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.

Translation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
The Third ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Church

In 1823, Joseph Smith (1805–44), a farmer and treasure seeker in Upstate New York, had a vision in which a personage told him of ancient golden plates buried in a hillside, which Mormons claim he recovered, translated, and published as the Book of Mormon (1830) and which led to the founding of a restored church (1830). The revelation to Smith that Mormons now refer to as “D&C 3,” that is, the third revelation in the current edition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' canonized Doctrine and Covenants, provides our first direct window into the emergence of early Mormonism. Although there is evidence to suggest that Smith received what he and others viewed as revelations prior to this one, this is the first revelation that was written down at about the time it was received. This chapter centers on that revelation, using it to reconstruct not only the event itself but the events that led up to and followed from it, as they likely appeared to those who were involved at the time.

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.

Aftermath

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-206
Author(s):  
Spencer W. McBride
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Decision To Leave ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Church

This chapter describes the aftermath of the assassination of Joseph Smith. This aftermath includes mourning and a funeral in Nauvoo, debates over who should succeed Smith as the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who the Mormons should vote for in the election, and the decision to leave the United States altogether. The Mormons were contemplating leaving the United States before Smith’s murder, but the violent act seemed to make this departure the only way forward in the minds of many church leaders. They had come to realize that without significant reform, the United States was incapable of protecting them. This chapter also considers the result of the presidential election of 1844 and what became of each of the candidates in the years that followed.

“Some Little Necromancy”

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Alternative Religions ◽  
The Church

This chapter looks into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was labeled “Salem Witchcraftism,” “hocus pocus,” and “superstition” in its first decade. It analyzes the political dissent against Mormonism, which shared an antipathy with anti-Shakerism that purported superstition and magic. It also mentions Ann Lee, the Shaker founder, who was referred to as a “fortune teller” and Joseph Smith Jr. who was branded as “very expert in the arts of necromancy.” The chapter explores the propensity of critics to accuse Mormons of superstition and magical practice and associate that accusation with an enmity toward republicanism. It talks about the so-called alternative religions of the early republic routinely faced charges of being both superstitious and dangerous to democracy.

“Not to Be Trammeled”

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-270
Author(s):  
Terryl Givens ◽  
Brian M. Hauglid
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Boundary Maintenance ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Christian creeds go back to the first Christian centuries. Catholics produced creeds largely to establish the lines demarcating orthodoxy and heresy. Protestants at first were hostile to creeds and often invoked the Bible as the lone and sufficient creed for Christians. Joseph Smith’s hostility to creeds was common, especially among other restorationists. Eventually virtually all Protestants realized that without a creed, boundary maintenance was impossible. Early missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found it necessary to summarize and define the uniqueness of their message—effectively creating the first creeds. Joseph Smith, explicitly hostile to creeds as too circumscribing of belief, found himself forced by the same imperative to articulate his own summation of Mormon teachings. His Thirteen Articles of Faith are, however, wholly inadequate as a creed, since they omit many of the most core doctrines of the church. They are best understood, in Rodney Stark’s formula, as establishing an optimum tension with competing religious faiths—not too radical and not too familiar.

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”.

Joseph Smith's Translation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Morris Brown
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Metal Plates ◽  
King James Bible ◽  
The Church

Among many remarkable claims, Mormon founder Joseph Smith reported that he had translated ancient scriptures. He dictated the Book of Mormon, an American Bible from metal plates associated with Native antiquity; directly rewrote the King James Bible; and produced a scripture, derived from Egyptian funerary papyri, that he called the Book of Abraham. Smith and his followers used the term “translation” to describe the genesis of these English texts, which remain canonical for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most commenters see these scriptures as merely linguistic objects; the central and controversial question has been whether Smith’s English texts are literal translations of extant source documents. On closer inspection, though, his translations are far more metaphysical than linguistic. These translations express a nonordinary power of language to connect people across barriers of space and time. Within these metaphysical scriptures, Smith expounded a theology of human deification that he also termed “translation.” This one word thus referred to a scripture capable of mediating between the living and the dead and to the transformation of humans into divine beings. Joseph Smith’s projects of metaphysical translation place Mormonism at a productive edge of tense transitions later associated with secular modernity, a modernity challenged by the very existence of the Latter-day Saints. Smith’s translations and the theology that supported them illuminate the power and vulnerability of his critique of American culture in transition as they set the stage for two more centuries of cultural change.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Ashurst-McGee ◽  
Robin Scott Jensen ◽  
Sharalyn D Howcroft
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early History ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Church

Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft introduce Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources by noting the rich documentary record of the early history of Mormonism and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among these the documents from the founding era under Joseph Smith are several major sources to which historians continually turn for information. However, as the authors explain, this is often with little appreciation for the complexity of the circumstances under which these documents were produced. The volume provides several examples of how understanding the complexity of documentary production helps historians to use these sources more critically. The authors individually introduce the chapters of the book.

Cultural Crisis in the Mormon Kingdom: A Reconsideration of the Causes of Kirtland Dissent

1980 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-297
Author(s):  
Marvin S. Hill
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Land Values ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Cultural Crisis ◽  
The Will ◽  
Gathering Place ◽  
The Church

Until the time that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left western New York (where the church had been founded in 1830) and moved en masse to Kirtland, Ohio and then Far West, Missouri (where a second gathering place was established), the Mormons constituted a close-knit and fairly harmonious group. At Kirtland, however, serious internal discontent developed. In the wake of the collapse of the Anti-Banking Society in 1837 came widespread apostasy of many Mormons, several apostles included, who challenged Joseph Smith's role as prophetic leader whose word was the will of the Lord in secular as well as spiritual affairs. According to the prevailing interpretation, the causes were essentially economic. Fawn Brodie maintains in her chapter on the “Kirtland Disaster” that the “toppling of the Kirtland bank loosed a hornet's nest.” Quoting Apostle Heber C. Kimball, she says that afterward “there were not twenty persons on earth that would declare that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.” Despite Smith's efforts to salvage his Ohio community, “with mercantile firms bankrupt, the steam mill silent, and the land values sinking to an appalling low, Kirtland was fast disintegrating.” In a recent work, Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton repeat the generalization: “in Kirtland … Smith's failed bank led to internal dissension.”

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE BAPTIST MOVEMENT’S DIVISION IN UKRAINE

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-113
Author(s):  
Oksana Vysoven
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Special Services ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Prayer Meetings ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
The Church

The article analyzes the causes and consequences of the split in the evangelical-Baptist environment in the 1960s; found that one of the main causes of the split in the bosom of evangelical Baptist Christians was the destructive influence of state authorities on religion in general, and Christian denominations in particular when initiated by state bodies of the union of Protestant religious communities under the auspices of the All-Union Baptist Council Church for organization under control of special services bodies; it has been proved that the conflicts between the leadership of the Verkhovna Rada and the Council of Churches were artificial. The confrontations among the believers were mainly provoked by SSC agents and secret services, and were only in the hands of the Communist Party regime, which helped him control events, pacify some and repress others; it is proved that under the influence of the movement for the independence of the church from the state headed by «initiators», the regime has been operating since the second half of the 1960s. gradually began to ease the pressure on officially registered communities of evangelical Baptist Christians. Prayer meetings began to be attended by teens, and ordinary members and members of other congregations were allowed to preach. As a result of these changes and some easing of tensions between the church and the government, many believers and congregations began to return to the official union governed by the ACEBC, without wishing further confrontation; it is shown that the internal church events of the 60's of the twentieth century, which were provoked by the SSC special services and led to the split of the EBC community, reflected on the position and activities of the EBC Church and in the period of independence of Ukraine, the higher leadership of the split community (the ACEBC and the Church Council) and could not reconcile and unite in a united union. This significantly weakens their spiritual position in today's globalized world, where cohesion and competitiveness play an important role.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document