Irene M. Bates
IRENE M. BATES and her husband Bill joined the LDS church in England in 1955. 'Tatriarchal Blessings and the Routination of Charisma" is adapted from a chapter of her 1991 Ph.D. dissertation at Univeristy of California, Los Angeles. She lives in Pacific Palisades, California, and is co-authoring a book with E. Gary Smith on the presiding patriarchs of the church.
William Smith, 1811-93: Problematic Patriarch
Articles/Essays – Volume 16, No. 2
William Smith, younger brother of the prophet Joseph Smith, has been easy to dismiss but difficult to deal with. More often than not, he has been described with adjectives like violent, wicked, unstable, and licentious.…
Read moreBeing Mormon: An LDS Response
Articles/Essays – Volume 17, No. 1
What does it mean to be a Mormon? Is it what you believe or how you I act? “Both,” of course, is the easy and immediate answer, but the question deserves closer scrutiny. No longer…
Read moreUncle Joseph Smith, 1781-1854: Patriarchal Bridge
Articles/Essays – Volume 20, No. 3
John Smith, brother of Joseph Smith, Sr., and uncle of the Prophet Joseph Smith, was an unspectacular, though far from ordinary man. Amid the troubles and uncertainties following the June 1844 martyrdom of the Prophet…
Read moreLife in Zion after Conversion: Hazed or Hailed?: Toward a More Mature View
Articles/Essays – Volume 22, No. 2
When we immigrated to Utah in 1967, Elder Mark E. Peterson said to my husband, “I hope you won’t be like so many converts who come to Zion. They think we should be perfect, and…
Read morePatriarchal Blessings and the Routinization of Charisma
Articles/Essays – Volume 26, No. 3
The policy of recording patriarchal blessings, copies of which are deposited in the office of the LDS Church Historian, affords a valuable picture of cultural change in the church, perhaps reflective of changes in American society in general. In the interests of privacy, however, the church does not allow access to its copies of blessings, unless there is proof of blood relationship to the recipient. The researcher, therefore, must access blessings recorded in journals, those appearing in other manuscripts, and any blessings which individuals may choose to release for examination and publication. All of the 744 blessings upon which this study is based are drawn from these sources.
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