Mormon Heretic

I know I’m behind the times. I don’t watch television very often, and I don’t have cable or satellite tv. But I recently got a Netflix subscription, and I discovered that Sister Wives was on. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched all 18 episodes of season 1 and season 2. It really is entertaining. Over and over, I kept asking myself, “how do they afford such a large family?” Season 2, episode 3 answers the question. Read more…

Robert Rees

Sunstone has had a recurring theme over the past 25 years or so titled Why I Stay.  Robert Rees collected essays from 20 people that have answered this question over the years.  As I thought of the question, I think my answer would mirror Claudia Bushman.  From page 31, Read more…

Due to a scheduling conflict, Sunstone was forced to find a new venue for this year’s conference. Rather than stay at the Sheraton in Salt Lake City as they have for the past few years, the conference moved to Weber State University in Ogden. I was only able to attend the Saturday conference, but wanted to give a recap of some of the presentations I attended.

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Many people refer to “the Apocrypha” as if it is a clearly defined set of books.  The work “apocrypha” means literally “things hidden away.”  In modern usage, an apocryphal book is any book not part of the Bible.  In that sense, the Book of Mormon could be called an apocryphal book; there is a new book called American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon.  It is a collection of essays by scholars specifically addressing the Book of Mormon.

We often think that the Bible has a set number of books.  However, this is not true.   Read more…

D&C 132 was recorded on July 12, 1843.  In this section, God revealed to Joseph Smith the Celestial Law of Marriage, and showed that a man could be sealed to multiple wives if done with the proper priesthood authority.  On the other hand, women are not supposed to be sealed to multiple men.  However, verse 51 offers a vague reference:

A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her;

The subject of polygamy was quite controversial with Emma.  in a previous post, Richard Van Wagoner noted the issue of polygamy Read more…

Sadly, all good things must come to an end.  MHA 2011 finished with a bang.  Once again it was hard to pick which session to attend.  Steve Olsen, Shawn Bennion, and Brandon Plewe combined for a session titled “New Perspectives on Mormon History”.  Steve spoke on how we often argue history.  To bolster an argument is to support assumptions–to weaken an argument is to take apart these assumptions.  Shawn Bennion talked about how Mormonism is an ethnic group.  I’ve never really understood that point of view, but found his presentation compelling.  Brandon Plewe announced that he is working on a new LDS atlas of history.  It was interesting to see all the  maps he was making for the soon to be published book.  He also announced that there will be a website wiki about Mormon locations, but said it wasn’t available for public consumption yet.  It was a very interesting presentation.

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Re-creation of Mormon Fort in Las Vegas

I’m at the Mormon History Association meetings here in St. George, Utah and thought I would give some first impressions of the conference so far.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to be part of the pre-conference tour, and learned a very interesting thing:

Sin City was first settled by Mormons!

The first non-Indian settlers in Las Vegas were Mormons.  Wanting to improve relations with Indians and make a road to California, Brigham Young sent missionaries into what is now Nevada (it was part of the Territory of Deseret at the time) in 1855.  “Las Vegas” is a Spanish word for “the meadows”.  Water was found there and the Mormons set up the Mormon Fort.  The mission lasted just 2 years, due to the harsh conditions, and the fort was abandoned.

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John Larson of Mormon Expression did a book review of Mormon Enigma by Linda Newell and Valeen Avery.  I’m not going to quote the whole podcast, but John gives a very interesting introduction to the book.  In light of my recent post Latter-day Dissent, I thought I would continue the theme of how the church deals with intellectuals.

This book was published in the fall of 1984.  There sort of a back story to it. Read more…

A few months ago, I received an advance copy of a new book by Philip Lindholm called Latter-day Dissent: At the Crossroads of Intellectual Inquiry and Ecclesiastical Authority.  The book is supposed to be released on Friday by Greg Kofford Books.  Lindholm interviews 5 of the “September Six”, as well as 3 others.

The September Six refer to a group of 6 intellectuals that were disciplined by the church in 1993. Read more…

Last October, I wrote a post titled, Mormon Women Blessing the Sick, as a follow up to my post on Women with Priesthood in Ancient Christianity.  Jonathon Stapley was the first to comment, saying

Equating early Mormon female healing with evidence of female priesthood is folly. Kris’ and my paper on female ritual healing is finally coming out in January (JMH). We treat most of your questions and clean up the historiography a bit.

In the interim here is our paper on the development of Mormon healing to 1847, including the role of women.

Well, I didn’t actually equate healing with female priesthood, but there is an interesting connection.  I am finally getting around to reviewing Jonathan and Kristine Wright’s (abbrev SW) paper which was published in the Journal of Mormon History in the summer of 2009.   Read more…

The biblical account of the interactions between Joseph and Mary is very small.  To me, it almost makes Joseph and Mary appear 2-dimensional, and I never feel like I know them very well.  When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant before their wedding, we know that he considered cancelling the betrothal.  An angel intervened, and Joseph decided to continue with the wedding.  Many of us have imagined that this must have been very tough to deal with, but the details in the Bible of the interactions between Mary and Joseph have been quite sparse.

The Protevangelion fills in many of these details.   Read more…

A few months ago, I picked up a book called Lost Books of the Bible by William Hone on the clearance rack at Barnes and Noble.  It is one of the coolest books I have ever picked up.  There are 26 ancient books included in the compilation, dating to the earliest centuries after Christ.  These ancient writings include books such as The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Apostle’s Creed, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Letters of Herod and Pilate, to name just a few.

The first 4 books deal with the childhood of Jesus.  With the Christmas season approaching, I wanted to share some of these really cool stories about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  I think you’ll enjoy learning some of the extra-biblical stories.  Honestly, I don’t think I’ve read so much cool stuff about the life of Jesus.  I want to start with the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, and discuss some of these other ancient writings in coming weeks.  Some of these stories overlap, and I think it will be interesting to see the different, sometimes conflicting accounts over the coming weeks.

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As a follow up to my previous article discussing female priesthood holders in Ancient Christianity, I thought it would be interesting to discuss a now discontinued practice of Mormon women anointing and blessing the sick.  Did you know that Mormon women used to wash, anoint with oil, and lay hands on the sick until 1946?  Linda King Newell outlines the history of this practice in a Sunstone article called “A Gift Given: a Gift Taken”.  When questioned the propriety of women laying hands on the sick to heal, what do you think Joseph Smith’s response was?

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