Category Archives: Mormonism
Wednesday’s Book Review: “Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning”
Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning. By C. Mark Hamilton. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). X-vii + 203 pp. $65. This is a very poor work. C. Mark Hamilton, a professor of architectural history at Brigham Young University at … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism”
Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism. By Dan Vogel. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988. Pp. xiii, 237. I recently reread Dan Vogel’s 1988 book, Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism. I am more convinced than ever that … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization”
Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization. By Stephen Cave. New York: Crown, 2012. How might we live forever? Become a vampire? Download your memory into a supercomputer and become a silicon-based life form? Enter the … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes”
The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes. Edited by John S. Dinger. Foreword by Morris A. Thurston. Signature Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2011. Preface, introduction, city and stake councilmen, appendices, index. Hardcover with dustjacket. ISBN: 978-1-56085-214-8. $49.95. Nauvoo, Illinois, in … Continue reading
An Iowa Sheriff Comments on the Mormons in Nauvoo, Illinois
In 1995 I published with John E. Hallwas a documentary history about the Mormon experience in Illinois in the 1840s. The book, Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Utah State University Press). In this book … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910″
More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910. By Kathryn M. Daynes. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 305 pp. $34.95. Plural marriage was by far Joseph Smith’s most controversial doctrine. The Mormon founder began the practice … Continue reading
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints/Community of Christ and African American Members
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (renamed the Community of Christ in 2000), one of the inheritors of the legacy of early Mormonism who developed a moderate theological position and coalesced as a recognizable group beginning … Continue reading
The Latter-day Saint Movement and the Concept of a “Chosen People”
Perhaps the single most important tenet of Joseph Smith Jr.’s (1805-1844) theology in founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) was the identification of his followers as a “latter-day Israel.” This identification drove much of the rest of … Continue reading
Was the United States Founded as a Christian Nation?
Why do some Americans insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation? And what does that mean anyway? How does a Christian nation act? Why does one segment—a very vocal segment—of modern American society insists that the … Continue reading
