‘Kingdom Come’: Representing Mormonism through a geopolitical frame

This paper extends the reach of ‘popular geopolitics’ by exploring the geopolitical frame that American popular/news magazines use to portray a major religion in the United States: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the most prominent body known as Mormonism). It asserts that magazines often represent this type of Mormonism as a geopolitical entity, and sometimes even as a geopolitical threat. Prior to the early twentieth century, these portrayals were hegemonic, given the national government's distrust of Mormonism. But echoes of an earlier and more virulent geopolitical discourse have persisted, long after the federal government made its peace with Mormonism. This paper defines and analyzes twentieth-century magazines' geopolitical discourse on Mormonism, particularly in relation to Mormon spatiality. In doing so, it puts forward concepts of geopolitical optic and logic in order to more effectively distinguish between variations in geopolitical language.     

Mormons,Civil Authorities and Lutheran Clergy in Finland, 1875–1889

This article explores the reactions of civil authorities and Lutheran clergy to Mormon activity in Finland between the years 1875 and 1889. At this time, Mormonism was introduced to the country by missionaries who were mainly Swedish natives and who proselytized in the Swedish-speaking coastal areas. Although the impact was numerically small in terms of conversions, the Mormon presence was regarded by the civil authorities and the Lutheran clergy as sufficiently serious to warrant action. Civil authorities responded for example by confiscating Mormon literature and issuing warnings and threats of arrest to missionaries. Clergy, acting from a religious perspective and seeking to impede the spread of new religious movements that they regarded as spiritually harmful, interrupted preaching meetings and warned their parishioners against the perceived heresy. Enforced legislation and strong societal opposition was an important reason for the meagre harvest of Mormon converts in 19th-century Finland as opposed to the other Nordic countries.     

Mormon Masculinity: Changing Gender Expectations in the Era of Transition from Polygamy to Monogamy, 1890–1920

During the period from 1890 to 1920, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS) perceived a crisis in the lives of their boys. Like their Protestant contemporaries, Latter‐day Saints spent much time attempting to find a solution. At the same time, the LDS church was experiencing its own unique set of upheavals. In 1890, one of the central tenets of Mormonism – polygamy – had to be replaced with sexual practices that aligned the LDS with wider American society. It was during this transitional period that members and authorities of the LDS church sought to gain respectability in American culture by emphasising the morality and value systems they shared with their middle‐class Protestant contemporaries. As Mormons restructured marriage around the practice of monogamy, they placed the burden of the refashioned religious identity almost exclusively upon men and their bodies. The new Mormon man ushered the LDS church into the American mainstream while maintaining an acceptable difference from that mainstream culture.     

A Sacred Space for Women: Hymnody in Emma Hale Smith's Theology

Emma Smith oversaw the compilation of the first Mormon hymnal in 1835 and then prepared a second hymnal in 1841. This article contextualises and discusses Smith's significant assignment, and considers how a woman's hymn selections influenced early Mormonism. It also considers what Smith's hymnals reveal about her own life story and what her life story reveals about her hymn selections. While Smith's first hymnal highlights the emphasis she placed on immediately establishing a city of Zion in preparation for the millennial reign of a triumphal Christ, her second hymnal underscores the need to develop and foster a personal relationship with a merciful Saviour. Smith's 1835 hymnal emphasises being a Zion people immediately, whereas her 1841 hymnal, compiled in the context of intense personal and collective trials and religious persecution, highlights the importance of striving to become a more Zion‐like people over time. The different doctrinal emphases reflects their respective Mormon cultures at the time of compilation, and captures how the church responded to and grappled with its failure to establish Zion immediately. As a compiler of hymns, Smith clearly plays a significant role in Mormon history, while also demonstrating how women could impact their particular religious communities.     

Hawaiian health and the filibuster of Walter Murray Gibson

ABSTRACT

Scholars know Hawai‘i’s “minister of everything” as an upstart who rose to prominence by defending Hawaiian sovereignty. Few have noticed that Walter Murray Gibson’s influence stemmed from a paternalistic campaign to improve Islander health and expand the labor force for an emerging plantation complex. Improbably, public health presented Gibson, an excommunicated Mormon missionary, with a platform to pursue his lifelong dream of ruling a Pacific empire. This article explores the entangled issues of health, labor, and empire amid disparate and unpredictable colonial incursions in the Hawaiian Islands after 1860.     

Ordained Ministry in Maori Christianity, 1853–1900

From 1853 an ordained clergy emerged in the Protestant (but not the Catholic) churches founded by missionary organisations in New Zealand in the first half of the nineteenth century. Ordained indigenous ministers succeeded and largely superseded an earlier large force of lay "teachers." Although the Maori churches might in other circumstances have been seen as progressing towards self–reliance and autonomy, the colonial context of the second half of the nineteenth century confined them and their clergy to a restricted place in the ecclesiastical life of New Zealand. The transition from "teachers" to "ministers" in the Church Missionary Society (Anglican) and Wesleyan missions is examined, and a study is made of the place of indigenous ministers in the Maori Anglican and Wesleyan churches, the Mormon church, and the Maori religious movements such as Ringatu.     

The Postmodern Problem

Abstract

Mormon political theology must reconcile two distinct projects: the care for the Church's concrete, temporal existence in the World, and the welcoming of the future Kingdom of God on earth. Because of this duality, political theology finds itself highlighting the distinction between the World and the Kingdom of God and at the same time pointing out common ground and attempting to establish peace between the Church and the World. The alleged contradictions of Mormon political thought are, according to this conception, to be understood not as confrontations between idealism and brute reality (or “utopianism” and “assimilation”), but rather as the bringing together of the two goals of Mormon political reflection, pursued by two sides of political theology. These two sides, apologetic and prophetic political theology, are distinguished not by their political content, but rather by their particular kinds of political rhetoric.     

Travelling images and projected representations

This article examines how Mormons and Mormonism were represented in Norway in the period before and after their arrival as missionaries, c. 1840–1860. The religion came into existence in a US context of religious pluralism, where the idea, though not necessarily the practice, of religious freedom was central. It has been argued that the persecution of Mormons in the United States had to be coined in non-religious terms, and the religion represented as a fraud and orientalised as an un-American threat to the republic. The Norwegian religious context differed significantly as heterodoxy was opposed and only hesitantly tolerated in a limited scale. The article demonstrates how inimical images of Mormonism present in the United States were imported to Norway, and to a large part found resonance in inherent stereotypes of religious otherness already present. As Mormons changed from being an occidental abstraction to a domestic ‘problem’ in around 1850, the discourse of Mormonism as religious otherness was more openly framed within religious terms.     

Postcolonial Conservation and Kiekie Harvests at Morere New Zealand – Abstracting Indigenous Knowledge from Indigenous Polities

Conservation authorities and local Maori are engaged in a collaborative science project within the Morere Scenic Reserve (east coast of the North Island in New Zealand). Although the project was restricted initially to the integration of knowledge to support sustainable harvests of kiekie (Freycinetia baueriana), the illegitimacy of state agencies to manage competing Maori demands for that species led inadvertently to the devolution of harvest administration to a local tribe. The success of the Morere experiment is evident in widespread support for a subsequent decision to fallow the kiekie resource, suggesting that further experiments to activate Indigenous polities within conservation management are warranted. Nonetheless, ambivalence towards Maori development needs circumscribes the potential of devolved management and collaborative science.     

Was there an early Polynesian ‘sky father’?∗

Abstract

There is a recurring Polynesian cosmogonic tradition whereby the primordial world was transformed into the modem world by a series of events often consisting first of vague cosmic beings (whose names and nature are not generally cognate) giving rise to a Primordial Pair who then gave rise to first order anthropomorphic gods. The Primordial Pair in Tonga were ‘Seaweed’ and ‘Sediment/Slime’ while in Nuclear Polynesian we find the female named Papa‐adj. and evidence for the male being named Papa‐adj. in Proto Nuclear Polynesian and Proto Central Eastern Polynesian as well. These are thought of as physical strata or rock in Samoa while in Central Eastern Polynesia there was commonly the notion that Papa (the female) was the earth itself and that her mate was the sky or the space between the sky and the earth. It was, however, only amongst New Zealand Maori that the male was specifically given the name ‘Sky’ although an alternative name for the male in the Marquesas is ‘Sky Parent’ but seems a (lexical) development independent of the N.Z. Maori.     

Managing Oman's Archaeological Resource: Historical Perspectives

Abstract

This article examines the history of the development of archaeological resource management in the Sultanate of Oman. It provides an overview of past and present practices and investigates the relevance of current management to the present state of Omani society. Although archaeological resource management in Oman started only three decades ago, the government has made enormous progress in establishing archaeological organizations and in creating their administrative and legislative tools. Nevertheless, it is also evident that the national system of archaeological resource management is facing a number of challenges that need to be addressed. The significance of this study lies in the fact that it is the first attempt to review this resource management historically. It aims to fill an obvious lacuna left by the many researchers who, since starting their activities in the 1950s, have only focused on the archaeology of the resource without evaluating the system through which this resource has been managed.     

The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America

My research into the "Mormon Question" has blurred disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating that legal history occurs outside the confines of law books, out in the world of popular culture, political cartooning, and sermonizing, and even in outbreaks of violence. This article is designed to illustrate how an entire body of constitutional law was made in opposition to the marital and sexual arrangements of Mormons in the Utah Territory in the nineteenth century.     

Humans,Birds and Burial Practices at Ipiutak,Alaska: Perspectivism in the Western Arctic

ABSTRACT

Archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the coast of western Alaska and St. Lawrence Island indicate that human inhabitants over the past 1500–2000 years incorporated birds into their diets, cosmologies, material culture, and daily activities. Following a brief discussion of the archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence for human–bird relations, this article explores the evidence for birds as both an economic and cosmological resource at the Ipiutak site on the northwest coast of Alaska. Several lines of evidence indicate that hunters and shamans have consistently attempted to mimic or acquire the abilities and physical attributes of select bird taxa, reflecting a sophisticated knowledge of bird behaviours and life histories. A specific concern with vision – shamanic, predatory, and post-mortem – is inferred from an unusual Ipiutak burial assemblage that contained a loon skull with ivory eyes. Considered in light of the broader cemetery assemblage, which includes artefacts with bird imagery, the Ipiutak material is interpreted as evidence of perspectivism in western arctic prehistory.     

In visibilities: the Groupe du 6 novembre and the production of liberal lesbian identity in contemporary France

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the little-known contributions of a Paris-based activist group of self-identified lesbians of colour, the Groupe du 6 novembre, which formed in 1999. Their self-published anthology, entitled Warriors/Guerrières, contests the racism of French feminist and LGBT community and culture and examines sexual minority visibility through an intersectional lens. This anthology was unfortunately contested and all but censored by organisations that purportedly sought to promote lesbian culture and self-expression. The Groupe du 6 novembre’s erasure is symptomatic of the ways in which the seemingly laudable aim of combating lesbian invisibility—within both scholarship and activism—can actually serve to marginalise racialised lesbians. Through close readings of the Groupe’s poetry and prose and documentation of their history, this article will argue that dominant conceptions of lesbian sexual identity are imbued with liberal racism and Republican universalism. At a time of increasing concern that certain forms of feminist and LGBT politics are being co-opted by the State to racist ends, the Groupe du 6 novembre constitutes an essential chapter in French feminist history and literature.     

Nostalgia for ‘innocent homely pleasures’: The 1964 New Zealand Controversy over Washday at the Pa

In 1964, the New Zealand Department of Education withdrew and destroyed 38,000 copies of Washday at the Pa, a booklet depicting Maori family life, at the request of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. This essay explores the raced and gendered context of the ensuing uproar in the press, which debated aspects of New Zealand identity. It situates the Washday controversy in the context of post-war housing and differential standards of living experienced by Maori and pakeha. It argues that the League upheld claims to both modernity and tradition, while many pakeha used the occasion to express nostalgia for mother–centred domesticity.     

Licensed Native Interpreter:

Many of the cross-cultural intermediaries who figure in the New Zealand historiography operated in ‘middle ground’ situations. However, in New Zealand as elsewhere in the Pacific, intermediaries also had roles to play in settings where the authority of the colonial state was more or less assured. Working from government records and the 1920 diary of the Pakeha interpreter Ben Keys, this article examines the sorts of cross-cultural expertise involved in negotiating sales and leases of Maori land and probes the relationship between such instrumental uses of knowledge of Maori culture and the ethnographic interests that this work nurtured. For some settlers, Keys included, amateur ethnographic inquiry constituted the active intellectual work of being a New Zealander. By examining the work of an intermediary and amateur ethnographer in an age of automobiles and cinemas, I seek to demonstrate — in a modest, textured way — how the colonization of New Zealand was an ongoing, twentieth-century process in the sphere of economics and law as well as culture and identity.     

A Preliminary List of Patristic and Other Authors Cited in the Middle English Prose Sermon: An Introduction to an Online Resource in Progress

Abstract

This article provides an explanation of and abstraction from the material available as an online resource. This material consists of patristic and other citations found in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English prose sermon.     

State Ceremonial,Court Culture and Political Power in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1746

In early modern Europe the court of a prince was many things: the household of a prince, a point of contact between the ruler and the elites, a cultural trendsetter, a focal point of patronage and an important institution of regional and international politics. In short, the court had many functions. In this article the focus is on the main lines of development in the court culture of early modern Denmark, from the Reformation (1536) until early Absolutism. Certain structural changes are highlighted and an attempt is made to explain them in political terms. As a prelude, I offer some theoretical reflections on the meaning of court culture in general and ceremonial culture in particular. Let me say from the outset that I have found my inspiration mainly in German and American historical scholarship, which for the past twenty years or so has witnessed a continuous and fruitful debate on the early modern court.     

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.