MOH: Please introduce the project and tell us a bit about how it works. JC: Thank you, I’m so excited to share this great new resource! The Book of Mormon Art Catalog is a comprehensive…
The Mormon History Association will hold its 2010 Annual Meeting in Independence Missouri, May 27-30. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Home and the Homeland: Families in Diverse Mormon Traditions.” Details and online…
We are thrilled to announce a new online resource for the work of Dialogue’s founding editor, Eugene England. Below is the announcement from the Eugene England Foundation: On what would have been Eugene England’s 77th…
A Mormon is once again in the national spotlight, this time it’s Joanna Brooks who works to demystify Mormons on “On Being” with host Krista Tippett.
From the producer: “Enjoy an inside perspective of the Mormon universe with journalist Joanna Brooks. She helps us understand the emergence of a viable Mormon presidential candidate as a “white-knuckle” moment — a moment of self-searching. From an unorthodox perspective, she sheds a candid, genuinely informative light on what some are calling this “Mormon moment” in American life: on Broadway, on TV, and in presidential politics…”
Lucky souls attending the Mormon History Association meeting in Layton, Utah on June 7th and June 8th can stop by the IMS 2013 Summer Fundraiser (graciously hosted by Dialogue) for free Asian treats. We will be raffling off some fabulous prizes collected from across the globe, including boomerangs from Australia and sacks of the tastiest lychee jellies in Asia! Those searching for an original Father’s Day gift will be pleased to learn that we are also selling several colors of the ubiquitous “家庭是永恒的” tie, the favored Sunday tie of the hip, hardworking Mormons of China’s Pearl River Delta. All proceeds will go to the IMS Book Drive project. We hope to raise all remaining funds needed for the 2013 collections at this Summer Fundraiser.
The Spring 2012 Issue opens with a feisty stack of letters to Dialogue before delving into Shawn Tucker’s exploration of Mormonism’s contribution to the “Virtues and Vices” tradition in various religious and philosophical schools of thought. Then John Bennion contributes a tribute to his ancestor Lucile Cannon Bennion and Gary Bergera examines the cases of two “liberal” professors at BYU during the Wilkinson years, offering new insight into Wilkinson’s modes of thought and management. Other highlights include poetry by Elizabeth Willes, creative nonfiction by A Motley Vision’s William Morris, an Easter homily and a Mother’s Day sermon you will actually like (really!).
Yesterday, at a news conference to which Dialogue was invited, the editors of the newly released Histories, Volume 1 teased that there would be a plethora of resources to be uploaded soon to the Joseph Smith Papers website. A day later the heavens were opened! Among the releases, find a previously unavailable copy of an early version of Joseph Smith’s 1838-1839 history that is important because, as scholar Robin Jensen explains “the text has been available, but this version has not .” Also included is what Jensen calls “the best scanned images I’ve seen online of one of the most important books (the 1833 Book of Commandments) published in Mormon history.”And find 50 1839 documents, updated reference material, the second volume of the manuscript history and various 1840 documents.
There’s a new series of short commentaries on excerpts of the BoM in town. But this new series of books on the Book are, from the very beginning, said to be guided by interpretive strategies found within the BoM itself. Recall at the outset of this review I mentioned that the BoM contains scattered pieces of its own interpretive instruction manual. The editors and contributors to this collaborative new series excavate some of these instructions from Alma 32 (An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, ed. Adam S. Miller) and from 2 Nephi (Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: Reading 2 Nephi 26-27, ed. Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb).3
According to the series introduction, the books are produced by “The Mormon Theology Seminar,” an “unofficial and independent” scholarly collaboration. “Theology” is somewhat of a foreign word to many Mormons. (We have doctrine, we don’t have professional theologians, some might say.) But the series proposes and enacts a theological reading of the BoM. What does it mean to “read Mormon scripture theologically”? For this review I decided describe what Miller & co. mean by “Theology” in order to give you an idea if their approach is something you’d find worthwhile…
Patheos hosted an online roundtable discussion deconstructing the “Mormon Moment” with pieces from Matthew Bowman, James Faulconer, Terryl and Fiona Givens, Emily Jensen, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Patrick Mason, Neylan McBaine, Richard Mouw, Nathan Oman, and John Turner.
Patheos introduce it this way: “the year 2012 was in many ways the Year of the Mormons. Several national magazines devoted cover stories to the minority faith, and reporters sought to re-interpret the young religion for a broad audience. The candidacies of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman raised the faith’s profile, while a new musical that had little to do with the actual Book of Mormon broke records on Broadway. We invited a panel of experts to comment on the so-called “Mormon Moment”: What does it mean for the church, its adherents, for the media, and for religion in America?”
Cross-posted at the Maxwell Institute Blog by BHodges:
What is Mormon studies? Who is doing it? Where and how is it being done? What is the relationship between Mormon studies and apologetics? Does Mormon studies exclude or necessarily bracket discussion about the fundamental truth claims of the religion? How is Mormon studies to be situated within the wider academy? I’ve been busy compiling a bibliography of publications that tackle these types of questions. There are fewer published articles that directly address such questions than I expected. Some of the most interesting discussions have occurred in the Bloggernacle—a loose and unaffiliated collection of Mormon-themed blogs. I have gathered some of my favorite online discussions into a bibliographic essay on the sorts of issues being discussed in relation to Mormon studies. Many of the posts scope wider than the category in which I place them, and inclusion in this collection does not signal my agreement.