Recently in LDS history Category

July 24th is a state holiday in Utah, designated Pioneer Day. It commemorates the entry of the first wagon train of Mormons into the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1847. They came down Emigration Canyon, somewhat north of the present I-80 corridor which comes down Parley's Canyon. Brigham Young was part of that first company to enter the valley. Due to sickness, he was a couple of days behind the lead group of wagons. By the time he entered the valley, crops were already being planted and water diverted for irrigation.

In the small world of Mormon Studies and online blogging, the term "inoculation" refers to teaching mainstream Latter-day Saints enough accurate LDS history that they won't contract a terminal case of apostasy when they encounter publications or talks that use select historical events and interpretations to present an anti-LDS message. [And, speaking broadly, that also includes publications or talks which are relatively objective or scholarly with no overt anti-LDS intent but which come across as anti-LDS to a mainstream Latter-day Saint who reads it.]

I finally secured a copy of Richard L. Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction. Bushman, a historian, is the author of Rough Stone Rolling, the definitive biography of Joseph Smith, as well as the Howard W. Hunter Professor of Mormon Studies in the School of Religion at Claremont Graduate Univeristy in Southern California. This is the first of several posts covering some of the chapters in the book. The introductory chapter raises the persistent and somewhat puzzling issue of the widely contrasting public views of Mormonism.

The Mormon Times reports on the remarks of historian William P. MacKinnon at the recent MHA meetings. MacKinnon summarized his paper, "Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Mormon Problem: The 1857 Debate." Relying on what he admitted to be "rumors and reports," Douglas supported the use of military force to "to remove Brigham Young and all his followers from office."

The Mormon Times reports on one of the more interesting MHA sessions in "Reflections of an Emma Hale Smith biographer." Both stories make interesting reading: the story of Emma Smith, Joseph's first wife; and the story of Linda King Newell, the surviving author of Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, which won the MHA best book award in 1985. Co-author Valeen Tippetts Avery passed away in 2006.