I think your memory is a little off. The flier contained the two visions canonized as part of the PoGP in 1976. Those two sections were moved to the D&C in the 1981 edition. Joseph Smith- Matthew was in the PoGP prior to 1981, although under a slightly different name (which I don’t remember).

With 2005 being the bicentennial of Joseph Smith’s birth, the church’s curriculum seems to be especially focused on the restoration. Over the years, I have noticed that much of the official church curriculum includes very bland histories. A quick glance at the materials available for teaching in church this year reveals a similar pattern.

Recently, I have read “Mormon Enigma” about Emma Hale Smith and “In Sacred Loneliness” about Joseph Smith’s plural wives. I found these books fascinating and felt they portrayed early LDS women as strong, faithful, and multi-dimensional. These books also detail aspects and perspectives of Joseph Smith’s life that are never mentioned in church sponsored classes. As I continue my personal study, I find that there appears to be more books (“New Mormon History”) and publications available to the college-aged student. The explosion of the Internet has also made different views and perspectives available instantaneously. As an example, as an undergraduate, I had to go to my university’s library to look through the back issues of “Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought”. Today, I can look for an article on a topic of interest on the “Dialogue” website and then read the back issue through a link to the U. of Utah collections link.

As I have read ME, ISL and Dialogue articles, my response has been continued skepticism of church lessons… thinking … what’s not being included in the lessons ? I have had over 20 years to deal with my skepticism. I’m concerned that a young person who comes upon all this stuff at once will be completely disillusioned with the church …. Perhaps concluding that the church and its leaders have been hiding its history.

That said .. my question(s) to Brother Barlow is (are) :

Young LDS students have the ability to access “New Mormon History (NMH)”. How can we as parents and adult leaders incorporate NMH with church-sponsored lessons to create an environment of thoughtful discussion and learning ? Is this even possible given the climate in the church following the recent disfellowshipment of Grant Palmer ? Do you have examples of young people who were able to discuss NMH alongside official church history in a thoughtful manner ? What were the results ? What would you recommend in terms of a church curriculum given the recent scholarship of NMH ?

I thought the JS-M was also in the pre-1981 PoGP. But I must confess that was so long ago I don’t remember anymore.

Jed,

You will note that the editors of the JST critical text cite me–negatively–in the footnotes to that introduction. This is high irony, since they go on and take essentially the same position I took in my Dialogue article on the JST (an earlier article than the one on the Documentary Hypothesis I cite above). I have long been an advocate of what I call the Matthews paradigm. It’s a long story, but essentially Kent Jackson just plain doesn’t understand my position; he just had a bad (and superficial) reaction to it since an edited version of my Dialogue article was republished in the Word of God by–oh, the humanity!–Signature Books.