scholarly journals Tar & Feathers: Agnotology, Dissent, and Queer Mormon Polygamy

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Nerida Bullock
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Mormon History ◽  
Lds Church ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

In 2014 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) updated their official website to include information about the polygamy/polyandry practiced by Joseph Smith, their founder and prophet, and his many wives. The admission by the LDS Church reconciles the tension between information that had become readily available online since the 1990s and church-sanctioned narratives that obscured Smith’s polygamy while concurrently focusing on the polygyny of Brigham Young, Smith’s successor. This paper entwines queer theory with Robert Proctor’s concept of agnotology—a term used to describe the epistemology of ignorance, to consider dissent from two interrelated perspectives: 1) how dissent from feminists and historians within the LDS Church challenged (mis)constructions of Mormon history, and; 2) how the Mormon practice of polygamy in the late nineteenth century dissented from Western sexual mores that conflated monogamy with Whiteness, democracy and social progression in the newly formed American Republic.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Talbot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Plural Marriage ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Church

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Mormon question. In the 1830s, a young American named Joseph Smith founded a new religion that would come to be called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—commonly known as the Mormons. As the Church developed, the practice of plural marriage became central to Mormon theology. Polygamy generated decades of cultural conflict that contemporaries broadly referred to as “the Mormon question.” The conflict was more than a simple condemnation of sexual and marital practices unacceptable to Victorian norms. Rather, it was a contest over the very meaning of Americanness. The Mormon question then generated national discussions about gender, family, and the nature of citizenship that would define the parameters of membership in the late-nineteenth-century American body politic.

Gone Are the Days

First Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 247-258
Author(s):  
Steven C. Harper
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Education Curriculum ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Mormon History ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
The Church ◽  
Over Time

Richard Bushman’s 2005 biography of Joseph Smith incorporated the findings of the New Mormon history. Bushman saw changes over time in Smith’s vision accounts and granted the critics that point, just not their interpretation that it meant Smith did not experience what he claimed. Bushman did not question whether Smith told the truth about his vision, only what truth he told he time he recorded it. Bushman’s Joseph Smith is therefore not the deceived or deceiving one of Fawn Brodie or Wesley Walters, but neither is he the simplified teenage prophet of the movies and manuals. Though initially barred from use in LDS religious education curriculum, provided the standard interpretation of Smith’s first vision adopted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by 2018. This was most evident in “First Vision Accounts” and Saints: The Standard of Truth, volume 1—products espoused and promoted by LDS leaders.

Anti-Mormonism

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
John Corrigan ◽  
Lynn S. Neal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Local State ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
The Church

Violent opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged shortly after the coalescence of the group in the early 1830s. Mormons were subjected to intolerance everywhere they settled. Local, state, and territorial governments were opposed to them in varying degree. After founder Joseph Smith was murdered in Illinois many Mormons migrated westward. Their practice of polygamy brought them continued criticism during the nineteenth century. Intolerance of Mormons was punctuated by numerous instances of organized violence against them.

Matthew Philip Gill and Joseph Smith: The Dynamics of Mormon Schism

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Lds Church ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

In 2007, Matthew Philip Gill, a resident of Derbyshire, England, announced the formation of the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ. He claimed to be acting under angelic direction, and produced a new scripture, the Book of Jeraneck, to usher in his new faith. Gill's church is a restoration of a restoration: he claims to have restored the Mormon movement, which Joseph Smith founded as a restoration of the church Jesus organized, but which Gill claims has fallen into apostasy——particularly its primary iteration, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which Gill was raised in but has abandoned. This article analyzes the relationship between Gill's movement and the LDS church, pointing out the ways in which Gill draws upon the Mormon tradition to claim authority for his new church, but also the ways in which Gill seeks to alter the balance of tension between the LDS church and the culture around it. The article particularly explores Gill's founding narrative, comparing its language, motifs, and forms of spirituality with those of Joseph Smith; the Book of Jeraneck's intertextual relationship with the Book of Mormon; and Gill's story of LDS apostasy.

Cultural Configurations of Mormon Fundamentalist Polygamous Communities

2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Bradley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Belief System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Learned Behaviors ◽  
Lds Church ◽  
Plural Marriage ◽  
The Church

““The Principle”” or plural marriage, as practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) during the nineteenth century, evolved to encompass a culture of life practices, ideas and meanings for the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists who continue in the practice to the present day. For the modern-day polygamists, the culture that surrounds this doctrine includes a set of learned behaviors and strategies, symbols, and a compelling vision of an ideal community. This highly effective culture has helped plurality persist and grow in the intermountain western part of the United States, perpetuating a belief system but also a distinctive lifestyle wrapped around the doctrine of a plurality of wives. This article sketches out the parameters of the culture of polygamy, describes the key groups that continue in the practice, and discusses the connection between the fundamentalist polygamist groups and individuals and the LDS Church.

Scottish Missionaries, ‘Protestant Hinduism’ and the Scottish Sense of Empire in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century India

2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Constable
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

This article examines the Scottish missionary contribution to a Scottish sense of empire in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially, the article reviews general historiographical interpretations which have in recent years been developed to explain the Scottish relationship with British imperial development in India. Subsequently the article analyses in detail the religious contributions of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Missions to a Scottish sense of empire with a focus on their interaction with Hindu socioreligious thought in nineteenth-century western India. Previous missionary historiography has tended to focus substantially on the emergence of Scottish evangelical missionary activity in India in the early nineteenth century and most notably on Alexander Duff (1806–78). Relatively little has been written on Scottish Presbyterian missions in India in the later nineteenth century, and even less on the significance of their missionary thought to a Scottish sense of Indian empire. Through an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian missionary critiques in both vernacular Marathi and English, this article outlines the orientalist engagement of Scottish Presbyterian missionary thought with late nineteenth-century popular Hinduism. In conclusion this article demonstrates how this intellectual engagement contributed to and helped define a Scottish missionary sense of empire in India.

Anglican Emigrant Chaplaincy in the British Empire and Beyond,c.1840–1900

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

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.

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