Oman, Nathan B. “All Other Religious Sects Shall Have Free Toleration”: Recovering the Early Mormon Conception of Religious Freedom.” Forthcoming, Journal of Mormon History. 

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article recovers an early Latter-day Saint conception of religious freedom by examining Nauvoo’s 1841 “Ordinance in Relation to Religious Societies,” which promised “free toleration” and “equal privileges” to Catholics, Protestants, Latter-day Saints, “Mohammedans,” and all other religious sects. Rather than treating the ordinance as a simple precursor to modern liberal religious freedom, the article situates it within the Saints’ experiences of persecution in Missouri and the broader legal culture of antebellum America. It argues that early Mormon religious freedom was not primarily centered on individual rights asserted against the state, but on the “quiet enjoyment” of religion within a well-ordered community. Under this framework, threats to religious liberty could come from private actors as well as government, and the law could legitimately suppress disruptive religious speech or conduct in order to preserve peaceful pluralism. The Nauvoo ordinance therefore embodied a communitarian and regulatory model of religious freedom, relying on criminal law and executive enforcement rather than courts and constitutional litigation. Recovering this model complicates contemporary uses of Nauvoo as evidence of an uncomplicated Mormon commitment to modern religious liberty, while also showing that early Latter-day Saints were seriously engaged in questions of religious toleration, equality, and legal protection before the later polygamy cases. The article concludes that the ordinance illuminates both early Mormon legal thought and the broader American transition from republican, communitarian ideas of freedom to the liberal, rights-centered model that came to dominate modern constitutional law.

Hatch, Elise. “Many Are Called, But Few Are Curators: A Missionary, His Photographs, and the Complexities of Samoan Colonialism.” Journal of Mormon History 52, no. 3 (2026): 55-74.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article examines Harry Arnold Dean, a Latter-day Saint missionary who served in Samoa from 1914 to 1917, as both a witness to and participant in the visual culture of South Pacific colonialism. Focusing especially on Dean’s collection of Alfred Tattersall photographs, and particularly the image Solomon Islander Laborers, the article argues that Dean functioned not merely as a missionary or collector, but as a curator whose choices reveal the intersections of LDS evangelism, racial theology, photographic consumerism, and colonial labor systems. Dean occupied a liminal position: he was a white American outsider who did not see himself as an imperialist, yet his journals and photographic purchases show how deeply his worldview was shaped by the racial hierarchies of both Western colonialism and early twentieth-century Mormon thought. The article contrasts Dean’s favorable, theologically informed view of Samoans with his dehumanizing attitudes toward Solomon Islander laborers, many of whom had been coerced into plantation work under abusive conditions. By reading Dean’s journals alongside his curated photographs, the article shows how missionary records can illuminate overlooked dimensions of colonial Samoa, including slavery, indentured labor, racial classification, and the emotional ambiguities of missionary attachment. Ultimately, Dean’s archive demonstrates that LDS missionaries should be included in colonial discourse: even when they distanced themselves from imperial projects, they witnessed, interpreted, and preserved records of colonial power.

Nielsen, Chad L. “Ringing for the Restoration: The Bells at Temple Square and the Expansion of the Tabernacle Choir Brand, 2005–2025.” Journal of Mormon History 52, no. 3 (2026): 106-143.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article examines the founding and development of the Bells at Temple Square from 2005 to 2025, arguing that the ensemble was not merely an auxiliary musical group but a deliberate expansion of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square’s institutional brand and missionary purpose. Drawing on oral histories, internal documents, correspondence, and media archives, the article situates the Bells within the longer history of the Choir’s cultural diplomacy and its role as a public-facing representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It traces how Craig Jessop and Tom Waldron adapted the English handbell tradition—an art form with secular and Protestant roots—into a Latter-day Saint mode of worship, spectacle, and “music missionary” work. The ensemble’s unusual double-choir structure, large scale, volunteer labor, audition process, and emphasis on spiritual unity reveal how aesthetic grandeur and institutional mission shaped its identity. The article further argues that the Bells became a modern expression of Latter-day Saint ideals of consecration and Zion, requiring many individuals to act as one in service of a shared religious purpose. Ultimately, the Bells at Temple Square demonstrate the Tabernacle Choir organization’s capacity to absorb external cultural forms and repurpose them for Restoration-centered cultural diplomacy in the digital age.

Jung, Hannah. “The Secret Life of a Plural Wife: Gossip and Community Witnessing of Polygamy.” Journal of Mormon History 52, no. 3 (2026): 1-30.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article examines the life of Maggie Geddes Eccles to show how gossip, neighborly surveillance, and community witnessing shaped the lived experience of Mormon polygamy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on Maggie’s secret plural marriages, hidden pregnancies, assumed names, and eventual public claim on the Eccles estate, the article argues that polygamous secrecy was never simply a matter of evading federal authorities. It also depended on the discretion, curiosity, and testimony of neighbors, bishops, midwives, kin, and local communities. Maggie’s story reveals how women bore the burdens of secrecy especially intensely, since pregnancy, childbirth, children, and reputation made plural wives visible in ways men often were not. During the anti-polygamy raids of the 1880s, Mormon communities developed practices of “minding their own business,” allowing them to know that secrets existed without forcing details into the open. After the 1890 Manifesto, however, shifting legal, religious, and social expectations made such discretion less reliable, exposing women like Maggie to church discipline, newspaper speculation, Senate questioning, and local gossip. Yet the same neighborly knowledge that threatened Maggie also later empowered her: in the Eccles estate trial, witnesses’ memories of domestic intimacy helped establish her son’s legitimacy and enabled Maggie to publicly claim a marriage she had long been forced to conceal. The article demonstrates that local communities were crucial intermediaries between private polygamous family life and public legal, ecclesiastical, and political scrutiny.

Allred, Mason Kamana. “Dr. Hirschell and Mr. Hyde: Restorationism, Nationalism, and Orson Hyde’s Shifting Jewish Identity.” Journal of Mormon History 52, no. 3 (2026): 31-54.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article reexamines Orson Hyde’s 1840–1842 mission to Europe and Palestine by tracing the evolution of his relationship to Jewish identity, restorationism, and American nationalism. Beginning with the Damascus Affair and the broader nineteenth-century fascination with the return of Jews to the Holy Land, the article situates Hyde’s mission within transatlantic Christian restorationist thought and emerging debates about Jewish nationalism, assimilation, and modernity. Hyde initially described himself in language that suggested kinship with Judah and Jerusalem, a claim that later helped generate the persistent but historically uncertain Latter-day Saint tradition that he was of Jewish descent. Yet his encounters with European Jews, especially his correspondence with Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell, and his travels through Germany and the Middle East reshaped that self-understanding. As Hyde confronted the material reality of Jewish communities and the cultural unfamiliarity of the “Orient,” his romantic identification with Jews gave way to distance, American nationalism, and an increasingly orientalist gaze. The article argues that Hyde’s personal transformation reflected and anticipated broader shifts in Latter-day Saint theology: early hopes for Jewish physical restoration increasingly yielded to a framework in which conversion and spiritual transformation became prerequisites for covenant belonging. Hyde’s journey therefore illuminates not only Mormon thinking about the gathering of Israel, but also the entanglement of antisemitism, millenarian prophecy, nationalism, and religious self-definition in the nineteenth century.

Hales, Brian C. “Joseph Smith as the Book of Mormon’s Managing Editor.” Journal of Mormon History 52, no. 3 (2026): 75-105.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This article examines Joseph Smith’s editorial role in the 1837 and 1840 reprintings of the Book of Mormon. Hales asks whether Smith’s thousands of changes to the 1830 text were primarily copyedits—sentence-level corrections of grammar, spelling, wording, and readability—or more substantial content edits involving revision, restructuring, or redrafting. Drawing on Royal Skousen’s critical text work and earlier counts of textual changes, the article argues that Smith’s revisions were overwhelmingly brief and localized: most involved one to three words, none exceeded thirteen words, and none rewrote a full sentence, paragraph, section, or chapter. The changes largely normalized nonstandard English, corrected grammar, clarified phrasing, or removed redundancy. A few edits may have doctrinal implications, but Hales treats them as limited clarifications rather than major theological revisions. The article concludes that Joseph Smith functioned as the Book of Mormon’s managing editor, but that his editorial work was copyediting rather than content editing; consequently, the Book of Mormon’s original dictated text has never undergone substantial developmental revision.

Champoux, Jennifer. CCA Christensen: A Mormon Visionary. University of Illinois Press, 2026.

Carl Christian Anton (C. C. A.) Christensen left paintings that provide unique glimpses into the beliefs and life experiences of nineteenth-century members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Christensen took his subject matter from the Book of Mormon and the Church’s early history, painting widely admired scenes and panoramas that portrayed, retold, and interpreted the past.

Drawing on the artist’s voluminous writings, Jennifer Champoux illuminates Christensen’s influential art, including recently rediscovered works. Christensen received Church commissions and approval and helped shape Latter-day Saints’ vision of themselves. Over time the work of other artists eclipsed his achievements, but a twenty-first century revival of interest began to restore his reputation. Champoux also profiles how Christensen’s expansive activities outside of the art world gave him a unique vantage point for chronicling how the Latter-day Saint faith and culture evolved in Utah.

A revealing intellectual biography, C. C. A. Christensen offers a rare in-depth look at a major Latter-day Saint artist.

Wells, Eliza. “Mormonism, Feminism, and Relational Moral Agency.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 121-140. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter argues that Mormon theology contains distinctive internal resources for feminist philosophy, especially through its teachings on divine embodiment, human deification, relationality, and care. Rather than treating feminism as an external critique imposed on Latter-day Saint thought, the chapter shows how Mormonism’s own theological commitments support a relational model of moral agency. Because Mormonism teaches that God is embodied, emotionally responsive, relational, and that humans may become like God, moral agency cannot be understood as abstract, disembodied, or radically independent. Instead, agency develops through bodies, relationships, social scaffolding, and embodied experience. The chapter brings these Mormon commitments into conversation with feminist accounts of relational autonomy, feminist epistemology, and care ethics, arguing that Mormon thought resonates strongly with feminist critiques of traditional Western models of the autonomous rational agent. It further applies this framework to LDS Church practice, especially gendered leadership structures and household care labor. If embodied and situated knowledge matter, then excluding women from leadership creates epistemic and moral deficits in church governance. Likewise, if care labor is central to moral life, then assigning nurturing primarily to women while giving men presiding authority fractures the Latter-day Saint moral experience. The chapter concludes that Mormonism’s relational and embodied theology should lead not only to richer philosophical reflection but also to more responsible religious practice and reform of gendered structures within the LDS Church.

Lawal, Joseph. “God an Alien, or an Alien God?.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 31-48. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter contrasts the Latter-day Saint conception of God as embodied, relational, and in some sense finite with the God of classical theism, who is simple, immutable, impassable, a se, and radically transcendent. Lawal argues that the central divide is not merely over doctrines such as the Trinity, but over fundamentally different pictures of divine nature and divine knowability. After outlining the motivations for classical theism—especially its explanatory power and its claim to describe a maximally worshipworthy being—the chapter develops a critique of classical theological language. In particular, it questions whether appeals to analogy can preserve meaningful claims such as “God loves,” “God is compassionate,” or “God is merciful” when classical attributes seem to strip those terms of their ordinary content. Lawal concludes that classical theism risks making God so alien that ordinary religious language becomes unintelligible, whereas Latter-day Saint finite theism offers a conception of God more continuous with human relational categories.

Miller, Taylor-Grey. “Joseph Smith and the Specter of Classical Theism.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 78-100. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter argues that Joseph Smith’s theology may generate an unexpected “specter of classical theism.” Classical theism typically conceives of God as omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, eternal, metaphysically simple, and existing a se, while Joseph Smith’s mature theology appears to reject this picture by affirming that God has a body, parts, and passions. Yet the chapter contends that Smith’s own teachings about uncreated, beginningless “intelligences” create a paradox. Because intelligences are self-existent and uncreated, they appear to be metaphysically simple; because any possible intelligence must be beginningless, a modal argument suggests that all possible intelligences actually exist; and because Latter-day Saint scripture seems to allow for a hierarchy of intelligences culminating in a greatest intelligence, there is reason to think a greatest possible intelligence exists. The chapter then argues that this being would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, eternal, and metaphysically simple—close enough to the God of classical theism to trouble standard Latter-day Saint objections to divine simplicity. Rather than treating classical theism as irrelevant to Latter-day Saint metaphysics, the chapter concludes that Latter-day Saints must either “oust” this specter by challenging key premises about aseity, simplicity, or modal reasoning, or “befriend” it by finding a constructive theological role for such a being.

Christensen, Ryan. “Why a Latter-day Saint Might Recite the Nicene Creed.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 185-206. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

Ashfield, Mike. “Bare Theism and Latter-day Saint Philosophical Theology.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 10-30. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter asks whether Latter-day Saint theology should count as “theistic” within a genuinely global philosophy of religion. Ashfield argues that debates over whether Latter-day Saints are theists often assume narrowly Anselmian, Christian, or Abrahamic definitions of theism, which can obscure rather than clarify the distinctive structure of Latter-day Saint thought. Instead, the chapter proposes a broader account of “bare theism”: Exclusive Agential Ultimacy, the view that ultimate reality is primarily ordered by a small number of agential sources.

Using that definition, the chapter argues that several popular Latter-day Saint theological pictures may be better classified as nontheistic rather than straightforwardly theistic. A King Follett–style infinite regress of gods lacks any ultimate or fundamental explanation; Paulsen’s account of God organizing preexisting matter under eternal laws gives ultimate priority to impersonal order; and a view centered on infinitely many uncreated intelligences resembles pluralistic agential ultimacy rather than exclusive theism.

Ashfield stresses, however, that this does not mean Latter-day Saint theology is atheistic. Rather, some versions of Latter-day Saint thought resemble nontheistic traditions such as Pure Land Buddhism or Jainism more than standard Abrahamic theism. The chapter then considers how Latter-day Saint theology might be reformulated theistically: by rejecting an infinite regress of gods, affirming a supreme or unsurpassable Godhead, and preserving distinctive LDS commitments such as divine embodiment, non-creation ex nihilo, the co-eternity of matter or intelligences, and the possibility of exalted beings. Such a theism would likely differ from classical Christian theism, resembling in some respects process theism, African Traditional Religion, Zoroastrianism, or Manichaeism.

The chapter concludes that Latter-day Saints as believers need not care whether their theology fits a philosophical definition of theism, but Latter-day Saint theologians and philosophers probably should, since these classifications affect how the tradition is understood in comparative philosophy of religion. In the end, Ashfield presents Latter-day Saint theology as neither simply atheistic nor simply classically theistic, but as a distinctive tradition whose contested status can illuminate broader debates about God, ultimacy, agency, and comparative theology.

Sperry, Kathryn, Madison Arave, and Layla Manzanares. “Religion and Victim Blame in Sexual Assault Cases: Evidence of the Black Sheep Effect.” Violence Against Women (2026): 10778012261461595.

The black sheep effect (BSE) occurs when “deviant” ingroup members are judged more negatively compared to deviant outgroup members. We tested the BSE in the context of perceptions of rape victims. In a 4 (participant religion)?×?3 (victim religion)?×?2 (gender) between-subjects design (N?=?760), Latter-Day Saints (LDS) (Mormon) participants blamed the LDS victim more than the Catholic victim. Utah LDS participants had higher negative affect toward the LDS victim compared to the Catholic victim. Catholic participants did not show this pattern, suggesting a need to examine additional contextual factors, including religious salience and cultural tightness. Implications are discussed.

Shosted, Ryan, and N. E. Davis. The Deseret Alphabet: A Fixed and Unalterable Sound. University of Illinois Press, 2026.

Facing starvation and ruin on Utah’s nineteenth-century frontier, Latter-day Saint pioneers launched an audacious experiment to reshape the English language: the Deseret Alphabet. Ryan K. Shosted and N. E. Davis trace the alphabet’s origins in the linguistic vision of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young; explore its contested social, spiritual, and linguistic functions; and examine its decline and modern-day renewal.

Shosted and Davis draw on a wide range of sources, including previously unpublished archival material, to trace the alphabet’s roots in Joseph Smith’s esoteric translations and its role in shaping Latter-day Saint identity. Their account brings together theology, linguistics, and culture. As they show, the Deseret Alphabet remains relevant as a living artifact of a religion wrestling with its visionary origins and the divine potential of words.

In-depth and up to date, The Deseret Alphabet traces the script’s creation, use, and legacy across Latter-day Saint history.

Davis, Ryan W. “Authority Without Dominion.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 141-159. Routledge.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter argues that Joseph Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail advances a strikingly revisionist account of religious authority. Against the standard philosophical view that authority consists in a right to command, the chapter interprets Smith as claiming that divine authority is canceled when it is used to exercise dominion, compulsion, or control over others. On this account, priesthood authority is maintained only through persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, and love. The chapter develops this interpretation by reading the Liberty Jail letter alongside Matthew 21–22, especially Jesus’s parables about legitimate authorities who lose their standing when they attempt to seize dominion for themselves. It then contrasts Smith’s view with Hobbes’s theory of authorization and dominion, arguing that Smith separates authorization to act on God’s behalf from any right to alienate others’ access to divine revelation. The result is a concept of “authority without dominion”: religious authorities may act for God, but only insofar as they continue to receive and enact God’s will rather than asserting their own.

Haderlie, Derek Christian. “Is God Subordinate to Law?.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 49-67. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter examines the common claim that Latter-day Saint theology teaches that God is subordinate to law. Beginning with a reformulation of the Euthyphro question—whether laws are lawful because God commands them or God commands them because they are lawful—the chapter argues that “Subordination” is far more ambiguous than often assumed. It distinguishes different kinds of law, including moral, metaphysical, and physical laws, as well as different forms of dependence, including causal, metaphysical, and essential subordination. Against the widespread assumption that Latter-day Saints straightforwardly affirm God’s subordination to law, the chapter evaluates three major arguments for the view: Book of Mormon passages suggesting that God would “cease to be God” without law, Parley Pratt’s argument from divine embodiment, and B. H. Roberts’s moral argument against divine arbitrariness. Each argument, the chapter concludes, is inconclusive: the scriptural arguments establish at most modal coordination between God and law, Pratt’s physicalist argument does not clearly apply to God qua God, and Roberts’s moral argument overlooks alternatives such as moral law being grounded in God’s essence. The chapter therefore calls for a more careful metaphysical framework for future Latter-day Saint reflection on God’s relation to law.

Wrathall, Mark A. “What Kind of a Body Is God’s?” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 68-77. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter examines divine embodiment in the Latter-day Saint tradition by challenging the tendency to infer too much metaphysics from sparse scriptural claims about matter and bodies. Rather than treating Latter-day Saint scripture as straightforwardly committed to material monism, the chapter argues that passages such as D&C 131:7 and D&C 130:22 leave open a more complex ontological pluralism, including different kinds of matter, different kinds of bodies, and possibly non-material realities. The chapter therefore cautions against explaining God’s body by appeal to ordinary assumptions about physical matter. It then turns from metaphysics to phenomenology, asking what embodiment means existentially rather than materially. Drawing on themes associated with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger, it proposes four theses: to have a body is to actualize a world, to occupy a specific place and orientation within that world, to be a necessary contingency, and to be at risk. Applied to divine embodiment, these theses suggest that God’s body may matter less as a clue to divine material composition than as a way of understanding God as world-involving, project-bearing, and vulnerable to relationship with embodied beings. The chapter concludes that God’s embodiment may be best understood as enabling humans to inhabit, respond to, and relate to God within a shared world.

Rockwood, Nathan. “A Social Contract Theodicy.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 101-120. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter develops a “social contract theodicy” as a response to the problem of evil. It argues that God’s creation of a world containing evil can be justified if free and rational persons did, or would, consent to live in such a world. Drawing on the Latter-day Saint doctrine of a premortal council, the chapter presents mortal life as the result of a mutually agreed-upon plan in which persons knowingly accepted a world involving good and evil, pleasure and pain, success and failure. The argument is modeled on social contract theory: just as political arrangements can be justified by actual or hypothetical rational consent, the conditions of mortal life can be justified by our agreement to them. The chapter further argues that this consent need not depend on accepting a literal premortal existence; a Rawlsian-style hypothetical agreement would also suffice. In response to worries about horrendous evil, the chapter insists that rational consent would be possible only if God guarantees that each person’s life will ultimately be good for them. The social contract theodicy therefore explains why God would create a world like this one: not because evil is intrinsically desirable, but because rational agents would choose a mortal life whose goods—including free will, growth, and eventual redemption—make its costs worthwhile.

Paxman, Katharina. “The Sacred Nature of Shared Feeling: The Centrality of Empathy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition.” In Contemporary Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, pp. 160-184. Routledge, 2026.

No abstract provided, ChatGPT-created abstract. 

This chapter argues that empathy—understood as shared feeling and felt understanding of another’s mental states—is central to Latter-day Saint theology. While many religious traditions emphasize compassion, the chapter claims that LDS scripture and teaching give distinctive prominence to empathic experience itself. Drawing on contemporary philosophical accounts of empathy, it distinguishes empathy from sympathy and compassion, treating it as an other-directed capacity that combines affective sharing with cognitive understanding. The chapter then traces this theme through LDS sources, including baptismal covenants to “mourn with those that mourn,” Book of Mormon teachings about Christ’s embodied suffering and atoning knowledge of human pain, and the Pearl of Great Price’s portrayal of Enoch’s reciprocal empathic encounter with a weeping God. It argues that LDS theology includes both aspirational human empathy and perfect divine empathy: humans covenant to cultivate limited, humble, other-centered empathy, while God and Christ possess complete empathic knowledge. The chapter concludes that empathy is not merely instrumentally valuable as a path to compassion, but is a sacred feature of divine-human unity, Zion community, and eternal life in the Latter-day Saint tradition.