Review of John Christopher Thomas, A Pentecostal Reads the Book of Mormon: A Literary and Theological Introduction

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2017) ◽  
pp. 245-251
Author(s):  
Jenny Webb
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Mormon

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Priesthood Ordination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Stapley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church ◽  
Power And Authority

Early Mormons used the Book of Mormon as the basis for their ecclesiology and understanding of the open heaven. Church leaders edited, harmonized, and published Joseph Smith’s revelation texts, expanding understandings of ecclesiastical priesthood office. Joseph Smith then revealed the Nauvoo Temple liturgy, with its cosmology that equated heaven, kinship, and priesthood. This cosmological priesthood was materialized through sealings at the temple altar and was the context for expansive teachings incorporating women into priesthood. This cosmology was also the basis for polygamy, temple adoption, and restrictions on the participation of black men and women in the church. This framework gave way at the end of the nineteenth century to a new priesthood cosmology introduced by Joseph F. Smith based on male ecclesiastical office. As church leaders expanded the meaning of priesthood to comprise the entire power and authority of God, they struggled to integrate women into church cosmology.

The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Eastwood Pulido
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
The Third ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The World ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
Spiritual Conquest ◽  
The Church ◽  
The U.S

A spiritual biography, this book chronicles the journey of Margarito Bautista (1878–1961) from Mormonism to the Third Convention, a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) splinter group he fomented in 1935–1936, to Colonia Industrial/Nueva Jerusalén, a polygamist utopia Bautista founded in 1947. It argues that Bautista embraced Mormon belief in indigenous exceptionalism in 1901 and rapidly rose through the ranks of Mormon priesthood until convinced that the Mormon hierarchy was not invested in the development of native American peoples, as promoted in the Church’s canon. This realization resulted in tensions over indigenous self-governance within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) and Bautista’s 1937 excommunication. The book contextualizes Bautista’s thought with a chapter on the spiritual conquest of Mexico in 1513 and another on the arrival of Mormons in Mexico. In addition to accounts of Bautista’s congregation-building on both sides of the U.S. border, this volume includes an examination of Bautista’s magnum opus, a 564-page tome hybridizing Aztec history and Book of Mormon narratives, and his prophetic plan for the recovery of indigenous authority in the Americas. Bautista’s excommunication catapulted him into his final spiritual career, that of a utopian founder. In the establishment of his colony, Bautista found a religious home, free from Euro-American oversight, where he implemented his prophetic plan for Mexico’s redemption. His plan included obedience to early Mormonism’s most stringent practices, polygamy and communalism. Bautista nonetheless hoped his community would provide a model for Mexicans willing to prepare the world for Christ’s millennial reign.

John 11 in the Book of Mormon

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-105
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Frederick ◽  
Joseph M. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Basic Structure ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Christian Missionary ◽  
Mystery Of God ◽  
Raising Of Lazarus ◽  
Dead Man ◽  
Realized Eschatology

Abstract In a 1978 study, Krister Stendahl traced the use of Johannine theology in the Book of Mormon’s most central narrative: the climactic story of the resurrected Jesus visiting the ancient Americas. According to Stendahl, the reproduction of the Sermon on the Mount with occasional slight variations suggests an attempt at deliberately recasting the Matthean text as a Johannine sermon. Building on Stendahl’s work, this essay looks at the use of John earlier in the Book of Mormon, in a narrative presented as having occurred almost a century before the time of Jesus. In an inventive reworking of the narrative of John 11, the story of the raising of Lazarus, the Book of Mormon suggests that it bears a much more complex relationship to the Johannine theology than its unhesitant embrace at the book’s climax indicates. Broad parallels and unmistakable allusions together make clear that the Book of Mormon narrative means to re-present the story from John 11. But the parallels and allusions are woven with alterations to the basic structure of the Johannine narrative. As in John 11, the reworked narrative focuses on the story of two men, one of them apparently dead, and two women, both attached to the (supposedly) dead man. But the figure who serves as the clear parallel to Jesus is unstable in the Book of Mormon narrative: at first a Christian missionary, but then a non-Christian and racially other slave woman, and finally a non-Christian and racially other queen. But still more striking, in many ways, is the fashion in which the Book of Mormon narrative recasts the Lazarus story in a pre-Christian setting, before human beings are asked to confront the Johannine mystery of God in the flesh. Consequently, although the Book of Mormon narrative uses the basic structure and many borrowed phrases from John 11, it recasts the meaning of this structure and these phrases by raising questions about the meaning of belief before the arrival of the Messiah. The Book of Mormon thereby embraces the Johannine theology of a realized eschatology while nonetheless outlining a distinct pre-Christian epistemology focused on trusting prophetic messengers who anticipate eschatology.

Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Gordon Shepherd ◽  
Ernest H. Taves
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon

scholarly journals Religion and Revolution: Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and the Book of Mormon

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. p42
Author(s):  
Sri Michael Das
Keyword(s):  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Important Task ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Human History ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
False Prophet ◽  
Con Artist

The name Joseph Smith, b. 23 December 1803, d. 27 June, 1844 invokes words like heretic, false prophet, con artist and fruitcake. No stranger to con artistry or the interior of a prisoner cell, Smith was arrested numerous times on legitimate charges, he also accomplished something no other Prophet did: developed the character and strategies for First Citizen of Humanity, Abraham Lincoln and helped start a War Between the States that enslaved men might be free. Though he never lived to see his Book of Mormon accomplish its ends, he, along with the Latter Day Saints were never given recognition, not even informally for this, humankind’s the most important task. The most important in human history. In this paper I detail important elements of Smith’s and his Church’s work and also illuminate his ties to Mr. Lincoln, and mourn the wayward Church of today. Perhaps revisiting Mister Smith’s Vision will reignite all of us and cause us to rise up and wage one more War against tyranny, weaponry, waste, abuse, neglect, and utter ignorance of our innate spiritual principals.

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