By M. David Huston M. David Huston lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. He is a husband and the father of four children. Although it remains outside the LDS Church’s canonized scripture, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (hereafter, “the Proclamation”) is framed authoritatively. It ascribes “divine design” to the …
Category: History
“A Brother in the Pale-face”: White Mormons and Indigenous Polygamies
By Amanda Hendrix-Komoto Amanda Hendrix-Komoto has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Undressing Mahana: The Development of Mormon Modesty Culture and the Display of Polynesian Bodies,” forthcoming in Out of Obscurity: Mormonism after 1945 from Oxford University Press. When Mormons adopted polygamy in the mid-nineteenth century, …
“The Custom of his Nation”: William McCary and the Racialization of Plural Marriage
By Angela Pulley Hudson Angela Pulley Hudson is the author of Real Native Genius: How an Ex-slave and a White Mormon became Famous Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). She is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and can be reached at aphudson@tamu.edu. When envisioning Mormon polygamists, people of color …
Background and Fallout of My 1985 Article: “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904”
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is the award-winning author of many articles and books on Mormon history including Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature, 1998) and the upcoming The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power (Signature, 2016). Prologue I was recently asked1 to describe the background of the 97-page …
Daniel Webster Jones: A Western Hero
By Victoria Riskin Victoria Riskin is an award-winning television writer, former president of the Writers Guild of America West, and the author of Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir. Or download the audio file here: Daniel Webster Jones: A Western Hero A statue of Daniel Webster, the great American …
Polygamy and the Early Mormon Hawaiian Mission
By John J. Hammond John J. Hammond has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He taught political science and philosophy at Kent State University for thirty-five years, retiring in 2007. For the past fourteen years, he has enjoyed researching Mormon topics. Or right-click here to download the audio. …
Danites, Damsels, and World Domination: Mormons in the Dime Novels
By Michael Austin Michael Austin is co-editor of the Mormon Image in Literature series from Greg Kofford Books, which includes annotated reprints of 19th-century novels about Mormons including many of the works mentioned in this article such as The Doomed Dozen, The Bradys among the Mormons, and Eagle Plume: The White Avenger. Or …
Own Your Religion
By Gregory A. Prince Gregory A. Prince is the author of Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History (University of Utah, 2016), David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (University of Utah, 2005), and Power from on High: The Development of the Mormon Priesthood (Signature, 1995). For two years, …
Single Men in Nineteenth-century Mormonism
By Jeffery Ogden Johnson BEING SINGLE IN the Mormon Church has always been a challenge. An unsigned 1849 Frontier Guardian article, published by apostle Orson Hyde in Kanesville, Iowa, unequivocally declared: That man who resolves to live without woman, and that woman who resolves to live without man, are enemies to the community in which they …
Impossible Hymn
The course of study for Relief Society and Priesthood for 2015 is the Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson. Lesson 11 is titled “Follow the Living Prophet”. This lesson has all ready generated some discussion as much of it is based on President Benson’s controversial talk given in 1980 at BYU “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the …