13. The Historic Conflicts of Our Time: Ezra Taft Benson and Twentieth-Century Media Representations of Latter-day Saints

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-220
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Latter Day Saints

Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Apocalyptic Trajectories

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-270
Author(s):  
Christopher James Blythe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
First Century ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
The Face ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Final Group

This chapter documents the fracturing of end-of-world belief among Latter-day Saints in the twentieth century. Church leaders re-envisioned apocalypticism as a “moderate millenarianism.” At the same time, Mormon fundamentalists—deemed heretics by many church leaders—deployed apocalypticism to challenge the processes of Americanization, adding the church’s own apostasy as a distinctive part of their last days chronology. Finally, radical apocalypticism continued to find resonance with a contingent of committed Latter-day Saints. This chapter wrestles with how this final group has been able to negotiate their apocalyptic sentiments and LDS affiliation even in the face of continual criticism. Most importantly, it is in this chapter that the author demonstrates how apocalyptic ideas of any variety continued to be perpetuated in private and family circles.

scholarly journals Future-Day Saints: Abrahamic Astronomy, Anthropological Futures, and Speculative Religion

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 612
Author(s):  
Jon Bialecki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is an intense interest in creating “speculative fiction”, including speculative fiction about outer space. This article ties this interest to a broader tradition of “speculative religion” by discussing the Mormon Transhumanist Association. An interest in outer space is linked to nineteenth and twentieth-century speculation by Mormon intellectuals and Church leaders regarding “Abrahamic Astronomy”. The article suggests that there is a Mormon view of the future as informed by a fractal or recursive past that social science in general, and anthropology in particular, could use in “thinking the future”.

Tour Guiding, 1959–2012

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Historical Memories ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Tour Guiding ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
The Church

This chapter argues that the evolution of tour guiding at the Kirtland Temple reflects select and crucial changes within the Community of Christ/Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints denomination over the course of the late twentieth century. Specifically, tour performances offer a window into the historical memories that the church deemed important, show how it desired itself to be known by the wider world, and reflect how the denomination interacted with its competitors and changing allies. The Kirtland Temple tours tell as much about the Community of Christ's general leftward turn in the late twentieth century as they reveal about changing academic knowledge of the Kirtland Temple's past. Indeed, guides constantly were correcting or changing tour content to reflect new understandings of the history and the meaning of the temple.

Reforming Identities, Reframing Pilgrimage, 1900–1965

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Tourist Industry ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Temple

This chapter narrates Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' interactions at the sacred shrine from 1900 to 1964. The sometimes awkward early twentieth-century meetings between these two groups set the patterns for later interactions at the temple. A rich folklore about the temple was generated by the two competing denominations, and they shared in disseminating tales to one another. In the process, they reconstructed the Kirtland Temple's history to meet their present denomination's needs. In many ways, the Kirtland Temple proved to be a mirror for these groups, reflecting the image of the beholder. That the other group could not see the same image proved an obvious point of contention. At the same time, the temple began to be more physically accessible to members of both churches as an American tourist industry arose that would transform pilgrimage to the temple.

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.

Contemporary Mormon Religiosity and the Legacy of “Gathering”

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Phillips ◽  
Ryan Cragun
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Attendance Rates ◽  
Intermountain West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Member Retention ◽  
Lds Church ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
The Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the LDS, or Mormon church—has dominated the state of Utah both culturally and politically since joining the Union in 1896. Scholars note that LDS majorities in Utah and other parts of the Intermountain West foster a religious subculture that has promoted higher levels of Mormon church attendance and member retention than in other parts of the nation. However, after rising throughout most of the twentieth century, the percentage of Utah's population belonging to the church began declining in 1989. Some sources assert Utah is now less Mormon than at any time in the state's history. This article examines the degree to which this decline has affected LDS church activity and retention in Utah and adjacent environs. We find evidence suggesting church attendance rates may be falling, and clear evidence that rates of apostasy among Mormons have risen over the past decade.

Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Flake
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
The Church

In the winter of 1905, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (L.D.S. or the “Mormons”) departed Utah on two, seemingly disparate, missions to the east coast. One contingent went to defend their church at Senate hearings in Washington, D.C.; the other, to Vermont to dedicate a monument to church founder Joseph Smith. These forays into national politics and religious memory re-fashioned Latter-day Saint identity, as well as public perception of Mormonism, for the remainder of the twentieth Century They also illuminate one of the quotidian mysteries of religion: how it adapts to the demands of time yet maintains its sense of mediating the eternal. It is axiomatic that religious communities are not exempt from the human condition; they must adapt to their temporal circumstances or die. What is not as often recognized is that churches bring a particular burden to this task because they offer their believers the hope of transcending time.

“A verry poor place for our doctrine”: Religion and Race in the 1853 Mormon Mission to Jamaica

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Christopher Cannon Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Black Men ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Local Newspaper ◽  
The Temple

ABSTRACT This article examines the first Mormon mission to Jamaica in January 1853. The missionaries, facing opposition from both black and white Jamaicans, returned to the United States after only a month on the island, having made only four converts. Latter-day Saints did not return to Jamaica for another 125 years. Drawing on the missionaries’ personal papers, church archives, local newspaper reports, and governmental records, I argue that the 1853 mission played a crucial role in shaping nineteenth-century Mormonism's racial theology, including the “temple and priesthood ban” that restricted priesthood ordination and temple worship for black men and women. While historians have rightly noted the role twentieth-century missions to regions of the African Diaspora played in ending the ban, studies of the racial restriction's early scope have been discussed in almost exclusively American contexts. The mission to Jamaica, precisely because of its failure, helped shape the ban's implementation and theological justifications. Failing to make any inroads, the elders concluded that both Jamaica and its inhabitants were cursed and not worthy of the missionaries’ time, which anticipated later decisions to prioritize preaching to whites and to scale back and ultimately abandon efforts to proselytize people of African descent.

Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated and a Formal Latter-day Saint Presence in Nauvoo

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-101
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The Road ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
Restoration Work ◽  
The Church

During the second half of the twentieth century, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) returned in a formal and dramatic way to Nauvoo, Illinois. This chapter discusses that return, beginning with the restoration work of J. LeRoy Kimball and the organization he headed, Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated. Over a period a several decades, Kimball led a team of renowned archaeologists and historians to restore Nauvoo into a Midwestern version of Colonial Williamsburg. Eventually, however, tensions between the historical and the religious led to a shift in emphasis for the site, as those directing Nauvoo Restoration embraced the proselytizing potential among the thousands who took to the road in the post-World War II tourism boom, visiting sites like Nauvoo.

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