The dissolution of the hymnbook committee in the late 1970s brought the work of preparing a new collection of hymns for the worldwide Church to a halt. Approximately five years later, the First Presidency instructed Michael F. Moody of the…
Category: Church History
The History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 8: The Hymnbook that Never Was
Increased oversight by Church leaders caused by the Correlation movement brought the tension between the Church Music Committee’s ongoing crusade for more sophisticated hymns and general Church membership’s tastes for enjoyable music in the hymnal to a head. Correlation was…
The History of LDS Hymnbooks Part 7: The 1948 Hymns: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Sometimes musicians (both in our tradition and others) think of themselves, more or less, as musical dieticians for their religion when assembling hymnbooks. Some types of hymns are deemed to be higher quality (and therefore spiritually healthy) while others are…
The History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 6: The Latter-day Saint Hymns
In the early 20th century, the LDS Church formed an official music committee of professional musicians to oversee the production of a new hymnal for Church use. By 1920, there were a variety of hymn books in use by the…
The History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 5: The Sunday School Hymnals
The Sunday School played a prominent role in the development of LDS hymns during the late nineteenth century. In saying this, it is important to remember that in times past, auxiliary organizations had greater autonomy than they do today. For…
The History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 4: Latter-day Saints’ Psalmody
Original music for LDS hymns initially developed in 19th century Utah. For the faction of the Mormonism that followed the Quorum of the Twelve west to the Great Basin region, the Manchester hymnal continued to serve as the official hymnal…
History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 3: Emma’s 1841 Nauvoo Hymnbook
Two hymnals published in the early 1840s displayed a growing divide in opinion over selection of hymns in the Church. In October of 1839, a high council “voted that Sister Emma Smith, select and publish a hymn Book for the…
History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 2: The Manchester Hymnal
The history of Mormon hymnbooks is not always straightforward, with one authorized hymnbook following another. Following the publication of the 1835 hymnbook, a few unauthorized hymnals were published that influenced future hymnbooks. Recognizing a growing need for hymnals in Mormon…
History of LDS Hymnbooks, Part 1: The 1835 Hymnal
It has been stated before that “of all artistic endeavors . . . music may justly be named as the first to claim divine support and prophetic direction for its development in the fledgling LDS church.”[1] Mormonism began developing its…
The New LDS Hymnbook: Changes and Possibilities
Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that they were going to prepare a new hymnbook and children’s songbook for use in the worldwide Church. Specifically, the goal is to create unity in hymn numbers and selections…
Review: William V. Smith’s ‘Textual Studies of the Doctrine & Covenants’
In October 2007, I returned home to Texas from my mission in Nevada. In April of the following year, the raid on the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, TX, occurred. I didn’t think much about it at the time because, you…
What’s in a name? A historical note on the title of the Mission President’s Wife
Last year, Cassler and McBaine published results of their survey on “the Naming of Women’s Positions and Organizations in the LDS Church.” Around 400 survey respondents who self-identified as LDS women answered questions about whether or not they would change…
Review: A Peculiar People, or How Protestants Viewed Mormons in the Nineteenth Century
So I finally got around to reading J. Spencer Fluhman’s book “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. I was expecting another account of “beat up the Mormons” episodes in the 19th century. Instead, it…
New “Official” Church History Volumes Forthcoming
Ten years ago, I posted one of my very first pieces at T&S, “Missing Essentials,” noting the decline of familiarity with LDS history by the average member of the Church and suggesting this was due, in part, to the lack…
Telling the stories of the Church’s history
A review of Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History, by Gregory A. Prince Telling the history of a church can be tricky. Which elements arose from the culture of the time? Which manifest the direct intervention of the…
Some Thoughts on Trends in Apologetics
First let me say upfront that I simply don’t read that many apologetic papers anymore. That’s less about any problems with the genre so much as just a lack of time. I have to be a little pickier about what…
The New Harmonized First Vision Account
Sunday night, Elder Richard J. Maynes, of the Presidency of the Seventy, delivered a CES Devotional on the First Vision. In particular, he made explicit reference to the four first-person accounts of the First Vision authored by Joseph Smith that…
Terryl Givens on What It Means to Sustain
Below is a letter Terryl Givens recently wrote on what it means to sustain Church leadership. It is an outgrowth of an actual correspondence between Brother Givens and a friend, and is posted with Givens’ permission. The friend holds strong…
A Look at Life on the Trail
On a recent corner-to-corner drive across the state of Wyoming, I paralleled the Mormon Trail for about 200 miles: from where the trail intersects I-25 (about 80 miles north of Cheyenne), through Casper (site of the first Mormon ferry), along…
Review: Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy
Merina Smith’s Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy: The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830-1853 (USU Press, 2013) does a very nice job summarizing scholarship on the LDS practice of polygamy during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and for the decade following…