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.

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.

Responding to the Restoration

2018 ◽  
pp. 102-122
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Church Leadership ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
Building Program ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The restoration of Nauvoo, Illinois, by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) generated competing visions for the city. While the Latter-day Saints used the site to attract religious interest, their sibling faith, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Community of Christ), responded with a competing building program of their own. This chapter traces the way the Reorganized Church moved from a defensive posture to rebrand its message in Nauvoo around historical accuracy and the internal debate within Church leadership that this shift created. It also examines the cooperation between the faiths that emerged as they took divergent paths. Finally, it explores the response by the local Nauvoo community to the loss of control over their town’s historical narrative.

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.

Volksconcerte in Vienna and Late Nineteenth-Century Ideology of the Symphony

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 421-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Notley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The City

Late nineteenth-century journalistic criticism in Vienna offers many precedents for Paul Bekker's interpretation of the symphony. Beethoven's symphonies provided the model for an aesthetics of the genre-couched in metaphors connecting it to "the people"-that motivated the reception of works by Brahms and Bruckner. Activists who wished to inaugurate symphonic Volksconcerte in the city took the figurative utopian function of the genre literally. Though their efforts were confounded not only by institutionalized elitism but also by the preferences of the Viennese Volk for other kinds of music, their work bore fruit in the early twentieth century with the founding of the Wiener Konzertverein and the Arbeiter-Symphonie-Konzerte.

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.

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.

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.

Berlin

2019 ◽  
pp. 117-167
Author(s):  
Andrew Thacker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Alfred Döblin ◽  
Christopher Isherwood ◽  
Potsdamer Platz ◽  
Queer Spaces ◽  
Viktor Shklovsky ◽  
The City

This chapter analyses how modernism in Berlin vacillates between utopian and dystopian modes and moods from the end of the nineteenth century to the conclusion of the Weimar years in 1933. It argues that the culture of modernism in the city is marked by the twin features of spaciousness and restlessness. It analyses the rise of Expressionism as a dominant form in the city, linking its particular mood to the technological modernity embraced by Berlin in the early twentieth century. It illustrates these arguments by considering how Expressionist artists (e.g. Ludwig Meidner) represented a particular space in the city (Potsdamer Platz), before discussing work by Walter Ruttmann, Alfred Döblin, the expatriate Russian community (e.g. Viktor Shklovsky), and the American magazine, Broom. It then discusses cafés and queer spaces in work by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It concludes by analysing the geographical emotions prompted by Berlin in two important memoirs by English visitors to the city: Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin and Bryher’s The Heart to Artemis.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 142-150
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
The Future ◽  
Community Of Christ ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Church

This chapter explores the future for faith and community relations in Nauvoo as a result of the city’s twentieth-century restoration boom. It examines the directions taken by the various constituents, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Community of Christ), and local residents unaffiliated with either faith. Additionally, it explores how Nauvoo acts as a case study for the bargains made by a community when it selects, or has selected for it, a tourism-based economy. Finally, it opines regarding ways the parties involved can work together for the good of Nauvoo.

Latter-day Saint Re-Interest in Nauvoo

2018 ◽  
pp. 50-75
Author(s):  
Scott C. Esplin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
American West ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Church

While the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints utilized the Smith family properties in Nauvoo, Illinois, their religious siblings in the American West, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), maintained a fascination of their own with their former home. This chapter examines the Mormons’ slow return to the area in the early twentieth century, first as visitors to familial sites and later through the acquisition of significant properties, including the nearby Carthage Jail and the Nauvoo temple lot. It examines initial forays into commemoration, including cooperation with the Reorganized Church in the building of a memorial, but the conflict that eventually ensued over rival interpretations, especially as rumors circulated regarding the reconstruction of Nauvoo’s temple.

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