Brian C. Hales

BRIAN C. HALES {[email protected]} is the author or co-author of seven books dealing with plural marriage including the three-volume Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013). He works as an anesthesiologist and has served as president of the Utah Medical Association and the John Whitmer Historical Association. His current research focuses on the origin of the Book of Mormon, producing articles for BYU Studies and Interpreter along with a couple of book-length manuscripts.

Automatic Writing and the Book of Mormon An Update

Articles/Essays – Volume 52, No. 2

Dialogue 52.2 (Spring 2019):1–58Attributing the Book of Mormon’s origin to supernatural forces has
worked well for Joseph Smith’s believers, then as well as now, but not so
well for critics who seem certain natural abilities were responsible. For over
180 years, several secular theories have been advanced as explanations.

John T. Clark: The “One Mighty and Strong”

Articles/Essays – Volume 39, No. 3

This article examines John T. Clark, a relatively little-known but influential figure in the rise of fundamentalism among the Latter-day Saints during the early twentieth century. By 1921, small groups of excommunicated polygamists had begun to congregate at homes, offices, industrial buildings, and even in open-air settings. While no identifiable leaders would emerge until the 1930s, these groups would eventually coalesce to form the fundamentalist movement. Several individuals, including Clark, became prominent within the informal gatherings, either because of their testimonies, convictions, publications, financial successes, or claims to priesthood authority. Clark is unusual, however, because he was apparently never a polygamist. Rather, it was his doctrinal unorthodoxy and creative theological speculations that distanced him from the official LDS Church and made him an appealing figure to others whose ideas included the continuation of post-Manifesto polygamy.

Nauvoo Polygamy: The Latest Word | George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “…but we called it celestial marriage.”

Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 4

In 1994, businessman and Mormon history researcher George D. Smith wrote “Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841-46: A Preliminary Demographic Report” (Dialogue 27, no. 1 [Spring 1994]: 1-72), which contained groundbreaking research on 153 men and hundreds more women who were involved with plural marriage in Nauvoo. Recently, his long-awaited follow-up to that article, a 705-page book, has been printed by Signature Books, of which Smith is the publisher. In September 2009, the John Whitmer Historical Association awarded it Best Book of the Year.