{"id":47731,"date":"2024-09-08T03:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=47731"},"modified":"2025-05-28T21:04:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:04:52","slug":"top-mormon-studies-amateurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/09\/top-mormon-studies-amateurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Mormon Studies Amateurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mormon Studies is relatively open-minded when it comes to accepting the contributions of amateurs. Here I am defining amateurs as people who are not employed by academia as their main gig, whether or not they have a graduate degree\u2013some do, some don\u2019t; also, here I am defining \u201cMormon Studies\u201d broadly, as any original research endeavor that touches on Mormonism in some way. In this post I am making a list of amateurs who have in my eye have made significant contributions to the Mormon Studies world, including many that some people may not be aware of. Of course, I am not as deep into the world as some are, so no offense intended if I miss somebody big, which I probably will.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unsullied by careerism, there\u2019s a certain added creativity to amateur work since they can simply do what they love without worrying about whether it’s what the cool kids are doing. Sometimes we have a hard time looking past the title, but it\u2019s clear that amateurs have a lot to contribute. (Bike repair guys Orville and Wilbur Wright\u2019s <\/span>main competitor <\/span><\/a>was a prestigious professor that enjoyed federal funding, and Albert Einstein was famously a patent clerk that could not get an academic job to save his life when he discovered relativity). So without further ado…<\/span><\/p>\n

Ardis Parshall:<\/strong> I would not be surprised if Ardis Parshall knows more about Latter-day Saint primary sources than anyone alive. <\/span>Her blog<\/span><\/a> is a mine of unknown gems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Boylan:<\/strong> Irish graduate of divinity school, Robert is similarly probably one of the most well-read Latter-day Saints when it comes to ancient scripture and theology, and <\/span>his blog <\/span><\/a>is also a goldmine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Greg Prince:<\/strong> I think his speculative Salt Lake City Vaticanology is quite off sometimes (e.g. his insistence that the brethren believe that the biology etiology of homosexuality is a myth), but nobody can deny that his book-length works place him on any top Latter-day Saint amateur list. (I believe he had a faculty position, but it was for medicine, so for the purposes of this list he is an amateur).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blake Ostler:<\/strong> Philosopher\/theologian in competition with Boylan for most well-read theologian\/philosopher. His<\/span> Exploring Mormon Thought<\/span><\/i> series is an unparalleled, rather sophisticated look at Latter-day Saint thought through the lens of systematic theology and philosophy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel Brown:<\/strong> There\u2019s small potatoes Mormonism (this or that policy, particulars of this or that ancient people, or this or that particular sermon), and there\u2019s big deal Mormonism (Godhood, Worlds Without End), and Samuel Brown\u2019s<\/span> In Heaven As It Is On Earth<\/span><\/i> helps people see the richness of Latter-day Saint thought through the lens of the latter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary Bergera:<\/strong> Prolific long-time Signature Books editor. He has a string of impressively edited and annotated collections of primary sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Vogel:<\/strong> Similar string of impressively edited and annotated collections of primary sources. Dan Vogel is openly antagonistic to Latter-day Saint truth claims, but to baldly speculate for a moment I suspect that him and others are at least partially responsible for the Church\u2019s turn towards historical professionalization and things like the <\/span>Joseph Smith Papers<\/span><\/i>, because it became clear that if they didn\u2019t do it that somebody else would, and they would become the go-to experts. So thanks where thanks is due. I do know that, for example, <\/span>Rough Stone Rolling <\/span><\/i>elicited some discomfort<\/span> from a not-insignificant number of General Authorities, so I assume that pre-RSR<\/em> there was some pushback from those kinds of efforts at the higher levels, and I suspect things like Vogel\u2019s Early Mormon Documents<\/em> series gave some leverage to those within the COB that wanted to go in the professionalization direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben Crowder:<\/strong> Less well known than the others on the list, and he\u2019s more of a creative type than a researcher, but his Mormon Text Project and other publication projects<\/a> have made early Latter-day Saint texts much more accessible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Don Bradley:<\/strong> Ex-Ex-Latter-day Saint. Did a lot of the research legwork on Joseph Smith polygamy research; is known for his creative analysis (I don\u2019t mean that pejoratively) as well as encyclopedic knowledge of the primary sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jasmine and Neal Rappleye<\/strong>: Apologist couple who work at Scripture Central. Arguable successors to Daniel Peterson.<\/p>\n

James Goldberg:\u00a0<\/strong>Probably the main “Mormon Lit” guy. One would think BYU would have more of these, but it’s one of those areas where it’s surprisingly up to unfunded amateurs.<\/p>\n

Again, no offense to any that I may have missed. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mormon Studies is relatively open-minded when it comes to accepting the contributions of amateurs. Here I am defining amateurs as people who are not employed by academia as their main gig, whether or not they have a graduate degree\u2013some do, some don\u2019t; also, here I am defining \u201cMormon Studies\u201d broadly, as any original research endeavor that touches on Mormonism in some way. In this post I am making a list of amateurs who have in my eye have made significant contributions to the Mormon Studies world, including many that some people may not be aware of. Of course, I am not as deep into the world as some are, so no offense intended if I miss somebody big, which I probably will.\u00a0 Unsullied by careerism, there\u2019s a certain added creativity to amateur work since they can simply do what they love without worrying about whether it’s what the cool kids are doing. Sometimes we have a hard time looking past the title, but it\u2019s clear that amateurs have a lot to contribute. (Bike repair guys Orville and Wilbur Wright\u2019s main competitor was a prestigious professor that enjoyed federal funding, and Albert Einstein was famously a patent clerk that could not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-studies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47731","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\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47731"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50276,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47731\/revisions\/50276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}