Item Detail
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13571
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3
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44
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English
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A Personal Odyssey Revisited : My Continuing Encounter with Mormon History
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Journal of Mormon History
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Spring 2004
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30
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no.1
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Mormon History Association
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1-36
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Foster, a non-Mormon, discusses why so few non-Mormon scholars have become professionally involved with Mormon history. He describes his personal background which has influenced his unorthodox approach to Mormon history. He concludes that no religion has a monopoly on absolute truth. He compares the marriage ideals of the Shakers and the Oneida Perfectionists with the origins of polygamy within Mormon theology. His continuing interest in Mormonism was stimulated by his access to primary records of the Church early in his career. Non-Mormon historians often encountered difficulties in obtaining access to these primary records and also suffered limitations in understanding the Mormon past on its own terms. Foster's advantage has been his belief that even the most baffling questions would make sense if investigated fully and his lack of fear of what he may find makes him free to investigate controversial questions. Foster's goal is to discover, to the greatest extent possible, what actually happened in the past. Many scholars believe that the material world is the only one that exists. Foster wants to develop a materialistic middle ground that could make sense in very different ways to both Mormons and non-Mormons by objectively opening the possibility of other dimensions of reality, 'particularly spiritual worlds.' Foster believes that a valuable approach in preserving historical studies of Mormonism lies in the belief that religion can be reviewed as by an anthropologist of the past. The historian's chief task is to try to present different ways of looking at living in a world at different times and places seeking to translate such experiences into the present so they can have meaning for our own time as well.
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Beyond Black Muslims and Reorganized Mormons : The Transformation of Two New Religious Movements in America
The Psychology and Prophetic Charisma : New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership
The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma : New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership -
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume One, 1830-1847
Adventures of a Church Historian
A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842
Among the Mormons : Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers
A Mormon Bibliography, 1830-1930 : Books, Pamphlets, Periodicals, and Broadsides Relating to the First Century of Mormonism
An American Prophet's Record : The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith
Apostate Believers : Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Encounter with Mormon History
A Thoughtful Faith : Essays on Belief by Mormon Scholars
Differing Visions : Dissenters in Mormon History
Early Mormon Documents : Volume I
Early Mormon Documents : Volume II
Early Mormon Documents : Volume III
Early Mormon Documents : Volume IV
Early Mormon Documents : Volume V
From Frontier Activism to Neo-Victorian Domesticity : Mormon Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Great Basin Kingdom : An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith : the First Mormon
Mormon Americana : A Guide to Sources and Collections in the United States
Mormon America : The Power and the Promise
Mormonism : The Story of a New Religious Tradition
Mormon Mavericks : Essays on Dissenters
New Paradigms for Understanding Mormonism and Mormon History
New Perspectives on the Mormon Past
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Prophecy and Palimpsest
Religion and Sexuality : Three American Communal Experiments in the Nineteenth Century
Sex and Prophetic Power : A Comparison of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community, with Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormon Prophet
Sojourner in the Promised Land : Forty years among the Mormons
Studies in Mormon History 1830-1997 : An Indexed Bibliography
Ten Years in Camelot : A Personal Memoir
The Angel and the Beehive : The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation
The Development of Mormon Communitarianism, 1826-1846
The Lord's University : Freedom and Authority at BYU
The Mormons
The Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 1 : Autobiographical and Historical Writings
The Prophet Puzzle : Interpretive Essays on Joseph Smith
The Psychology and Prophetic Charisma : New Approaches to Understanding Joseph Smith and the Development of Charismatic Leadership
The Psychology of Religious Genius : Joseph Smith and the Origins of New Religious Movements
The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism
The Social Sources of Mormonism
The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion
The True Origin of Mormon Polygamy
Women, Family, and Utopia : Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons