guest lecture

data-content-type="article"

The recent Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture featuring Brian Hauglid and Robin Jensen is now available to watch online: “A Window Into Joseph Smith's Translation: Exploring the Book of Abraham Manuscripts.” Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tznpRR0Fos8&index=2&t=0s&list=PLOrN0FV73AsIPDg3ikykCBYeH4yiiIsroSome of the most puzzling documents left in the wake of Joseph Smith's prophetic career pertain to the Book of Abraham—from the ancient papyrus to the nineteenth-century notebooks. For over a century these documents were specially housed away from public view. In 2018 The Joseph Smith Papers Project team at last made them eminently accessible in volume 4 of the 'Revelations and Translations' series.Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid co-edited the landmark volume, and in the process they learned more about the origins and uses of the cryptic Egyptian papers which Joseph Smith and his associates worked on in beginning in the mid-1830s. About the SpeakersRobin Scott Jensen is an associate managing historian and the project archivist for the Joseph Smith Papers. He coedited the first three volumes in the Revelations and Translations series. He specializes in document and transcription analysis, and is also a member of the Church History Department Editorial Board. He earned an MA degree in American history from Brigham Young University, and a second MA in library and information science from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He is now pursuing a PhD in history at the University of Utah.Brian M. Hauglid is an associate professor and visiting fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He earned a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Utah. He has worked in Book of Abraham studies for over twenty years. As an editor for the Maxwell Institute’s “Studies in the Book of Abraham” series, Hauglid assisted in compiling and editing Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham and Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant. He also published A Textual History of the Book of Abraham.

data-content-type="article"

John Rogers’s MI Guest Lecture is now available to watch online: “Latter-Day Milton: Early Mormonism and the Political Theologies of Paradise Lost.” WatchDid John Milton’s seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost play a role in the early development of Mormon theology?Milton’s heretical speculative theology left an indelible imprint on the conceptual and imaginative structures of early Mormon doctrines of Creation, the Fall, and redemption. Past scholars have noted parallels between Paradise Lost and the visionary writings of Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants. But Yale University professor of English John Rogers believes some of the most exciting Miltonic contributions to Mormon speculative theology emerged in the years just after Smith’s death in the work of Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt. About John Rogers A professor of English at Yale University, John Rogers is the author of Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton, a book awarded prizes by the Milton Society of America and the Modern Language Association. He is also author of several articles on Renaissance (mainly seventeenth-century) English literature and religious culture. He is currently completing a book titled Milton’s Poetry and the Theologies of Liberalism, which looks at the impact on Milton of the dangerous early modern heresy of Socinianism, which denied the existence of the Trinity, and which radically secularized the doctrine of Christ’s atonement on the cross. He has also begun a new book, from which the material for this Maxwell Institute guest lecture is taken, on the reading of the seventeenth-century poem Paradise Lost in the spiritual hothouse of nineteenth-century America. The focus of that book, tentatively titled Latter-day Milton: Paradise Lost and the Creation of America’s God, examines the engagement of Mormonism and Seventh-Day Adventism with Milton’s epic poem and the highly publicized revelation, in 1823, of Milton’s secret and hitherto unpublished espousal of anti-Trinitarianism.

data-content-type="article"

Professor Anthea Butler's MI Guest Lecture is now available to watch online: 'Caught in the Tentacles: American Baptist Home Missions to Mormons in Utah in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century.' Watch https://youtu.be/W0u2IsACJC4In 1898, the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society published a startling tract called “The Mormon Octopus.” The Baptist group warned the nation about a severe danger lurking in the newly-established state of Utah: “Mormonism is an ecclesiastical and, since statehood, a political DESPOTISM. Like a huge octopus, the Mormon hierarchy is fastening its tentacles throughout the Rocky Mountain States, and is sapping the very life-blood of American freedom.” In this Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture, Anthea Butler sheds light on a long-forgotten mission Baptists undertook to rid the nation of this deadly octopus—they took their fight straight to the heart of Utah.P.S.—Coming on Friday, Butler will be featured on the Maxwell Institute Podcast talking about her book, Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World. About Anthea Butler Anthea Butler is Graduate Chair and Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Butler’s research and writing spans religion and politics, religion and gender, African American religion, sexuality, media, religion, and popular culture. A sought-after media commentator on the BBC, MSNBC, CNN and other media outlets, Professor Butler also provides op-ed on contemporary politics, religion, and race at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She has also served as a consultant on the PBS series God in America and the American Experience feature about Aimee Semple McPherson. She is the author of Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World and is currently completing a book on religion, politics, and evangelicals from the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 and 2016. Her website is antheabutler.com.

data-content-type="article"