Before 1903, writings about Mormons were mostly orthodox documentary histories or anti-Mormon material. The first dissertations on Mormons, published in the 1900s, had a naturalistic style that approached Mormon history from economic, psychological, and philosophical theories. While their position within Mormon studies is debated, Mormon apologetics have a tradition dating back to Parley P. Pratt's response to an anti-Mormon book in 1838.
The amount of scholarship in Mormon studies increased after World War II. From 1972–1982, while Leonard Arrington was a Church Historian in the history department, the LDS Church Archives were open to Mormon and non-Mormon researchers. Researchers wrote detached accounts for Mormon intellectuals in the "New Mormon history" style. Many new publications started to publish history in this style, including Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, BYU Studies Quarterly, and Exponent II. Some general authorities in the church did not like the New Mormon history style, and Arrington and his remaining staff were transferred to Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1982, where they worked in the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History. The institute continued to support scholarship in Mormon history until 2005, when the institute closed and employees transferred to the LDS Church Office Building.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, several other incidents made BYU faculty reluctant to voice unorthodox ideas about church history. Around 1990, BYU professors were asked not to contribute to Dialogue or Sunstone. Two historians were excommunicated in 1993, probably for their published unorthodox views.[citation needed]BYU Studies and other LDS church-sponsored publishers published more "faithful" scholarship at this time. Presses outside of Utah started to publish more books in Mormon studies.
Mormon scholars engaging in Mormon studies still feel they must be careful about what they write, especially if they work with material from the Church History Library archives.[citation needed] Non-Mormon scholars are often suspicious of Mormon scholars' work.[citation needed]
Pre-1903 writings about Mormons
Before World War II, church histories were mostly either orthodox Mormon or anti-Mormon and written by faithful Mormons or hostile non-Mormons, respectively.[1] A few writers in the first era of church history (1830–1905) wrote about Mormons as a curiosity and focused on their peculiar ways.[2]
In the 1960s, ex-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner continued that anti-Mormon tradition by reprinting anti-Mormon works in the public domain as well as important but unflattering documents from LDS history through Utah Light House Ministry. They published their own criticisms of the LDS church as well, which, unlike early anti-Mormon works, cite historical documents.[7]Ed Decker, an excommunicated Mormon, made two anti-Mormon films: The God Makers (1982) and The God Makers II (1993). The films described Mormons as being a cult, abusing women and children, manipulating news outlets, and practicing Satanism. The God Makers II received criticism from other anti-Mormons, including Jerald and Sandra Tanner, who stated it contained inaccuracies.[8]
Official church records and early histories
Andrew Jenson wrote the LDS Biographical Encyclopedia
Official recorders have existed since Joseph Smith organized the Church of Christ on April 6, 1830. Church records continue to the present and are kept in the LDS church archives. The first official church history was published in 1842, when Smith and his associates began writing History of Joseph Smith as an official diary of Joseph Smith. This history was published in Times and Seasons in Nauvoo, and then in Deseret News and Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star up until 1863. History of Joseph Smith was followed by History of Brigham Young, which was also published in Deseret News and Millennial Star over the next two years. Church Historians and their assistants edited the material, which was published in official publications.[9]Andrew Jenson made sizable contributions to documentary church history with the Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia (1901–36), Encyclopedic History of the Church (1941), and an unpublished "Journal History of the Church" containing over 1,500 scrapbooks filled with published and unpublished records of daily activities in the church.[9] Jenson made a special report on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and parts of the report were not openly used until Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008) by Richard E. Turley, Ronald W. Walker, and Glen M. Leonard.[10]
The first historian to attempt to summarize Mormon history on a large scale was Edward Tullidge, who wrote Life of Brigham Young: or Utah and Her Founders (1876), History of Salt Lake City (1886), and History of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho (1889). Hubert How Bancroft wrote History of Utah (1889) with the help of the Historian's Office.[11] Bancroft's history of Utah portrayed Mormons favorably. Critics say that he wasn't objective since he allowed LDS Church authorities to read the book before publication. Perhaps his favorable treatment was how he obtained access to the church records.[12] Expanding on Bancroft's history, Orson F. Whitney wrote History of Utah (1898–1904) in four volumes. Joseph Fielding Smith wrote Essentials of Church History in 1922. Most of these accounts combined various testimonies into a single narrative without questioning the validity of the eyewitnesses or other observers, especially those of church authorities.[11]
Mormons wrote accounts for other Mormons, often published in church-sponsored venues like The Juvenile Instructor and in church-published lesson manuals. These writings were written for a Mormon audience in order to support their existing beliefs. Brigham H. Roberts was an associate editor of the Salt Lake Herald and while on a mission to England, was the editor of the Millennial Star. Upon returning to Utah, he became a General Authority. After an invitation from Americana, Brigham H. Roberts wrote a chapter each month from 1909 to 1915 in what later became the Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century One.[3] The history had some of the first historical analysis of events in church history.[13] It was serialized in Americana 1909–1915.[11]
From 1830-1930, women were victims or symbols in historical accounts.[14] Church historians mentioned their suffering, but rarely mentioned them by name. Anti-polygamy tracts also described Mormon women in general terms, describing them as deluded or miserable.[15] In an effort to combat the way anti-polygamists portrayed Mormon women, Edward Tullidge and Eliza R. Snow compiled The Women of Mormondom (1877), a book that portrayed Mormon women as hardworking and independent in a combined history, biography, and theology. Heroines of Mormondom (1884) highlighted faithful Mormon women's lives. Women wrote short biographies of other women and recorded them in Women's Exponent and through publications from the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.[16]
Early Mormon studies
Great Basin Desert
Early academic writers on Mormon topics had a "naturalistic" approach to history, using theory from economics, psychology, and philosophy to guide their study.[17] Richard Ely contributed to the professionalization of Mormon studies with his early dissertation "Economic Aspects of Mormonism" (1903). In the work, he praised Mormon irrigation and communalism as a good model of economic development.[18] He influenced Leonard Arrington's interest in economics and Mormons.[19] Andrew Love Neff wrote "The Mormon Migration to Utah," which he finished in 1918 but had started over ten years earlier. He was interested in how Mormons helped colonize the West.[20] Mormon Ephraim Edward Ericksen wrote "The Psychological and Ethical Aspects of Mormonism" (1922) while studying at the University of Chicago. His dissertation, influenced by functionalist theory, argued that Mormonism was a product of conflicts with non-Mormons and harsh environments.[21] Lowry Nelson, also a Mormon, studied at the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s. He worked in agriculture and was dean of BYU's College of Applied Science and director of the Utah Agriculture Experiment stations. He wrote articles about how the Mormon village was designed to promote unity and sociability, which allowed Mormon settlers to colonize the Great Basin Desert. He left Utah in 1937.[22]Nels Anderson studied at the University of Chicago, and studied hobos in Utah, where he converted to Mormonism. His book Desert Saints (1944) recounted the history of saints in the St. George, Utah area.[23] Other scholars publishing on Mormonism from this time period include I. Woodbridge Riley, Walter F. Prince, Franklin D. Daines, Hamilton Gardner, Joseph Geddes, Feramorz Fox, Arden Beal Olsen, William McNiff, Kimball Young, Austin Fife and Alta Fife.[24]
In the 1950s after World War II, an increasing number of Mormons studied history professionally and wrote dissertations about Mormon history. Non-Mormon sociologist Thomas F. O'Dea wrote a dissertation entitled "Mormon Values: The Significance of a Religious Outlook for Social Action" after living in a rural Mormon farming village in New Mexico for six months and subsequently teaching at Utah State University.[25] This study of Mormon culture "stunned Mormon readers with its objectivity and sympathetic insight," according to Mormon scholar Richard Bushman.[26] (O’Dea expanded this into The Mormons in 1957.[27]) Bernard DeVoto, Dale L. Morgan, Fawn McKay Brodie, Stuart Ferguson, and Juanita Brooks did not have graduate degrees in history, but made significant contributions to the foundations of Mormonism's "New History" movement.[28][24] Brodie wrote No Man Knows My History (1945), which contemporary reviews praised as definitive and scholarly. Other LDS scholars, notably Hugh Nibley, criticized Brodie's biography.[28] In 1950, Juanita Brooks, a Columbia University-trained housewife who formerly taught English composition at a nearby college, published a well-researched and balanced book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Brooks's Mormon neighbors did not like "the frankness" of her book.[29]
Mormon scholars are divided on whether or not apologetics should be considered part of Mormon studies. Brian D. Birch argues that it should be a part of Mormon studies, as long as apologetic authors concede that their arguments are objective and subject to academic debate.[30] Apologists write defensively, and view their polemical responses to criticism as a battle for their faith.[31]Parley P. Pratt responded to Mormonism Unveiled in detail in his 1838 pamphlet Mormonism Unveiled: Zion's Watchman Unmasked and Its Editor Mr. L.R. Sunderland Exposed, Truth Vindicated, the Devil Mad, and Priestcraft in Danger! Pratt argued against Sunderland's character, quoting Hurlbut, who stated that Sunderland has a "notorious character."[32]
Hugh Nibley's No, Ma'am, That's Not History set a standard for apologetics to use academic language, and criticized Brodie's use of sources in her controversial biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History.[33] The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) aimed to support the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon and respond to criticism, and used Nibley's style[33] to counter research that contradicted the Book of Mormon's ancient origins.[34] FARMS collaborated with Deseret Book to publish the complete works of Hugh Nibley starting in 1984.[33] In 1997, LDS church president Gordon B. Hinckley invited FARMS to be officially affiliated at BYU, and in 2006 it was subsumed by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship.[33] In 2012, Daniel C. Petersen, the editor of FARMS Review, started publishing a new journal called Interpreter.[35] The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), a group including both laypeople and academics, attempts to answer criticisms of the Mormon faith.[34] in 2013, it changed its name to FairMormon.[36]
Some other Mormon "insiders" countered the Book of Mormon's ancient origins through the Smith-Pettit Foundation in Salt Lake City and George Smith's Signature Books publishing company. Signature Books published New Approaches to the Book of Mormon by Brent Metcalfe and American Apocrypha by Dan Vogel and Metcalfe.[37] These insider views of the Book of Mormon's origins were diverse. American Apocrypha described the Book of Mormon as a work of fiction reflecting its environment. Ostler argued that the Book of Mormon was partially inspired.[38] FARMS's responses were at times patronizing, and even descending into veiled name-calling in William Hamblin's 1994 critique of a Metcalfe essay.[39]
In the 1990s and 2000s, Evangelicals Carl Mosser and Paul Owen encouraged other Evangelicals to respond to Mormon apologetics. Evangelical Craig L. Blomberg discussed whether or not Mormons were Christian with Mormon Stephen E. Robinson in How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and Evangelical in Conversation.[40] Richard Bushman encouraged fellow Mormon historians to be less defensive and more open to criticism, and also to do research on Mormon history from a consciously Mormon point of view.[41]
Over the years, scholars raised within the Latter-day Saint tradition and professionally trained academically, often in the social sciences, began to enter the field. A flowering of these efforts in the 1960s has come to be known as the New Mormon history.[42] The publication of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the newly-established Mormon History Association, and the professionalization of LDS and RLDS history departments provided spaces for historians to do new research in Mormon topics.[43] RLDS scholars founded the John Whitmer Historical Association in 1972.[44] In 1974, Claudia Bushman and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich founded the magazine Exponent II.[45] The first issue of BYU Studies was published in 1959.[46]
In 1972, the LDS Church hired Leonard Arrington as their historian.[47] During Arrington's time as historian, Mormon and non-Mormon historians were allowed to access the LDS Church Archives. Much of the research in the 1970s used these newly-available sources to examine church history, sometimes in great detail.[48] Leonard Arrington influenced important scholars of Mormon history, including Richard Jensen, William Hartley, and Ronald Walker.[45] In 1969, Jewish historian Moses Rischin named the increasing amount of Mormon scholarship "the New Mormon history."[26] The "New Mormon history" movement included non-Mormons Thomas F. O'Dea, P.A.M. Taylor, Mario De Pillis, Lawrence Foster, Community of Christ member Robert Flanders, and Mormon scholar Klaus Hansen.[49][44]
Maureen Ursenbach Beecher was a leading researcher in women's studies.[50][51] In the 1970s women's biographies were published, but not integrated into larger narratives.[15] Other women hired by the Church Historical Department included Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, and Edyth Romney. Journals dedicated special issues to Mormon women, and the increased interest in Mormon women led to more publications focused on them. Scholars published biographies of Emma Smith, Eliza Snow, Emmeline B. Wells, and Amy Brown Lyman.[52] Beecher's efforts would also prove instrumental to the founding of the Association for Mormon Letters, the first scholarly association aimed at the literature of the Latter-day Saints.[53]
Some writers looked at Mormon women's history with the goal of restructuring historical narratives. Mormon feminist articles on Mormon history started with the special Summer 1971 issue of Dialogue on women's issues and continued in publications like Exponent II (starting in 1974), and Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah (1976), edited by Claudia Bushman. Beecher and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich edited another volume about Mormon women's history in Sisters in Sprit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (1987). Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (1992) was another milestone in feminist publications, and it encouraged Mormon women to be empowered by their history and "reclaim lost opportunities."[54]
Most New Mormon historians were LDS.[55] Their audience was Mormon intellectuals[49] and non-Mormons.[56] They maintained their respect for the Mormon faith, admitted to flaws in people and policies, and avoided taking a defensive stance,[56] a tone which non-Mormon historian Jan Shipps wrote "made them seem more secular than they actually were."[57] Mormon history by non-Mormons at this time had a similar detached tone.[56] New Mormon historians often published with the University of Illinois Press in order to publish for an academic audience independent of the church.[58] Charles S. Peterson argued in The Great Basin Kingdom Revisited that Arrington took an exceptionalist view of Mormon history, which he then taught to other New Mormon historians. This exceptionalist view was that they could believe in both secular history and orthodox Mormon views of the restoration.[59]
LDS church reaffirms orthodoxy and New Mormon faith historians
The LDS church stopped funding so much research and limited access to the church archives.[60] Apostle Ezra Taft Benson warned employees in the Church Educational System against New Mormon history in a 1976 speech. He said that writing history in a neutral style undermined "prophetic history." Boyd K. Packer's 1981 article, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect" was published in BYU Studies. He wrote that contemporary historians were too eager to focus on the faults of church leaders and dismiss spiritual inspiration.[61] In 1982, historians from Arrington's department were transferred to Brigham Young University, where they were assigned to teach in the history department and worked in the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History.[62]
Carol Cornwall Madsen
After Arrington's death in 1999, Ronald K. Esplin and Jill Mulvay Derr led the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History at BYU. Carol Cornwall Madsen led research in the Women's History Initiative at the institute, where she wrote an important biographical study of Emmeline B. Wells.[63] In 2001,[64]Richard Bushman retired from full-time teaching at Columbia University and was a research director at the Smith Institute.[65]Dean C. Jessee started editing Joseph Smith's papers in The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. The Smith Institute closed in 2005, and institute staff along with the Smith papers project moved to the Church Office Building.[63] The Joseph Smith Papers project, started by the LDS church in 2001, aimed to publish Joseph Smith's papers with rigorous accuracy, and was validated by the National Historic Public Records Commission.[66]
Jan Shipps asserts that this reluctance to support New Mormon history was a response to the Mark Hofmann document forgeries. Also, some church authorities disliked the books and articles produced by the history department, which noted flaws as well as strengths of people in church history.[60] Shipps states that the increase in new converts to the LDS Church led General Authorities to emphasize the need for "palatable" versions of church history in museums and historic sites rather than in-depth articles in church-sponsored publications.[67] Mormon sociologist Armand Mauss argued that Mormonism was a struggle between remaining distinctive and assimilating to accepted American cultural practices; scholar Ronald Helfrich speculates that the change in General Authority's reception to Arrington's research was because they feared assimilating too much.[68] General interest in Mormon studies continued during the 1980s, with over 2,000 books, articles, and other material published on Mormon history during that decade.[44]
BYU Studies and Deseret Books published more New Mormon historians after General Authority pushback against New Mormon history. One of these New Mormon historians was Louis Midgely, who argued that from a relativist, postmodern theory, the Mormon view that the LDS Church had divine origins was just as valuable and valid as others. New Mormon historians said that the New Mormon scholars left faith out of their analyses.[69] Many were members of FARMS, and often saw writers of New Mormon history as the same as other anti-Mormons, even though most writers of New Mormon history were Mormon.[70] The difference between the New Mormon historians and New Mormon scholars was hard to define.[69]
Along with Arrington's transfer and a subsequent increase in restrictions in the LDS Church Archives, several other incidents led to an intellectual chilling of Mormon history by Mormons in the 1990s.[71] In 1992, Arrington wrote that "the church cannot afford to place its official stamp of approval on any 'private' interpretation of its past," and this kind of history must be not sponsored by the LDS Church.[72] In September 1993, the LDS church excommunicated the September Six, which included historians Lavina Fielding Anderson, D. Michael Quinn and Maxine Hanks. These excommunications served as a warning to other Mormon historians.[60] Quinn's excommunication was perhaps tied to his idea that Mormon women had been given the priesthood in 1843, which he published in an essay in Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism.[73] In 2003, he was scheduled to give a speech at a conference at Yale which was co-sponsored by BYU, and BYU stated they would withdraw their funding if Quinn presented his paper. That same year, Quinn applied to work as a professor at the University of Utah and Arizona State University. He was not hired as a professor, possibly because of fears that LDS people in power would retaliate against the university.[74] In 1986, administrators were asked not to contribute to Dialogue or present at the Sunstone symposium; around 1990, BYU professors were asked not to contribute to Dialogue or Sunstone.[75]Eugene England, one of the founders of Dialogue and then a professor at BYU, spoke out against these prohibitions. He was asked not to write for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism in 1990, and in 1998 he was asked to retire from BYU without justification. England saw this as stemming from his publicly anti-war stance, and for his attention to Mormon racism and sexism. He viewed his differences as a potential source of learning for himself and others. After retiring from BYU, he started one of the first Mormon studies programs at Utah Valley State College. According to a 1997 report by the American Association of University Professors on academic freedom at BYU, Alan Wilkins was questioned about his motives for contributing to Dialogue and Sunstone in a tenure review. The report also mentioned other incidents where BYU administration criticized speakers and articles for criticism of the church, among other complaints.[76]
In 1997, Joanna Brooks argued that the goal of Mormon studies was to critically examine Mormonism, not to determine religious truths.[77] She postulated that Mormon studies done as a type of cultural studies will help scholars in the field feel less defensive and more productive.[78] Outside of Brigham Young University and Utah, the University of North Carolina Press, Knopf, and the University of Oklahoma Press published books on Mormonism.[44] In the 2000s, Jan Shipps was a large influence on news articles about Mormons; often she is the only expert cited for an entire article.[44] In 2005, the National Endowment for the Humanities held a seminar at Brigham Young University on the bicentennial of Joseph Smith's birth.[79]Terryl Givens, a comparative literature scholar, analyzed discourse about the Book of Mormon in By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion in 2002. [80]
Mormon women's history has not been well-integrated in general histories. Arrington and Davis Bitton discussed women's issues in two chapters on marriage and sisterhood in The Mormon Experience (1992). The Story of the Latter-day Saints (1992) by James Allen and Glen Leonard mentioned women in the context of auxiliaries like Relief Society and Primary, plural marriage, suffrage, and the ERA. The Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History (2000) contained 435 entries about men, but only 64 about women, with three-quarters of the women receiving less than a page of description. Church publication Our Heritage (1996) only mentioned a few women. Women's history remained in a "separate sphere."[81]Daughters in My Kingdom (2011), an official history of the Relief Society, is mostly used in women's meetings. Outside of Mormon history specialists, Mormon women are rarely mentioned.[82]
Newer Mormon history
Non-Mormon scholars are still often suspicious of LDS scholars' work.[83] That is gradually changing as non-Mormon scholars increase and universities not affiliated with the LDS Church have endowed chairs for Mormon studies.[84]Kathleen Flake is the first Richard L. Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies at University of Virginia, and Patrick Mason is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California.[85]
Church History Library in Salt Lake City
The Church History Library still restricts access to certain documents for most scholars. Scholars may self-censor their research for fear of losing access to documents from the Church History Library. Previous excommunications of Mormon historians give Mormon researchers the sense that they are being watched.[84] Scholars from various disciplines see the New Mormon history movement as ending, bring replaced by post-New Mormon history or "Newer Mormon History." This emerging movement is interdisciplinary and endeavors to place Mormon studies in a broader historical context, further eroding boundaries between disciplines.[86] Mormon women's history has not been well-integrated with other Mormon studies topics.[87] Contemporary historians like R. Marie Griffith, Grant Wacker, and Robert Orsi encourage the use of interdisciplinary tools in Mormon studies.[88]
Included in these interdisciplinary tools are oral histories. In 1972, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies was established at BYU, where Jessie L. Embry directed an extensive oral history project.[89][90] The Church History Department started their own oral history project in 2009.[54] Claudia L. Bushman and her students started the Claremont Oral History collection in 2009, and papers using the oral history data were published in Mormon Women Have Their Say: Essays from the Claremont Oral History Collection.[91]
The Church History Department hired a specialist in women's history in 2011, Kate Holbrook. She co-authored The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-Day Saint Women's History with Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, and Matthew J. Grow. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said the book was "the most important work to emerge from a Mormon Press in the last 50 years." Jennifer Reeder, specializing in 19th century women's history, was hired in 2013. Brittany Chapman Nash and Lisa Tait also specialize in women's history and work in the Church history department. Nash works in public services and helps researchers to be aware of women's sources the archive offers. She co-authored Women of Faith in the Latter Days with Richard Turley. Tait works on the web team, helping to add a "Women of Conviction" section to church history website.[92] In 2017, Reeder and Holbrook edited a compilation of women's speeches called At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women.[93]
Blogs and Mormon studies
The Mormon blogosphere influences Mormon studies. In 2011, Patrick Mason surveyed 113 Mormon blog readers who were also graduate students.[94] Most respondents viewed blogs as a way to democratize Mormon studies. Since blogs are independent from Church institutions, many felt that blogs were a safe space to test more unorthodox ideas.[95] A few observed that men's voices are more prominent in the blogging community, though a few prominent blogs have all-women authors.[96] Other respondents felt that blogs made Mormon studies "more of an echo chamber," and were "superficial," and "glorified navel-gazing."[97] One of the most popular blogs, By Common Consent, had over two million page visitors in 2011. It and other blogs are influential on Mormon studies.[98]
Archives
Archives with significant Mormon collections include the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at BYU, the Church Archives in Salt Lake, the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah in Salt Lake, Utah State University Libraries, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.[99]
Universities also present awards. The University of Utah gives the Juanita Brooks Prize in Mormon Studies[105][106] and offers a Mormon Studies Fellowship.[107]Utah State University's Evans Biography Awards focus on biographies significant to "Mormon Country".[108] Student writing competitions are held by Utah State University,[109] the MHA,[100] and the JWHA.[110]BYU Religious Education presents annual awards to its faculty for teaching, research, and service, as well as books in the categories of church history or ancient scripture.[111][112]
Academic programs
Several universities have programs in the study of Mormonism, with professors named to oversee coursework, research, and events on Mormon studies. While independent academic programs have emerged in recent years, devotional religious education programs have existed far longer. Additional colleges have also taught courses on Mormonism without having institutionally sponsored programs,[113] but they are not included in the list below.
Independent
Utah State University, Program of Religious Studies, including the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture (est. 2007)
University of Utah, Tanner Humanities Center's Mormon Studies Initiative,[116][117][118] including the Marlin K. Jensen Scholar and Artist in Residence (est. 2016)[119][120] and the Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies (est. 2017)[121]
University of Virginia, Graduate Program in Religious Studies, including the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies (est. 2012)[122]
LDS Church Institutes of Religion — Offers official LDS Church approved religious instruction, often at locations adjacent to institutions of higher learning
↑ The History of the Church, also known as the Documentary History of the Church, was based on the multi-volume Manuscript History of the Church and decades of additional work of the Church Historian's Office.
Leonard James Arrington was an American author, academic and the founder of the Mormon History Association. He is known as the "Dean of Mormon History" and "the Father of Mormon History" because of his many influential contributions to the field. Since 1842, he was the first non-general authority Church Historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1972 to 1982, and was director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History from 1982 until 1986.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism is a semi-official English-language encyclopedia for topics relevant to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The encyclopedia's five volumes have been digitized and are available for free online via the Harold B. Lee Library's official website.
Richard Lyman Bushman is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, having previously taught at Brigham Young University, Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. Bushman is the author of Joseph Smith:Rough Stone Rolling, a biography of Joseph Smith, progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. Bushman also was an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project and now serves on the national advisory board. Bushman has been called "one of the most important scholars of American religious history" of the late-20th century. In 2012, a $3-million donation to the University of Virginia established the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies in his honor.
Historians of the Latter Day Saint movement are a diverse group of historians writing about Mormonism. Historians devoted to the history of the Latter Day Saint movement may be members of a Latter Day Saint faith or non-members with an academic interest. They range from faith-promoting historians to anti-Mormon historians, but also include scholars who make an honest effort at objectivity.
The Mormon religion is predicated on what are said to be historical events such as the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the historicity of the Book of Mormon, which describes a detailed pre-Columbian history of the Americas. Joseph Fielding Smith, the tenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, declared that "Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground." As Jan Shipps has written, "Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history," and until after World War II, Mormons did not critically examine the historical underpinnings of their faith; any "profane" investigation of the church's history was perceived "as trespassing on forbidden ground."
Jo Ann Barnett Shipps, known as Jan Shipps, is an American historian specializing in Mormon history, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. Shipps is generally regarded as the foremost non-Mormon scholar of the Latter Day Saint movement, having given particular attention to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her first book on the subject was Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition published by the University of Illinois Press. In 2000, the University of Illinois Press published her book Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons, in which she interweaves her own history of Mormon-watching with 16 essays on Mormon history and culture.
Thomas Glen Alexander is an American historian and academic who is a professor emeritus at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, where he was also Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor of Western History and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. After studying at Weber State University (WSU) and Utah State University (USU), he received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965. He taught history at BYU from 1964 until 2004, and served in the leadership of various local and historical organizations.
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith is a 1945 book by Fawn M. Brodie that was one of the first significant non-hagiographic biographies of Joseph Smith, the progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. No Man Knows My History was influential in the development of Mormon history as a scholarly field.
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought is an independent quarterly journal that addresses a wide range of issues on Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint Movement.
View of the Hebrews is an 1823 book written by Ethan Smith, a Congregationalist minister in Vermont, who argued that Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a relatively common view during the early nineteenth century. Numerous commentators on Mormon history, from LDS Church general authority B. H. Roberts to Fawn M. Brodie, biographer of Joseph Smith, have noted similarities in the content of View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon, which was first published in 1830, seven years after Ethan Smith's book.
Philip Layton Barlow is a Harvard-trained scholar who specializes in American religious history, religious geography, and Mormonism. In 2019, Barlow was appointed associate director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Barlow was the first full-time professor of Mormon studies at a secular university as the inaugural Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University (USU), from 2007 to 2018.
New Mormon history refers to a style of reporting the history of Mormonism by both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars which departs from earlier more polemical or faith-based styles of history. Rather than presenting material selectively to either prove or disprove Mormonism, the focus of new Mormon history is to present history in a more humanistic and dispassionate way, and to situate Mormon history in a fuller historical context. Because it is a break from past historical narratives, new Mormon history tends to be revisionist. In many cases, the new Mormon history follows the perspectives and techniques of new history, including cultural history. The Mormon historian Richard Bushman described it as "a quest for identity rather than a quest for authority." New Mormon historians include a wide range of both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, the most prominent of which include Bushman, Jan Shipps, D. Michael Quinn, Terryl Givens, Leonard J. Arrington, Richard P. Howard, Fawn Brodie, and Juanita Brooks.
Dean Cornell Jessee is a historian of the early Latter Day Saint movement and leading expert on the writings of Joseph Smith Jr.
The Story of the Latter-day Saints is a single-volume history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, first published in 1976.
James Brown Allen was an American historian of Mormonism and was an official Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972 to 1979. While working as Assistant Church Historian, he co-authored The Story of the Latter-day Saints with Glen Leonard. After Ezra Taft Benson dismissed the book as secular new history, other events led to the dissolution of the LDS Church History department in 1982. Allen resigned as Assistant Church Historian in 1979, returning to work at Brigham Young University (BYU) full-time.
Reed Connell Durham, Jr. is a historian of the Latter Day Saint movement and former director of the Institute of Religion in Salt Lake City, Utah for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Durham is remembered for a controversial speech given in 1974 about Freemasonry and the Latter Day Saint movement.
No, Ma'am, That's Not History is a short work written by Hugh Nibley to criticize Fawn M. Brodie's biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History. Nibley accuses Brodie of inconsistency and improper historical methodology. Scholars have criticized No, Ma'am for using the same kind of hyperbole that Nibley critiques in Brodie. Nibley's defenders explain that his acerbic satire does use similar rhetorical tools as Brodie does, which is part of its attention-grabbing intent. In 1999, The Salt Lake Tribune said the book "was wildly popular in Utah".
The John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA) is an independent, nonprofit organization promoting study, research, and publishing about the history and culture of the Latter Day Saint movement. It is especially focused on the Community of Christ, other midwestern Restoration traditions, and early Mormonism. The Community of Christ's approach to its own history was influenced, in part, by historical problems raised and explored through JWHA publications and conferences, and those of its sister organization, the Mormon History Association. JWHA membership numbers around 400 and is open to all, fostering cooperation with LDS and non-Mormon scholars.
This is a bibliography of works on the Latter Day Saint movement.
Arrington, Leonard (1992). "Search for Truth". The New Mormon history: revisionist essays on the past. D. Michael Quinn (ed.). Salt Lake City: Signature Books. ISBN978-1-56085-011-3.
Bushman, Claudia; Kline, Caroline, eds. (2013b). Mormon women have their say: essays from the Claremont Oral History Collection. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books. p.xiv. ISBN9781589584945.
Bushman, Richard (2007). "What's New in Mormon History: A Response to Jan Shipps". Journal of American History. 94 (2): 517–521. doi:10.2307/25094963. ISSN0021-8723. JSTOR25094963.
Bushman, Richard (2013a). "Commencement of Mormon Studies". In Newell, Quincy D.; Mason, Eric F. (eds.). New perspectives in Mormon studies: creating and crossing boundaries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN978-0-8061-4313-2.
Erekson, Keith A. (2017). "Charting the Past and Future of Mormon Women's History". In Cope, Rachel; Easton-Flake, Amy; Erekson, Keith A.; Tait, Lisa Olsen (eds.). Mormon women's history: beyond biography. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN978-1-61147-964-5.
Newell, Quincy D. (2013). "Introduction". In Newell, Quincy D.; Mason, Eric F. (eds.). New perspectives in Mormon studies: creating and crossing boundaries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN978-0-8061-4313-2.
Newell, Quincy D.; Mason, Eric Farrel, eds. (2013). New Perspectives in Mormon Studies: Creating and Crossing Boundaries. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN9780806143132. OCLC795354450.
Duffy, John-Charles (2006). Faithful Scholarship: The Mainstreaming of Mormon Studies and the Politics of Insider Discourse (M.A.). University of North Carolina.
Helfrich, Ronald Jr. (2011). Idols of the Tribes: An Intellectual and Critical History of 19th and 20th Century Mormon Studies (Ph.D.). State University of New York at Albany.
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