Mormon History

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.

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.

A list of members from the Minute Book of the Nauvoo Relief Society linked with profiles found on the Church Historians Press book The First Fifty Years of Relief: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History.

Members listed were born outside the U.S.

A 2017 Project for the Joseph Smith Historic Site.

As most US servicemen drafted into the military during World War I headed east across the Atlantic bound for Europe, the men of the 31st Infantry boarded ships in San Francisco and sailed west across the Pacific, landing in Vladivostok in August and September of 1918 as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Siberia.  Unlike the war in Europe, military operations in Siberia and Northern Russia involving allied forces continued beyond the November 11 armistice, ending with the last US troops leaving Vladivostok in the spring of 1920.
A small but significant number of those servicemen were LDS, drafted from Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and other western states.  Many were returned missionaries, some with wives and children at home.  They quickly found each other in basic training, socializing on weekends, and organizing a formal branch of the church upon arrival in Siberia.  The LDS soldiers dealt with declining public support, poorly understood goals, and difficulties with allies and enemies alike.  Barely acknowledged and not well remembered, the Siberian campaign has many interesting parallels with more recent military conflicts.

A list of members from the Minute Book of the Nauvoo Relief Society linked with profiles found on the Church Historians Press book The First Fifty Years of Relief: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History.

Percent of Members Born Outside the U.S. vs Inside the US

A 2017 Project for the Joseph Smith Historic Site.

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.

This paper discusses a little-known chapter in the history of southern Utah.  The first organized expedition south of Utah Valley, with a view to colonize what became known as the "Mormon Corridor" — roughly the area traversed by US Highway 89 and I-15, was made by the "Southern Exploring Company," in late 1849 and early 1850.

This colonizing effort by Brigham Young and his Mormon people was necessitated by the California gold rush of 1849-1850. Brigham Young had brought his people from their city Nauvoo, on the banks of the Mississippi River, across plain and mountain range to escape further persecution, after the murder of their prophet-leader, Joseph Smith, and armed attacks upon their city.

They built a settlement in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Because those who had, shared with those who had not, the little settlement nearly starved during the first winter. Before the colony had a chance to build up its strength, thousands of "Argonauts" came from the eastern states to seek their fortunes in the gold fields of California.

Realizing that some of those gold rushers, not finding their fortunes, would be tempted to settle on the peaceful and inviting streams in the valleys of what the Mormons called the Provisional State of Deseret, Brigham Young sent out exploration parties and then colonizing companies to take possession of all the settle-able places before others could.

The first major exploration of the territory to the south of Utah Valley was the Southern Exploring Company. The place they identified as the site for the first major settlement in the southern part of the territory was on the Little Salt Lake. After a couple of ultimately-discarded choices, the new settlement was named Parowan.

Not long after Parowan was initially settled in 1851, a group of men from the community set out to explore the territory to the east and to the south along the Virgin River. This paper discusses that expedition.

In September, 1857, one of the worst tragedies in the history of the Westward Expansion took place at Mountain Meadows in southwest Utah Territory. John D. Lee, on the orders of his leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lead approximately fifty Mormon priesthood holders and a few Paiute allies to massacre 120+ men, women, and children. Events like this do not happen in a vacuum. Utilizing both LDS and non-LDS sources and historians, Matt McCune examines some of the contributing causes of this tragedy. He examines a combination of religious, political, and economic circumstances that came together to create conditions that resulted in poor, and frequently persecuted, Mormons attacking a wealthy and well equipped non-Mormon wagon train attempting to pass peacefully through their territory on the way to California.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is known for its doctrine of exaltation: the belief that human beings can become gods who create and reign over their own worlds, even as God the Father has done with this world. The Church also teaches that God the Father is male and that gender is an essential and immutable characteristic of being. Though it intermittently proffers a “God the Mother” whose image women were created in, little has been officially declared of her other than that she exists. As such, while exaltation for men means the relative clarity of looking forward to becoming what God the Father is, exaltation for women is marked by considerable uncertainty.

While seldom examined directly in Mormon theological discourse, exaltation for women receives ancillary illumination when other theological areas of Mormonism are in focus, especially in regards to women and the priesthood, celestial marriage, temple ordinances, and Heavenly Mother. An examination of these four areas paints a clearer picture of what exaltation means for women, revealing that, while there are some promising areas of parity between women and men along with numerous broad affirmations of equality of the sexes, the specifics of liturgy, teaching, practice, and policy in these particular areas depict an androcentric exaltation in which women are lesser deities subordinated to their husbands.

What did Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, George Q. Cannon, and seventeen other early LDS leaders teach about building Zion that we today have forgotten?
Quite a bit, it turns out!

Chapter Five – Our Obligations Regarding Zion

As in the last chapter, around 50 of the 700+ quotes by early LDS leaders about building or establishing Zion are covered in this chapter.  Our Champions for Zion specifically spoke about our obligations as members of the LDS Church to build Zion.  Their quotes fell neatly into 6 subcategories:
1. Building Zion is the work we've been given to do.
2. It is our duty & responsibility to build up Zion.
3. Building Zion is one of our callings from God.
4. We are obligated to build Zion.
5. The Priesthood obligates us to build Zion.
6. Building Zion is the whole point of receiving the Priesthood.

Those last two subcategories were a complete and total surprise!  In fact, later we'll see some evidence that building Zion is perhaps also the whole point of the temple endowment.  But first, let's read all the apostolic quotes, spanning from 1857 to 1884, about how it's our obligation as Latter-day Saints to build Zion.

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.

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.

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.

A list of members from the Minute Book of the Nauvoo Relief Society linked with profiles found on the Church Historians Press book The First Fifty Years of Relief: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History.

A 2017 Project for the Joseph Smith Historic Site.

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.

Mormon’s Chronological Summary of the Period from the 19th Regnal Year of the Reign of MosiahI to the Coming of the Limhites and Mormon’s Synopsis of the Book of Mormon Prophetic Calendar
A small scrap of paper entitled “Caractors” (also known as the Anthon Transcript) that contained Reformed Egyptian characters copied from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated has remained an enigma for more than a hundred years.  Finally, the characters have been successfully translated. In a book that is the first of its kind, Jerry Grover, a professional civil engineer, geologist, and translator, has been able to crack the code of the “reformed Egyptian.” The author’s approach is meticulous and scientific. This book is a landmark event in Book of Mormon studies and is a book that must be read by every serious student of the Book of Mormon and of Mesoamerican studies. The author is dedicating all proceeds from the book to additional scientific studies to cast further light on the ancient setting of the Book of Mormon.

Microhistory of the interactions between a Kentucky folk magic practitioner, English astrologers and occultists, and a young English scryer in the new environment of pioneer Mormon Utah.
My capstone research project for my undergraduate program.  I plan on doing a thorough revision at some point due to my limited understanding of some of the subjects treated here when I wrote it.

The history of Mormonism in Mexico reached a new landmark early in 1997 when Colonia Industrial, a United Order community founded by Margarito Bautista Valencia, achieved, its fiftieth successful year. Second, third, and fourth generations of Mexican Mormons in Colonia Industrial celebrated through sermons and activities that remind them of their legacy. Colonia Industrial, a small, unimposing, exclusive colony of Mexican Mormons, lies in the municipio of Ozumba at the base of Popocatepetl, an active volcano in the central valley of Mexico. While the growth of the LDS church in Mexico (claimed 720,000 members in 1995) dwarfs the small offshoot in Colonia Industrial, these Mexican Mormons' tenacious adherence to the socioeconomic principles of the United Order and plural marriage is a tribute to the testimony and fervor of their founder, Margarito Bautista Valencia.

Before he perceived himself as a prophet, Joseph Smith was deeply involved in folk magic, particularly as a treasure seeker. Between 1823 and 1827, however, there was a shift in Joseph Smith’s divining, the type of treasure he sought, and the treasure’s significance. Both Cryptic and Royal Arch Masonry have important parallels to Smith’s recovery of sacred records and artifacts that point to a shift in his treasure seeking. This provided a fundamental paradigm shift in his self-perception as he transitioned from treasure seeker to restorer and translator of ancient scripture, opening the way for the unfolding of Mormonism.

The idea of religious freedom was one of the hallmarks of early nineteenth-century America, but it was not truly universal. Despite denominational differences, mainstream white evangelical Protestants formed a body of unified believers that defined “true” American religion. The Burned Over District of central New York would give birth to two religious movements, Mormonism and Millerism, that challenged the position of evangelical religion in the spiritual consciousness of the nation. The Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the followers of William Miller’s end time prophecy were inspired by, but moved outside the boundaries of, established evangelical theology and practice. In reacting to these movements, evangelical denominations went beyond cooperation to try to forge a unified congregation of believers. In the face of religious movements that posed real challenges to their prominent position, mainstream evangelical denominations like Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians responded in strikingly similar ways, belying the notion of religious plurality.

Nearly two centuries ago the earliest Mormon scripture, the first half of the 'abridged' account of the Book of Mormon's narrator Mormon was stolen, never to be seen again. Consequently, within the Latter-day Saint community the situation has long been that everybody knows a large portion of the foundational scripture is missing, but nobody knows what was in it.

In this book I identify the evidence within the extant Book of Mormon text and assemble the external sources (e.g, accounts from the father of the person who dictated the text and the brother of the scribe who recorded it), and, using methods similar to those used in reconstructing ancient Greek plays and other missing texts, I piece together what can be known of the book's missing narrative. The Book of Mormon's lost text, as it emerges from the available evidence, presented a narrative that was both very Judaic, responding to the Jewish problem of Diaspora, and very Mormon, portending the distinctive doctrines of the Latter-day Saint faith.

This publisher's preview includes an Introduction, discussing the book's purposes and methodology, and Chapter 13--"God and Aminadi in the Temple"--which reconstructs and contextualizes the lost Book of Mormon narrative of Aminadi,  referenced in the extant text in Alma 10:2 as "Aminadi who interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God."

A frequently told story in Church history concerns the call of Artemus Millet to work on the Kirtland Temple. With variations here and there, historians have related the story as follows: Joseph Smith, in the company of other brethren, is walking where the Kirtland Temple will be built. He wonders aloud who could superintend its construction, and Joseph Young (or Brigham Young or Lorenzo Young) recommends an acquaintance named Artemus Millet, who lives in Canada. The Prophet then sends Brigham Young to Canada to baptize Millet and bring him to Kirtland with one thousand dollars. Historians then relate that Brigham Young fulfilled his mission with exactness, baptizing Millet in January 1832 (or 1833). Millet sells the family farm, takes his family to Kirtland, and labors on the temple from the laying of the cornerstone to the project's completion, having full charge of the work. The differing details within the story depend upon the source cited by the historian—Millet's diary, autobiography, biography, or family records and histories. Our purpose in this article is to examine the existing sources on Millet's conversion and his call to Kirtland in order to identify the elements of the story that can be historically corroborated and to demonstrate that Artemus Millet's greatest legacies of faith are his conversion and his lifelong commitment to establishing Zion.

This article examines the role of the Mormon Church in the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s.  While the historiography of the ERA has largely concentrated on the role of Phyllis Schlafly and Southern fundamentalists in defeating the proposed constitutional amendment, this article argues that the Mormon Church played a critical role in stopping the ERA in states as diverse as Utah, Nevada and Virginia.  In doing so, the Mormon Church proved itself a formidable, if overlooked, player in the emerging New Right coalition.  This article also highlights the critical role that Mormon women played in the church’s political efforts against the ERA.  In seeking to defeat a gain for women’s equality, the Mormon Church activated its women through their church service organization to work against the amendment’s ratification.  This work was often presented as a religious calling, and Mormon women opposed the ERA out of service to their church as much as from political conviction.  At the same time, the Mormon Church increased its emphasis on women’s proper role, stressing wifely submission and domestic duties – a marked change from the church’s historic encouragement of women as public figures.  In light of the growing constrictions, Mormon women found that the ERA battle provided an opportunity to challenge subtly the limited role their church advocated for them.  Mormon women worked to defeat the ERA, this article maintains, in part because of the chance it provided them to show the church they still had a useful public role.  By opposing women’s equality, LDS women showed the church and themselves that they could be more than housewives.  In defending women’s place in the home, Mormon women used the battle over the ERA as an opportunity to step out of their homes and take their place on the national political stage.