A City-State on a Hill

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Spencer W. McBride
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Church Member ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

This chapter examines the founding and the incorporation of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith works with new church member John C. Bennett to draft a charter that grants Nauvoo an unprecedented combination of powers. Smith and Bennett argue that such powers are necessary to protect the Latter-day Saints from a repeat of the persecutions they experienced in Missouri and that the federal government’s refusal to protect religious minorities made such protections even more important at the local level. Illinois is divided between the Whigs and the Democrats at this time, and both parties are courting the support of the Mormons. As a result, the charter is approved overwhelmingly by the Illinois state legislature.

The Mormon City in Decline

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-30
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the preparation for and eventual abandonment of Nauvoo, Illinois, by the Mormons following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism). It marks the failed attempts to sell properties by the faith’s new leader, Brigham Young, and the eventual resettlement of the city by a French communal society known as the Icarians. The chapter also traces the Icarian’s demise and the German farmers and vintners who next occupied Nauvoo, transforming it into a rural river village by occupying, repurposing, or removing remaining Mormon structures while remaking the city’s religious character.

Joseph Smith for President

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spencer W. McBride
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Political System ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
White House ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
National Bank ◽  
The Church

In 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers—and a militia of some 2,500 men. In this year, his priority was protecting the lives and civil rights of his people. Having failed to win the support of any of the presidential contenders for these efforts, Smith launched his own renegade campaign for the White House, one that would end with his assassination at the hands of an angry mob. Smith ran on a platform that called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country’s penitentiaries, the re-establishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy, and most importantly, an expansion of protections for religious minorities. Spencer W. McBride tells the story of Smith’s quixotic but consequential run for the White House and shows how his calls for religious freedom helped to shape the American political system we know today.

Return to the City of Joseph

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

In the 1840s, Nauvoo, Illinois, was a religious boomtown, the headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), a controversial religion whose theology, social practices, and solidarity led to cultural conflict. By the mid-1840s, Joseph Smith, the religion’s prophet-leader, was killed, and thousands of Mormons relocated west to Utah. During the twentieth century, the Latter-day Saints returned to their former headquarters in Nauvoo, Illinois, in a dramatic way. Acquiring nearly half of the property in the city, the faith transformed the sleepy Mississippi River town into a historical re-creation of its earlier splendor. However, as it did in the nineteenth century, Mormonism’s presence in western Illinois in the twentieth century created conflict. Competing groups, including the religion’s sister faith, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ, offered a rival interpretation of Nauvoo’s past. Additionally, community members without a connection to either branch of Mormonism sought to preserve their own rich history in the city. Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo examines the conflicts over historical memory that have developed as Mormonism returned to western Illinois. It focuses on the social history of the community, examining interactions between groups impacted by Mormonism’s touristic takeover. In a broader way, it also intersects with studies of historical tourism and pilgrimage.

scholarly journals Political Representation in the Discourse and Practices of the “Party of the Common Man” in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Man ◽  
The Many ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

One of the many challenges presented by populism concerns its relationship with political representation. What happens when an anti-politics movement wins elections? This article offers an analysis of the exercise of power by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, Party of the Common Man), which has been ruling the city-state of Delhi since 2015, in order to bring elements of answer to this question. On the basis of discourse analysis as well as direct observation of meetings, the article first identifies a series of populist tropes in the official discourse of the AAP, including a de-emphasis on representation to the advantage of participation. It then describes the two main participatory schemes implemented by the AAP government since 2015, and shows that these generate, in different ways, a magnification of the mediation work that is central to political representation at the local level in the Indian context. Finally, the article argues that the party has been developing, through these participatory schemes, a form of “inclusive representation” (Hayat, 2013), in which inclusion is linked to mobilization.

“Aunt Jane” or Joseph’s Adopted Daughter?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Perry Mueller
Keyword(s):  
African Descent ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Covenantal Community ◽  
The City

This chapter examines the period during which the Latter-day Saints built “the City of Joseph” in Nauvoo, Illinois. During this time, in a limited manner the Mormons attempted to create a Zion that included people of African descent. Both contemporaneous and retrospective archival records from this period portray Joseph Smith Jr. as a prophet who welcomed blacks as (all but) full members of the Mormon covenantal community. Yet Joseph and other Smith family members were far from colorblind. In fact, the Smiths’ willingness to accept black Mormons like Jane Manning James was predicated on the black Mormons’ ability to overcome the legacy of spiritual inferiority of the cursed lineages into which they were born. If they remained faithful to the gospel, then their cursed bloodlines would be purified. This inward change meant that these black Saints could become equal to their white brethren and (eventually) white themselves.

“The Way of the Transgressor Is Hard”

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-91
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This chapter mentions HR 0627, which tenders an apology to the Latter-day Saints for the misguided expulsion of their Mormon ancestors from the city of Nauvoo and the State of Illinois in 1846. It recounts the years after the Mormons were expelled from Missouri in 1838 to 1839, in which the Saints developed the swamp land in the far west of the state into the thriving economic community of Nauvoo. It also looks into the argument about HR 0627's contention that the Saints were initially expelled from Missouri and welcomed in Illinois in part because Joseph Smith was a strong anti-slavery advocate. The chapter analyzes the problem related to HR 0627 that wrongly isolates Mormon expulsion from any larger political context. It also offers an alternative narrative that puts Illinois's removal of both Indians and Mormons in the context of gender, political culture, and ultimately American empire.

Nauvoo as a Reorganized Church Foothold

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Tourism ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
The City

Though Nauvoo was abandoned by most Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, Emma Smith, the widow of Church founder Joseph Smith, and her children remained in the city, maintaining a Mormon presence in western Illinois. This chapter examines the rise of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Community of Christ), founded by Smith’s children, and their use of family and historic sites in Nauvoo in the early twentieth century. It discusses the transformation of these sites from family residences to religious tourism centers used to proselytize people to the faith. It also introduces the competing views of Mormonism that developed between the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Reorganized Church.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Verdichten mit «Greening», oder was wir von Singapur lernen können (Essay)

2015 ◽  
Vol 166 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-222
Author(s):  
Urs Gantner
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Botanical Gardens ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Urban Neighbourhoods ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
City State ◽  
Vertical Greening ◽  
The City

Densification by greening, or what we can learn from Singapore (essay) Singapore, a city-state with a high population density, wants to give its population, its tourists and its economy a living and livable city and has developed the concept of the Garden City. Parks, nature reserves, forest, green corridors, trees, botanical gardens, horizontal and vertical greening of buildings, as well as popular participation, are all important for this vision of the city. Singapore is counting on dense construction alongside “greening” and biodiversity. Let us be prepared to learn from Singapore's example! Our land is also a non-renewable resource. To protect our ever more limited agricultural land, we should renounce any extension of building land, and free ourselves from the expanding carpets of suburban development. Let us build multiple urban neighbourhoods with mixed use and more biodiversity. Let us develop new types of communal gardens. Urban gardens in the widest sense – from private gardens to garden cooperatives, to parks and botanical gardens – are a part of our living space. The city should be our garden.

The City-State of Boston

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK PETERSON
Keyword(s):  
City State ◽  
The City
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