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  • John Shaw says:

    Just finished listening to the episode, and I think it turned out fantastic. mormonhistoryguy pulls off a balanced approach that most members can find satisfaction in the answers provided.

    A couple of comments – on the Book of Mormon not being used much in the early part of the church. I think this one was stretched a bit. If JS used it in sermons it was so overshadowed by the Bible that it could be seen as non-existent. The D&C is put together from pondering and questions from the Bible (other than that famous one during the translation) – The Nauvoo period is chalk full of exposition on Biblical topics – the justification of polygamy to Nancy Rigdon is a more famous exception — I think the mention of EZT is the real shout-out here. As a prophet he didn’t go on a anti-communism tour, but told us that we had treated lightly the Book of Mormon which we had. For a detailed description if you are interested see this article from BYU Studies – VERY good reading – https://byustudies.byu.edu/showtitle.aspx?title=6565

    On the Church glossing over history I think he did a pretty good job there as well. I think he did a great job of saying what is the church? If you are referring to Sunday School Curriculum, then, maybe over the last 20 years it has, but the last 20 years have had a different thought and approach – curriculum was based on ‘teaching correct principles’ and developing the divine attributes to get back to the Father. It’s hard to understand how knowing whether JS stuck his face in a hat to translate the BOM helps us develop faith, hope, and charity. This is a part of our history where we were reaching out to the rest of Christianity in an effort to show that we’re part of you, the vast Christian universe, not some small, strange religion in Utah. Did it backfire on us? Maybe…

    Also the historical approach in our church has mostly been led by non-historians over the years, or the historians focused (initially) on more general approaches. The Study of Mormonism’s History has taken time to develop also… once the general stuff was completed, along came others who studied under these generalists and found more specialized niches… We initially got entire books that covered the years 1830 – 1980, and after their publication others started to do more complex work on specific areas… now we have entire books about a 4-5 month exodus of handcart pioneers… the few days of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The Utah War, History of the Word of Wisdom, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, etc… as these more specialized authors did research the information is more generally available.

    There is nothing Sinister about it – yes, Mark Hoffman scared us back into a cave for a bit, but that was downright ugly. The church leadership, not being trained historians and theologians (minor exceptions) took time to wade through how to react, but have from through their storm with something like the Joseph Smith Papers.

    Regardless – the information was there to be had if you wanted… In my opinion, members of the church interested in history in general knew this stuff.. no big deal to them, generally. Our society in the US/Canada are generally illeterate after college, I find the line ‘nobody told me’ to be extremely naive.

  • John Shaw says:

    The irony of misspelling illiterate in my previous post is not lost on me…. Richie, if that could be fixed I would appreciate it…

  • Jimmy Jon says:

    Richie, I gotta call you on preaching false doctorine in the first block:

    The Ensign used to say Ensign is correctly pronounced N’sign, not N’sun. Then they softened it to N’sign is merely ‘preferred’. However, they’ve stopped printing that for years now. That said, the N’sun pronunciation is actually more proper for naval personnel and people who say mow-UHN instead of mountain.

    To see this relic of the past, head over to lds dot org and look up the January 2001 Ensign to see the “preferred” message.

  • Wendy Miller says:

    Very good episode! I would never get bored of hearing the Mormon History Guy!

  • Lynnette says:

    Thumbs up – loved this episode! Keep ’em comin’…

  • Lynnette says:

    also… the question of Joseph Smith & polygamy was brought up, but not addressed because “it would take an entire podcast to cover it” (or something to that effect). So – can we get an entire podcast on that, pretty please?

    • John Shaw says:

      Lynnette,

      Richie could probably do something, but the best overview of this is over a 4-part podcast series (402-406) on Mormon Stories (podcast site) with Brian Hales who recently completed a 3-volume assessment of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. It’s a pretty conservative treatment, but both sides liberal and conservative have hailed the research and detail – whether they agree with the conclusions.

      Sorry Richie to push someone off the podcast, but The Cultural Hall just doesn’t seem to me a forum for the kind of time it takes for the topic.

  • Chow says:

    Really enjoyed this episode- I’m not one to delve into church history too much because church history is not necessarily doctrine. But this was an interesting listen and I heard answers to questions that I had never thought of. Thanks!

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