Best of the Week 3: Academic LDS

Posted on June 22, 2008
Filed Under Religion | 1 Comment

OK, I missed last week due to being ridiculously busy. But here’s my “best of the web” on more academic oriented LDS blog posts. As ever, if I forgot something you think others would be interested please let us know in the comments.

Let’s start this week with Ardis and her blog. There’s a great post listing philosophical and criticism books at the Utah Territorial library as well as theology, ecclesiastical history and law. Useful for knowing what ideas people were exposed to in the 1850′s and 60′s. (One wished the books were all digitized, but that’s an unreasonable dream) Ardis also has an interesting post about one person’s describing the three phases of travel to Utah in the 19th century. There’s also a great discussion of some legal documents burned in 1857 and the debate about what was burned in the privy vault?

Over at FPR there’s an interesting discussion about a religious studies major at BYU. (Part 1 and Part 2) They also have a series on modernism in religious studies although it’s more focused on Catholicism than Mormonism. (See here for the first post) As ever one should note that philosophy senses of modernism and postmoderns don’t map directly onto the religious studies use. (Although there is obviously interplay between the two) They also had a fairly technical discussion of the exegesis about whether Eve was deceived in Gen 3:13. It’s interesting relative to discussions about Paul and his purported misogyny.

At Juvenile Instructor there were a ton of great posts the past two weeks. One was on Non-Mormon religious activity in Nauvoo in the years following the Mormon diaspora. There was a discussion comparing Evangelical and Mormon proselyting in Africa asking why it hasn’t done better. This gets discussed a lot since there appears to be a conscious decision to grow slowly unlike activity in South America during the 20th century. There’s a great post about an old New York Times editorial from 1896 comparing Mormons to the Boers in the Boer war. A related post is on non-Mormon narrative models for considering Mormons during the closing of the American west. Yet an other must read post involves Mormons and revenge narratives. Or the idea that God would take vengeance on the persecutors of the Mormons or the murderers of Joseph Smith. This is an important topic given how much this topic played in the psychology of Mormons in the mid to late 19th century. Obviously it’s fairly alien to 20th century Mormons.

At BCC Steve had a review of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. I should note that NPR’s RadioWest had a show on that documentary as well. That show is available as a podcast at the moment. (I think they keep them up a month)

BCC also had a fantastic must read review/discussion of Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Most of the big names in the history of that issue pop up and make comments. I’d linked to it in the sideblog but if you haven’t read the BCC discussion you really should. (I have the book pre-ordered at Amazon)

Related posts:

  1. Best of the Week 2: Academic LDS
  2. Best of the Week 6: Academic LDS
  3. Best of the Week 5: Academic LDS
  4. Best of the Week: Academic LDS
  5. Best of the Week 4: Academic LDS
  6. Mormons, Productivity, Intelligence and Living Alone

Comments

One Response to “Best of the Week 3: Academic LDS”

Thanks for the post and the Juvenile Instructor nod.

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