Finding the Presence in Mormon History: An Interview with Susanna Morrill, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Robert Orsi
Susanna Morrill: I’d like to start the conversation by asking four framing questions relating to the issue of religious experience: First, are “abundant events” proper subjects of study for historians of religion? Second, how do historians of religions go about studying such experiences within the methodological expectations of the academy? Third, what are the responsibilities of scholars to the believers whom they write about? And fourth, to what extent will, and should, the faith of scholars appear in their work? Richard, could you start start the discussion with the ideas Robert offers in his article?
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Prophetic Glimpses of Mormon Culture: Recent Publications on Patriarchal Blessings | Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith, Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of the Presiding Patriarch; H. Michael Marquardt, ed., Early Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; H. Michael Marquardt, ed., Later Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, Binding Heaven and Earth: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism
With these publications, Gary and Gordon Shepherd and H. Michael Marquardt have contributed immeasurably to the scholarly conversation about Mormon patriarchal blessings. This has been a continuing conversation that intensified in 1996 when Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith published their book on the office of Church patriarch. Scholars now have a critical mass of primary and secondary material with which to understand this often overlooked but powerful practice in the LDS Church. Each of these books adds something to the conversation, complicating it in messy, fruitful ways. They illuminate the intersection of the institutional and lived religious levels of Mormonism, an intersection that has been largely unexplored but is receiving increasing scholarly attention. Marquardt’s collection of patriarchal blessings, in particular, enables scholars to examine how, every day, leaders and members created the Mormon faith as a viable and vigorous religious group.
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