Continued from Part I One 24 September 1835, notwithstanding the absence of an external threat, Joseph Smith organized militarily in Kirtland. He proposed “by the voice of the Spirit of the Lord” to raise another Mormon army “to live or die on our own lands, which we have purchased in Jackson County, Missouri.” His manuscript …
Tag: Joseph Smith
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part I
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is an independent scholar in Rancho Cucamonga, Southern California. His first ancestral Mormon mother, Lydia Bilyeu Workman, died in Nauvoo on 30 September 1845, just days after she was burned out of her farmhouse by mobs. Her five youngest children were aged six to eighteen. It is extremely …
Letter to the Editor: Graphic Novel
In response to Noah Van Sciver’s comic “Book of Mormon Origins,” Sunstone received the following. Graphic Novel The Sacred Grove is strangely young—devoid of foliage, with spindly, half-grown trees. And awkward, teen-age Joseph, on his knees—trapped inside the walls of his own comic strip—has coal-black hair, and fuller lips than we recall. Is …
Notes to D. Michael Quinn’s: “The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism” Part II
100. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 138, 144-52. While Anderson, “Clarifications of Bogg’s [sic] `Order’ and Joseph Smith’s Constitutionalism” acknowledges that the Boggs extermination order responded to what Anderson calls “the hot skirmish at Crooked River” (45), he emphasizes the “unfounded rumors” (45), “the upcoming fictitious attack on the county seat” (46), the …
Notes for D. Michael Quinn’s: “The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism” Part I
1. Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp, eds., Social Norms (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). 2. Richard Maxwell Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence in America,” in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: …
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: A Guide for the Overwhelmed–Part II
Continued from Part I III. Mapping the Positions Thus far this article has summarized the historicity question as if it were a two-party debate: arguments for versus arguments against. But in fact, writers have adopted a wide array of positions around this issue. William Hamblin (1994) organizes views on historicity into five categories: evangelical, …
Mapping Book of Mormon Historicity Debates: A Guide for the Overwhelmed–Part I
By John-Charles Duffy Art by Jeanette Atwood Book of Mormon “historicity” refers to the claim that the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient volume of scripture. Whether or not one believes the Book of Mormon to be historical in this sense is maybe the most fundamental question affecting one’s relationship to …
Written by the Finger of God?: Claims and Controversies of Book of Mormon Translation
By Don Bradley The accuracy of the Book of Mormon’s rendering into English was so important for Mormonism’s founding claims that—like the divine Sonship of Jesus in the biblical narratives of the Baptism and the Transfiguration—it needed to be declared from heaven (Matthew 3:13–17; 17:1–5; D&C 5:11–13).1 In June 1829, the Three Witnesses to the …
Approaching the First Vision Saga
By Stephen C. Taysom Art by Galen Dara Or right-click to download audio file here: Approaching the First Vision Saga Joseph Smith’s First Vision stories constitute a key element of contemporary Mormon self-conception. Anyone seeking to understand Mormonism will have to grapple with the complexities surrounding this event and the stories told …