Mormon Chronicles: Mormon Studies Wiki - Simple. Factual. Non-Polemical.

Mormon Studies Wiki - Simple. Factual. Non-Polemical.

http://www.mormonstudieswiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

The Situation: Every day, members of the LDS Church are going to the Internet to learn more about their religion and are discovering a great deal of new information about LDS history and culture that does not match their current perceptions. In many cases, this "Gap of Understanding" leads to a great deal of distress and cognitive dissonance--often leading to disillusionment or even apostasy.

The Problem: Several anti-, post-, and ex-Mormon sites exist which attempt to explain this gap--a sampling of which includes: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, lds-mormon.com, and exMormon.org. While many of these sites have a great deal of good information and are often written by smart and sincere people, they also operate from the assumption that the Church is false and its leadership deliberately deceitful.

The Solution: Imagine a centralized directory for Mormon issues, where anyone with any of the "big questions" surrounding Mormon studies can go to find accurate, complete information and non-polemical answers.

A Proposal for What We Might Try to Accomplish: Target Audience: Members of the LDS Church who are newer to the Internet and who are exploring tough historical and/or cultural issues for the first time. The target audience will NOT be academics, scholars, etc. The reading level should be comparable to USA Today, Newsweek, etc.

Goal: Create a content directory that addresses the gap between official LDS teachings/perceptions and the actual facts surrounding the top issues in Mormon studies.

This will include:

The top 20 or 30 issues in Mormon studies
A whitepaper describing what the mainstream LDS view and/or teaching is (or has been) on the particular topic. This whitepaper would include quotes and references to Church publications that created or reinforced this view
A 10-20 page "definitive" whitepaper on each of the major topics (written collaboratively with amateurs and experts). This definitive whitepaper would outline the basic facts (as best as they can be established) in a neutral, "as objective as possible," way. This definitive whitepaper would also include links to the "definitive" articles, webpages, and blog/forum postings related to each issue (Sunstone, Dialogue, BYU Studies, Journal of Mormon History, Blogs, etc.)
Eventually I would like to see (at a minimum) "screencasts" produced for each topic (think of this as an audio-narrated powerpoint presentation viewable on the web, kinda like this and this)--and ultimately 30-minute video documentaries for each topic. This will help us reach the new generations.

The aspirations for this project are inspired by the work of Linux, Wikipedia, the Open Directory Project, Slashdot, and the writings of Yochai Benkler

For instructions on working with the Wiki, check here: MediaWiki Documentation

List of Current Pages

List of Current Categories

[edit]

An Initial List of Major Topics

Broad Theme	Specific Issues	Whitepaper on official church teachings/perceptions, w/ links to church publications	10-20 page whitepaper on "basic facts", w/ links to seminal additional readings
Joseph Smith and Mormon Origins
	The First Vision Controversy
	Treasure Digging and Magic		Magic and Early Mormonism
	The Priesthood Origins Controversy
	Polygyny and Polyandry in Kirtland, Missouri, and Nauvoo
	Danites and Theocracy in Missouri and Nauvoo
	Apostasy Among Top Church Leaders
	Causes of Persecution in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois
	The Masonic/LDS Endowment Ceremony Connection
	The Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith
The Polygamy Period
	The Succession Crisis
	Demographics of Polygamy
	The Mormon-American Conflict
	Mormons and Race in the Brigham Young Era		Race
	Blood Atonement		Wikipedia entry
	Adam-God Doctrine		Wikipedia entry
The Book of Mormon
	Theories of Book of Mormon Geography
	Evidence Against Continental Theory of the Book of Mormon
	Evidence For and Against the Mesoamerican Theory
	Church Leader Statements about Geographic Theories
	19th-Century Environmental Parallels in the Book
	Chiasmus and Statistical Authorship Evidence
	Evidence of Modalism in the Book
	The Question of Racism		Race in the Book of Mormon
The Book of Abraham
	The Debate Over the Papyri
	Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar
	The Kinderhook Plates
	Book of Abraham as a Justification for Racism		Race
	Divergent Creation Accounts in Abraham, Moses, Temple Ceremony
	Book of Abraham Cosmology and Modern Science
Modern Leadership and Contemporary Issues
	Post-Manifesto Polygamy
	Word of Wisdom--From Suggestion to Requirement
	Fundamentalist Authority Claims
	Church Actions Against Fundamentalist Groups
	The Leonard Arrington Experiment and Rise of "New Mormon History"
	The end of the race-based temple/priesthood restriction		Race
	Racial folklore developed/used to explain the racial ban		Race
	The Church's Stance on Homosexuality
	The Mark Hofmann Affair
	Church Political Efforts Against Gay Marriage and "Right to Die" Initiatives
	The rise of literal/fundamentalist approaches to scripture and religion
	Political Efforts Against the ERA
	The Decline of Mother in Heaven in LDS Discourse
	Women and the Priesthood
	Intellectual Freedom Issues at BYU
	Faith-Promoting History Issues
	The End of Financial Disclosure
	Baseball Baptisms
	Membership Statistics and Trends
	Organic Evolution	Church Position