Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays

Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays - Paperback

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Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays
  • Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays
Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays - Paperback

Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays - Paperback

by Richard Lyman Bushman
$64.80
$64.80

Book Overview

by Richard Lyman Bushman (Author), Reid Neilson (Editor), Jed Woodworth (Editor)

The eminent historian Richard Bushman here reflects on his faith and the history of his religion. By describing his own struggle to find a basis for belief in a skeptical world, Bushman poses the question of how scholars are to write about subjects in which they are personally invested. Does personal commitment make objectivity impossible? Bushman explicitly, and at points confessionally, explains his own commitments and then explores Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from the standpoint of belief.

Joseph Smith cannot be dismissed as a colorful fraud, Bushman argues, nor seen only as a restorer of religious truth. Entangled in nineteenth-century Yankee culture--including the skeptical Enlightenment--Smith was nevertheless an original who cut his own path. And while there are multiple contexts from which to draw an understanding of Joseph Smith (including magic, seekers, the Second Great Awakening, communitarianism, restorationism, and more), Bushman suggests that Smith stood at the cusp of modernity and presented the possibility of belief in a time of growing skepticism.

When examined carefully, the Book of Mormon is found to have intricate subplots and peculiar cultural twists. Bushman discusses the book's ambivalence toward republican government, explores the culture of the Lamanites (the enemies of the favored people), and traces the book's fascination with records, translation, and history. Yet Believing History also sheds light on the meaning of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon today. How do we situate Mormonism in American history? Is Mormonism relevant in the modern world?

Believing History offers many surprises. Believers will learn that Joseph Smith is more than an icon, and non-believers will find that Mormonism cannot be summed up with a simple label. But wherever readers stand on Bushman's arguments, he provides us with a provocative and open look at a believing historian studying his own faith.

Author Biography

Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University.

Reid L. Neilson is assistant professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University.

Jed Woodworth is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Number of Pages: 312
Dimensions: 0.55 x 9.21 x 5.89 IN
Illustrated: Yes
Publication Date: February 13, 2007
ISBN9780231130073
Author Richard Lyman Bushman
PublisherColumbia University Press
GenreReligion & spirituality and History
FormatPaperback
PublishedFebruary 2007
LanguageENG- English
Pages312
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

History Nonfiction

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More by Richard Lyman Bushman

On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary

On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary - Paperback

On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary - Paperback

By Richard Lyman Bushman

About Richard Lyman Bushman

Richard L. Bushman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1931. He took his B.A., M.A., and PhD. degrees at Harvard University. He has taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, University of Delaware, and Columbia University, where he is currently Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus. His previous books are From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (1967), Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985), and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, and Cities (1992).

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