Review: Brigham Young, Pioneer Prophet by John G. Turner

Brigham Young, Pioneer Prophet
 John G. Turner

Reviewed by Bryan Buchanan for the Association for Mormon Letters

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Indulge me: picture a man neck deep in a swift river with people on both banks trying to warn him of boulders they think are in his path.  After successfully navigating his course, he exits the river to the cheers of both banks.  It happened.  His name is John Turner and he's just written a landmark biography of Brigham Young.  With an embarrassment of riches in terms of sources that would drown a lesser man and voices from both extremes depicting a tyrannical harem-master and, conversely, a gentle kingdom builder, Turner has achieved a fair and well-rounded portrait of Brigham Young. No sticky wicket (Mountain Meadows, the handcart imbroglio, Young's often testy personality, etc.) is skirted—at the same time, the reader does not get a sense that Turner is poking at them as at a sore tooth. Notoriously difficult for biographers, Young has eluded many through the years.  With "Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet," Turner has done what "Rough Stone Rolling" did for Joseph Smith: combine meticulous primary source research with balanced historical craft. ...

New Content on Joseph Smith Papers Website

Characters, pronunciations and definitions from the 2nd part
of the 1st degree of  Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet

The Joseph Smith Papers Project announces the addition of new content to its website:

• Joseph Smith's Letterbook 1, a compilation of copied outgoing letters dated 14 June 1829 through 4 August 1835. 
• Source texts and supplements to the histories to be published in Histories, Volume 2, including:
• John Corrill, "Brief History," Manuscript, ca. 1838–1839
• Edward Partridge,History, Manuscript, ca. 1839 (from 1st Presidency vault)
• Sidney Rigdon, JS, et al., Petition Draft ("To the Publick"), ca. 1838–1839
• Parley P. Pratt et al., "'The Mormons' So Called," 12 December 1833
• Parley P. Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 1839
• One of the Book of Abraham manuscripts
• "Egyptian Alphabet" from the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Research to be presented on changing LDS LGBT sexual orientation

Bill Bradshaw will report some of the data from a recent on-line survey of 1600 LGBT Latter-day Saints at the Family Fellowship Forum, Sunday, June 24, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. in the Social Work Auditorium on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The talk will focus on the experience of these respondents in trying to change their sexual orientation. The results should shed light on an ongoing debate about the validity such therapies.

Mormon Stories Salt Lake City Conference

Mormon Stories: Salt Lake City Conference and Art Show: June 15th-17th, 2012

"Mormon Crossroads: Traversing New Paths"

Women and the LDS Church Conference

Women and the LDS Church: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Conference

Co-directed by Kate Holbrook, Specialist in Women's History in the LDS Church History Department and the 2010-2011 Eccles Mormon Studies Fellow, and Matt Bowman, Professor of History at Hampden Sydney College and alumnus of the University of Utah. 

FAIR conference 2012

The FAIR Conference is an annual event that brings together scholars, apologists, and interested individuals from a variety of areas. Each comes with a unique perspective on history, science, or theology, and all come with a desire to help defend the gospel and share evidences of its truth.

Why the name and organizational location of the church was changed

The reason most mistakenly believe the church was organized in Fayette, NY is tied to the reason the church's name was changed from "Church of Christ" to "Church of the Latter Day Saints" according to historian Michael Marquardt.  Following are excerpts from a series of small articles in Joseph Smith Organized the Church of Christ in Manchester, Ontario County, New York on April 6, 1830.

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Podcast on the forthcoming "Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet"

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet - by John G. Turner

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than fifty women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical exposé,John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.

Selected chronology of George Albert Smith: Early Life

George Albert Smith*

Included are items related George Albert Smith's family life as a child and early adulthood before before becoming an apostle at age 33.  Most of this material comes from the diary of his father - John Henry Smith - who became an apostle when George Albert was ten. Events from John Henry's life that may have impacted his family, as well as a few major events in church history as seen through his eyes are included. Additional sources are used to supplement the material from his diaries.

Brigham Young's James Jesse Strang Revelation

 J. James Strang

Two months after Joseph Smith's death,  James Jesse Strang claimed that days before Joseph Smith's murder, Joseph had appointed Strang his successor. 

Strang made claims similar to Smith, including translating plates with a Urim and Thummim and receiving angelic visitations.  Even though Strang was a relative newcomer to Mormonism  (baptized February 25th, 1844 by Joseph Smith) his charismatic claims made him a viable contender with Brigham Young to succeed Joseph Smith.  As Mormons began taking Strang’s claims seriously, Young provided a revelation to a questioning bishop and delivered "an entire blowing up" of Strangism in the Nauvoo temple.  The following provides background to Brigham Young’s James J. Strang Revelation.

Index for Joseph Smith Papers: Journals vol 2

Joseph Smith Papers: Journals
volumes 1 and 2 of 3 planned volumes

The index for the Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843 is available in print form or PDF. To order a free print copy, click here, or to download a copy, click here.

Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, is the second of three planned volumes in the Journals series, and begins in December 1841.

Mormon Stories vs Mormon Apologists

Another event has occurred that may be another mark the church's ongoing shift away from retrenchment towards a stance more accommodating of open intellectual inquery. John Dehlin's successful Mormon Stories Foundation provides a community and forum for Mormons to openly explore unorthodox issues that can challenge belief. Apologists associated with the Maxwell Institute of BYU (formerly FARMS) have defended traditional, correlated views of the church in a variety of methods including identifying and exposing persons or groups they perceive as enemies of the church. This past week, the two groups clashed.

Michael Marquardt papers

Historian Michael Marquardt has posted the contents of his extensive collection housed at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. It consists of 419 boxes containing over 4,000 items including correspondence, clippings, diary copies, scholarly articles, and miscellaneous research on topics in Mormon history and theology.

First Nauvoo temple marriage and a revelation on dancing

Brigham Young received more
than one revelations on dancing

Mormon-Church-History has finished detailing the year 1845 and has begun posting day-by-day details of 1846. The following looks at January 1, 1846.

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On the first day of 1846, Brigham Young performed the first marriage sealing of a man and woman for "time and all eternity" in the Nauvoo Temple, and issued a revelation regarding the new practice of dancing "unto the Lord" in the temple.

Church growth rate overstated

Excerpts of Change lowers Mormonism's growth rate by Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune (see here for related story and here for a discussion on LDS demographics)

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Only 40% of Mormons in the U.S. attend  church  regularly, says researcher.

If you suspected the newly released U.S. Religion Census overstated the LDS Church's growth rate, you were right. That's because, this time around, the Utah-based faith changed the way it reported its membership to the researchers.

Vigil planned after another gay Mormon suicide

Excerpts of  Vigil Planned in Wake of Suicide by 17-Year-Old by Joanna Brooks, Religion Dispatches

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In the wake of another gay Mormon suicide, more than three hundred people are expected to attend a May 1 community speak-out and vigil against bullying and suicide.  Sources are reporting seventeen year-old Jack Denton Reese ended his life on Sunday, April 22. 

Mormonism leading way in U.S. religious growth

[Note, the story below is based on inconsistent numbers.  See here for an update, or here for a discussion on growth rates]. Excerpts of Mormonism leading way in U.S. religious growth by Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune

LDS Church is fastest-growth Christian faith in 30 states, report shows.


The Utah-based faith is leading the way — Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota and other states far outside the West's traditional "Mormon corridor."

Joseph Smith Papers: Histories, Vol. 1 (1832-1844)

Joseph Smith Papers: Histories, Vol. 1 (1832-1844) The Joseph Smith Papers Project has released Histories, Volume 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844, the first volume in its Histories series. This volume contains compelling narratives of Joseph Smith's life and of early Latter-day Saint history - including several accounts of the First Vision and of the visits of the angel Moroni. Presented in this first volume of the Histories series are the six histories that Joseph Smith personally wrote, dictated, or supervised. The volume also contains several dozen photographs, maps, charts, and other illustrations that help bring the historical narratives to life.

Forms of re-baptism in Mormon history

The next topic at LDS-Church-History will cover forms of rebaptism in Mormon history. Various types of rebaptism will be analyzed, including baptism for recommitment, baptism for health, baptism for the dead, reformation baptism, and even baptism to prepare for plural marriage.

Baptism within the Latter Day Saint tradition followed a separate trajectory from other Christian practices of baptism in the 19th century. Revelations received at the formation of the church required already baptized Christians to be rebaptized into the church due to issues of apostasy and authority. Later, new forms of baptism became available to members of the church,

Mormon gender roles enter political debate

Excerpts of Why Ann Stayed Home, BuzzFeed, McKay Coppins
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Ann Romney was already fully immersed in stay-at-home motherhood — raising five sons, — when Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson took to a pulpit on February 22, 1987 and delivered a definitive sermon on gender roles in the church titled, "To the Mothers of Zion."