Category: Church History

  • Jerusalem

    Jim F.

    Last week Janice and I spent several days in Cornwall, Great Britain, with the BYU students doing London Study Abroad.

  • David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

    Greg Prince

    David O. McKay presented a dramatic contrast to his predecessors: an athletic, movie-star-handsome, clean-shaven figure who often wore a white double-breasted suit; contrasted to the dark-suited, bearded polygamists (or, in the case of George Albert Smith, son of a polygamist) who preceded him as Church President ever since Joseph Smith. In an age prior to…

  • Visions–Medieval and Modern

    Kirsten M. Christensen

    I had just completed the oral defense of my admission-to-PhD-candidacy exams, which emphasized the writings of medieval visionaries and mystics. My advisor extended his hand, and with his typical wry smile, said: “Congratulations. You passed. Now, go home and have a vision!” We all had a good laugh, but for different reasons. They all laughed…

  • Game Theory and Mormon History

    Nate Oman

    So let’s think about Zion as a prisoner’s dilemma (PD).

  • Sectarianism vs. Assimilation

    Ben Huff

    Which should we be more strenuously avoiding, and how? Clark Goble suggests that the Church in “the last decade and a half has focused on building on common ground. But that has also (IMO) had unfortunate doctrinal consequences on the population as well as I believe leading to the decrease in conversions the last 5…

  • The Problems of the Great Apostasy

    Nate Oman

    One the bed-rock doctrines of Mormonism (to the extent that we have any bed-rock doctrines) is that the church set up by Christ fell away from the true gospel, lost its priesthood authority, and slipped into apostasy. It seems to me that we have two fundamental problems with the doctrine of the Great Apostasy.

  • The Evening When Mormons Could Once More Become Americans

    Nate Oman

    I have been reading Kathleen Flake’s excellent book on the Reed Smoot hearings, and it has me thinking Smootish thoughts.

  • 268M in 2080

    Julie M. Smith

    Most members of the Church are probably familiar with the estimate made by (nonLDS) sociologist Rodney Stark that, if current growth patterns hold, there will be 268 million members of the Church by the year 2080.

  • Joseph Smith, Justice Frankfurter and the Great Writ

    Nate Oman

    It is time for the post that you have all been waiting for, the one of the place of Mormonism in habeas corpus jurisprudence.

  • David O. McKay: Father, Teacher, Prophet

    Rosalynde Welch

    On Sunday I received this year’s course curriculum for RS and Priesthood: a diminutive paperback with a striking portrait on the cover, entitled Teachings of Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay.

  • A Mormon Washington Post?

    Nate Oman

    Among other reasons that I like living in Washington DC is the Washington Post. It is on occasion of course a partisan rag, but, hey, it is my partisan rag. It is certainly much better than the trash that they read in some city farther up the coast. The world might have been different, however,…

  • How Corporations Saved the United Order (kind of)

    Nate Oman

    One of the great advantages of blogging is that you can ramble on regardless of whether or not what you are saying is of any interest to anyone else. Hence this post. I feel it is time that we had the discussion that you have all be waiting for: The one on real estate leases,…

  • The Church and the Tribe

    Ben Huff

    The church seems to have replaced the tribe as God’s pattern for organizing his people–or has it? When God covenanted with Abraham, the covenant was with Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:7-8+). This covenant was to be fulfilled in part through Abraham’s righteous leadership as a father

  • Galen, Holmes & Hot Drinks

    Nate Oman

    One of the odder bits of Mormon interpretation is the strange life of “hot drinks.â€? These are the actual beverages forbidden by the Word of Wisdom. As we all know they have come to mean coffee and tea with hot chocolate and Diet Coke forming border cases for some, and no one really objecting to…

  • Relics

    Nate Oman

    One of my more prized possessions is a small chunk of limestone. It is about 8 inches long, roughly the size of two fists. Its value lies in the fact that is is a piece of one of the shattered sunstones of the original Nauvoo temple.

  • The Nauvoo Printing Office

    Gordon Smith

    I went to Nauvoo this weekend and found this, which reminded me of all of you.

  • A Book I Would Like to See

    Nate Oman

    With luck we should soon be hearing from Professor Royal Skousen, who is the mastermind of the critical text of the Book of Mormon. There is another critical text edition that I would like to see: A critical text of the Doctrine and Covenants.

  • Mormon Images: Office Decor and the Place of Mormonism in American History

    Nate Oman

    A few weels ago I finished my stint at the public trough and left the service of the federal courts. I know work for the law firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood in Washington, DC. The identity of the firm is significant only because this is the firm (and office) where Rex E. Lee…

  • A Matter of Taste

    Gordon Smith

    I just received an announcement for a talk next week in our business school. The title is “Practicing Polygamy with Good Taste: The Evolution of Inter-organizational Collaboration in the Life Sciences.” The paper on which the talk is based has a different title, but the reference to polygamy has me wondering about this person’s perception…

  • Davis Bitton: “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church”

    Matt Evans

    Davis Bitton, one of the Mormon church’s most prominent historians, has written an essay with the provocative title, “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church.” First delivered at the 2004 FAIR Conference, his purpose is to distinguish the gospel, of which he has a testimony, from church history, of which he…

  • “Our Mothers (and Grandmothers) Knew It”: The Testimony of Talitha Cumi Garlick

    A A A A A A A

    A controversial event in Church history occurred when Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon both presented their arguments to the Church regarding who should lead after the death of Joseph Smith. Many members of the Church have heard that when Brigham Young rose to speak, he seemed to sound like and even look like Joseph Smith,…

  • The Drama of Procedural Nonsense

    Nate Oman

    I appreciate Kaimi’s post about the jury instructions in Reynolds. But I do object to his claim that the procedural arcana at the beginning of that opinion are of no interest today. The substantive law that they deal with — the number of grand jurors necessary in an Article II territorial court — are not…

  • Was Polygamy Good for Women?

    Julie M. Smith

    I think there is an unexamined assumption that polygamy in general is misogynistic, as if there were an equation in our minds and three or four or five women were needed to be ‘equal’ to one man in a polygamous worldview. I am wondering if we might explore that assumption.

  • My Pioneer Ancestors

    Jim F.

    I joined the Church in February of 1962, as a teenager living in San Antonio, Texas, where my father was stationed at the time. (He was in the Army, studying hospital administration at Fort Sam Houston, in a Baylor extension program.) My parents and my younger brother joined at the same time. My parents were…

  • Belated Good-Bye

    Nate Oman

    I missed it at the time, but last month Rhee Ho Nam died. The name probably means very little to most of you, but Brother Rhee was one of the noble and great ones. A very early convert to the Church in Korea, he served as the first Korean stake president, and at one time…

  • The Odd Double Restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood

    Nate Oman

    Of late I have been reading Joseph Smith’s History of the Church (also sometimes known as the Documentary History of the Church) in the mornings before I start work. Reading it raised fun little puzzle for me about the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood.

  • On the Significance of Mormon Wars

    Nate Oman

    One of the interesting questions to ask in the current discussions of war and peace is whether the history Mormon wars tells us anything about how Mormons ought to think about these issues.

  • On Being Called to the Law

    Nate Oman

    War, peace, gay marriage…whatever…lets talk about something important and interesting: My great, great grandfather.

  • Joseph’s Phrenology Report

    Christopher Bradford

    I know, I know, this is something you’re more likely to see from Nate, but I couldn’t resist, especially after seeing Nate’s post of the Joseph Smith caricature.

  • Church PR and the CIA

    Nate Oman

    As many people are aware, the Church currently employees a New York based PR firm. The topic has come up from time to time in press accounts about the Church, and journalists have labored mightily to make this into an interesting fact. I am doubtful. However, there are some interesting Church PR stories, including the…