1,001 Facts about the Prophet Joseph Smith is a history book for this generation. The entire book can be read in one sitting, or readers can jump around to different moments in the prophet’s life and learn about their favorite and the more fascinating events” (page 2). The author also intends the book to combat the anti-Mormon propaganda being spread on the Internet.

Here are several examples from the book that I thought were of interest: [Read more…] about Book Review: 1,001 Facts About the Prophet Joseph Smith

Part 2 of 2: Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24B)

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Angelika Kauffmann: “Thou Art the Man!”

 

An Old Testament KnoWhy relating to the reading assignment for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 24: “Create in Me a Clean Heart” (2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51) (JBOTL24B)

This article continues a detailed commentary begun in article JBOTL24A on 2 Samuel 11-12, the story of the fall of David. Robert Alter summarizes this tragic story as follows:

The Book of Samuel is one of those rare masterworks that … evinces an unblinking and abidingly instructive knowingness about man as a political animal in all his contradictions and venality and in all his susceptibility to the brutalization and the seductions of exercising power. And yet, David is more than a probing representation of the ambiguities of political power. He is also an affecting and troubling image of human destiny as husband and father and as a man moving from youth to prime to the decrepitude of old age. The great pivotal moment of the whole story in this regard is when he turns to his perplexed courtiers, after putting aside the trappings of mourning he had assumed for his ailing infant son, now dead, and says, ‘I am going to him. He will not come back to me.’ These … words … have no conceivable political motive[; they] give us a glimpse into his inwardness, revealing his sense of naked vulnerability to the inexorable mortality that is the fate of all humankind. For the rest of the story, we see David’s weakness and his bonds of intimate attachment in fluctuating conflict with the imperatives of power that drive him as a king surrounded by potential enemies and betrayers.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL24B — Why Is the Story of David and Bathsheba Significant? (Part 2 of 2)