As an 11-year old in 6th grade, I filled out a worksheet that asked me to rank my Top Ten Values (from a list of eleven). This is what I came up with… (more…)

My conception of the planned Strangite Temple at Voree. (more…)

I began my first journal in 1975 (age 5) in response to commandment (and maternal encouragement). The initial volume served me infrequently and irregularly until around 1979. In 1983 (age 13), I tried my hand at journal keeping again using a much more nicely bound artist’s sketchbook which I’d filled after one year. This was followed by a second matching journal that was kept less consistently over the course of 1984. The next journal sporadically lasted from 1984-1990, a time period that overlapped with entries made in a larger, folio journal in 1988, and also with entries in my final, smaller journal 1988-1995. This last volume includes the final formal entry I’ve made in a journal (age 25; I’m now 38). Taken together, my journals are hardly a complete chronicle of my life. (more…)

Mike and I are back home after another enlightening, productive, and thoroughly enjoyable conference of the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA). This was our third JWHA since Mike and I became the association’s executive directors, and the sixth I’ve attended in total. (more…)

Following up on my previous post on Strangite Hymns, I thought I’d offer a selection of Williamite hymns. (more…)

“Examining the Origins of Scripture” will be the theme of the 2nd Annual Restoration Studies / Sunstone Midwest Symposium, to be held April 17-18, 2009, in Independence, Missouri. (more…)

Each year at the John Whitmer Historical Association conference we have an ecumenical Restoration devotional service — i.e., one that includes multiple Latter Day Saint traditions. This year’s conference will be held near Old Voree, Wisconsin, once and current headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite). Our conference’s Sunday devotional will be held in the Strangite chapel and will include common hymns from the early church (published in Emma’s 1835 hymnal) as well as distinct hymns from a number Restoration heritage churches. Selections will include hymns from the LDS Church (Brighamite), the Community of Christ (Josephite), the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Josephite), the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and of course the Strangite church.
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We spent the weekend in Washington DC, visiting our own Karen H. (newly returned from Central Asia), and seeing the sites. One of the first museums we hit was the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI*) — an impressive new branch of the Smithsonian that has opened during the decade since our last visit. The NMAI was designed by Native Americans and is devoted to telling the stories of the original peoples of the western hemisphere in their own voices. The museum includes three major exhibit spaces labeled: “Our Lives” (contemporary stories of Indians today), “Our Universes” (traditional Native cosmologies and world-views), and “Our Peoples” (history from the Indian perspective).

Imagine my shock when I saw that the exhibit in the “Our Peoples” section devoted to native religion was dominated by an art installation representing the (Mormon) White Horse Prophecy.
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That’s the number connecting me to Eve and Adam — at least by one count on one line. When I was a kid, our ward had a large chart entitled THE ROYAL LINE hanging on the wall near the library. The chart traced lineage from Adam to Judah through European kings like Charlemagne and Alfred the Great to modern leaders including Queen Victoria, George Washington, FDR, and the prophet Joseph Smith.
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There are all kinds of bad movies. Some bad movies are dull, some are annoying, some are unwatchably horrific, but some bad movies are so bad that they become interesting to watch. It is in this last category that I put Rodney Dangerfield’s little-known Mormon cult classic, My 5 Wives. (more…)

When I was a teenager in the early 1980s, I was a member of a choir that toured the churches of many other Christian denominations — Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Catholics, and more Lutherans (I lived in Minnesota). This culminated in touring the cathedrals of Germany and Austria. What glorious and uplifting edifices these believers had built for God!

Coming home to our ward’s meetinghouse with its painted cinderblock chapel and orange industrial-grade carpeting (that clashed with the slightly-different-shade-of-orange pew cushions) left me unimpressed. My mother always reminded me that the LDS Church built temples as houses of the Lord that were monumental (an argument that was already losing potency as smaller, less unique, less impressive temples had begun to dot the earth) and that meetinghouses and stake centers were supposed to be utilitarian. (more…)

Last week saw another round of back and forth between the LDS Church’s public relations department and the Principle Voices Coalition, an inter-denominational group advocating the awareness and rights of “fundamentalist Mormons.” It should be noted that Principle Voices is made up of independent fundamentalists and has associations with the Apostolic United Brethren (the Allred organization), the Work of Jesus Christ (the Centennial Park organization), and the Davis County Cooperative Society (the Kingston organization), but has no ties with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Colorado City/Hildale organization).

The LDS PR folks are again arguing that the word “Mormon” can only be properly applied to the LDS Church and its members, while Principle Voices maintains that the term applies to everyone whose faith derives from the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. (more…)

On September 13, 1845, four Mormons acting at the call of the prophet James J. Strang went to a certain hill near Burlington, Wisconsin, and, at a spot beneath a great oak that showed no signs of having been disturbed, they dug and found an earthenware box containing a set of three plates of brass. Beyond the four witnesses, the plates were viewed by hundreds of curious spectators including a local non-Mormon newspaper reporter. (more…)

Biblical scholars have long identified distinct sections within the early books of the Bible that employ a consistently different tone, language, and content from one other. In what is generally called the “documentary hypothesis,” these scholars have labeled the major underlying sources with letters: J, E, P, and D, along with R (the redactor, who assembled the whole). (more…)

While my partner Mike and I were in southern Utah last week, we decided to swing through the fundamentalist Mormon communities of Hildale/Colorado City and Centennial Park. (more…)

John Hamer is our latest guest-blogger here at BCC. We are happy to have him with us and look forward to his contributions.

Bill Shepard, President-Elect of the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA) and trustee of Strangite properties in Voree, Wisconsin, has located an important document in the Hancock County Courthouse in Carthage, Illinois: a record of the incorporation of the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints” in the state of Illinois by Joseph Smith. (Bill has given me permission to publish his find on BCC.) Although its contents have long been known (see History of the Church 4:287), the physical document itself seems to have eluded notice. (more…)