Visions in a Seer Stone

Visions in a Seer Stone PDF Author: William L. Davis
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469655675
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America. Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith's process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books—he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

Visions in a Seer Stone

Visions in a Seer Stone PDF Author: William L. Davis
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469655675
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America. Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith's process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books—he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

Seer Stone v. Urim & Thummim

Seer Stone v. Urim & Thummim PDF Author: L. Hannah Stoddard
Publisher: Joseph Smith Foundation
ISBN: 1646334817
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Seer Stone v. Urim and Thummim places the Book of Mormon translation on trial, presenting the latest research in one of the most comprehensive treatments of the translation process to date providing encouragement for Latter-day Saints who fear they have been “betrayed” by the translation history taught by the Church for over 190 years. Did Joseph Smith study and master the Nephite language? Did the Prophet tutor some of the early Brethren in ancient Nephite characters? Did Joseph Smith translate the Book of Mormon using a dark seer stone in a hat? Why are progressive historians creating a new history using sources from a man who vowed to wash his hands in the blood of Joseph Smith, while boasting that he had deceived the Prophet and his God? Has The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints covered up its history for nearly 200 years? Was Joseph Smith a treasure digger? During his life, did the Prophet artfully suppress his alleged treasure digging past? Did Joseph Smith cover up his use of a seer stone during the translation, feigning use of the Urim and Thummim? What new information has The Joseph Smith Papers Project uncovered that challenges our understanding of the translation process? Is David Whitmer a credible witness of the Book of Mormon translation? Did you know that David Whitmer consulted a witch and occultic seer stones, denounced Joseph Smith as a false prophet and aided the mob in the persecution of the Missouri Saints? Was Joseph Smith involved in sorcery, astrology and ritual magic? “Seer Stone v. Urim and Thummim makes a great case for simply going ‘back to the basics’! That is, accepting the translation of the Book of Mormon as Joseph said it was done, as opposed to how others claim it was done. It is well researched and very enlightening and a must read for those who are willing to accept the words of Joseph and other prophets at face value.” —Kay M Godfrey, Author, Joseph Smith Epoch Historian “As you read this book, it will validate your knowledge that the Book of Mormon is a real history of a real people. The Stoddards have once again born witness that Joseph Smith was and is truly our Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. You will love this book.” —Rian Nelson, Author and speaker, FIRM Foundation “The Stoddards present a thorough and careful analysis of the numerous errors and sometimes outright falsehoods that have crept into many of the translation narratives, even some by respected scholars, who relied on changing accounts from both fallible acquaintances and also outright enemies.” —Leslie Pearson Rees, Author, “Ye Have Been Hid: Finding the Lost Tribes of Israel”

Visions of Glory

Visions of Glory PDF Author: John M. Pontius
Publisher: CFI
ISBN: 9781462128433
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages :

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CES Letter

CES Letter PDF Author: Jeremy Runnells
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998869902
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
CES Letter is one Latter-Day Saint's honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church (Mormon) on its troubling origins, history, and practices. Jeremy Runnells was offered an opportunity to discuss his own doubts with a director of the Church Educational System (CES) and was assured that his doubts could be resolved. After reading Jeremy's letter, the director promised him a response.No response ever came.

An Address to All Believers in Christ

An Address to All Believers in Christ PDF Author: David Whitmer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Book of Mormon
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Tabernacles of Clay

Tabernacles of Clay PDF Author: Taylor G. Petrey
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146965623X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Taylor G. Petrey's trenchant history takes a landmark step forward in documenting and theorizing about Latter-day Saints (LDS) teachings on gender, sexual difference, and marriage. Drawing on deep archival research, Petrey situates LDS doctrines in gender theory and American religious history since World War II. His challenging conclusion is that Mormonism is conflicted between ontologies of gender essentialism and gender fluidity, illustrating a broader tension in the history of sexuality in modernity itself. As Petrey details, LDS leaders have embraced the idea of fixed identities representing a natural and divine order, but their teachings also acknowledge that sexual difference is persistently contingent and unstable. While queer theorists have built an ethics and politics based on celebrating such sexual fluidity, LDS leaders view it as a source of anxiety and a tool for the shaping of a heterosexual social order. Through public preaching and teaching, the deployment of psychological approaches to "cure" homosexuality, and political activism against equal rights for women and same-sex marriage, Mormon leaders hoped to manage sexuality and faith for those who have strayed from heteronormativity.

Stretching the Heavens

Stretching the Heavens PDF Author: Terryl L. Givens
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664348
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Eugene England (1933-2001)—one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals in modern Mormonism—lived in the crossfire between religious tradition and reform. This first serious biography, by leading historian Terryl L. Givens, shimmers with the personal tensions felt deeply by England during the turmoil of the late twentieth century. Drawing on unprecedented access to England's personal papers, Givens paints a multifaceted portrait of a devout Latter-day Saint whose precarious position on the edge of church hierarchy was instrumental to his ability to shape the study of modern Mormonism. A professor of literature at Brigham Young University, England also taught in the Church Educational System. And yet from the sixties on, he set church leaders' teeth on edge as he protested the Vietnam War, decried institutional racism and sexism, and supported Poland's Solidarity movement—all at a time when Latter-day Saints were ultra-patriotic and banned Black ordination. England could also be intemperate, proud of his own rectitude, and neglectful of political realities and relationships, and he was eventually forced from his academic position. His last days, as he suffered from brain cancer, were marked by a spiritual agony that church leaders were unable to help him resolve.

Race and the Making of the Mormon People

Race and the Making of the Mormon People PDF Author: Max Perry Mueller
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469633760
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The nineteenth-century history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Max Perry Mueller argues, illuminates the role that religion played in forming the notion of three "original" American races—red, black, and white—for Mormons and others in the early American Republic. Recovering the voices of a handful of black and Native American Mormons who resolutely wrote themselves into the Mormon archive, Mueller threads together historical experience and Mormon scriptural interpretations. He finds that the Book of Mormon is key to understanding how early followers reflected but also departed from antebellum conceptions of race as biblically and biologically predetermined. Mormon theology and policy both challenged and reaffirmed the essentialist nature of the racialized American experience. The Book of Mormon presented its believers with a radical worldview, proclaiming that all schisms within the human family were anathematic to God's design. That said, church founders were not racial egalitarians. They promoted whiteness as an aspirational racial identity that nonwhites could achieve through conversion to Mormonism. Mueller also shows how, on a broader level, scripture and history may become mutually constituted. For the Mormons, that process shaped a religious movement in perpetual tension between its racialist and universalist impulses during an era before the concept of race was secularized.

Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith PDF Author: Richard Lyman Bushman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400077532
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 786

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Book Description
Founder of the largest indigenous Christian church in American history, Joseph Smith published the 584-page Book of Mormon when he was twenty-three and went on to organize a church, found cities, and attract thousands of followers before his violent death at age thirty-eight. Richard Bushman, an esteemed cultural historian and a practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations. An arresting narrative of the birth of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling also brilliantly evaluates the prophet’s bold contributions to Christian theology and his cultural place in the modern world.

Natural Born Seer

Natural Born Seer PDF Author: Richard S. Van Wagoner
Publisher: Smith Research Associates
ISBN: 9781560852636
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Joseph Smith survives today as one of nineteenth-­century America's most controversial religious figures. He claimed visions of angels, dictated a lost record of the ancient inhabitants of the New World, announced new revelations from heaven, and restored what he believed was an ancient yet more complete form of Christianity, over which he presided as prophet, seer, and revelator until his death in 1844. A child of impoverished Yankees, raised in rural New England and New York, Smith grew up in a hardscrabble frontier culture that embraced a spectrum of competing folkways, religious fervor, and intellectual thought. He was both a product of his times and a syncretic innovator of a compelling vision for God's people. Perhaps more importantly, he was the self-proclaimed herald of Christ's imminent return, called by the Father to reveal the fullness of the Christian gospel for the last time. As prize-winning historian Richard S. Van Wagoner narrates the first twenty-five years of Smith's life, the young seer struggled with his family through a series of roller-­coaster hardships, eventually securing work as a scryer of lost treasure and money digger. In the wake of successive failures, including run-ins with the law, Smith's glass-­looking activities gave way to more religiously oriented pursuits, especially after a heavenly messenger showed him the location of buried golden plates containing a pre-Columbian story of the Americas and charged him with the record's decipherment and publication. Smith also learned, following another extraordinary vision, that his sins had been remitted, that humanity was in a state of apostasy, and that Jesus would soon return to the earth. After eloping with Emma Hale, much to her skeptical father's chagrin, the couple settled down to complete work on what would appear for sale in early 1830 as the Book of Mormon. By this time, Smith had begun to shoulder more fully the prophet's mantle, issuing proclamations in God's own voice, and on April 6, 1830, organized the Church of Christ, known today as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I treat the early years of the Mormon prophet as I would approach an archaeological dig," Van Wagoner explains. "The deepest levels, those deposited first and least contaminated by subsequent accumulates, are of primary interest in my pursuit of the historical Joseph. Mindful of the prophet's controversial reputation, I try to remain sensitive to the impact that some of the more problematic elements of his behavior may have on believers. But truth is often best evidenced in the detail." Van Wagoner's meticulously researched study offers more detail than any previously published biography of Smith, and provides what may be the most culturally nuanced analysis ever attempted of the early years of the American prophet.