John G. Turner
JOHN G. TURNER {[email protected]} is professor of religious studies at George Mason University and the author of They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty (Yale University Press, 2020). He is a member of Burke Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Virginia.
Articles
The True Tales of Polygamy Fiction | William A. MacKinnon and Kenneth L. Alford, eds., Fact, Fiction, and Polygamy: A Tale of Utah War Intrigue,1857–1858: A. G. Browne’s The Ward of the Three Guardians
A woman unhappily married to a polygamist. A girl trapped in Utah, separated from her father, likely soon to be sealed to a hoary elder. A gentile-accompanied flight to safety.
Read moreHistoric Sites Holy Envy Sara M. Patterson, Pioneers in the Attic: Place and Memory Along the Mormon Trail
When it comes to sacred places, I feel considerable holy envy toward the Latter-day Saints. Their sacred sites stretch across the continent, from Vermont to California. Mormons can visit their founding prophet’s birthplace, the grove…
Read moreJesus Christ, Marriage, and Mormon Christianities: 2016 Smith-Pettit Lecture, Sunstone Symposium
According to his official history, that’s all Joseph Smith said to his mother after God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him while he prayed by himself in the woods. Whether or not Presbyterianism was true was a more pressing question for the young Joseph Smith than it is for most of you. Sometime in the mid-1820s, Lucy Mack Smith and several of Joseph’s siblings joined a Presbyterian church. Joseph must have wrestled with his mother’s choice. Like his father, though, he never joined any Protestant church. But it was surely a major point of controversy and discussion in the family.
Read moreLoyal Follower, Bold Preacher | Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism
In May 1857, a jilted husband finally found the man who had taken his wife. After tracking him to western Arkansas, he organized a posse to cut off his escape, followed him into a thicket of trees, pulled him from his horse, and stabbed him repeatedly near his heart. Hector McLean left to fetch a gun, returned, and fatally shot Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt in the neck.
Read more“An Icon of White Supremacy”? | Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
Jesus and I were the only white people in the sanctuary. One summer, while outside Washington, D.C., on a college internship, I walked across the street to church. When I opened the door and went inside, I saw only black people—with one prominent exception: Above a side door, the church displayed a picture of Jesus. It was Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ. I wasn’t sure how church members felt about white visitors, but I didn’t think it appropriate to leave a church simply because of race. So I sat down. In this church, the deacons sat at the front and looked out at the congregation during the service. I wondered what they thought about a twenty-year-old white kid sitting in their church. It turns out they were extremely welcoming. I also wondered why a group of African American Baptists had a picture of a white Jesus.
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