Panelists will discuss the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LDS priesthood ban that excluded black members from full Church participation. Several of the panelists contributed a compelling chapter to the forthcoming University of Illinois book, Black and Mormon, scheduled for release in October 2004. The articles examine the mechanisms that marginalize blacks, motives behind the original …
Location: Utah
THE OVERLAND JOURNEY FROM UTAH TO CALIFORNIA: WAGON TRAVEL FROM THE CITY OF SAINTS TO THE CITY OF ANGELS
This paper surveys the Latter-day Saint use of the historic trail often called the Mormon trail to Southern California. In 1848, the Mormon Battalion was the first ever to akte wagons over the route. In 1851, the largest emigrant company ever, 437 people, traveled the trail to found San Bernardino, with many others following later. …
PANEL. THE BOOK OF MORMON QUANDARY
Over the past two decades, scientific research has emerged which challenges the LDS church’s explanation for the origins of the Book of Mormon. How should we as Church members respond to the questions this research raises? Considering the implications of these findings, how might we as individuals shift our personal philosophy, religious belief and practice, …
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS AND OTHER MINORITIES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA: A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH
The paper describes postcolonialism as a research approach and examines case studies of nineteenth-century dispossession and forfeiture of rights among Hispanics, Indians, and Blacks in America from a postcolonial perspective. A fourth case study examines dispossession and forfeiture of rights among the Mormons in the same era. Was nineteenth-century territorial Utah a “colonial site,” and …
CO-PAPERS. COPING IN THE MORMON BORDERLANDS: THE PRICE OF OPENNESS & THE ‘PHENOMENON OF THE CLOSEST DOUBTER’ REVISITED
Last fall, I wrote an essay, published in Sunstone, that detailed my struggle for testimony. In it, I discuss how my desire for truth led me into the dark side of Church history, causing a battle between my intellect and my spiritual ties to the Church. I also discuss how I’ve been affected by the …
History’s Apprentice: Personal Reflections On B. H. Roberts
Though he has been dead for seventy years, B. H. Roberts remains a significant Mormon historian and theologian, and is considered one of the Church’s premier intellectuals. Though best known for his writings, Roberts was also a member of the First Council of Seventy and a stalwart of Utah’s Democratic Party. This presentation draws on …
‘LET US TRY WHAT LOVE WILL DO’: A QUAKER-MORMON MARRIAGE
Acclaimed author Heidi Hart considers the challenges of interfaith marriage and community bridge-building. Living on the threshold between two very different religious traditions, she finds herself continually negotiating those differences with extended family and friends as well as in her own marriage. She is coming to understand relationship not as socially prescribed convention but as …
A CHURCH OBSERVED
We are non-Mormons who have observed that the LDS Church seems to be divided into essentially two camps, loyalists and dissidents, the blindly devoted and the brutally critical. Each seems to champion the Church’s well-being. But if the Church’s effectiveness in serving its members and the community declines, we think, ironically, it will because of …
JAMES E. TALMAGE V. THE KOYLE RELIEF MINE
In 1894, John H. Koyle claimed he had been visited by a heavenly being who told him there was a vast deposit of Nephite gold in a hill in Salem, Utah. The messenger said the gold in this hill was to provide relief to the Church and the U.S. government after a severe economic collapse. …
TWO ROADS TO THE TRUTH: APPROACHING HISTORY THROUGH RESEARCH AND IMAGINATION
Judith Freeman and Will Bagley have written a prizewinning novel and prize-winning history of the darkest event in Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In Freeman’s Redwater, three wives of John D. Lee describe life on the ragged edge of the Mormon frontier. Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets carries forward Juanita Brooks’s work through its …