When was Jesus born? While not consequential to our salvation or daily choices, it’s an interesting question to explore. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Jeffrey R. Chadwick discussed his research into the question: When was Jesus actually born? What follows here is a co-post to that discussion (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). When a non-expert Latter-day Saints approach the question of “When was Jesus born?”, they often draw upon a traditional interpretation of Doctrine and Covenants, 20:1 to claim that it happened on 6 April. Elder James E. Talmage’s widely read Jesus the Christ reinforces this interpretation. As Chadwick explained: Growing up as a Latter-day Saint boy, serving a mission, and entering service as a seminary teacher 45 years ago, it was axiomatic in our conversation that Jesus had been born on April 6th of 1 BC, as stated by Elder James E. Talmage in his classic work Jesus the Christ. … Generally, and also quite specifically, many Latter-day Saints take at face value the statement of Elder James E. Talmage that Jesus was born on April 6 of 1 BC, a position Elder Talmage linked to the passage in Doctrine and Covenants 20:1 which notes the organization of the Church on April 6 of 1830, being that many years since the “coming of … Jesus Christ in the flesh.” This seemed to Elder Talmage a specific dating tag…
Author: Chad Nielsen
Chad’s three great intellectual passions in life are science, history/religious studies, and music. He has pursued a career in biotechnology, but maintains an active interest in both of his other passions on the side. Chad is a four-time winning contestant in the Arrington Writing Award competition held at Utah State University for his essays on Mormon history and has presented at the Logan Institute of Religion scholar’s forum and the annual meeting of the Society of Mormon Philosophy and Theology. He is a faithful Latter-day Saint who has served in a variety of music, teaching, and clerical callings at his church as well as in the music ministry of a Presbyterian church. Currently he is serving as a music missionary as a member of the Bells on Temple Square.
Documents and a House Full of Females
Primary sources like journals and diaries are the backbone of a lot of historic research. In a recent interview with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich over at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Ulrich discussed some of the documents she used and how she used them while writing A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870. What follows here is a copost to that interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). Close readings and use of primary source material is central to Ulrich’s work. As she noted in the interview, A House Full of Females is a bit like a quilt: Nineteenth-century quilts were often made by stitching together small fragments of fabric. My book is also built from fragments, day-by-day accounts found in diaries, letters, autograph albums, poems, and minutes of meetings. I privileged records created in the heat of events, not because I consider those records more truthful than later recollections but because I wanted to understand how people behaved when they had no idea how things were going to turn out. I treasured every scrap of women’s writing I could find, even using the dated squares on an actual quilt as one of my sources, but I also found important material in the diaries of several men, including Wilford Woodruff, whose consistent daily diaries provided a kind of sashing to hold my story squares together. In fact, it was one…
Imperial Zions
Latter-day Saints in the 19th century existed at a paradoxical intersection of American history. When they fled to Alta California to settle the Great Basin, they were refugees fleeing from the United States. Defiantly practicing plural marriage in the face of federal laws that opposed the principle, they came to face a heavy-handed effort by Americans to colonize their community of Deseret to match the broader American culture. At the same time, they were colonizers in their own right, settling land claimed by other peoples for hundreds of years by dispossessing the Native Americans, while also launching a missionary effort into the Pacific Ocean. In Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto explores these paradoxes and how the Latter-day Saints (Euro-American, Native American, and Pacific Islander) navigated them. In many ways, Imperial Zions itself sits at the intersection of several landmark studies of Latter-day Saint history, synthesizing them together while building on that foundation. I felt like it brought together W. Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color (Oxford University Press, 2015), Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females (Knopf, 2017), Darren Parry’s The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History (BCC Press, 2019), and Hokulani Aikau’s A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) together in one place to have a conversation and work out how they all fit together in a larger…
Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints
The Maxwell Institute at BYU recently published Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints, and it is a fantastic journey into early Christianity geared specifically to Latter-day Saints. Through a collection of 14 essays dealing with topics ranging from praxis and worship to scripture and theology, the key elements of Christianity during its first several centuries (and beyond) are addressed in an accessible way. The discussions are punctuated by a large collection of artwork produced by early Christians, spread throughout the book in beautiful detail. When approaching Latter-day Saint writings about early Christianity, I’m generally concerned that it will be an effort to convince people that the ancient Church was identical to the modern one in a polemic effort to reinforce the traditional apostasy-restoration narrative. Ancient Christians quickly dispatched that concern, with Jason R. Combs discussing this at length in the introduction. He notes that: “rather than dismissing entire epochs as corrupt … today we work to understand ancient Christians on their own terms.” He added that: “We cannot assume that today’s Church is a template for what the first-century Church must have been, or vice versa. For that reason, in this book, our authors acknowledge the differences between ancient Christians and Latter-day Saints without automatically assuming such differences to be evidence of apostasy.” In this way, Ancient Christians both compliments and expands on some of the concepts discussed in Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy (Oxford University…
Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision
The vision that we have printed as Section 138 was received by Joseph F. Smith in the last few months of his life. Among the very first people he asked to have review the document was none other than his friend, Susa Young Gates. In one of the excellent essays presented in the Revelations in Context book, Lisa Olsen Tait talked about Susa’s experience with the revelation. More recently, Lisa Olsen Tait discussed more about Susa and the Vision of the Redemption of the Dead in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with some excerpts and discussion). Why was Susa one of the first people to read the vision? Part of it has to do with her personal friendship with Joseph F. Smith. As Tait described: Joseph F. Smith was over seventeen years older than Susa Young Gates. … They became friends in Hawai’i in 1885-87. Susa accompanied her husband, Jacob F. Gates, on a return mission to the Sandwich Islands, and their service overlapped with the time that Joseph F. Smith and his wife Julina were there, basically keeping a low profile during the anti-polygamy crusade. (Smith was a highly-wanted man due to his church leadership position and his knowledge of the records.) A few letters between them from that time survive, and, in my reading, evince a progression from friendly but formal acquaintances to deep…
Clare Middlemiss and David O. McKay
In a church hierarchy made up of humans, it is possible for people who we don’t usually think about to have power and influence in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. During the David O. McKay administration, his personal secretary (Clare Middlemiss) was one such person who has not commonly been discussed, but who had an impact on the Church. President McKay’s biographer, Gregory Prince, recently discussed Clare Middlemiss in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion. David O. McKay originally took on Middlemiss as his personal sectary in 1935, but his choice to retain her in that role when he became president of the church in 1951 was unusual. As Greg Prince explained: It was unprecedented [to have Middlemiss stay on as his secretary]. Joseph Anderson had been the personal secretary to George Albert Smith and, I think, Heber J. Grant, and he assumed he would have the same role when David O. McKay became president. But, immediately upon moving into the president’s office, McKay announced that Clare would continue to be his secretary, she having filled that role for 16 years by that time. (Joseph Anderson was the secretary to the First Presidency, and as such, he sat in on First Presidency meetings and took minutes of those meetings. Clare never attended those meetings.) It was the only…
“Final”, Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 9
“Our Savior, Jesus Christ, understands our pains and our afflictions. He wants to ease our burdens and comfort us.”[1] ~Moisés Villanueva Hymn Text: “Final”, by Joel Morales was included in the Spanish hymnals from 1912 – 1992. The 1912 hymnal indicates that it is intended to be sung to the same tune as Songs of Zion, no. 168, which was “Ye Who Are Called to Labor” by Daniel B. Towner . When printed with music in the 1942 hymnal, it was published with the tune of “A Happy Band of Children” by Edwin F. Parry. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any information about Joel Morales himself. Table 1. Comparison of the hymn text in different editions of the hymnal 1912 1942 Ya suena la trompeta, Los justos llaman ya, Y Cristo se presenta, Los hombres juzgará. Ya suena la trompeta, Los justos llama ya, Y Cristo en su trono A todos juzgará. Serán las obras jueces, El mal á condenar; A justos dar la gloria, El bien á premiar. Serán las obras jueces, El mal condenarán; A justos dar la gloria, Lo bueno premiarán. En nube de la gloria, El Cristo ya vendrá; Del hombre la historia Escrita, El tendrá. En nube de la gloria, El Salvador vendrá; Del hombre la historia Escrita, él tendrá. La salvación eterna, A justos, les dará; El romperá las ligas, Y les libertará. La salvación eterna A justos, él dará, Eterna…
Latter-day Listicles
The Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk is approaching its 5-year anniversary. With those 5 years of content in mind, they have gathered snippets of information from their interviews into compilations, one each featuring the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Jr., and Brigham Young. They’re pretty fun and interesting to peruse to see what has been shared at From the Desk about those topics over the years. For example, with the Book of Mormon, there is a lot of information to look through. Some if it is relatively well-known already, such as that the Book of Mormon helps Latter-day Saints Isaiah, the process that Joseph Smith went through wasn’t exactly a language-to-language translation in the sense we generally think of today, and Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote the current section headings. Other parts are less commonly-known, such as the fact that Jane Manning James held Joseph Smith’s seer stone, that there’s a lot more to the Martin Harris story than is commonly told, and that Emma Smith took efforts to protect the gold plates. For example, in discussing the seer stone story with Jane Manning, the following is shared: Jane Manning James had the opportunity to handle Joseph Smith’s seer stones. Biographer Quincy Newell said that the priceless opportunity occurred while living in the Nauvoo Mansion House. In the words of Jane Manning James: One morning I met Brother Joseph coming out of his Mother’s room he said good morning and shook hands…
“Venid, Hermanos”: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 8
To the degree that members of the Church live the gospel and follow the counsel of the prophets, they will, little by little and even without noticing it, become sanctified. Humble members of the Church who conduct daily family prayer and scripture study, engage in family history, and consecrate their time to worship in the temple frequently, become Saints.[1] Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: “Venid, Hermanos” by José V. Estrada G. was published initially in the 1912 edition of the Mexican mission hymnbook, though it did not make the cut past the 1933 edition of the same hymnal. It bears a similar name and the same author as the previous hymn discussed in this series (“Hermanos, Venid”), though it is a distinct hymn. The original edition indicates that it was intended to be sung to hymn 87 from The Songs of Zion, which was “How Firm a Foundation.” In this case, the same tune is used for “How Firm a Foundation” in the current hymnal. It took me a bit to figure out how to do the translation, since rather than using an iambic meter (every other syllable is stressed), it uses a dactyl-based meter (every third syllable is stressed).
The Rise and Fall of the ZCMI
Growing up in the Salt Lake Valley, one of my family’s favorite Christmas traditions was visiting the ZCMI storefront in Salt Lake City to see a display of large ornaments decorated with candy. While that tradition is carried on by Macy’s Salt Lake City store, ZCMI is gone. But the story of how ZCMI came to be is fascinating in its own right, with its ties to the United Orders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19th century. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Jeffrey Paul Thompson discussed some of that history. What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). While the department store I grew up knowing as ZCMI was a department store located in Salt Lake City and other major cities in the Intermountain West, the Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution at its height was a series of institutions and stores across Utah Territory. Thompson explained their origins as follows: Joseph Smith had repeatedly tried to bring economic parity to the Saints but, for various reasons, the attempts had failed. It appears that Brigham felt that this was one thing he needed to accomplish before he died since one of the hallmarks of a Zion society is that there are “no poor among them.” The organization of ZCMI really prepared the way for the United Order movement of…
“Hermanos, Venid”: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 7
Problems form an important part of our lives. They are placed in our path for us to overcome them, not to be overcome by them. We must master them, not let them master us. Every time we overcome a challenge, we grow in experience, in self-assuredness, and in faith.[1] ~Horacio A. Tenorio Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: “Hermanos, Venid” by José V. Estrada G. was initially published in 1912 and continued to be published up through the 1942 hymnbook. It was intended to be sung to the tune of Latter-day Saint Psalmody, 254, which was OMEGA by John Tullidge (“We’ll Sing the Songs of Zion”). It was also published in the 1942 hymnal, though set to a tune by George Careless called SUPPLICATION (“O God, The Eternal Father”). In the Latter-day Saint Psalmody, SUPPLICATION is the next page over from OMEGA, so it is possible that either there was a typo in the older hymnals or that both tunes were used interchangeably for the hymn and the latter won out later on (both tunes work for the text). Figure 1. “Hermanos, Venid” in the 1912 hymnal. Table 1. Comparison of the text of “Hermanos, Venid” in various editions of the Spanish hymnal. 1912 1942 Se oyen por doquiera Anuncios y clamor, Que dicen á la tierra, Su pronta destrucción; Ya suena la trompeta, Con…
Ann Madsen and Spencer W. Kimball
While Ann Madsen isn’t as well-known as her husband, Truman Madsen, she is a notable woman who has been described as “every bit the disciple-scholar” that her husband was. In a recent interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Ann discussed some of the events in her life, focusing particularly on a few interactions with Truman Madsen and Spencer W. Kimball. What follows here is a co-post (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). Ann Madsen notes in the interview that Spencer W. Kimball “was like a father” to her and her brother. She explained that: “I grew up two houses away from President Spencer W. Kimball. Even though he was an apostle, I grew up calling him ‘Brother Kimball.’ My father and I would often come out of the house each morning just before President Kimball. He’d come out of his house and call down the street to my father, ‘Barnard, hold the bus!’” She went on to share a story from her childhood: When I was about 10 years old, I was watching my 7-year-old brother when my parents went out. The last thing my mother said was: “Do not walk up to 21st East to get ice cream at Duffin’s. Do not do that.” As soon as they left, my brother said, “I think we can go up there. We’d be alright. We only need a nickel for ice cream cones and…
Dios, bendícenos: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 6
That complicated bond between my faith is what keeps me wondering, searching, discovering, and debating with myself, and through this I find a little of me each day, repeatedly learning that life has a purpose and that it has much to do with others and my relationship to the divine. It humbles me when I begin to think that I’m very important and lifts me up when I convince myself that I’m not worth much.[1] ~Ignacio M. García Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: “Dios, bendícenos”, by Edmund Richardson, is an interesting example of a hymn where it’s not clear if it’s meant to be an original text, a translation of an existing hymn, or something in between. It was published initially in 1907 and was included in every Spanish hymnal up through the 1942 hymnal. In the 1992 Himnos, however, the translation of “Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessings” was published using the same title while the Richardson text was dropped from the hymn book, indicating that it might have been a translation or paraphrase of “Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessings” in the past hymnals. There is a significant amount of overlap in ideas between the two hymns, similar meter, and the same number of verses. On the other hand, the text was always attributed to Edmund Richardson as author rather than translator,…
Choosing Faith and Into the Headwinds
Belief in religion is something that can be hard in Western culture. Yet, it is something worth working towards. This idea is something that Terryl and Nathaniel Givens discussed in a recent interview on the Latter-day Saint history and theology blog From the Desk. The context of their discussion has to do with a book they recently published called Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard–and Still Is (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2022). What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with some excerpts and discussion). The publisher of Into the Headwinds describes their book as follows: Acclaimed author Terryl Givens and his son, Nathaniel Givens, combine their respective areas of expertise to offer a fresh take on religious belief through the lens of contemporary research on psychology, cognition, and human nature. They also address two of faith’s foremost modern-day antagonists: rationalism, the myth that humans can or should make the majority of their choices based on logical thought, and scientism, the myth that science is the only reliable means of discovering truth. After reckoning with the surprising fact that people often don’t even understand their own beliefs and are influenced in ways they seldom perceive, the authors go on to describe genuine faith as an act of will—an effortful response to the deepest yearnings of the mind and heart—that engenders moral responsibility, the ability to embrace uncertainty, the motivation and means to relate to others, and…
¿Por qué somos?: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 5
Our Father knows and loves His children all over the world, from Boston to Okinawa, from San Antonio to Spain, from Italy to Costa Rica. In Ghana, President Gordon B. Hinckley recently thanked the Lord “for the brotherhood that exists among us, that neither color of skin nor land of birth can separate us as Thy sons and daughters.” … We come to this world in many colors, shapes, sizes, and circumstances. We don’t have to be rich, tall, thin, brilliant, or beautiful to be saved in the kingdom of God—only pure. We need to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ and keep His commandments. And we can all choose to do that regardless of where we live or what we look like.[1] ~Clate W. Mask Jr. Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: The hymn ¿Por qué somos? by Edmund W. Richardson was initially published in the 1912 edition of Himnos de Sion (see Figure 1). It is one of the three hymns that were written originally in Spanish that are included in the 1992 Spanish hymnal. The hymn has also been included in the Portuguese hymnal as “De que rumo vêm os homens”, though it is not included in the current hymnbook in that language. The original publication indicated that it should be sung to the tune of hymn 50 in Songs of…
Santos, Dad Loor á Dios: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 4
What greater power can you acquire on earth than the priesthood of God? What power could possibly be greater than the capacity to assist our Heavenly Father in changing the lives of your fellowmen, to help them along the pathway of eternal happiness by being cleansed of sin and wrongdoing?[1] ~Adrián Ochoa Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: “Santos, Dad Loor á Dios” by Edmund W. Richardson was initially included in the 1907 Himnario Mormón (see Figure 1). It was published in the 1912 edition of the Himnos de Sion, but was not included in subsequent editions of the hymnal. Both of the hymnals that it was published in did not indicate a tune to which it was intended to be sung, though the John-Charles Duffy and Hugo Olaiz article indicates that it was sung to the tune of “O Jesus! the giver of all we enjoy” from the Latter-day Saints’ Psalmody (GOSHEN, by Ralph Bradshaw), which can be made to fit.[2] There are a few textual variations between the 1907 and 1912 editions (see Table 1). Table 1. Comparison of texts from the two editions in which “Santos, Dad Loor á Dios” was published. 1907 “Santos, Dad Loór á Dios” 1912 “Santos, Dad Loor á Dios” Santos, dad loór á Dios, Himnos elevad; Alaban al Señor Por Su gran bondád. Antes en la cruz…
Mexican Pioneers
Back in 1997, M. Russell Ballard spoke about how we should take the “opportunity to honor … the remarkable efforts of our pioneers in every land who have blazed spiritual trails with faith in every one of their footsteps.” (M. Russell Ballard, “You Have Nothing to Fear from the Journey,” Conference Report, April 1997.) In a recent interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, F. LaMond Tullis discussed some of the stories of Latter-day Saint pioneers in Mexico. What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a shorter post with excerpts and some discussion). F. LaMond Tullis recently published a book covering the stories of 19 pioneering members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the interview, he discussed some of the reasons that led him to write Grass Roots in Mexico: First, I had a long and abiding interest in Latin America triggered by college friends who taught me Spanish. I also had an academic focus on the area at Harvard University, where I wrote several articles about the Church in Latin America, and published my book Mormons in Mexico (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987). I’ve also struggled over the years to say to an insular Latter-day Saint population that becoming a world-wide church entails attention to cultural matters at home as well as sending out missionaries abroad. He added that he hopes that people who read the book gain “a realization that…
Humildad: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 3
Oh, beloved brethren! Let us always remember the teachings of the prophets, let us always remember the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ which he brought us in the meridian of time. Let us remember also his exhortations to our people here in the Americas, which are recorded in the Book of Mormon; let us keep watch so that these great treasures which have been left to us will not be buried as they were during the time of the great apostasy. Strive to preserve them, to cultivate them, to convert our families into strong units in Zion.[1] ~Guillermo Torres Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: Humildad by W. Ernest Young was originally published in the 1912 editions of Himnos de Sion, and was included in the 1927 and 1933 editions of that book before being cut in subsequent editions. According to the 1912 edition, it was intended to be sung to the tune of hymn 223 in Songs of Zion, which was “Beautiful Isle” by J. S. Fearis. It is notable as the only one of the 23 original hymns in the Mexican mission hymnals to have a verse-chorus structure. Figure 1. “Humildad,” in the second 1912 edition of Himnos de Sion. Note: The author’s name is switched around slightly in the published text (Ernest W. instead of W. Ernest). The author, Walter Ernest…
Mormon Women at the Crossroads
Caroline Kline’s Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (University of Illinois Press, 2022) is an important contribution to studies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 21st century. The book is based on a series of oral interviews that Kline did with women of color in Mexico, Botswana, and the United States, both presenting excerpts from those interviews as well as analysis. The introduction begins by discussing how her initial lens of gender equality proved insufficient in understanding the stories, perspectives, and priorities of the women she interviewed. Recognizing that overlapping identities of race, social class, sexual identity, etc. shape people in different ways, Kline strives to capture and represent the voices of these women through focusing on the stories they wanted to tell. In her efforts to analyze the interviews through their lenses and priorities rather than strictly through her own lenses and priorities, Kline came to focus on the perspective of non-oppressive connectedness, a worldview that blends elements of female empowerment and liberation with a broader focus on fostering positive and productive relationships. The first three chapters focus on the women interviewed in each of the three different regions (Mexico, Botswana, and the United States) while the fourth is an effort at bringing together and synthesizing theological reflections from the women who were interviewed, focused on a theology of abundance. All told, the book is very rich with insight…
Padre Nuestro en el Cielo: Mexican Mission Hymns, Part 2
“Doing good often means getting one’s hands dirty, engaging in unpleasant things, and coming out of the battle worn and scarred. The battle for the public good is neither about holding onto or giving up everything, it is about knowing when to do much, when to hold back, a little, and when to do nothing at all.”[1] ~Ignacio M. García Note: This is a part of an ongoing series. To start at the introduction, follow the link here. Hymn Text: Padre Nuestro en el Cielo by Manrique González was one of the earliest-published Spanish hymns in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was published in the 1907 Mexican Mission Himnario Mormón (p. 57, see Figure 1) and in the 1912 editions of the Himnos de Sion (p.44). It was cut from subsequent editions of the hymnbook (1927 onwards). Textual changes between the two editions it was included in are minor, consisting solely of punctuation alterations (see Table 1). According to the 1912 edition, the hymn was to be sung to the tune of hymn 37 in the English-language Songs of Zion, which was “We are Sowing” by H. A. Tucket (8.7.8.7 D). Oddly, the hymn tune fits two verses of the hymn at a time, but there are 5 verses of the hymn, which doesn’t work out math-wise. In addition, the syllables do not completely align with the music as written. As a result, I wonder…