If you follow the Mormon blogosphere at all, you may already be aware of the Claremont Journal of Mormon Studies (free PDF here, print version for $5.92 here). This is a new student-run journal put out by the Mormon Studies Student Association here at Claremont Graduate University. It was gorgeously designed by David Golding, who even registered a proprietary font for it. He and his co-editor Loyd Ericson did a fantastic job putting together the first issue.
The issue opens with an editor's introduction by Loyd Ericson, in which he asks, "Where Is the 'Mormon' in Mormon Studies?" Loyd's essay is a celebration of the potential breadth and diversity of Mormon Studies, and provides a useful barometer of the editorial spirit of the CJMS. The editors have a genuine desire to be as inclusive and methodologically permissive as they can be without compromising Claremont's high academic standard.
The next article in the issue is an essay by yours truly, titled "The Inspired Fictionalization of the 1835 United Firm Revelations". This is probably the most intrinsically interesting piece of writing I've published to date. It's about how Joseph Smith altered some revelations about modern persons and events in order to make them appear to be ancient revelations to the patriarch Enoch. I argue that although this was done mainly for practical reasons, the changes also had a powerful mystical meaning for Smith and his followers. I wrote the essay shortly after purchasing Volume 1 of The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations, and I daresay mine is one of the first published articles to make systematic use of that important volume.
The third piece in the issue is a paper by Jordan Watkins titled, "The Great God, the Divine Mind, and the Ideal Absolute: Orson Pratt's Intelligent-Matter Theory and the Gods of Emerson and James". Watkins contributes to a growing literature that situates early Mormon thought against the backdrop of early American Romanticism. This paper might be described as a case study in comparative panentheisms, with Orson Pratt and Ralph Waldo Emerson marking out two ends of a spectrum of theological possibilities. Emerson was an idealist who considered a unified divine Mind to be the source of all the pluralities of the material universe, whereas Pratt was an empiricist who considered the unified divine Mind to be an emergent property of an infinite number of self-existent intelligent atoms. Watkins then uses the empirical pragmatist William James, who leaned toward something similar to Pratt's view, to show the intellectual power and respectability of Pratt's position. Despite their different ontologies, Watkins finds that Pratt's and Emerson's Gods functioned in similar ways and possessed similar attributes.
The fourth and final essay in the volume is Joseph Spencer's "Prolegomena to Any Future Study of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon." Spencer argues that understanding the use of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is central to understanding the message of the Book of Mormon itself. He finds that exegesis of Isaiah features prominently at each of the Book's major "narrative hinges," and argues that in each case Isaiah is used to present a particular interpretation of the baptismal covenant. These are important observations, though after page 62 his presentation was guided by some assumptions about the order of the Book of Mormon's composition that unbelieving scholars such as myself will be unable to accept (see here). Spencer addresses this problem by claiming (taking a cue from Grant Hardy) to be discussing the Book's self-presentation rather than the author's intent, but I can't help but feel that from an unbeliever's perspective this sort of analysis is about as useful as fan fiction or in-universe commentary. I think the Hardy approach suffers from the chief pitfall of the New Criticism: it treats the text as autonomous, as if it can be studied without reference to an author or group of readers. Those looking to build bridges between believing and unbelieving scholars would do better to adopt a phenomenological or reader-response approach of the sort advocated by Terryl Givens.
In any case, I daresay that the first issue of the CJMS was a resounding success. I strongly encourage all you students out there to submit pieces for the next issue. Let's help David and Loyd make the second issue even better than the first!
2 comments:
I read each of the articles and enjoyed all of them. What a great journal!
My favorite was the one on Orson Pratt because I have read much of Orson's stuff and I think the author gets a lot right. And to be honest, Orson's actual writings are so convincing both in logic and scriptural backing that I am surprised his panentheistic ideas are not more Mainstream among other Mormons.
I mean, after reading his writings and scriptures he cites his claims are very convincing indeed.
I'm glad you liked it, Joseph! I haven't read much of Pratt's later theological writings, but after reading Watkins's paper I think I'll have to add some of them to my list.
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