Review
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Title: From the Outside Looking in: Essays on Mormon History, Theology, and Culture
Editors: Reid L. Neilson and Matthew J. Grow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Genre: History, Religious Studies
Year: 2016
Pages: 414
Binding: Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-024466-8
Price: $35.00
Reviewed by Greg Seppi for the Association for Mormon Letters
Adding to Oxford University Press’ already substantial catalog of recent works in Mormon Studies, this book collects the fifteen Tanner Lectures given from 2000-2014 at the annual Mormon History Association (MHA) conference. The Tanner Lecture is typically a fascinating opportunity to hear from an historian who is not usually a specialist in Mormon Studies, though the speaker will usually be a noted scholar in a related field. One lecturer described the experience as “a clever device for forcing non-Mormon historians to think seriously about Mormon history, and, as the series charter says, to provide context from the outside—insofar as there is an outside” (Nugent, “The Mormons and America’s Empires,” p. 253; all references refer to the text under review). The immediate impetus for the project was MHA’s Golden Anniversary in 2015 (p. xix). The work may also signal the close of one period of the study of Mormon history and the beginning of a new one. Certainly the growing volume of quality scholarship related to the study of Mormonism signals that Mormon Studies may be moving beyond “niche” status.
In contrast to John Whitmer Historical Association’s willingness to grapple with organizations beyond Community of Christ, MHA remains largely focused on the growth, development, and meaning of the Mormon experience. That many scholars equate “Latter-day Saint” with “Mormon” is certainly a small victory for the Church’s advertising firm, though it is also rather ironic—but in terms of this book, it’s worth noting that it would be difficult to compile a more diverse group of essays related to LDS history and culture. The book is divided into four main subject areas: “The American Religious Landscape,” “The Creation of Mormon Identities,” “The Study of Western Histories,” and “The Study of Global Religions” (p. vii-viii). Each subject area is introduced by a detailed, if short, essay by Reid L. Neilson or Matthew J. Grow. An introduction by Richard L. Bushman, the dean of Mormon history, rounds out the original content within the book. Each of the five introductory essays (including Bushman’s) provides necessary context and explains why the essays within each section were grouped together.
While only mentioned specifically by a few of the lecturers, Jan Shipps’s “doughnut hole” analogy is probably the strongest organizing principle within the book as a whole—that is, how can Mormon history can be better integrated into the broader contours of American history? Each lecturer makes a unique contribution to the study of Mormonism within that broader context and suggests new or fresh venues for further research. While some of the topics are somewhat insular in nature—William Deverell’s lecture on the failure of Civil War historians to include Mormon experiences in their study of the causes, events, and outcomes of the Civil War, while excellent, might not interest most general students of Mormon history—others excellently expand the horizons of both American and Mormon religious studies. For example, Richard H. Brodhead’s 2002 lecture, “Prophets in America Circa 1830: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nat Turner, Joseph Smith” establishes an intriguing approach to three disparate thinkers that explores their relationships to American history and culture and recalls the similarities in their experiences with religion that prepared them to take unique roles in American society. Brodhead argues that Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of the First Vision draws on the same “fixation on a passage from scripture” (referring to Smith’s focus on James 1:5 within his narrative) that Nat Turner used to turn his own experience of revelation, “seek and ye shall find,” into a revelatory message that led him to lead a slave insurrection in 1831.
I also found Elliott West’s 2001 lecture “Becoming Mormon” to be particularly adept at interweaving his extensive research into the history of childhood with stories from Mormon children’s narratives. West noted the scarcity of first-hand accounts from Mormon children, as well as the value retrospective memoirs about childhood provide in terms of understanding what 19th century Mormons valued—how they perceived their past can teach those of us in the present “how [19th century Latter-day Saints] came to see themselves near the end [of their lives] and how they believed that their early years had given meaning to the lives they would live out building the Church” (p. 172). West closes by noting the stress that the shift from polygamy to mainstream American culture must have caused to individuals who defined themselves by their survival in the face of mobs and other forms of opposition—an interesting take on post-manifesto Mormon identity that, so far as I know, has not been extensively explored by scholars thus far.
My favorite Tanner Lecture happens to be included in this volume—George Miles’ 2011 “Mormon Stories: A Librarian’s Perspective.” Miles is the William Robertson Coe Curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. His lecture notes a number of ways that the study of Mormon printing and publishing can influence our understanding of the development of the West, using the example of Joseph E. Johnson, a pioneer printer who established the earliest press in Nebraska. Apart from the story of Western printing, Miles also issued a strong reminder that special collections librarians (such as myself) need to include Native Americans to successfully grapple with the consequences of decades of demonization and trivialization of Native Americans that “Great White Man” narratives about the conquest of the West inflicted on American history (p. 287-288).
In my work, I have made a number of efforts to collect and preserve texts that document the Native American experience, but Miles’ argument takes this beyond mere collection development to include actually discussing collections with Native Americans at the acquisition, cataloging, preserving, and sharing levels—in other words, to actually get out and talk to people. I don’t know what I’m going to do about this yet, but it’s good to remember. Given the tangled legacy of Mormon and Native American experiences, it would behoove historians of the Mormon experience to pay greater attention to the relationship between Native Americans and Mormons.
I can imagine that the temptation to shrink the extensive endnotes following each lecture may have been quite strong, but I’m thankful that Neilson, Grow, and OUP decided to keep the extremely valuable endnotes of each lecture, which include extensive references (sometimes practically bibliographies) and highly readable commentary on various points made in the lectures. I’m a big fan of footnotes, but this book is a rare case in which the reader is probably better-served by placing the endnotes at the close of each lecture.
This book highlights the valuable contributions to Mormon history made by a number of scholars. It lacks original content beyond basic description and analysis provided by the editors, and I would hesitate to purchase this volume if I had an MHA membership and could access back issues of the Journal of Mormon History online, since the lectures are all available to scholars with JSTOR access or MHA memberships. That being said, the lectures are well-ordered, and it would be difficult to read them in a better order than that found in this volume.
I would certainly recommend that anyone involved or interested in Mormon Studies purchase this volume. It would also be useful for a course on Mormon historiography or Mormon culture, since each essay highlights the history of Mormon Studies on a particular subject area.
I should also note that the unique context of the lectures renders them highly readable, since they were designed to be read aloud. As such, this volume is perhaps more valuable to scholars just getting their feet wet in Mormon Studies than other, similar works. That being said, I do think this book will be most appreciated by those who are most familiar with the general arc of Mormon historiography, since each essay takes a unique approach to an area of Mormon history that may have been discussed extensively in the past, and turns the debates on their heads.
I must mention the presence of two fascinating lectures on Mormonism as perceived by Freethinkers in the late 19th century and several excellent lectures on 21st century global Mormonism that are absolutely must-reads for those doing research on Mormonism after 1844 or who are exploring Mormonism after the restrictions on priesthood ordination were lifted in 1978.
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy original takes on Mormon history (a small group, to be sure) or who are themselves interested in expanding their current area of research into Mormon Studies, since these lectures provide a strong example of the value that historians from outside the traditional confines of the Mormon History Association can add to discussions of Mormon history.