{"id":36369,"date":"2017-03-23T07:25:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T12:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=36369"},"modified":"2017-03-23T07:25:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T12:25:14","slug":"three-big-things-and-some-little-things-this-lifelong-mormon-learned-from-matt-bowmans-history-of-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/03\/three-big-things-and-some-little-things-this-lifelong-mormon-learned-from-matt-bowmans-history-of-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Three big things (and some little things) this lifelong Mormon learned from Matt Bowman&#8217;s history of the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-36370\" src=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/the-mormon-people.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"258\" height=\"388\" \/>How do you tell the story of a 200-year-old movement in a single volume? In the summer of 2011, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.matthewbowman.net\/\">Matthew Bowman<\/a> received a call inviting him to write such a volume in under three months. The result &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/a.co\/09IWV42\">The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith<\/a>\u00a0&#8212; is an accessible, even-handed volume that uncommonly gives as much attention to the modern church as it does to the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Here are three things that I learned from the book:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The power of the primary during the correlation reorganization of the 1960s:<\/b>\u00a0&#8220;The reorganization drained some power from the First Presidency itself and undeniably from the various departments and auxiliaries of the church. Some resisted as best they could; LaVern Parmley, president of the Primary since 1951, retained her position and through sheer force of personality a good deal of independent authority until she stepped down in 1974.&#8221; You can read more about President Parmley generally <a href=\"http:\/\/eom.byu.edu\/index.php\/Parmley,_Lavern_Watts\">in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism<\/a>.\u00a0You can read about how she led a movement toward the modern conception of reverence in primary in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dialoguejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sbi\/articles\/Dialogue_V37N04_108.pdf\">Kristine Haglund Harris&#8217;s Dialogue article<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Acceptance of Mormonism in American culture has not proceeded obviously in one direction:\u00a0<\/b>George Romney and Mitt Romney both ran for president, father in 1968 and son in 2008 and 2012. With George: &#8220;His faith was rarely mentioned in any of his political campaigns, for Mormonism by the 1960s had become unexceptional to most Americans.&#8221; With Mitt: &#8220;Mormonism weighed Mitt Romney down more than it had his father&#8230;. In 2008, even some Mormons were surprised when polls indicated that about a quarter of Americans believed that Romney&#8217;s Mormonism disqualified him for the presidency.&#8221; There are a number of factors at play here &#8212; notably, Mitt Romney made it much further in the campaign than his father had. But Bowman also points to the rise of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moral_Majority\">Moral Majority<\/a> and Evangelical Christians in politics in the 1970s and 1980s, with their suspicion of Mormons (see the 1982 film and the subsequent 1984 book, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_God_Makers\">The God Makers<\/a>, for example).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Bowman adds both <b>colorful and sobering anecdotes to the narrative of polygamy in the 1880s and 1890s<\/b>, when &#8220;more than a thousand Mormon men were convicted of a crime relating to plural marriage.&#8221; On the one colorful side, &#8220;One bishop, trapped in a department store, had himself boxed into an organ crate and carried out to safety.&#8221; On the sobering side, &#8220;John Taylor [then President of the Church] himself traveled from house to house in northern Utah, staying with his followers and rarely sleeping in the same bed two night in a row. He died in 1887 in hiding in Kaysville, Utah, just north of Salt Lake City.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Bowman brings us up to the modern day, from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to Richard Dutcher&#8217;s film work, Stephanie Meyer&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Twilight_(novel_series)\">Twilight series<\/a>, &#8220;shot through with Mormon themes,&#8221; and Mormons on American Idol and in college basketball.\u00a0He also narrates a fascinating transition around the mid-20th century, with &#8220;a growing suspicion of theological innovation in favor of an emphasis on correct behavior.&#8221; As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj2qfyZuOPSAhVT12MKHdvnBEkQFggaMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fscholarsarchive.byu.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D4470%26context%3Dbyusq&amp;usg=AFQjCNGMxEXzo1cNwILqaflrrnJN7edltg&amp;sig2=j1Ct1jXYPYC8md87pGsjpg&amp;bvm=bv.149760088,d.cGc\">Armand Mauss wrote in BYU Studies<\/a>, &#8220;Indeed, no earlier\u00a0general histories have devoted such a large proportion of their treatments\u00a0to this second half of Mormon history.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>It&#8217;s a fascinating treatment all around and &#8212; despite the Washington Post&#8217;s claim that Bowman is\u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/books\/the-mormon-people-the-making-of-an-american-faith-by-matthew-bowman-andlds-in-the-usa-mormonism-and-the-making-of-american-culture-by-lee-trepanier-and-lynita-k-newswander\/2012\/02\/14\/gIQAro4x1R_story.html?utm_term=.9a9b28fd878b\">starry-eyed<\/a>&#8221; about Joseph Smith &#8212; I found it very fair. I was reminded of Richard Bushman&#8217;s book <a href=\"http:\/\/a.co\/iprSjxn\">On the Road with Joseph Smith<\/a>, in which he narrates the reception of his biography of Joseph Smith, <a href=\"http:\/\/a.co\/3TkibQ7\">Rough Stone Rolling<\/a>. One of Bushman&#8217;s great frustrations is that he wanted to bring members and non-members along, and ultimately the non-members remained unconvinced, while a fair number of members found the treatment lacking in faithfulness. Such is the likely fate of any historian seeking to straddle that middle ground. But I&#8217;d feel very comfortable recommending this single-volume history to curious non-member friends, as well as those of the faith seeking a big picture view of how the Church&#8217;s place in the United States has evolved. (I listened to the audiobook, narrated by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0212636\/\">Mark Deakins<\/a>. It was well done.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Bits and pieces<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>I had the pleasure of hearing Bowman talk about his book last month; he &#8212; an active member of the Church &#8212; recalled a letter he received soon after the book&#8217;s publication, thanking him for taking an interest in our faith and seeking to correct him on a few historical points. As above, an effort to take a dispassionate view will win a historian the incredulity of members.<\/li>\n<li>In recounting the basic Book of Mormon plot, Bowman characterizes Nephi as &#8220;a well-intentioned but frustrating young man of great faith.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>You can listen to an interview with Bowman about his book on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fairmormon.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/07\/fair-conversations-episode-15-matthew-bowman-on-his-new-book-the-mormon-people\">the FairMormon podcast<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you tell the story of a 200-year-old movement in a single volume? In the summer of 2011, Matthew Bowman received a call inviting him to write such a volume in under three months. The result &#8212; The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith\u00a0&#8212; is an accessible, even-handed volume that uncommonly gives as much attention to the modern church as it does to the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Here are three things that I learned from the book: The power of the primary during the correlation reorganization of the 1960s:\u00a0&#8220;The reorganization drained some power from the First Presidency itself and undeniably from the various departments and auxiliaries of the church. Some resisted as best they could; LaVern Parmley, president of the Primary since 1951, retained her position and through sheer force of personality a good deal of independent authority until she stepped down in 1974.&#8221; You can read more about President Parmley generally in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.\u00a0You can read about how she led a movement toward the modern conception of reverence in primary in Kristine Haglund Harris&#8217;s Dialogue article. Acceptance of Mormonism in American culture has not proceeded obviously in one direction:\u00a0George Romney [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10383,"featured_media":36370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/the-mormon-people.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10383"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36374,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36369\/revisions\/36374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}