A series I am going to occasionally come back to on my takes on early Church primary sources that I’m reading. We have a tendency to only read secondary takes, whether a talk, book, or commonly shared anecdote, but there are often insights buried in the primary sources that don’t make it into the collective consciousness.

The Evening and the Morning Star was the first Latter-day Saint newspaper, published in Independence and then Kirtland. As you maybe could tell from my last post that cited copiously from it, I’ve been schlogging through its issues (okay, maybe skimming, but it was a schlog too).

• I already discussed in my last post how the Evening and Morning Star provided insight into what could be termed early American Zionism (like, Jews in Jerusalem Zionism, not “let’s gather to Zion.”)

 

•  Similarly, volume 5 discusses Hinduism and their beliefs in a way that would not be out of place in a comparative religion class. Even though the Church periodical suffused with Latter-day Saint specific content, it was intriguing to see them address other religions on their own terms beyond being a foil for the one true and living faith.

 

• While it was a schlog, I had to keep reminding myself that this was the Twitter/podcasts/TV of the day, and people would wait for weeks and read good money to read the traveler’s boring description of Lake Superior. Reading an old newspaper makes you grateful for the flood of information we have now.

 

• Edition 13 has an early example of Book of Mormon archaeology. It used excavated finds from North Carolina and Cincinnati to show that the early American civilizations were capable of building homes, therefore…Book of Mormon true. Say what you will about the Sorenson model, we’ve become somewhat more careful in our claims.

 

• Edition 15 has another example of the term “Mormon” being used as an uwanted slur, so once again the reticence to be called Mormon has a long history.

 

• Edition 16 and others have insights into early race relations, with Phelps (or whoever was writing it) noting the concern that the slaves will raise up and kill the white people, another data point suggesting the long influence of the Haitian revolution (where they did exactly that) on antebellum race attitudes. Of course, The Evening and Morning Star is perhaps most famous as the newspaper that riled up the proslavery anti-Mormons, leading to Phelps backtracking, although others would know more detail about that. So yes, while contrary to speculation this was not the reason for the priesthood ban, it is demonstrably true that our early race attitudes caused us problems with the proslavery settlers.

 

• At some point I’m going to get all of the primary sources on the Missouri conflict and map it out, because it is very difficult to get all the storylines and geographic locations straight.

 

• Edition 18 has an early apologetics counter to Campbell’s early anti-Mormon rhetoric. Again, it’s interesting to see the deep historical roots of some contemporary practices.