Sounds like a great conference. I wish I could have been there as well. John Hamer and I were buddies when we were something like four and five years old. But I haven’t seen much of him since. What a punk.

Great report, DKL! I also enjoyed the comparatively informal (and candid) nature of JWHA conferences.

Can you elaborate on which conspiracies Ron Esplin commented on, in regard to the martyrdom? (I’m curious if he touched on my own area of research there.)

VERY interesting re the Anthon Transcript. I wish I’d been there to hear the details!

You mentioned several friends of mine, who I wish I could have been there to see.

Thanks for this nice summary.

I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall during your conversation with Vogel and Metcalfe. I’ve enjoyed listening to their past presentations and remarks at various MHA or Sunstone conferences, as well as their jointly edited “American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon.” Have you read Metcalfe’s “New Approaches…”, and if so, would you recommend it? Care to expound a little about the substance of your conversation?

Do you get the feeling Newell Bringhurst would like home teachers to visit him? And did Bill Russell rib him about having had an affair with Fawn Brodie?

What was the head count at the JWHA? Sunstone and MHA usually hover around 700 to 1,000 range. Not that numbers matter, just curious. I imagine JWHA to be more intimate, which can be a good thing.

Hale’s book did win the best book award. (And I’m with you on the cover.)

Thanks for this summary of the conference, DKL. You clearly took more detailed notes (or have a better memory) than I.

The name of the other book nominated for best book is United by Faith: The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family, edited by Kyle R. Walker. I was personally surprised the Hales won for best book. I think his book is groundbreaking in subject matter, but it is rather poorly written and oft-times too apologetic in tone.

I also thought David Howlett’s paper on Pilgrimage to Kirtland was exceptional and that the session on modern polygamy was fantastic. While I still prefer MHA, JWHA was great for all of the reasons you mention.

#5:
When Ron Esplin discussed conspiracy theories, he did go into Masonry, but not very deeply. He referred only to the fact that Mervin Hogan was absolutely positive that the Masons were knee deep in the conspiracy to kill Joseph. I don’t disagree with this, but I’ve read all of Hogan’s manuscripts, and I don’t know of any smoking gun that Hogan points to.

Well, many of Mervin Hogan’s writings are enough to make you pull your hair out. In my research, I’ve come across rejections from publishers, who frankly told him he was completely incoherent. I also know that in some cases, Hogan told others that he had “proof” of his various claims, that he dare not share. In most cases, I’ve been unable to come up with evidence to back his theories when he failed to do so. In one case (his claim that the Grand Lodge of Utah destroyed evidence belonging to the Grand Lodge of Missouri, which would have shown that Mormons were welcomed in the first lodge established in Utah, which was under Missouri dispensation), I have been able to establish good circumstantial evidence to back him.

As for a Masonic conspiracy regarding Joseph’s death, I’m convinced it was there, in spite of Hogan. As I worked with original Masonic manuscripts in the region around Nauvoo, I found some fairly remarkable circumstantial evidence. I can’t “prove” it beyond a reasonable doubt, but when I’ve laid the evidence down for experienced Masons (who know the protocols and traditions of the Fraternity), their jaws drop pretty far. Of course, my task will be to lay it all out in a way that people unfamiliar with Freemasonry will see why the evidence points the way I think it does. I made a good start on this in my presentation at the 2005 JWHA conference, but that was limited to a 20 minute presentation, which didn’t allow a full development of ideas.

Nick, I agree with you that Hogan’s works are discursive and rambling at best, but frequently incoherent to the point of being dizzying. Homer’s Dialogue article on Masonry does a tremendous job of making sense of Hogan and stringing the workable parts of his research together into a coherent narrative. Hogan was an engineer, so I can forgive him.

I’d love to read the presentation that you gave in 2005. Could you send it to me?

john f, I think it’s pretty obvious that you cannot have a terribly educated opinion about LDS scripture without having read the books edited by Metcalfe and Vogel. Being terribly educated about LDS scripture requires having a reasonable familiarity with the case for 19th century authorship, especially the commonalities that LDS scriptures share with the beliefs and literature of the culture in which it was published. The books on Mormon scripture edited by Metcalfe and Vogel are far-and-away the best source for this. To be sure, there are a few sources that provide a great deal of depth in some specific and limited area of LDS scriptural understanding (e.g., Robert Matthews has written extensively on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and there are some very good works on the LDS take on Isaiah), but there is not, to my knowledge, any other source that covers such a broad range as well as any one of these three books. If there are any other books that you think are of similar scope and quality, I’d love to hear about them.

Also, many of the articles are illuminating quite apart from the case for 19th century authorship. For example, Mark Thomas’s article on the Sacrament in New Approaches is the single most illuminating piece of literature on the sacrament prayer that I’ve read, independent of how one views the origin of the Mormon sacrament prayer.

danithew, unfortunately the article is not online. The book is out of print, but you can get it used through Amazon. Though Signature performs a great service by putting out of print volumes online for free consumption, their ability to do so is limited by their available manpower. Unfortunately, New Approaches is not one of the ones that they’ve been able to put up yet.

The article is entitled, “A Rhetorical Approach to the Book of Mormon: Rediscovering Nephite Sacramental Language.” Shoot me an email to remind me to copy it and send it to you.

Reviews by John Tvedtnes and Richard Anderson are available online, but reading them does not give one any real impression of what the essay is primarily about, and they don’t say anything substantive about the essay anyway.

I feel like I got a pretty good overview of the BoM’s 19th century context — and some of the arguments for 19th century authorship — from By the Hand of Mormon and Rough Stone Rolling. I came away from those works with a strengthened belief in Blake Ostler’s expansion view of the translation, which I had arrived at on my own but never heard articulated as fully as in By the Hand of Mormon.
Vogel and Metcalfe likely have a lot of very useful material, but I’m not sure I can make it a priority to read their stuff when I reject their conclusion out of hand- I don’t have the luxury of approaching the issue dispassionately. Still, it would be nice to be more familiar with the arguments.

John, thanks for the details on future conferences.

Dan, I agree that there are other sources that survey the information very nicely, but one’s a survey and the other is an in-depth treatment. That said, there are far more books than anyone can read, and no matter how much I read, my reading list gets longer and longer. Beyond a certain point, the level of education one gets regarding the LDS scriptures reflects nothing more than one’s interests, and has no bearing on anything relating to salvation.

Matt, I hadn’t noticed the ambiguity that you identify when I wrote it, but now that you’ve pointed it out, it’s as plain as day. I don’t subscribe to any of the plagiarism theories of Book of Mormon authorship (and I don’t believe them to be intellectually reputable). I do think that Nephi, Jacob, Mormon, Moroni, et. al. are the authors, but with the following qualifications:

My view approaches Blake’s expansionism, but I don’t agree with him (and he may find our disagreements to be fairly subtle). The Book of Mormon is heavy with Joseph and his 19th century protestant/revivalist/primitivist surroundings, just like there’s a lot of 2nd century BC Alexandrian Judaism in the Septuagint. And if you have an understanding of a religious controversy, nearly anything you translate that discusses that controversy is going to reflect your understanding.

Moreover, I don’t believe that Joseph could have retranslated the lost 116 pages and made them identical to the original translation. Joseph understood translation as a revelatory process, and he was as willing to revise the Book of Mormon as he was to revise his revelations. I’d guess that Joseph’s revelatory process gave him a sense that he had more license than the Septuagint translators would have. That said, he did not approach the Book of Mormon text with the same freewheeling attitude that occasionally characterized his approach to revelations. I am comfortable saying, with the aforementioned qualifications, that Joseph’s translation is reasonably faithful to the original.

And Nephi, Jacob, Mormon, Moroni, et. al. must all be abysmal historians by today’s standards. Mormon and Moroni probably did much more violence to the texts that they redacted, edited, and annotated than (say) B.H. Roberts did when he edited the History of the Church. And everything true of Joseph’s translation applies to the translation of the Jaredite record.

Plus, anyone who’s read about an event that they’ve attended has had the experience of saying to herself, “That’s not how it happened at all.” I’d guess that many people described in the Book of Mormon may well have that reaction to the versions of the stories they’d read in the Book of Mormon.

So I believe that the Book of Mormon was written by the ancient authors who purport to have written it, that its source is an ancient document, and that there is a real relationship between its narrative and events that took place in New World settlements. I do not believe that it’s inspired fiction, nor do I see that as the kind of hypothesis that I’d maintain (though one never knows what one might think tomorrow). And I offer no hypothesis to explain where these settlements were or what happened to them.

I’m not sure that you counted on getting that much expansion, but that’s my point of view, for what it’s worth.

Here’s the summary of the conference for the Mormon History Association’s newsletter:

MHA’s sister society, the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA) recently completed its 35th Annual Conference. This year the conference was held in Kirtland, Ohio at the newly dedicated Kirtland Temple Visitor Center, the nearby Community of Christ chapel and also within the temple itself. The topic of the conference was “Communal Experiments among Latter Day Saints and Other American Groups,” and it was co-sponsored by the Communal Studies Association (CSA), which studies communitarianism among Mormons and other groups, religious or secular.

Highlights included a plenary address by Dr. Martha S. Bradley of the University of Utah entitled “Joseph Smith, the Temple and the Imagined Space of Zion.” David J. Howlett, a PhD student at the University of Iowa, explained how three separate Latter Day Saint groups — the LDS church, the Community of Christ and the Restorationists — use the act of pilgrimage to Kirtland Temple to construct their divergent identities. The presidential address was given by Dr. Alexander Baugh of BYU who outlined the final chapter of Mormon history in 1830s Missouri — the imprisonment and escape of apostle Parley P. Pratt and his comrades. After the address, Baugh passed the presidential gavel to Barbara Walden, Director of Kirtland Temple, initiating her 1-year term as JWHA president. William Shepard, Strangite Properties Trustee, was elected JWHA’s President-Elect.

JWHA gave its best article award to David J. Howlett for “‘The Making of a Steward’: Zion, Ecclesiastical Power, and RLDS Bodies, 1923-31,” which appeared in last year’s Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 32, No. 2. The JWHA Smith-Petit Foundation Best Book Award was given to Brian C. Hales for Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations after the Manifesto, which is published by Greg Kofford Books. Dr. Jan Shipps was presented with JWHA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented to scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of Latter Day Saint history. Only four scholars have previously been presented this honor by the association: Leonard J. Arrington, Richard P. Howard, Alma Blair and Paul M. Edwards. Having received a standing ovation, Shipps told the audience that she considered the award “the most important honor I have ever received.”

The conference concluded with a special hymn festival in the Lower Court of Kirtland Temple itself. Arranged and conducted by Dr. Richard Clothier of Graceland University (emeritus), the festival celebrated the hymns of communal groups including the Shakers, the Hutterites, the Amana Society, the Amish, the Harmonists, the Ephrata Cloister, the Moravians and the Latter Day Saints. At the conclusion, those assembled sang “The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning,” resulting in an outpouring of emotions and energy that left many in the congregation in joyful tears. Debra J. Marsh, a graduate student at the University of Utah, commented that the festival had been one of the most moving spiritual experiences of her life.

JWHA also announced several important expansions. The association has begun a publishing imprint called John Whitmer Books. This year it will publish seven titles. Already out are Emma’s Nauvoo and Martin Harris’s Kirtland, two brief documentary histories edited by Ronald E. Romig, Archivist of the Community of Christ. Debuting at the conference was Scattering of the Saints: Schism Within Mormonism. This volume is a collection of 16 original essays on the history of the broader Latter Day Saint movement edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer. Order forms for the books can be found at http://www.JohnWhitmerBooks.org.

JWHA has issued two separate calls for papers. Its traditional fall history conference will take place September 25-28, 2008 at Burlington (Voree), Wisconsin — the headquarters of the Strangite church. A post conference “aero-tour” will take participants to Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan. The Voree conference’s topic is “1844-1859: Time of Transition.” The JWHA program committee invites proposals for papers and/or panels on this topic or on Mormon history in general. Email a 1-page proposal and brief vita to proposals@JWHA.info prior to February 29, 2008.

JWHA will also be holding a spring symposium in Independence, Missouri on April 11-12, 2008. Entitled the “Restoration Studies Symposium,” it will be co-sponsored by the Sunstone Educational Foundation as “Sunstone Midwest” and the Community of Christ Seminary. The Symposium Program Chair is Jeanne Murphey. Submit proposals for papers and/or panels on the subject of Restoration theology, religious or cultural studies to proposals@RestorationStudies.org prior to December 17, 2007.

DKL, many Mormons have terribly educated opinions about Mormon scripture without having read Metcalfe and Vogel. Although you pay them a huge compliment in making them the sine qua non of education about Mormon scriptures, it seems to be a bit of a contrived construction.

Do you think that one can have an educated opinion about Mormon scriptures by virtue of having read and fervently studied those scriptures themselves? I simply thought your comment went too far and dismissed the valid and terribly educated opinion of Mormon scriptures held by thousands of Latter-day Saints who never read or even heard of Metcalfe and Vogel, or FARMS for that matter.

Metcalfe and Vogel are certainly interesting to people who are interested in history, literature, and comparative religious studies, or other academic pursuits but the majority of people who don’t share those interests cannot be said not to have opinions about Mormon scripture and those opinions themselves are not “uneducated” simply because they are oblivious to Metcalfe or Vogel.

Personally I couldn’t figure out why FARMS spent so much ink on New Approaches. There were some interesting things that were useful as a jumping off point for an other discussion. But I think it was more that all the regular contributors wanted to say something and they just published everything regardless of how repetitive it got.

I agree with you on both counts, Clark. The problem with the notion that we should get together and write something that matches the “scope and depth” of Metcalfe and Vogel is that the church has created a very strong disincentive to undertake such a task. Specifically, to the extant that it is not faith promoting, contributors may end up getting excommunicated. In this sense, Metcalfe got ex’d so that we don’t have to.

I should add, now that I think about it, while Vogel and Metcalf have a fair scope and depth their writing is still fairly one sided. Don’t get me wrong. Unlike some I don’t mind that, so long as they fairly represent the positions against theirs. (Which I think they are more mixed on - although Metcalf vis a vis the Egyptian stuff does well there I think) Of course FAIR and FARMS are very one sided as well.

My point in saying what I said was less to promote Metcalf and Vogel as the source to read to understand the Book of Mormon. (I think at best that’d give a rather warped perspective) Rather it is simply to point out the paucity of good literature on Mormon scripture.

Dan E.-

I agree with you. It goes back to my position on another thread that apostasy and excommunication are separate and distinct.

Excommunication is a formality if one is already an apostate (one who abandoned his/her faith or a integral tenant of that faith).

I agree with some of what you say here, and I really wish I could agree with all of it- I really do. It is true that priesthood leaders sometimes abuse authority, and I also believe it is true that the Church has made mistakes in the past in dealing with supposed dissidents. All of that said, the only things that make us different from other Christian sects are 1) our culture, 2) our heritage, and 3) our claims to authority, which are inseparable from our claims about the origins of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s prophethood. When someone argues publicly against those claims, I do not believe it is incumbent upon us as a community of believers to meet that person where s/he is and allow them full privileges in the Church; it is only incumbent upon us to show genuine Christian kindness.
With regards to Metcalfe and others in his situation, the Church has been placed in an impossible position, because drawing lines of any kind looks exclusionary. But allowing any and all people to enjoy full participation in the Church is not a standard Christ has ever held up for His church.
I say those things with full understanding of how awful they appear from a PR point of view…

I agree that we should make it as easy as possible for people to leave if they disassociate with the Church.

the “dissenter” who loves the Church and Gospel is booted out for thinking something not in line with the heirarchical thinking.

This is not the Church’s approach-there’s plenty of room for dissenting thought in the Church. Church discipline only becomes a factor when someone works actively to undermine the Church’s mission, which mission includes teaching some core doctrines to the world. New Approaches may be a good book in many ways, but it clearly does have as its purpose the undermining of a core tenet of our faith.
Admittedly, this dissent/apostasy distinction has not always been observed by the Church; I think in the case of people like Leonard Arrington, the Church has erred unnecessarily and even wrongly on the side of caution.

Dan Ellsworth: Church discipline only becomes a factor when someone works actively to undermine the Church’s mission…

This is factually incorrect on nearly every level. Margaret and Paul Toscano and Maxine Hanks, for example, were faithful Mormons doing scholarship on Heavenly Mother and early Mormon priesthood practices among women. They’re work no more undermines the church’s mission than the near-weekly discussions of such issues on Feminist Mormon Housewives.

Lavina Fielding Anderson was excommunicated for her groundbreaking article in Dialogue which provided reports of members who felt that they had suffered from cavalier, dictatorial, and abusive misuses of power by church leaders. (This included such things as Bruce McConkie’s letter to Eugene England, of which I own a physical copy. McConkie’s letter is, in a word, totally whacked.) To this day, Lavina participates in her ward, though nobody seems willing to re-baptize her and restore her blessings.

Michael Quinn was excommunicated for publishing Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. The first edition of this was a groundbreaking study of how the culture and beliefs of early church leaders were steeped in folk magic. It’s very good scholarship, and it’s written from a point of view that is every bit as faithful as Rough Stone Rolling

None of these scholars were fighting against the church. They were believing Mormons who wrote scholarly articles in areas that irritated church leaders enough to trigger persecution by them. These actions come from the era in which Boyd Packer made his bozo-the-clown assertion that the biggest threats to the church were intellectuals, feminists, and gays; surely there is no better example of one of our leaders fiddling while Rome burns.

These disciplinary instances are abuse of authority because they leveraged the control that leaders had over the stigma of excommunication in order to undermine the influence of these scholars among members; i.e., they were ex’d so that Mormons would be encouraged to reject them out-of-hand. This is what I hate most about Mormonism: First, that it’s leaders publicly dole out factors of credibility in this way, and second, that members are receptive to it. When I recommended to some Mormons I know that they read Duane E. Jeffery’s Dialogue articles on evolution, I told them that he was a BYU professor. Their first question was, “was he still a BYU professor after he published his articles?” This, for them, was the measure of whether he could be trusted. It’s kind of sickening how routine and reflexive this attitude is.

Dan Ellsworth: New Approaches may be a good book in many ways, but it clearly does have as its purpose the undermining of a core tenet of our faith.

Have you read it?

I emphatically disagree on two counts. First, its purpose is not to undermine belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon; it’s purpose is to examine the Book of Mormon within the religious and cultural context of its first readers. Second, Book of Mormon historicity is not a core tenet of our faith. B.H. Roberts didn’t believe in the ancient origin of the Book of Mormon, and he was a GA. Many people view it as inspired fiction. Others view it as part of our scriptural tradition, and therefore scripture. Still others follow Blake Ostler in believing that it is based on an ancient record, but the modern translation contains many interpolations and glosses from Joseph. I’ve related my own, rather conventional view above. It’s a complex issue relating just as much to personal modes spirituality as it does to intellect, though certain general authorities may well want it to be otherwise.

Again, DKL, I agree with much of what you are saying. I agree that mistakes are made in Church governance; the difference between our points of view is, with all of your explanations for those people’s excommunications, I would begin my explanation with

It appears that…

and I would end with

…but I definitely don’t know the whole story.

When you make the judgment that the Church leaders involved in these situations don’t know the Savior, haven’t you become the thing you loathe — someone willing to pass harsh judgment on the soul of another member of the Church?
As far as New Approaches goes, no- I haven’t read it, but that’s irrelevant since my judgment of the book and its author does not matter. My point with regard to New Approaches is that if the leadership of the Church came to the conclusion that Metcalfe’s efforts were in oppostion to the mission of the Church, then I think Church discipline is entirely appropriate for him. My judgment is not towards Metcalfe or any others in his situation; I am only making a comment about the propriety of the Church’s use of discipline to prevent what it pereives as being efforts to thwart its mission from the inside. I believe this to be true of any organization.
In instances where the Church is in error in excommunicating someone, I refuse to believe that God would deny that individual any blessings that matter, and I believe that person would continue to feel the companionship of the Spirit.

DKL -

I’m curious to know what you view as the difference between passing [improper] judgments and the abuse of power. I’m not sure I see the difference.

You also said that the “public figures” who lead the “global organization” of the Church are accountable to members for their actions. While I can buy into the idea that leaders of the church have some kind of holy fiduciary duty to the members over whom they preside, I do not think that they are ultimately accountable to the members. While leaders of the church have a responsibility to members of the church, I am aware of no doctrinal or legal basis on which Church leaders would be accountable to the members. Ultimately the leaders of the Church are accountable only to God.

You make it sound like members of the Church are akin to shareholders in a multi-national corporation. If that is your view, then why be so bitter when the “public figures” leading the big bad “large global organization” “abuses its power” in forcibly repossessing the shares of certain shareholders who want to take the business in a different direction and don’t seem, by their actions, to want to be part of a “large global organization” that “abuses its power”.

If, on the other hand, you see the Church as being the Kingdom of God on Earth, led by flawed, but ultimately (and generally) well-intentioned men, you can begin to see reasons the Church insists on being organizationally strict. All you have to do is look at the experience of the primitive Church to see what happens when disparate doctrines take the hold.

Might I suggest that you should have said, “It appears that you should have wrapped your story with the prefix, ” It appears that…” and the suffix, “…but I don’t know the whole story,” but I definitely don’t know the whole story.

Uncle.

I don’t know the story of the “September 6″ as well as a lot of folks; I had just come out of high school when that happened. But I do remember the Metro section of the L.A. Times one Sunday doing a cover story on it; they had a huge picture of the Salt Lake Temple and a headline: “Cracks In the Foundation?” They interviewed several of the “victims,” and I remember visiting a friend in the area whose family I had been trying to prepare for the missionaries; the father asked me about the article saying “It looks like things are really coming apart for your church” or something to that effect. I was really angry at the statements the 6 made to the press, and I remember thinking Good riddance at the time. I wish I had Lexis-Nexis now so I could go back and re-read that article, because I know my thinking has evolved significantly since then.

[...] David King Landrith’s summary of the Kirtland Conference in September (originally posted at Mormon Mentality), the newsletter discussed some of the new directions John Hamer is steering JWHA, including the [...]