Category: Bushman Symposium

RSR: Walter van Beek on Joseph Smith

[This review has been provided by special arrangement to Times and Seasons by Walter E. A. van Beek, an anthropologist and scholar of religion and culture at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.] O Lord; thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed; I am in derison daily, everyone mocketh me. Jeremiah 20:7.

RSR reviews collected

With four excellent reviews here on T&S, as well as other discussions around the bloggernacle, you may think you’re covered as far as initial responses to Rough Stone Rolling.

Rough Stone Rolls Into Times and Seasons

Since its release, Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling has been the subject of conference sessions, media reports, bloggernacle essays and academic conversations far and wide. Seeking to engage Bushman in a sustained and interactive conversation about this compelling new biography of Joseph Smith, we are pleased to announce a symposium running this week at Times and Seasons. Watch for a new review of the book to appear every day with a response from Bushman to follow. To introduce the symposium and provide a contrast to the coming reviews we thought it might be of interest to offer a window into what sorts of questions Rough Stone Rolling is raising for some non-LDS scholars. Last month at the annual meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, one session was entirely devoted to responding to Bushman’s book. Here is the gist of what these scholars had to say.