Tag Archives: religion
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
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
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
Jeffrey Lundgren, Reorganized Church Dissidents, and Modern Blood Atonement Killings
This is a horror story worthy of anything Stephen King could write. Tragically it is not fiction. Jeffrey D. Lundgren and his followers in Kirtland, Ohio, former members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (renamed … Continue reading
Notes on an Important Book: Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason”
The Age of American Unreason. By Susan Jacoby. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. While there is much on this book that is quite valuable and I certainly recommend reading it, Susan Jacoby reminds me of so many ancient Roman writers … Continue reading
What Were the Origins of Mormon/Non-Mormon Conflict in 1840s Nauvoo?
The non-Mormons of Hancock County, Illinois, in the early 1840s probably disliked the Mormons from the first, in the same way that most Americans have generally disliked what they have viewed as religious fanaticism, but they were initially disposed toward toleration … Continue reading
