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.

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.

The Reconstructed Nauvoo Temple

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-141
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church

At the end of the twentieth century, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) embarked on the most ambitious project in the history of Nauvoo’s restoration, the reconstruction of the famed Nauvoo temple. While the branches of Mormonism had settled their differences and established their separate paths in the years leading up to the temple reconstruction, the project opened new wounds within the greater Nauvoo community. This chapter examines the construction of the Nauvoo temple and the resulting reaction by the residents of Nauvoo. It explores the changes the project brought to the city and the contest that developed for the legacy of Nauvoo.

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.

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.

Rethinking the Twentieth-Century History of Mumbai

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1435-1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOUGLAS E. HAYNES
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

AbstractThis review examines three major books on the history of Bombay. Historians of the city have tended to focus primarily on the period before 1930; this tendency has seriously limited our understanding of the dramatic transformations that have taken place in Bombay over the course of the twentieth century. Each of the studies reviewed here devotes considerable attention to developments since the 1920s. Collectively these works make a significant contribution to the appreciation of such matters as working-class politics, the changing character of workers’ neighbourhoods, land use, urban planning, and the ways the city has been imagined and experienced by its citizens. At the same time, these works all shift their analytic frameworks as they approach more contemporary periods and this restricts the authors' ability to assess fully the character of urban change. This paper calls upon historians to continue to apply the tools of social history, particularly its reliance on close microcosmic studies of particular places and groups over long periods of time, as they try to bridge the gap between the early twentieth century and the later twentieth century. At the same time, it suggests that historians need to consider Gyan Prakash's view of cities as ‘patched-up societies’ whose entirety cannot be understood through single, linear models of change.

The Pearl of Greatest Price

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terryl Givens ◽  
Brian Hauglid
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Principal Parts ◽  
The Church

This book narrates the history of Mormonism’s fourth volume of scripture, canonized in 1880. The book tracks this work’s predecessors, describes its several components, and assesses their theological significance in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Four principal parts are discussed, along with the controversies associated with each. The Book of Moses purports to be a Mosaic narrative missing from the biblical version of Moses’s purported writings. Little noticed in the scholarship on Mormonism, these chapters, produced only months after the Book of Mormon was published, actually contain almost all of Mormonism’s core doctrines as well as a virtual template for the project of Restoration Joseph Smith was to effect. Most controversial of all is the Book of Abraham, a production that arose out of a group of papyri Smith acquired, along with four mummies, in 1835. Most of the papyri disappeared in the great Chicago fire of 1871, but the surviving fragments come from Egyptian documents. That fact and the translations Smith attempted to make from the hieroglyphs on the surviving vignettes have convinced most Egyptologists that Smith’s work was fraudulent or inept. Mormon scholars, however, have developed several frameworks for vindicating its inspiration and his calling as a prophet. Chapter 3 attempts to make sense of Smith’s several, at times divergent, accounts of his First Vision, one of which is canonized as scripture. Chapter 4 assesses the creedal nature of Smith’s “Articles of Faith” in the context of his professed anticreedalism.

Kirtland Temple

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Sacred Site ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Two Sides

The only temple completed by Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith Jr., the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio, receives 30,000 Mormon pilgrims every year. Though the site is sacred to all Mormons, the temple's religious significance and the space itself are contested by rival Mormon denominations: its owner, the relatively liberal Community of Christ, and the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This biography of Kirtland Temple is set against the backdrop of religious rivalry. The two sides have long contested the temple's ownership, purpose, and significance in both the courts and Mormon literature. Yet members of each denomination have occasionally cooperated to establish periods of co-worship, host joint tours, and create friendships. The book uses the temple to build a model for understanding what he calls parallel pilgrimage—the set of dynamics of disagreement and alliance by religious rivals at a shared sacred site. At the same time, it illuminates social and intellectual changes in the two main branches of Mormonism since the 1830s, providing a much-needed history of the lesser-known Community of Christ.

Introduction

First Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Steven C. Harper
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
New York State ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
York State ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Joseph Smith (1805–44), founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormonism, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in the woods near his parents’ home in western New York State, resulted in a vision of heavenly beings who forgave him and told him Christianity had gone astray. Scholars debate the multiple memories Smith recorded of this event, arguing about which is accurate. Latter-day Saints, meanwhile, have just begun, historically speaking, to awaken to the fact that there are multiple memories and to wrestle with the implications. Until now, no one has brought memory studies to bear on the origins of the church. This book is the first to trace the history of Joseph Smith’s memories.

“Come After Us”

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

This chapter introduces the religious tensions created in Nauvoo, Illinois, by the return of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) to the region in the twentieth century and their historical restoration of the city that was once their headquarters. It places the restoration project, patterned after the historical recreation of Colonial Williamsburg, within the larger trend of memorials that swept across America in the twentieth century. Overviewing other studies, it positions historic Nauvoo as a case study in historical tourism and pilgrimage. Finally, it examines how Mormonism used restored Nauvoo as a staging ground for celebrating American westward expansion to position the faith within a larger national narrative.

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