Wilfried noted this article, which says, Before each general [Utah legislative] session, GOP and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate sit down separately with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints special affairs committee, a group made up…
Tag: Latter-day Saint
“This Thing Was Not Done in a Corner”
I was delighted when Noah Feldman accepted my invitation to give the keynote address at Princeton’s Mormonism and American Politics conference because I knew he’d offer a thoughtful and sophisticated outsider’s perspective on these issues. His latest NYT piece, a…
An Al Smith Moment?
Here is my argument: Let us suppose that Mitt Romney does not become the next president. What will this mean for the Mormons? There about 5.7 million Latter-day Saints in America, which in a nation of more than 300 million…
Latino/a and Mormon
America, as they say, is browning. Latino/as recently surpassed African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States, and the Church is experiencing that browning along with the rest of the nation. “According to Church statisticians, the future…
Zion v. Babylon: Life in the Enclave
In his recent (and excellent) book, Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes, Paul Reeve examines the contact and interactions between the three groups mentioned in his title in southern Utah/eastern Nevada during the last four…
Narrating the Priesthood Ban and Constructing Selves
The way we see and define who we are is usually closely related to how we understand the past. Most of us have overlapping identities that require us to negotiate compromises between them and these compromises shape our narratives of…
The Haun’s Mill Massacre in Mormon Memory
In April 2005, I spent two weeks on assignment for the Joseph Smith Papers Project in Missouri and Illinois, visiting court houses and archives searching for documents pertaining to early Mormon history. On the second evening of my stay in northwestern Missouri, I drove down a lonely dirt road to a desolate place that had significant meaning for me as a Latter-day Saint. When I arrived, I found only a small creek surrounded by trees, grass, mud, and a small plaque that identified the site of the Haun’s Mill Massacre…
Gadianton Robbers Among the Ancestors
In fall 2001 (vol. 27, pp. 125-149) the Journal of Mormon History published an article I wrote entitled “‘As Ugly as Evil’ and ‘As Wicked as Hell’: Gadianton Robbers and the Legend Process among the Mormons.†Let me share a…
In Which Jules Verne Meets Clarissa
Clarissa, the daughter of commenter East Coast, is a seventh-grader, the only Latter-day Saint in a student body of more than 600.
The Monolithic Myth
Much of the commentary and criticism swirling around Mitt Romney and the religion issue seems to take as its starting point the assumption that there is a single Mormon view on any particular issue, decided by LDS leaders and accepted…
If I were Mitt Romney
We recently surveyed a bunch of politically savvy bloggernacle types — including some of our own T&S crew — and asked them to answer in a few paragraphs this question: “What would you say tomorrow (in the much-anticipated “Religion Talk”)…
Standing Strong and Immoveable
Each Monday they rotate drivers. Every three weeks it is my mom’s turn. She picks up Margarete and MaryLou in her Buick and they drive to St. George to visit Shirlee.
Terryl Givens: The Scholar as Celebrant
Terryl Givens is doing a great deal in People of Paradox.
Tracing Emily (updated)
This story begins at the bitter end, with suicide in a Butte brothel.
Blogging, Church Doctrine, and the Limits of Authority
People frequently claim that Mormonism is an essentially atheological religion. It is not always exactly clear what is meant by this statement, but it generally seems to me something like we place right practice and sacred stories at the center…
Mormonism and American Politics conference, November 9-10
This weekend, Princeton will host an interdisciplinary conference to discuss the contested intersection between religion and American politics. Speakers include Richard Bushman, Richard Land, Kathleen Flake, Philip Barlow, Marci Hamilton, Alan Wolfe, Helen Whitney, Mark Silk, Noah Feldman, Sarah Barringer…
In Defense of Commentaries
Let’s say that you learned to cook by watching others and that you’ve never picked up a cookbook or seen a cooking show. Could you become an excellent cook?
“The most difficult of all the many subjects”
That is what B.H. Roberts called it when he reached the point in his monumental Comprehensive History of the Church where he had to confront the Mountain Meadows massacre, which occurred 150 years ago today.
A French View of Mormonism, 1941
I’ve referred a time or two to one of my heroes, Leon Fargier, the only Melchisedek Priesthood holder in France during World War II.
Of Perfect Organizations
“No other organization is so perfect as the Mormon Church, except the German army.â€