Most of those were added several months back. They are almost Bible Dictionary-like explanations for things. But these new articles all seem to have appeared in the last week or so.oliblish wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:41 am There are lots more of them in addition to the ones listed above. I have found most of them are very brief and watered down.
...
Once you get to one of the history essays, there is a long list of other topics in the left margin to get to the others. Here is what is listed just for A-B:
Church History Topics
Adam-ondi-Ahman
Amanda Barnes Smith
American Indians
American Legal and Political Institutions
Angel Moroni
Anointed Quorum (“Holy Order”)
Awakenings and Revivals
Baptism for the Dead
Bishop
Book of Abraham Translation
Book of Commandments
Book of Mormon Translation
Why don't they just put out a new New Mormon Doctrine for the shelves of Deseret Book? Could be some good $$ to be made there instead of burying these on lds.org.oliblish wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:41 am
Church History Topics
Adam-ondi-Ahman
Amanda Barnes Smith
American Indians
American Legal and Political Institutions
Angel Moroni
Anointed Quorum (“Holy Order”)
Awakenings and Revivals
Baptism for the Dead
Bishop
Book of Abraham Translation
Book of Commandments
Book of Mormon Translation
They want these essays neatly tucked away so they can say they're not hiding information, while keeping it just far enough out of reach so that members don't stumble into it.RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 1:31 pm
Why don't they just put out a new New Mormon Doctrine for the shelves of Deseret Book? Could be some good $$ to be made there instead of burying these on lds.org.
This way they can also update/change/modify/clarify/re-word/obfuscate as necessary in order to make sure we all know the true (current) word of god. Notice how none of these articles, much like the original essays, are dated. That makes it much harder to track changes, like when were these actually published in the first place?jfro18 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 1:38 pmThey want these essays neatly tucked away so they can say they're not hiding information, while keeping it just far enough out of reach so that members don't stumble into it.RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 1:31 pm
Why don't they just put out a new New Mormon Doctrine for the shelves of Deseret Book? Could be some good $$ to be made there instead of burying these on lds.org.
Right. They say they aren't hiding anything, by which they mean the are mentioning it while steering a wide path around actually dealing with it. The typical reader will be able to check the made-reference-to-that box without having any idea that there's another 90% of the story that has been left out. I totally understand why they are doing this. Critics were accusing them of hiding facts. They claimed they weren't. Critics said they were lying about that. They were lying and it was easy to prove that. They had to scramble to get to a more defensible we're-not-lying position. If you don't want to be caught lying you tell half-truths and leave out important details. At least, that's what they always taught me about how Satan works.
LOL. Daughers of Zion? I've never heard that one before. Nor is that sentence sourced. Where does that come from? Bunch of murderous militia dudes calling themselves the Daughters of Zion?...some Latter-day Saints organized a group known as the “Daughters of Zion” or the “Danites,” whose objective was to defend the community against dissident and excommunicated Latter-day Saints as well as other Missourians.
Five months? After listening to YoP I understood that the Danites were alive and actively "intimdating" people well into Nauvoo and revived in SLC to do BY's bidding. Where does this claim of five months come from? Is this a lie? Or am I just completely wrong?The Danites existed for only five months, from June through October 1838, and were only ever active in two counties in northwestern Missouri. Though the existence of the Danites was short-lived, it resulted in a longstanding and much-embellished myth about a secret society of Mormon vigilantes.
StarbucksMom wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:46 am The essay on Fanny........Holy crap. I can’t even....
It needs it’s own thread.
Just reading through Saints I am almost positive their presence is noted in there longer than a five month span although I'm not positive. Either way - there is no chance they were only around 5 months unless they're trying to claim they were only "official" for five months which is a really bad stand to take.græy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:02 pmFive months? After listening to YoP I understood that the Danites were alive and actively "intimdating" people well into Nauvoo and revived in SLC to do BY's bidding. Where does this claim of five months come from? Is this a lie? Or am I just completely wrong?The Danites existed for only five months, from June through October 1838, and were only ever active in two counties in northwestern Missouri. Though the existence of the Danites was short-lived, it resulted in a longstanding and much-embellished myth about a secret society of Mormon vigilantes.
Yet, after moving to Far West, Missouri, in 1838, Marsh grew critical of Joseph Smith and opposed Latter-day Saints using violence to fight mobs in Missouri.(4) He and Orson Hyde signed an affidavit detailing their concerns about Mormon violence, which became one piece of evidence used against the Saints by Missouri officials. “I got a beam in my eye and thought I could discover a mote in Joseph’s,” he recounted years later, “though it was nothing but a beam in my eye.”(5) He withdrew from the Church in October 1838, and he and Elizabeth raised their family in Missouri. Elizabeth died in 1854, and Marsh sought readmittance into the Church three years later. While assisting with Church emigration, he was soon rebaptized in Florence, Nebraska. Eventually settling in Utah, Marsh married Hannah Adams, taught school in Spanish Fork, and later moved to Ogden, where he died in 1862.
Footnotes:
4 -Some sources point to an 1838 dispute in Far West, Missouri, between Elizabeth Marsh and Lucinda Harris over milk strippings as contributing to Marsh’s decision to leave the Church (see George A. Smith sermon, Dec. 21, 1845, in Helen Mar Whitney, “Scenes in Nauvoo, and Incidents from H. C. Kimball’s Journal,” Woman’s Exponent, vol. 12, no. 3 [July 1, 1883], 14; George A. Smith, Apr. 6, 1856, in Journal of Discourses, 3:283–84; Thomas B. Marsh letter to Heber C. Kimball, May 5, 1857, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; Erastus Snow, “Autobiography of Erastus Snow [1875],” Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine, vol. 14, no. 3 [July 1923], 106–7).
You know the one thing I like about the Fanny Alger essay, though? At least it mentions for the first time since Bushman's book, is that the Fanny Alger affair as what caused Oliver Cowdery to leave the church in the first place. So the witness to everything that Joseph claimed, from the BOM to the priesthood at least now has his story told as to why he left in the first place. That is ammo I can use in a church class, from a church source.Sheamus Moore wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:19 pmsanitized.jpgStarbucksMom wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:46 am The essay on Fanny........Holy crap. I can’t even....
It needs it’s own thread.
They totally throw Oliver under the bus and never mention how Emma saw JS and AF out in the barn together. Emma never says exactly what she saw but it was enough to make her kick Fanny out of the house! This is so blatantly deceitful on the part of the church to leave out details like that!Fanny Alger
Born in 1816 to Samuel and Clarissa Alger, Fanny Alger joined the Church with her family in the early 1830s and worked in Joseph Smith’s household in Kirtland, Ohio.1 Several Latter-day Saints who lived in Kirtland in the 1830s later reported that Fanny Alger married Joseph Smith, becoming his first plural wife.2 The marriage was evidently of short duration. Fanny left Ohio with her parents in 1836 for Missouri, apparently staying at a tavern owned by the family of Solomon Custer in Dublin, Indiana.3 Within a few months, Fanny married Solomon.4 She remained in Dublin after her parents continued to Far West, Missouri. Fanny’s family followed the main body of the Saints from Missouri to Illinois and ultimately to southern Utah. When Fanny’s father, a patriarch, passed away in the 1870s, his obituary celebrated his family’s faithfulness.5
Fanny and Solomon had nine children, only two of whom survived Fanny. The Custers maintained a grocery store in Dublin and invested in a sawmill in nearby Lewisville.6 The family moved to Lewisville during a time of financial difficulty, and Solomon attempted to sell the sawmill but ultimately declared bankruptcy.7 Fanny and Solomon moved back to Dublin, where they remained until his death in 1885.8
Fanny and Solomon attended the local Universalist Church that Solomon’s father had helped establish. During her later years, Fanny also became interested in spiritualism.9 After Solomon’s death, Fanny moved to Indianapolis to live with her son Lafayette. She died in 1889 and was buried in Dublin next to Solomon in a plot of ground he had cleared as a child.10
Relationship to Joseph Smith
Very little is known about the marriage between Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger. The earliest sources emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837. Angry investors in the society and local antagonists circulated many rumors attacking Joseph, including allegations that he committed adultery. Some of the rumors were said to originate with Oliver Cowdery, whose formerly close relationship with Joseph had become strained over a variety of matters. Some claimed Oliver heard Joseph confess to extramarital relations with Fanny Alger.11 In fall 1837, Joseph Smith confronted Cowdery about the rumor in a meeting attended by at least three others. In that meeting, Cowdery refuted the rumor that Joseph had confessed to him.12 The following April, when Cowdery was tried in Missouri for his Church membership over many charges, the high council discussed the rumors Cowdery had circulated. Joseph gave an explanation of his relationship to Fanny that appears to have satisfied the high council.13 Cowdery was excommunicated during this meeting.
Other than evidence of a visit in the early 1840s to her family who belonged to the Church branch in Lima, Illinois, Fanny’s name remains absent from Latter-day Saint records for nearly 30 years.14 In the late 19th century, a handful of statements by Latter-day Saints and former Church members indicated that Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger’s relationship was an early plural marriage.15 Eliza R. Snow, one of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, simply included Fanny in a list of his wives.16 Mosiah Hancock in 1896 and Benjamin F. Johnson in 1903 likewise described Fanny’s relationship to Joseph as a plural marriage that was kept confidential. Hancock told of a private marriage sealing performed by Hancock’s father in Kirtland. According to Johnson, Fanny was asked about her relationship to Joseph but refused to elaborate on the matter.17
Though we know little about the introduction and early practice of plural marriage, Latter-day Saints honor the faith of early Church members who sacrificed to obey this difficult commandment.
Lock and load, dude.Mormorrisey wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:42 pmYou know the one thing I like about the Fanny Alger essay, though? At least it mentions for the first time since Bushman's book, is that the Fanny Alger affair as what caused Oliver Cowdery to leave the church in the first place. So the witness to everything that Joseph claimed, from the BOM to the priesthood at least now has his story told as to why he left in the first place. That is ammo I can use in a church class, from a church source.Sheamus Moore wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:19 pmsanitized.jpgStarbucksMom wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:46 am The essay on Fanny........Holy crap. I can’t even....
It needs it’s own thread.
For sure.
Angry investors in the society and local antagonists circulated many rumors attacking Joseph, including allegations that he committed adultery. Some of the rumors were said to originate with Oliver Cowdery, whose formerly close relationship with Joseph had become strained over a variety of matters.
In that meeting, Cowdery refuted the rumor that Joseph had confessed to him.
Granted, what kind of bias would we expect the church to have? It's not like they'd ever come out and say, "Yeah, Joseph probably did commit adultery with Fanny Alger."The following April, when Cowdery was tried in Missouri for his Church membership over many charges...
They might be right to leave those details out. Both purported facts are from second-hand accounts recalled decades later by someone antagonistic to Joseph Smith. On that basis only, they stand about as much chance of being true as Brigham Young's transfiguration. I have a bias against believing miraculous events, though, so IMO they're much more likely than the transfiguration, but that isn't saying much.RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:00 pm They totally throw Oliver under the bus and never mention how Emma saw JS and AF out in the barn together. Emma never says exactly what she saw but it was enough to make her kick Fanny out of the house! This is so blatantly deceitful on the part of the church to leave out details like that!
Fear of allowing people room to commit errors could be part of it. Shame, too. Members, especially leaders, tend to identify strongly with Joseph Smith.nibbler wrote: ↑Sat Feb 02, 2019 9:23 am It's tiring. The apologists want to remind everyone that people are not perfect, that of course the church was founded by imperfect people... and then they spend 90% of their time defending the personal righteousness of Joseph Smith, at all cost to their integrity and as if people's relationship with god depended on Joseph's purity. If we truly believe that the church was founded by flawed individuals why can't we embrace the idea that Joseph was deeply flawed?
