Mormonism

That glorious theophany which took place in the spring of 1820 and which marked the opening of the dispensation of the fullness of times is called the First Vision… This transcendent vision was the beginning of latter-day revelation; it marked the opening of the heavens after the long night of apostate darkness; with it ushered in the great era of restoration… This vision was the most important event that had taken place in all world history from the day of Christ's ministry to the glorious hour when it occurred." -Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine 1 unidentified angel, later to be named Moroni, This angelic visit was probably the real first vision, since for many years it was the only vision about which Smith, his family, or his followers ever spoke." 61 This means that if any sort of "first vision" at some point in history, it was what is now referred to as the Second Vision.

With two new publications, the Museum of Mormon History in Mexico has firmly established itself as a leading venue for the production of Mormon history in Mexico. The Spanish translation and English commentary on Part 1 of F. LaMond Tulllis's Mormons in Mexico is a significant contribution to both Spanish and English readers. This text, published through Deseret Book, makes a valuable resource available to Spanish speakers. It also offers an impressive correction of documentary errors in Tullis's interpretation and historical data. A second significant contribution to the literature on the same subject is a series of four articles available in Spanish or English by Fernando R. Gómez Páez (museum president). Read side by side, the translation of Tullis's book and this new selection of articles by the museum's president provide a worthwhile and balanced introduction to Mexican Mormon history. Readers will recognize that Mormon history in Mexico extends well beyond the colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. The most interesting stories may very well come from central Mexico. Mexican Mormons now have a significant voice in the writing of their own Mormon histories.

Early Mormonism rejected, over a remarkably short period of time, Christian marriage’s traditional role as a defense against carnality. When the medieval Christian church systematized the sacraments, it created a fork in the road of salvation, requiring the faithful to choose either ordination or marriage. Durng the Reformation, Protestantism’s denunciation of celibacy celebrated marriage within another dichotomy: the created, earthly world and the uncreated, heavenly one. Marriage was divinely instituted but meant for this world, not the world to come. In contrast,Mormonism made marriage a locus of its priesthood restorationism and its marriage rite gave men and women rights to access heavenly powers to accomplish divine purposes here and in the hereafter. Thus, marriage was eternal in both senses of the word. It was a means of inculcating the divine nature and of creating ties that transcended the limits of time and mortality. It was not only the pattern for this world, but the world to come. This was new, an extraordinary recalculation of centuries of tradition.

Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of the Church and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women’s periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women’s History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women—journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records—to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories.

The LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah houses extensive archival materials documenting the LDS Church’s expansion in postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa. These records, including journals, correspondence, local church records, and oral histories, constitute a crucial resource for reconstructing the continent’s postcolonial history, offering invaluable insights into African social, cultural, and religious practices from the 1960s onward.

The United States has long grappled with the question of how to maintain an appropriate combination of religion and politics in the public sphere. The current electoral cycle is no different, as Presidential candidates attempt to negotiate both the political and religious landscapes. This essay introduces a special forum on rhetoric and religion in contemporary politics and touches on some recent instances of how religious differences have played out in the current political environment. Some of the issues discussed include the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Rick Santorum’s conception of the “war on religion,” and the controversy over contraceptives at religious institutions and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on a Georgetown law student.

the messages of God given to the prophet Joseph Smith at 135 different times over nearly 15 years, 1830-1844.  Here they're divided into 3 volumes, the way of many other ancient and modern books of scripture.

There are many other messages from other people that wrote in the same name of God, or in the name of angels.  They were revealed to mankind over the past century and a half, a progressive revelation that was started by none other than the prophet Joseph Smith! 

Not only did he write and produce and distribute his own book of prophecy and manage to build a church, he also facilitated the beginning of divine messages from God, almost 15 years before the big date of 1844!  He would have been so proud of his accomplishment, and surely would want for them to be shared with all the world, the way they were intended to be.

Some messages are better than others, that is some have much teaching and doctrine, while others are basically administrative meeting notes. Most are from authentic genuine honest and trustworthy Mormon Christians in orbit around the church in Utah, or the reorganized moderate Latter Day church in Independence, Missouri. 

They are trying real hard to be normal Christian church people in the old Zion Camp at Independence.  Their church wrote the lions share of divine writings called 'revelations'.  Messages from God average about 4 ever 3 years, or less.  Some are pages long.  Others are scant news. 

There is a project underway for the production of all the revelations in chronological order, with a new numbering of all the revelations since the prophet Joseph Smith was martyred. 

Presently the Book of the Church Presidents vol 1 and II covers most of the messages from the 1850s to the 1970s.  There are several other "Mormon prophets" that each wrote a large set of messages, 1845-1856, 1927-1994, and 1961-2012.  Then, around 1990 there were more teachings given to these type of prophets than before, through several independent Latter Day churches in the Independence area.

And elsewhere there have been other people claiming to have received books from God, though many are forgeries.  Some however are just as authentic as the Records of the Nephites received by Joseph Smith in 1828, and basically point towards being scriptural canon, not just some random message from God.

If you want to understand the importance and significance of Joseph Smith, you have to read Doctrines & Covenants.  It's not like its the ark of the Covenant, per se, yet then again the idea of the ark of the testimony is the big idea from 1830 to 1844, and afterwards with a good number of other people. 

One lesson that might be learned from the volumes of D&C is that people with really profound and remarkable names are popular with everybody in the churches, and they are called to be used to perform blessed works.  (the giving of names that are ill omens is actually unlawful.)

Pentecostalismo histórico. Empezó a fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX, principalmente en Estados Unidos, a partir de la agrupación de iglesias protestantes.  Son trinitarios y fueron rechazados por la importancia que le daban al supuesto don de lenguas.  Pentecostalismo clásico. Nace el 1 de enero de 1901 en Topeka, Kansas, EUA con Charles Parham. Son trinitarios con diferentes doctrinas. Son fundamentalistas y desaprueban el alcohol, tabaco, drogas, la homosexualidad y el divorcio. Pentecostalismo unicitario. Comenzó en 1913, en un campamento donde se cuestionó la doctrina de la Santísima Trinidad. Practican el bautismo en agua en el nombre de Jesús.  En 1914 en Hot Springs, Arkansas, fundaron lo que luego se llamarían las Asambleas de Dios. En 1916, un grupo de pastores se separaron y crearon la Iglesia pentecostal unida. El Movimiento carismático o neo pentecostalismo. Surgió en Estados Unidos a fines de los años 1950. El nombre “Movimiento carismático” lo comenzó a utilizar el ministro luterano Harald Bredesen en 1962. Entre sus fundadores están David Du Plessis, ministro de las Asambleas de Dios y Dennis Bennett. Se enfocaron más en la revitalización de su liturgia que en la evangelización.”

Jewish and Christian theologies of suffering respond to human pain in multiple ways. The most popular ones defend God’s goodness and power by ascribing value to the human experience of suffering. Less popular, but equally traditional, responses invite sufferers to protest against God for their suffering and allow for the possibility that God will respond with mercy. More modern responses explain the existence of human suffering in spite of a loving god by postulating that while God cannot end human suffering unilaterally, God is eager to work with humans to eliminate it. I explore texts from Judaism and Christianity exemplifying each of these theological responses to suffering. I argue throughout that because people’s experiences of suffering differ, someone who wants to minister effectively to many sufferers must be fluent in multiple ways of responding to suffering. The Jewish and Christian responses to suffering most popular in our society today will tend to compound the pain of people who are already least able to cope. For them, one or more of the less popular responses to suffering may be more healing and empowering.

This autobiographical account details the author's upbringing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in southern Idaho and outlines how his encounters with history and science undermined his faith. Dr. Thomas W Murphy presented this story as a keynote speaker at the Help for the Hurting Conference in Keokuk, Iowa in September, 2003, less than a year after the LDS Church initiated and then aborted an effort to excommunicate him for his publication of a summary of genetic research into Native American origins and its implications for the Book of Mormon.

Once we begin to think critically about what drives the current craze — our “need to know” where we came from — we encounter contradictory, paradoxical and oxymoronic ideas. Though some may connect the surge in interest in our personal roots as a desire for “one world/one race” — where everyone is actually related — this leaves out the significant portion of people searching for proof of their whiteness.

Mormons are particularly concerned about missionary work, putting much effort into converting non-Mormons into their faith. The proposed text attempts to focus on the goals of the missionary activity of this quasi-Christian new religious movement, to explain the processes by which the Mormons formed their view of conversion and how to achieve them in daily life during missionary work at the early stages of the history of the denomination. An analysis of the idea of mission in the teaching and practice of the Church of Joseph Smith allows us to gain an understanding of the general theological and anthropological principles of modern Mormonism.

A text recovered from the Pearl of Great Price archives, intended to be a book within Joseph Smith's library.

Another edition of the lost Book of Lamech.  Follows the Book of Lamech found in the Dead Sea scrolls at the Salt Sea Academy.

Featuring a fawning over Sarah, Abraham's pearl.

Lamech = Greco-Hittite King = David = Jesus = Noah's Dad = Enoch's grandson

While the Book of Mormon recounts a variety of miracles, two miraculous events have special significance, the illuminated night and associated signs and wonders and the appearance of a new star in Mesoamerica previous to the birth of Christ, and the darkness and destruction which occurred upon his death.  In a previous work, The Geology of the Book of Mormon, I elucidated a scientific explanation of the destruction, here I will provide the most likely scientific explanation for the illuminated night and signs and wonders.  Also established is the correlation of the day of Christ’s birth with a solar eclipse, seen both in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia, and the Old World astrological calculation used by the Magi of the day of Christ’s birth, together with a planetary Bethlehem Star and a separate Mesoamerican new star as a comet.  Exact dates are then determined for Christ’s birth and death based on this astronomical information and information from the Book of Mormon and associated information.

Review of Simon Southerton. Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004. 270 pp. Appendices, glossary, index. Paper $24.95. ISB 1-56085-181-3. While Southerton's honesty ultimately cost him his membership in the LDS Church, his book should make a lasting impact on the debates about the historicity of Latter-day scriptures within and beyond restoration communities.

This is a somewhat longer version of the paper read at the "Latter-day Saints and the Bible" session at the Society of Biblical Literature annual convention, November 22, 2014. It is adapted from a section of my Ph.D. dissertation, “The Sermon at the Temple in the Book of Mormon: A Critical Examination of Its Authenticity through a Comparison with the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.” In the paper, I critique LDS scholar John Welch's theory that the temple setting of the Sermon in the Book of Mormon provides a long-lost hermeneutical key to the Sermon on the Mount.

the Mormon prophet of the Chicago area appears to have received 2 lengthy messages divided into 31 revelations, naming it the Word of the Lord.  The messages were followed by more messages of the book of the Word of the Lord given to 2 other Mormons, 120 messages from 1927-1933 and 1937-1993. 

The man's father might have received some of the messages before his passing around 1917 or 1917, at Mankato, Minnesota.

The messages are stern warnings and rebukes about ruthless criminals and warmongers causing so many problems for the entire world that the world had better listen to the prophets of God.

The second message of 1918 also features an address to the people of Israel, concerning the Everlasting Gospel and faith in God.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the mainstream Mormon Church – has been seeking to establish itself in the People’s Republic of China since the 1980s. Unlike other religious movements of Christian and foreign origin, which have chosen to go underground, the LDS Church has adopted a strategy of complying with the law and negotiating with the state to obtain official authorisation to conduct its religious activities. The aim of this article is to describe and examine the basis, the form, and certain observable effects of such a strategy, both on an institutional level and in terms of the religious identities that are produced.

Joseph Smith died before the practice of sealings had been wholly unfolded and implemented. In particular, what Brian Hales calls the “vertical” sealing of parents to children (as opposed to the “horizontal” sealing of men and women as husbands and wives) was never performed by the time of Joseph’s death, though there had been hints that sealings could be performed for relationships other than marriages. Brigham Young’s introduction of the “law of adoption”—which allowed couples to be sealed to a married priesthood leader as a father figure—was another further development. But it was in 1894, under the presidency of Wilford Woodruff, that the tradition of sealings reached the form that has not been significantly altered since, setting the stage for the Latter-day Saint emphasis on the importance of biological families that continues to this day.

This analysis will make clear that the final development—Woodruff’s— is the most theologically complete (though not without its own complications) and that there have been no major structural developments of vertical sealings since then because of this theological completeness. Woodruff’s developments added a coherence and a theological rigor, with compelling practical implications, which had been lacking previously. This coherence and theological rigor are the major reasons why no major developments in the Latter-day Saint vertical sealing rituals have been enacted since 1894.

19 messages of Frederick Larsen, the late president-prophet of the Remnant Church of the Latter Day Saints, in Independence, Missouri. 

Turned out real nice

Basically prophetic messages that they add to the book of Doctrines & Covenants every year or two.  Apparently a Book 3 of the much revered book of Doctrines & Covenants.

Appears to be mainly authentic.

With the publication of its first book, the Museum of Mormon History in Mexico is helping to initiate an era in which international Mormon history is produced and published in local languages by local people. Fernanco R. Gómez Páez, president of the museum, and Raymundo Gómez González, director of the museum, coauthor of this book, and an engineer, founded this independent museum to house the historical materials gathered by their aunt, Conseulo Gómez González, an influential early convert to Mormonism in Mexico. The publication of an intellectual biography of Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty, the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Central Mexico, marks the expansion of their efforts from historical preservation to the production of local Mormon history. The title translated as "Mormon Eagle or Christian Anarchist" juxtaposes Rhodakanaty's prominent place in Mormon history with his significant role in Mexican intellectual history.

Critics have demonstrated how Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga reinforces the notion that the appropriate roles for women are those of wife and mother. Viewed from a literary historical perspective, however, the Twilight saga can also be seen as reinterpretation of the Genesis story, told from a female point of view as a vampire narrative. Meyer's ''New Eve'' is part of a literary tradition that springs from Paradise Lost. Meyer's portrayal of the concept of free will and her connected depiction of the redemptive power of motherhood emphasizes elements in the Latter Day Saints tradition that present a more positive view of Eve, and by extension of ''Woman,'' than is common in traditional portrayals of Genesis.

Terryl L. Givens, professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia, enters the stormy field of Book of Mormon studies with an examination of why generations of believers and skeptics have taken the Book of Mormon seriously. His refreshing intent is not to argue for or against the truth of the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith's account of it. Rather, he offers the wider public an overview of the "tempestuous career" of an American scripture as a sign of young man's prophetic calling. Despite some gross errors produced by his occasional failure to investigate claims made by LDS scholars, Givens's book is not a simple repetition of the general failings of Book of Mormon studies. His willingness to discuss the nineteenth-century context as well as peculiarity of prayer in the Book of Mormon helps to keep the delicate balance he seeks and mostly maintains. As an English professor, he is at his best when dealing with linguistic and rhetorical analysis in the Book of Mormon. His forays into anthropology lack a similar rigor. He identifies the historical root of Mormon struggles with their central scripture in the mundane rhetoric of a prophet with a divine message. Givens's summary of the Book of Mormon wars in the United States make this book necessary reading for any serious student of the Book of Mormon.

Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), the rejection of sexualized bodily display has been institutionalized and dogmatized, reflecting a gendered paradigm in which modesty functions as a necessary element in members' temporal (hetero-) sexual practices, and in broader beliefs about the nature of the afterlife. Through a pervasive bureaucratic communicative model, Latter-day Saints are socialized to internalize and appropriate both Church dogma and Church-sanctioned standards of modesty, normalizing both temporal and eternal gender-based roles. Using LDS primary sources, I demonstrate the ubiquity of institutionalized messages on the body and sexuality, and the relationship of these concepts to LDS cosmology that serves as the institutional justification for the clear demarcation of gender roles and the division of gendered power. Through an emic understanding of the meaning of modesty, I argue that the normalization of modesty and chastity through immersive socialization acts to enforce the patriarchy of not only the temporal Church hierarchy but of Mormon concepts about eternity.

The book is about the way military chaplains handle religious diversity among the enlisted they serve and within their own corps. It is based on extensive in-depth interviews with more than 30 active duty chaplains, so their successes, failures and conflicts are described in their own words. The book will be of interest to military chaplains, chaplain candidates, seminarians exploring career options, and other clergy and counselors who perform institutional ministry (e.g. hospital chaplains). It will appeal to sociologists who study multiculturalism and pluralism, as well as to people with scholarly or professional interest in church/state issues, such as equal opportunity officers. It will be interesting to readers concerned with the rise of the 'religious right', the status of Islam in America, and general interest in military history and American culture.

ABSTRACT: Space, time, cosmos, and architecture are interconnected with the realm of the sacred. At present the modern world and its architecture of newness, speed, information, and consumerism appears to be losing its sense of sacredness or the experience of sacred time. While this may be the case, I would argue that the experiential space of time – its depth and plasticity – can be regained through design principles such as the proper orientation, alignment, and replication of the cosmic order in architectural form, space, and details. The objective of this study aims to help the discipline address the ‘terror of time’ by (re)gaining an existential understanding of key architectural design principles that restore sacred, cyclical time to human experience. Based on the comparative framework and methods of an earlier study published in Harvard’s Journal of Comparative Theology, the scope of this paper continues its focus on architectural works found within Mormonism, Judaism, and Christianity by asking the following questions: 1) How is the cyclical pattern of sacred time experienced mythically through the narrative of sacred history? 2) How is sacred time conveyed astronomically through the revolutions of the cosmos? 3) How is cyclical time encountered spatially in the architecture of the temple? and 4) What parallels exist in the mapping of cosmos and sacred history onto the spatial frame of temple architecture throughout the religious traditions? The paper concludes by demonstrating the relationships that exist between religions on architectural, spatial, ritual, astronomical, and mythicohistorical levels. Since the cyclical and chiastic pattern of sacred time is present in temple, cosmos, and history, our understanding is improved of how the plan of salvation may be read as 'one eternal round'.

2021 Best Book Award, John Whitmer Historical Association.
Finalist for Best Book in "Excellence in the Study of Religion, Textual Studies" by the American Academy of Religion.
Finalist for Best Book in Religious Non-Fiction, the Association for Mormon Letters.

Publishers Weekly, Starred Review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-46965-566-6

Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Pick for the Week of May 25, 2020: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/83347-pw-picks-books-of-the-week-may-25-2020.html

Roundtable Reviews by Dr. Elizabeth Fenton, Dr. Brian Hauglid, and Dr. Michael Austin, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought:  https://www.dialoguejournal.com/2020/05/dialogue-roundtable-william-l-davis-visions-in-a-seer-stone-joseph-smith-and-the-making-of-the-book-of-mormon/

The Association for Mormon Letters, review by Andrew Hamilton: http://associationmormonletters.org/blog/reviews/current-reviews/davis-visions-in-a-seer-stone-joseph-smith-and-the-making-of-the-book-of-mormon-reviewed-by-andrew-hamilton/

The University of North Carolina Press (2020).
https://uncpress.org/book/9781469655666/visions-in-a-seer-stone/ 

In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America.

Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith’s process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books—he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

This article documents one strain of Mormon thought concerning the Woman of Endor narrative in 1 Samuel 28, in which the woman was interpreted as a prophetess enabled to raise the dead through her spiritual gifts. Church leaders eventually condemned this narrative because of its similarities with Spiritualist exegesis and American Christianity's use of the narrative to condemn Spiritualism as necromancy. Through establishing an orthodox reading of the passage, leaders strengthened the boundaries separating the two faiths – boundaries that many Spiritualists had argued were at best blurry and overlapping.