Samuel M. Brown

What Shall We See?

Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists

Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Levirate Widow

Tending the Desert | Alan K. Parish, John A. Widtsoe: A Biography

We have waited five decades for a biography of one of our most prominent apostles, and I am grateful to Alan Parish for bringing the volume into existence. He is to be congratulated for returning…

The Prophet Elias Puzzle

Early Mormonism is notable for a proliferation of angels, scriptural luminaries who visited the Prophet Joseph Smith and his close associates. These visitations not only established prophetic authority generally but were also often associated with specific innovations, rites, and doctrines. Thus, Moroni delivered the Book of Mormon, John the Baptist bestowed the lesser priesthood, and a triumvirate of Christian apostles granted the higher priesthood. Perhaps most important in this august pantheon is Elijah, the biblical patriarch who ascended living to heaven (was translated) as a reward for exemplary faithfulness. For early Mormons, Elijah shouldered a burdensome mission: to oversee LDS temple rites and integrate the human family into an organic whole, sealing up personal relationships against death. 

Choices, Consequences, and Grace | Richard Dutcher, dir., God’s Army 2: States of Grace

Richard Dutcher, the founding father of Mormon cinema, has much to be proud of in his third film, God’s Army 2: States of Grace. His first effort, God’s Army, was a missionary bildungsroman with a…

Domlik

Winter was Domlik’s best season. The New Year rains were the earth’s sweat; and when the soil perspired, the dirt softened into mud so thick it postponed all organized demining activity. Even the bravest deminer—by…

Brattle Street Elegy: Always Sacred

I first arrived in late August 1990. Two weeks earlier, I had undergone a conversion experience that had jolted me from world weary agnosticism to a fervent belief in God and the Restoration. Simultaneously I…

Hurt or Make Afraid

We’ll find the place which God for us prepared, In His house full of light, Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid; There the saints will shine bright.  William Clayton, 1846  I’m cold. We’ve been walking…

The Early Mormon Chain of Belonging

On March 10, 1844, Mormon founder Joseph Smith preached a sermon after the burial of his friend King Follett, killed by accidental rock-fall while building a well. To an assembled crowd of his followers, Smith proclaimed, “If you have power to seal on earth & in heaven then we should be crafty. . . . Go & seal on earth your sons & daughters unto yourself & yourself unto your fathers in eternal glory . . . use a little Craftiness & seal all you can & when you get to heaven tell your father that what you seal on earth should be sealed in heaven. I will walk through the gate of heaven and Claim what I seal & those that follow me & my Council.” 

Canon: Open, Closed, Evolving | David F. Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America

Sacred Borders represents a rigorous and compelling consideration of various traditions about the state of the biblical canon in American religion. For bookish Latter-day Saints, this volume will provide much-needed context for early Mormon beliefs about their open canon as well as a subtle and sympathetic view of both sides of the debate over the closed canon.