Tag Archives: Book of Mormon

Mormon history

Mormonism and Science – REPOST

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Reposting this article today in honor of the Science March and Earth Day and in recognition that superstition and the rejection of science has only gotten worse since 2009. If I were writing today, I would lead front and center with a defense of climate science and contra the abhorrent pseudo-Mormon fallacy that we don’t need to be stewards of the earth because when Jesus returns he will clean up our mess anyway.

Mormonism directs the faithful to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118), and finds no incompatibility between truth that is revealed by God and truth that is discovered by the observation and patient inquiry of thoughtful humanity. Apparent contradiction between religion and science is due to misunderstanding and the temporary incompleteness of both revelation and human knowledge; ultimately, there will be no conflict.

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Mormon history

John Philip Dalby: Musician, Storyteller, Artist (would this post get more traffic if I said it had COMIC STRIPS?)

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Who is the most prolific illustrator of the Book of Mormon? Not C.C.A. Christensen, with his brightly colored 1890 paintings. Not Minerva Teichert with her wonderful pastels. Not even Arnold Friberg with his muscle-bound old men and striplings.

My candidate for that title is a man you have possibly never heard of, and whose work you almost certainly haven’t seen: John Philip Dalby.

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Mormon history

George Reynolds and C.C.A. Christensen: Illustrated Book of Mormon Stories

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Before there was Arnold Friberg, before Living Scriptures and the Book of Mormon comic books, there was George Reynolds (1842-1909).

Some of Reynolds’ writings about the Book of Mormon were state-of-the-scholarship for his day:  His Complete Concordance to the Book of Mormon, A Dictionary to the Book of Mormon, and several refutations of the Spaulding story fall into this category. Other writings attempted to simplify and popularize the Book of Mormon among church members, especially the youth. So far as I have been able to determine — and my search has not been exhaustive, so I could quite easily be corrected here — his 1888 The Story of the Book of Mormon may contain the first illustrations of the Book of Mormon, all of them paintings of varying quality produced by various Mormon artists.

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Mormon history

Book of Mormon Geography

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Wrote George Q. Cannon in 1890:

There is a tendency, strongly manifested at the present time among some of the brethren, to study the geography of the Book of Mormon. We have heard of numerous lectures, illustrated by suggestive maps, being delivered on this subject during the present winter, generally under the auspices of the Improvement Societies and Sunday Schools. We are greatly pleased to notice the increasing interest taken by the Saints in this holy book. It contains the fullness of the gospel of Christ, and those who prayerfully study its sacred pages can be made wise unto salvation. It also unravels many mysteries connected with the history of the ancient world, more particularly of this western continent, mysteries which no other book explains.

But valuable as is the Book of Mormon both in doctrine and history, yet it is possible to put this sacred volume to uses for which it was never intended, uses which are detrimental rather than advantageous to the cause of truth, and consequently to the work of the Lord.

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Antonio E. Duran: Converted by the Book of Mormon

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Sometime in the early 1930s, Antonio E. Duran came across two LDS missionaries preaching on a street corner in Harlingen, Texas (near Brownsville, just about as far into the southern tip of Texas as you can go and still be in the U.S.). Antonio was the only man who stopped to listen to the elders that day, and when they concluded their meeting he stayed to chat with them for a few minutes. He bought a Spanish-language Book of Mormon from them, they gave him some tracts, and all went on their way. Not long afterward, Antonio moved to the tiny farming village of Rangerville and the elders were withdrawn from Harlingen. Continue reading Antonio E. Duran: Converted by the Book of Mormon →

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Dr. Pack and the Common Six-Pack

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Frederick J. Pack (1875-1938) was a highly educated, scientifically minded Latter-day Saint, with a doctorate in geology from Columbia University and an undergraduate education in mining engineering. He was a missionary, a professor of geology at the University of Utah, and the husband of Sadie Grant Pack, first counselor in the general Primary presidency.

Pack wrote several articles for church magazines concerning the origins of the earth. Writing in 1910-11, at precisely the time when questions of the origins of life and the physical universe were matters of much controversy, Pack adopted a waffling position, one that saved him from having to take a public stand in support of either the Biblical creationism of Joseph Fielding Smith or the hard science of James E. Talmage. Continue reading Dr. Pack and the Common Six-Pack →

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Gohar Yeghiayan Davidian: A Latter-day Saint in Syria

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For half a millennium, ending with World War I, the Ottoman Empire dominated eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. Turks controlled Palestine when Orson Hyde dedicated that land in 1841 for the return of the Jews, and when George A. Smith, Eliza R. Snow, and other prominent Latter-day Saints held the first LDS worship service on Mt. Olivet in 1873.

Aside from these brief pilgrimages, LDS presence there began in 1884 when Jacob Spori was called to open the Turkish Mission. He was followed by a handful of other missionaries. The Church grew slowly, mostly among the already-Christian German and Armenian populations. By the early twentieth century, there were half a dozen small LDS branches scattered through modern-day Turkey and Syria. Continue reading Gohar Yeghiayan Davidian: A Latter-day Saint in Syria →