visiting scholar spotlight

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Cory Crawford is currently visiting the Maxwell Institute as recipient of a short-term research grant. He’s working on a book about the Jerusalem temple, dealing especially with something scholars in the field have long neglected—the role of gender in understanding the temple, and the role of the temple in understanding gender. Cory Crawford on Disciple-ScholarshipWhen it comes to scholarship in the context of communities of faith, I’ve been strongly influenced by the example of Richard Bushman, whom I heard say once that the only way to make progress in understanding—whether inside or outside a faith tradition—is to examine a problem as exhaustively as possible, to describe it as accurately as possible, and only then can one begin to pursue its implications. It is this exhaustive examination and detailed description that I am pursuing this summer. I am also guided by the axiom of my friend and colleague Dr. Jill Kirby, who said in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity that “bad scholarship is not faithful scholarship” (SBA 6 : 100). Beyond these guiding ideals, my experience as a Mormon has of course shaped the way I think about sacred space and ritual—and my experience of space and ritual also shaped the way I think about myself—and it engendered in me an interest to understand the role of sacred space in ancient social narratives and collective self-understanding. I’m grateful to the Maxwell Institute for providing me the opportunity to sit with these questions over the summer. Crawford is assistant professor of Biblical Studies in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University. He previously served as associate editor of the Institute’s Studies in the Bible and Antiquity. He has published in various venues related to Bible and ancient Near East. He is co-editor of a volume under contract with Oxford University Press, provisionally entitled The Bible in Mormonism: A Guide to Scripture in the Latter-day Saint Tradition.Learn more about Crawford here.

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Benjamin Park is at the Maxwell Institute this summer, working on his tentatively titled book, Democracy's Discontents: A Story of Politics, Polygamy, and Power in Mormon Nauvoo. He's one of the Institute's 2018 short-term research grant recipients, but you might recognize his name because he's been an associate editor of our Mormon Studies Review since volume 1.Park's book about Mormons in Nauvoo grows out of his deep interest in early American politics. He argues that the clashes between the Mormons and their neighbors during the 1840s can be seen as a moment of democratic crisis in the early republic.“Americans were struggling to understand what democracy meant,” Park said. “Joseph Smith and his followers worried that the nation's democratic culture allowed mobocratic rule that trampled on minority rights; their opponents countered by arguing that the saints were trespassing on the boundaries of political and social decorum, proving to be a nuisance to America's democratic experiment.”In the end, Park said, both sides lost faith in the democratic process and turned to extralegal actions, including violence. His book uses this story as a lens through which to understand the tensions of populist governance and cultural boundaries more broadly.Park said the historian's task of taking different perspectives of historical actors—the ability to sympathize with competing points of view—reflects a crucial element of discipleship.“As a historian,” Park said, “I am tasked with trying to reconstruct the motivations and justifications of historical actors, including people with such disparate agendas like Nauvoo's Mormons and Carthage's anti-Mormons. As a disciple, I am tasked to try to empathize with both sides of the divide and see them as individuals who were likely trying to make the best decisions for them and their community. Such a daunting mission should be humbling, but also rewarding.”This isn't Park's first BYU experience. He earned his bachelor's degree in English and history here. He completed his master's of science in theology at the University of Edinburgh and rounded out his student career at the University of Cambridge (MPhil, political thought; PhD, history). He became the inaugural postdoctoral fellow with the University of Missouri's Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and recently published his first book, American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833 (Cambridge University Press). Now he's an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, teaching courses in early American history as well as American religions.Park will be at the Maxwell Institute until the end of June.

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Deidre GreenDeidre Green would like to see more women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thinking about theology. Not only thinking about it, but also contributing to it. As a scholar of Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Green understands the value of individual perspectives in a community's efforts to understand God: 'Women’s experience is not ancillary to, but rather foundational for, the articulation of theology...Lifting up women’s experience seems fitting of an LDS framework, in which revelation and doctrine often derive from questions that arise from embodied encounters with the world.' ((Deidre Nicole Green, 'Becoming Equal Partners: Latter-day Saint Women as Theologians,' Mormonism in the Academy: Teaching, Scholarship, & Faith, June 8, 2016. Watch her presentation here. This paper is scheduled for publication in the forthcoming book based on this colloquium.)) For Green, understanding God's purposes requires the mutual participation of women and men, everyone involved offering and learning from diverse perspectives. The Maxwell Institute is grateful that Green brings her perspective as one of this year's visiting fellows. Having completed a PhD in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, she also currently teaches part-time in BYU's Religious Education department.Green is encouraged by historical examples of women contributing to LDS theology, as well as by current efforts by the LDS Church to increase the participation of women: 'As women increasingly feel confident in their knowledge of LDS doctrine, appropriate it, and assume the authority both to teach and shape it, they can better fulfill the imperative given to them by Russell M. Nelson, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to 'speak with the power and authority of God!'' ((Russell M. Nelson, “A Plea to My Sisters,” General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 2015.)) We're thrilled to have Green with us at the Institute. You can read more about her historically grounded and philosophically informed ideas about women and LDS theology in a forthcoming book based on last year's Bushman colloquium. Her contribution is called 'Becoming Equal Partners: Latter-day Saint Women as Theologians.' Stay tuned for more information.

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