Item Detail
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25614
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0
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0
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English
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"Complexity and Richness" : Reenvisioning the Middle Ages for Mormon Historical Narratives
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Standing Apart : Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy
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Oxford, NY
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Oxford University Press
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242-264
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The concept of the Dark Ages has seemed congenial to a Mormon theology of history. As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in particular, has advocated for the necessity (and adopted a concomitant vocabulary) of apostasy and restoration, the notion invented by Renaissance humanists and later furthered by both Protestant polemicists and anticlerical modernists of a dark “middle age” between two epochs of light has appeared to map conveniently onto its assertions about the chronology of the mission of Jesus Christ, his church, and the prophet Joseph Smith within the grand drama of salvation...The use of darkness to describe the period before Joseph Smith (and especially the Middle Ages) continues to color LDS apostasy and restoration narratives that build upon the foundational work of Talmage and others.
While the essential features of this view remained almost entirely unchanged in historical treatments of the apostasy and restoration written for an LDS audience across the twentieth century, Dursteler expressed hope at the opening of the twenty-first that the decisive rejection of the darkness metaphor by professional scholars over the past century could lead to a more nuanced approach to LDS periodization and perhaps a reenvisioning of the significance of the concept of apostasy and restoration for Mormon narratives of history.[From the article]