The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Essays on Mormonism Series) [Paperback]

D. Michael Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essays on Mormonism Series | Publication Date: February 15, 1992

The New Mormon History is the banner under which many professional historians today approach Latter-day Saint historiography. Scholars who embrace this term attempt to put significant events into context rather than bracketing data that might seem challenging to traditional assumptions. These scholars are also as interested in the experience of the rank-and-file as in the lives and edicts of the leaders, and pursue questions about women, minorities, domestic life, diet, fashion, and the common church experience. They employ statistical analyses and theories and methods of the social sciences in their work. In this collection, D. Michael Quinn has selected fifteen essays which demonstrate the methods of this new history. Contributors include Thomas G. Alexander, James B. Allen, Leonard J. Arrington, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Eugene E. Campbell, Kenneth L. Cannon II, Mario S. DePillis, Robert B. Flanders, Klaus J. Hansen, William G. Hartley, Stanley S. Ivins, Dean L. May, Linda King Newell, B. H. Roberts, Jan Shipps, and Ronald W. Walker. Participants offer new ideas and give readers the opportunity to determine for themselves the relative success of these approaches by presenting examples. The collection demonstrates areas of interpretation that may be considered revisionist as well.

Editorial Reviews

Review

When founding Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation in 1831 (Doctrine and Covenants 58:26-29) declaring men and women "agents unto themselves," the genius of Mormon creativity and a source of future tension were born. Far from considering themselves mere obedient extensions of their authoritarian leaders, early Mormons took seriously the revelation's admonition to "be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will." Some modern Mormons, historian Leonard J. Arrington points out in the lead essay in this book, have seemed to think that their primary task is to sit down and wait for instructions from 47 E. South Temple [previously church headquarters, now at 50 E. North Temple]." "This was clearly not the attitude of earlier generations, who were told by personal revelation that they were personally invested with the responsibility. . .and did not wait on anybody to tell them when to start." In the 163 years since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded, control over members has been increasingly consolidated at the top, while the liberating "can do" philosophy of D&C Section 56 continues to jump-start individual Mormons most pertinently historians, journalists, and other truth-seekers to examine their faith. As editor Michael Quinn observes in The New Mormon History's introduction, serious Mormon research has proliferated since the publication of Juanita Brooks' Mountain Meadows Massacre in the 1950s, concurrent with a quest for "functional objectivity." (Quinn surveyed more than 200 selections before choosing the 15 essays in this book.) Creative thought and action at the periphery of the church once routinely moved toward adoption at the center (the women's Relief Society began as a voluntary aid society in Nauvoo, Ill.; the church's welfare plan introduced in 1936 grew out of local experiences in St. George and Salt Lake City LDS stakes). And as Thomas G. Alexander (To Maintain Harmony: Adjusting to External and Internal Stress, 1890-1930) and Ronald W. Walker (Sheaves, Bucklers and the State: Mormon Leaders Respond to the Dilemmas of War) note in their essays, wide difference of opinion, even among leaders, were once tolerated on such subjects as evolution, politics, Prohibition, pacifism. and even polygamy. Ironically, the very historians who helped raise modern Mormon consciousness of early church members' admirable willingness to test their faith in a marketplace of diverse ideas have become under increasing suspicion from the hierarchy. Editor Quinn was recently informed by his stake president that his historical research (the accuracy of which was not challenged) had placed him under investigation of apostasy. And as recently as last week, a prominent LDS researcher was pressured by her stake president for cataloging instances of spiritual abuse in the church. --The Salt Lake Tribune, Paul Swenson

An array of scholars of Mormon history, most of them evidently of the faith, are represented in this anthology. As Quinn states, the new history holds all the ingredients of that movement in the profession, plus an "effort to avoid using history as a religious battering ram." To this Gentile, the effort seems to have succeeded, and the result is worthwhile reading. --Books of the Southwest

About the Author

D. Michael Quinn is a former professor of history at Brigham Young University. His accolades include the Samuel F. Bemis, the George W. Egleston, and the Frederick W. Beinecke prizes; Best Book and Best Article awards from the Mormon History Association; "Outstanding Teacher" by vote of graduating BYU seniors; and invitations to lecture at the University of Paris's Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and other similar venues. He is the author of J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years; Early Mormonism and the Magic World View; The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power; The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power; and Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example. He is the editor of The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past and a contributing author to American National Biography; Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History; Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education; Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West; Under an Open Sky: Re-thinking America's Western Past; and Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism. His research honoraria include grants from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, Yale University, and others.

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Signature Books (February 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560850116
• ISBN-13: 978-1560850113
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #297,252 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sampler's Table of Mormon Study, October 24, 2000

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Missing in Action (Idaho Falls, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Essays on Mormonism Series) (Paperback)

Michael Quinn has collected a body of work that is sure to be remembered as one of his least controversial works in general circulation. That's all well and good, but it wasn't as "fun" to read as some of his own writings.

That said, this is a fine compilation, a smorgasborg that allows someone the opportunity to sample some of the "non-traditional" LDS studies that are available to the open-minded, yet faithful Mormon student. As Quinn defines them, the "new Mormon Historians" are a breed of scholar/student/writer who examine difficult, complex, and often controversial subjects in the church with an eye toward objectivity. The result is material that is neither condemning nor ridiculously apologetic, but rather intelligent and reasonable, with the intent to understand the faith system which they continue to maintain. Quinn respectfully tributes Juanita Brooks for paving this path for careful, objective and yet still faithful Mormon scholarship.

Topics covered in this collection include Mormon authority, evolving interpretatins and use of the First Vision and the Joseph Smith story, charismatic and priesthood gifts and useage among early Mormon women, the legend of the crickets and gulls, polygamy issues, and more. Each essay could send an interested reader down a long path of further study by reviewing the lists of reference material available in each author's footnotes.

A book like this might be a fine place for someone just starting the adventure of understanding Church History. As mentioned below, however, serious students of Church History will be very familiar with about everything found between these two covers.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is There a New Mormon History?, February 8, 2004

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Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Essays on Mormonism Series) (Paperback)

D. Michael Quinn, one of the foremost practitioners of the type of work distinguished as the "New Mormon History," certainly thinks so. He has assembled in this volume a set of fifteen previously published essays and a short epilogue by B. H. Roberts, all demonstrating most ably the basic trends identified as "New Mormon History" (to Quinn a broadly descriptive rather than polemical label). He notes that this type of historical analysis seeks to attain a "functional objectivity" and avoid several "deadly sins of traditional Mormon history" (viii), among them shying away from critical but controversial topics.

"New Mormon historians" have adopted these as cardinal points against which all historical writing must be measured. The fifteen essays in this volume certainly rise to high there is no question that something important has happened in Mormon historical writing since the 1960s. Indeed, perhaps what has been taking place has been not so much a "new" approach toward Mormon history as the rapid and sustained professionalization of the field. The distinguishing features of the "New Mormon History" had been present to some degree long before the 1960s--most assuredly in the work of such early Mormon historians as E. E. Erickson, Joseph A. Geddes, or Nels Anderson--but emphasis on understanding rather than arguing a specific position became dominant during the 1960s. Both the quality and the quantity of the publications taking this approach skyrocketed during the next three decades. This book puts between two covers some of the best of that work.

Quinn's introduction briefly sketches these general trends in the text, and endnotes exhaustively reference historiographical trends. While a serviceable preamble to the articles that follow, the introduction could have presented a more substantial and philosophical discussion of the "New Mormon History" and its role in furthering an understanding of the Mormon past. The essays follow in roughly chronological order, making the book a useful text for classroom use. Taken altogether, the fifteen essays, each written by a different specialist and originally appearing between 1966 and 1983--perhaps the golden age of the New Mormon History--represent a powerful explanation of the larger aspects of Mormon history from its origins.

Some narrow and others broadly interpretive, these essays include the first major reassessments of unique topics in the history of the Mormon Church. Many of these pathbreaking studies, however, have since been revised by other historians. With the exception of a couple of instances where the authors have inserted some historiographical discussion into their endnotes, the essays do not comment on specific debates over interpretations. This lack of historiographical context is unfortunate, leaving readers with little understanding of the historians' differing perspectives.

Although each of these essays has stood the test of time and can be considered a benchmark study, like most collected works, this book suffers from uneven quality. Some essays are more challenging than others; I found particularly rewarding Thomas G. Alexander's "'To Maintain Harmony': Adjusting to External and Internal Harmony," first published in "Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought" in 1982; Ronald W. Walker's provocative analysis of Mormon militarism, "Sheaves, Bucklers, and the State: Mormon Leaders Respond to the Dilemmas of War," which first appeared in "Sunstone: that same year; and "A Demographic Portrait of the Mormons, 1830-1980" by Dean L. May, first published in 1983, which significantly revised early membership numbers and Utah migration figures.

In addition, the volume's first essay, Leonard J. Arrington's eloquent plea for serious, professional historical inquiry--"The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History"--is an important declaration of intellectual independence that present-day historians of Mormonism should embrace just as fully as did those who first read it in "Dialogue" in 1968. His assertion that "historians ought to be free to suggest interpretations without placing their faith and loyalty on the line" (p. 5) is a central issue in the current restrictive environment. Arrington's conclusion "that an intensive study of church history, while it will dispel certain myths or half-myths sometimes perpetuated in Sunday school (and other) classes, builds faith rather than weakens it" (p. 6) is especially germane to present debates over the faithfulness of Mormon history that strays from the agreed-upon story. With the current LDS review policy, threat of censorship, and restricted access to the Church Archives, we would do well to listen to such past voices of concern.

Any essay collection of this type has built-in difficulties. Although "The New Mormon History" is an important work encapsulating Mormon history's reinterpretation during the last generation, it views the Mormon experience only through the lens of selected events, institutions, and personalities, leaving huge gaps in the story of Mormonism and representing themes and events unevenly. The Reorganized Church (now Communit of Christ) experience, not even discussed, deserves mention in a book such as this and could have provided a useful counterpoint for analyzing such themes as theological developments, political issues, relations with larger society, and organizational structures. The collection also contains very little discussion of twentieth-century Mormonism. The era is ignored, with the exception of the Alexander and Walker essays, already mentioned, and some spillover of their subjects into the first part of this century in articles by Kenneth L. Cannon II, "After the Manifesto: Mormon Polygamy, 1890-1906," and Klaus J. Hansen, "The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward a Reinterpretation of Mormon History." Admittedly Quinn had much less to choose from for this field, although much more of the Church's history has been in the twentieth century. The volume would also have been enhanced had Quinn incorporated any of his own exemplary work.

Quinn anticipated some of these concerns in his introduction. "I can only apologize in advance," he wrote, "for the omissions and acknowledge that others might choose differently" (p. x). No apologies are necessary. This is an excellent collection in spite of different choices that could have been made. It makes available between a single cover several classic essays--some of the best of the "New Mormon History"--and serves as a fine introduction to a complex and fascinating subject.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Towards reinterpretation, February 22, 2005

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Conny Svensson - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Essays on Mormonism Series) (Paperback)

It is not surprising that LDS movement would be inspired by the text and form criticism movement that began in the early 20th century. It is not surprising that the primary "battle" is between this new perspective and the more traditional one in LDS movement itself. There is no "new" LDS history as there has never been a "new" Jesus story. Stories are told over and over again by humans and interpreted by others and it is a fact that a historical account of Jesus would be more neutral if it was written today than by the community close to his presumed death, so the same goes for LDS.

As always Signature does their best to give a holistic picture thru their selection of essays. The essays don't have the "what really did happen?"-cliché, that many Conservative anti-LDS Christians are famous for. Lancaster handles the issue like Joseph's several accounts of the first vision very "gently". He has no ambition to say the last word. This is clear when Hansen, who became famous for his "Council of Fifty" make a review of his own essay some 20 years afterwards. He acknowledges that he would have written a bit differently, how, well it is for you to find out.

It's lovely that Newell (co-author to Emma Smith's biography) has an essay about the LDS women and how they spoke in tongues, administered; thing that LDS today view as strictly male priesthood duties. Shipps famous essay on a holistic view appears among the essays. She wanted to introduce a way to analyse Joseph ignoring the eternal dichotomy of charlatan and prophet. Beecher writes about the leading sisters of early LDS, among others Eliza R Snow. It is weird how history always becomes the history of leading brothers... Not to forget the story of the sea gulls by Heartly. The monument stands there in Salt Lake as a memory of this miracle of LDS history - however sources and some environmental issues seems shed a new light, there were sea gulls and crickets, but ....

Very strictly analytical essays are those of May about the LDS membership statistics thru 150 years and Walker's fine overview of how LDS responded towards wars such as the American war, WW1 and WW2 etc. The wonderful essay of Flanders, Nauvoo revisited: it is more like a columnist writing about a period of LDS history which ended with the terrible murder of the prophet. An important essay is the case of how LDS maintained harmony is policy issues, such as polygamy, by Alexander.

Arrington, former church historian, takes us thru the historical sources in the archives. He introduces us to a world of hidden treasures, which change our perspective of LDS history, from strictly hierarchic to horizontal, from centre to periphery. Pillis' essay treats the rise of LDS in the early 1830s. It shows how environment can shape religious movements.

The remaining three essays - Ivins, Campell & Campell and Cannon II - are about polygamy. The first one is the most thrilling, because it is a sort of an ethnographic study of the practice itself, such as men seemed to marry several from the same family, such as sisters or mother/daugther, and as older the men got, the younger women they married. The second shows the other side of polygamy, the divorces. The third is about how polygamy continued even after the famous manifesto of 1890.

The book ends by B H Roberts and how he wants to write a history of church where every side is heard. Signature manages always to end the essays with this short writing by famous LDS. This book gives you a glimpse into a history not wished to be written and therefore it is a challenging history. It reshapes how we have viewed the past and hopefully shapes in a right way to handle the past. I am looking forward to such a collection of essay in twenty years.... Thank you Signature.