The Missouri Old Sow Cannon, or “Foli’s Folly”

old-sow-bigAn antique cannon nicknamed the “Old Sow” resides in the LDS Church History Museum. There’s a story behind the nickname. However, it should be noted that this isn’t the first “Old Sow” cannon in American history. Nor is the legend behind it entirely unique.

The “Old Sow”, a cannon that fired 18-pound cannon balls, was placed on a hill above Springfield, New Jersey in the time of the American Revolution. When fired, the cannon served as an alarm signaling the “Minute Men” to action.[1] Historians conjecture that its booming, a contrast to the small and piping sounds of musket and pistol, was reminiscent of an old sow.

A heavy, one-ton mortar, thought to be named “Old Sow” because of its weight, was located at Fort Ticonderoga and later used by George Washington in his siege of Boston.[2]

A 32-pound “old sow” cannon located at Sackett’s Harbor played a part in the War of 1812. The gun was designed for the ship Oneida, but being too heavy, was placed near the shore, wallowing in the mud. From its appearance there, the cannon was said to have acquired its name.[3]

These stories seem, by their very nature, to be folklore. I wondered, since there were so many of them, if an “old sow” was a particular kind of cannon, or had a certain meaning in colonial days which has been lost to us over time.

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Mere ‘Tools’ in a Man’s Exaltation? An Analysis of Women in D&C 132

The status of women in religious discourse has historically constituted a troubling theological issue, especially in light of the traditional authoritative role of male hegemony in world religions.  Turning our focus to the Jewish and Christian world view, it is in my estimation a tragic fact of history that women have frequently been perceived as an inferior gender class by culturally dominant male theologians.  I would submit, however, that despite what some have assumed, this is not the case in the LDS revelation on theosis (becoming divine) that appears in D&C 132.

Oftentimes in religious statements, the role of Eve in consuming the fruit of the knowledge of “good and bad” is offered as an explanation for not only the inferior spiritual status of women in general, but for the attestation of sin itself in human existence.  Such a view appears, for example, in the writings of the Hellenized Jew, Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of both Jesus and the New Testament Apostle Paul.  Concerning “woman” Philo writes:

“Woman becomes for him [Adam] the beginning of blameworthy life.  For so long as he was by himself, as accorded with such solitude, he went on growing like to the world and like God… But when woman too had been made… love [eros] enters in… and this desire [pothos] likewise engendered bodily pleasure, that pleasure which is the beginning of wrongs and violation of law, the pleasure for the sake of which men bring on themselves the life of mortality and wretchedness in lieu of that of immorality and bliss.” (Philo, Creation 151-152; also 165-166).

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Like A Boss: A Critique of Nibley’s “Leaders to Managers”

“Talk to corporate! (Like a boss!) Approve memos! (Like a boss!)…”

A few years ago, I stumbled across one of Joanna Brooks’ many Ask Mormon Girl blog posts.[1] The inquirer was desperately trying to cope with his feelings of loneliness as a literature student attending “wards filled with aspiring physicians, lawyers, and businessmen (and sometimes women).” He struggled to understand why Mormon culture “glorifies these professions as more appropriate tha[n] the fabled ‘life of the mind’.” In his view, his fellow “bookish” Mormons were “isolated and few.” He wondered if the “resistance to hierarchy and willingness to deal in contradictions and ambiguities” found among humanities scholars made them, in the eyes of most Mormons, “too unstable to be useful/productive.” At long last he despaired “that maybe Mormon culture isn’t a living human culture,” but a “conservative, insular, and intellectually uncurious” one instead.

While I can sympathize with some of the questioner’s complaints about Mormon culture, as a graduate student in business, I find many of them to be question-begging. This is largely because those who practice medicine, law, and business tend to be highly intelligent and (often out of professional necessity) curious. However, the intellectuals and scholars this young man seems to be seeking are, to use Dr. Brooks’ words, “New-York-Times-reading-complexity-craving-literature-philosophy-and-history-reading-liberals-like-me-and-you.” This appears to be a particular type of intellectual; an occupational intellectual whose trade is abstract ideas. As one insightful economist has pointed out, “Most of us do not think of brain surgeons or engineers as intellectuals, despite the demanding mental training that each goes through, and virtually no one regards even the most brilliant and successful financial wizard as an intellectual. At the core of the notion of an intellectual is the dealer in ideas, as such – not the personal application of ideas, as engineers apply complex scientific principles to create physical structures or mechanisms.”[2] I was reminded of Brooks’ post as I was reviewing Hugh Nibley’s well-known 1983 address-turned-article “Leaders to Managers.”[3] Just as intellectualism and scholarship were pitted against business, medicine, and law, Nibley pits the supposed mediocrity of management against the ideal of leadership. While Nibley may have had both church and university bureaucracies in mind at the time of his remarks (perhaps even correlated Mormon culture as a whole),[4] he nonetheless engages in a kind of rhetorical irresponsibility when discussing the supposed differences between leadership and management as well as the nature of business. Not only do I believe Nibley is mistaken, but I believe his views are potentially damaging to the progress of Zion.

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The BYU New Testament Commentary

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On May 15, 2013, the BYU Religious Studies Center, BYU Studies, the Maxwell Institute and the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Program at BYU sponsored their first annual New Testament Conference as a companion project to the publication of a forthcoming BYU New Testament Commentary. This multivolume Commentary will be released over a period of years. The first volume on the Book of Revelation will be available within a few weeks. Each volume will contain a new LDS translation of the New Testament text along with accompanying Mormon commentary.  The conference began in a spirit of something extraordinary, perhaps (as one particpant stated) even inspired. Carole Mikita, a local KSL religion reporter, hosted the event in a spirit of excited anticipation.

The interpretive methodology in the conference and commentary is unapologetically Mormon, with all that that means, good and bad. This commentary and these conferences are partly reading the Greek text, quoting from a general authority here, and preaching one’s own sermon there. The interpretive methodology is less about the New Testament as a text, and wholeheartedly looking as Mormonism as reflected in the New Testament. But the methodology strikes me as premature— speaking before carefully listening, silencing the voice of the text and using it instead as a mirror to understand Mormonism. In some instances the approach worked well. I found myself interested in a Mormon reading of the Gospel of Luke by Kent Brown. He explored the strong role of women and the concept of “house,” meaning family, in Luke. He was bringing very interesting Mormon questions and listening carefully to the voice of the text. Eric Huntsman explored the understanding of miraculous signs in the Gospel of John as christological and soteriological symbols. At times these authors may have overstated their points. But these were the high marks of the conference.

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Jason Mack, Joseph Smith’s Seeker Uncle

Lucy Mack Smith, mother of Joseph Smith and sister of Jason Mack. Lucy’s book “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and His Progenitors” is the major surviving source of information about Jason.

One of the lesser-known aspects of Joseph Smith’s family history is that his uncle, Jason Mack, anticipated many of the themes that would become important to the Mormon movement. According to Lucy Mack Smith, Jason was “a studious and manly boy” who became a “Seeker” by the age of sixteen. Among other things, Jason held that “there was no church in existence which held to the pure principles of the gospel.” At age twenty he became a minister. His mind, he said, was so entirely “taken up with the deplorable situation of the earth” that he held meetings and preached the gospel “day and night.”

Jason apparently had a particular conviction that the gifts and signs and wonders of the New Testament were still available, and he preached “incessantly to convert others to the same faith.” In an 1835 letter to his brother Solomon Mack, Jason reported that twelve years earlier the Lord had “bestowed upon me the gift of healing by the prayer of faith.” He apparently knew some basic field medicine as well, perhaps learned in the Revolutionary War, but his “chief reliance” was on the Creator “who organized us at the first, and can restore at pleasure that which is disorganized.” (The use of the term “organized” rather than “created” raises the interesting question of whether Jason shared his nephew’s rejection of creatio ex nihilo.)

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Visions of Light: Itzhak Eyzik and Joseph Smith

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We at Worlds Without End are pleased to host a guest post by one of our regular commenters, Allen Hansen. This post is adapted from his presentation at the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference on March 16th, 2013.

Ilya Schor, Kabbalah, 1949.

Ilya Schor, Kabbalah, 1949.

Shortly before his death, Rebbe Abraham Joshua Heschel published a remarkable book titled A Passion for Truth. In it he explored the life and teachings of Søren Kierkegaard and the Hasidic master R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk. The first time that Heschel read Kierkegaard, the teachings felt familiar, and he found that they reminded him of the Kotzker Rebbe. Kierkegaard and Mendel had never met and their worlds were very different, yet Heschel detected what he termed an “affinity of strangers.”[1] Such comparisons are fruitful because, as one scholar has stated, “an examination of other revival movements and their characteristics will also provide a new background against [which what] is distinctive in Hasidism will stand out in clear relief.”[2]

There are, in my opinion, very good reasons for applying such an approach to Mormon studies. Studying Mormonism in light of other traditions and movements will help us better recognize not only what is different and unique to Mormonism, but also how and why. Such an approach can lend our work a broader perspective. As a case study I will look at two visions which occurred in the same year. One is Joseph Smith’s, and the other a Hasidic rebbe’s.

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The Word of Wisdom as Early Mormon Commandment and Identity Marker

cuppaMo

The current dominant narrative among Mormon historians is that the Word of Wisdom (D&C 89) didn’t begin to function as a commandment or Mormon identity marker until the early twentieth century. Thomas Alexander argues that although there were “sporadic” attempts to enforce the Word of Wisdom in the nineteenth century, these efforts never caught on. For Alexander, the wine and brandy consumption of top-level leaders like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and various apostles shows they viewed the Word of Wisdom as little more than a “principle with promise.”[1] Amy Hoyt and Sarah Patterson are even more forceful: “It is clear that until the turn of the twentieth century, Mormons read the Word of Wisdom more as a set of suggestions than as commandments.” Then the end of polygamy forced Mormons to find new ways of distinguishing themselves from mainstream America, and their solution was strict enforcement of the Word of Wisdom.[2]

I would like to propose a modest modification to this theory: namely, that the Word of Wisdom functioned as a commandment and Mormon identity marker before the formal introduction of polygamy as well as after polygamy’s end. For a brief window in the 1830s, Word of Wisdom observance was treated as a mandate for all Church members, and especially for leaders. The mandate weakened in Nauvoo partly because there were new symbols of Mormon distinctiveness and partly because of Joseph Smith’s non-observance. Smith’s non-observance, in other words, was a contributor to the weakening of the mandate rather than an indication that it was never treated as a mandate in the first place.

This modification of the hypothesis actually strengthens the causal linkage other historians have hypothesized between the end of polygamy and the early twentieth-century strengthening of the Word of Wisdom mandate. It also suggests that the strengthening of the mandate was more authentically Mormon than some historians have allowed; it was in some ways a return to the standards of Kirtland Mormonism.

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Why Mormons Should Not Be Afraid of Mormon Studies

The title of this essay may seem a bit shocking; like an issue that shouldn’t require much thought.  Of course Mormons should not be leery of Mormon studies!   To the contrary, Mormons should embrace the fact that their religion is starting to receive greater academic attention. And it is!

In recent years, institutions of higher learning have offered a variety of courses devoted to Mormon studies.  Courses in Mormon studies have been taught at Harvard, UPenn, Virginia, Arizona, Arizona State, Southern Alabama, Georgetown, Utah State, Utah Valley University, the University of Utah, etc. Books focusing on Mormonism have been published by university presses at Oxford (probably the premier venue for Mormon studies, publishing close to a dozen in the last few years), Harvard, UNC, Nebraska, Tennessee, Yale, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Missouri.

In 2012, the University of Virginia announced plans to hire a chair in Mormon studies.  The Claremont Graduate University has for several years now had the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon studies position, Utah State has the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture (currently occupied by Dr. Philip Barlow), and presently Dr. Boyd Peterson serves as the program coordinator over Mormon studies at Utah Valley University.

Ready or not, Mormonism has begun to be taken seriously as an academic field of study.   However, as exciting as this news proves to some Latter-day Saints, there has of course been a bit of concern over the nature of Mormon studies on the part of some believers.  In light of the fact that Mormon studies is a subset of Religious studies and Religious studies constitutes a secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions, this apprehension is to be expected.

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Order of the Days of Creation

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Some assume the creation story described in the opening chapter of the Bible is a literal description how the universe unfolded. Efforts have been made to try to fit the order of the seven days of creation into our scientific world view. But trying to explain the order of creation as described in Genesis 1 stands at odds with modern understanding.

There are problems that are difficult to reconcile in a literal interpretation of the creation story. For example, day and night occur before the sun is created on the 4th day. The waters are created before the earth. The earth is created on the 3rd day before the stars or sun.  Plants are created on the 3rd day before the Sun is on the 4th.

Literalist defenders are left trying to explain various difficulties such as how plants could survive without the sun.

There are other ways to explain the ordering of the events of the creation story. Continue reading “Order of the Days of Creation” »

The Coming Mormon Environmentalism

Elder Marcus Nash

On April 12, 2013, I attended a Symposium on Religion, Faith , and the Environment in the S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. There were attorneys, Buddhists, Hindus, evangelicals, Native Americans, and various leaders of environmental institutions from across America. It was fascinating for the audience to stand with Lacee Harris (a Native American Elder) and pray as we faced the east wall of the Moot Court Room.

We heard the stories from Vasudha Narayanan of Hindu Earth Goddesses and the sacred, eternal Ganges as universal water and purifier, and sadly a river threatened by global warming. A Buddhist MD spoke of the psychological nature of their tradition with universal human suffering, and self-relinquishment as an environmental act. Nalinin Nadkarni, a biologist from the University of Utah, addressed her favorite topic—rainforest trees and how vulnerable life is in the canopy. There was a palpable excitement in the audience as she spoke of humans as the heirs of Noah, and showed how prisoners and children are aiding the research to save rainforests. We saw pictures of rap singing sessions among the trees and a Tree Top Barbie intended to attract the youth into the cause.  A biologist from USU spoke of three models used to represent the human/nature interface: 1) human dominion over nature, 2) human guardianship of nature, or 3) simple human partnership and participation within and without nature.

For Elder Marcus Nash of the LDS Quorum of Seventy, the dominion/ stewardship model is the appropriate ones for Mormons. His delivered a watershed speech on Mormonism and the environment. Elder Nash claimed to be speaking, not for himself, but for Mormonism. I am not certain whether he was simply stating that he personally was reflected the core of Mormon beliefs on the environment or whether he meant that he was authorized to speak for the Church. My guess is that he was authorized to speak as a representative for the Church at the Conference. But of course, he is not the leader of the Church. It clearly was a Mormon presentation, relying on scriptural and prophetic precedent. He cited Mormon scripture and as many modem day prophets, including the following: Psalms 8:4, Abraham 3:24, Moses 3:5, D&C 49:19-21, D&C 82:19, D&C 59:20, and Moses 7:28.

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