Religious Studies

Christopher James Blythe is a historian, folklorist, and scholar of Latter-day Saint literature whose work explores the history, beliefs, stories, and religious culture of the Latter Day Saint tradition. He is an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, where he teaches folklore and Latter-day Saint literature.

Blythe earned a PhD in American Religious History from Florida State University, an MA in history and a BA in religious studies from Utah State University, and a BA in anthropology from Texas A&M University. His scholarship brings together the methods of history, folklore, religious studies, and literary studies to examine how religious communities understand scripture, prophecy, supernatural experience, and sacred history.

Before joining the BYU faculty, Blythe worked as a historian and documentary editor for the Joseph Smith Papers and as a research associate at BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He co-edited three volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers Documents series and has served as an editor of the Journal of Mormon History.

Blythe is the author of Terrible Revolution: Latter Day Saints and the American Apocalypse, a study of Latter-day Saint apocalyptic thought and its relationship to American history. He is also a co-editor of Open Canon: Scriptures of the Latter Day Saint Tradition. His research has appeared in numerous academic publications and addresses subjects including prophecy, scripture, folklore, visionary experience, Latter-day Saint history, and religious belief.

His work for FAIR brings historical and folkloric context to subjects that can seem unusual to modern readers, examining how Latter-day Saint scripture and tradition developed within broader biblical, religious, and cultural worlds.