“Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood:
Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice.”
Brigham Young University
June 3 – July 12, 2013
In the summer of 2013, the Neal A Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University, with support from the Mormon Scholars Foundation and the Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley Institution, will sponsor a summer seminar for graduate students and junior faculty on “Workings of the Spirit and Works of the Priesthood: Gifts and Ordinances in LDS Thought and Practice.”
The seminar will be held on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, from June 3 to July 12. Admitted participants will receive a stipend of $3000 with an accommodations subsidy if needed. The seminar continues the series of seminars on Mormon culture begun in the summer of 1997.
The seminar will be conducted by Terryl Givens, Professor of Literature and Religion and James A. Bostwick Chair of English at the University of Richmond.
This particular seminar will continue a series begun three years ago on the history of Mormon thought. A principal evidence appealed to by early Mormon writers and missionaries, on which they based their claim to authoritative restoration, was the abundance of spiritual gifts manifest among believers in the church founded by Joseph Smith. Closely allied to these gifts was the Latter-day Saint claim to genuine priesthood authority. We will study how early Saints understood the workings of the spirit and spiritual gifts, and how those perceptions and manifestations have changed through Latter-day Saint history. We will also investigate the theology behind early Mormon exercise of the priesthood, their understanding of the role of ordinances in salvation, and how such understanding was shaped by and responded to Protestant notions of the sacraments.
Each participant will be asked to prepare a paper on some aspect of this general subject area for presentation in a public symposium in the final week. Applicants are welcomed from the fields of history, literature, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, philosophy and other humanistic and social scientific fields. Graduate students at any level of preparation are eligible. Junior faculty are also invited to apply. Applications should be submitted by February 15, 2013. Notifications will be sent by March 15, 2013. For further information write:
Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture
Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah 84602
email: [email protected]
phone: (801) 422 9229
fax: (801) 422 0040
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