Item Detail
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26291
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Book
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English
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Brown, Samuel Morris
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In Heaven as It Is on Earth : Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death
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New York, NY
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Oxford University Press
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2012
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392
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A compelling new interpretation of early Mormonism, Samuel Brown's In Heaven as It Is On Earth views this religion through the lens of founder Joseph Smith's profound preoccupation with the specter of death.
Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism's earliest beliefs and practices. The world of early Mormonism was besieged by death--infant mortality, violence, and disease were rampant. A prolonged battle with typhoid fever, punctuated by painful surgeries including a threatened leg amputation, and the sudden loss of his beloved brother Alvin cast a long shadow over Smith's own life. Smith embraced and was deeply influenced by the culture of "holy dying"--with its emphasis on deathbed salvation, melodramatic bereavement, and belief in the Providential nature of untimely death--that sought to cope with the widespread mortality of the period. Seen in this light, Smith's treasure quest, search for Native origins, distinctive approach to scripture, and belief in a post-mortal community all acquire new meaning, as do early Mormonism's Masonic-sounding temple rites and novel family system. Taken together, the varied themes of early Mormonism can be interpreted as a campaign to extinguish death forever. By focusing on Mormon conceptions of death, Brown recasts the story of first-generation Mormonism, showing a religious movement and its founder at once vibrant and fragile, intrepid and unsettled, human and otherworldly.
A lively narrative history, In Heaven as It Is on Earth illuminates not only the foundational beliefs of early Mormonism but also the larger issues of family and death in American religious history. -
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225
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"A Continuation of the Seeds" : Joseph Smith and Spirit Birth
"A Negro Preacher" : The Worlds of Elijah Ables
"A Uniformity So Complete" : Early Mormon Angelology
"Build, Therefore, Your Own World" : Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, and American Antebellum Thought
"Reasonings Sufficient" : Joseph Smith, Thomas Dick, and the context(s) of early Mormonism
"Saviors on Mount Zion" : Mormon Sacramentalism, Mortality, and the Baptism for the Dead
"Tempered for Glory" : Brigham Young's Cosmological Theodicy
A Documentary Note on a Letter to Joseph Smith. Romance, Death, and Polygamy : The Life and Times of Susan Hough Conrad and Lorenzo Dow Barnes
A House Full of Females : Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870
Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism
Anchored in Revelation : Scripture and Schism in the Restoration
Balancing Faith and History : A Conversation with James B. Allen
Believing Adoption
Brigham Young : Pioneer Prophet
Debating Succession, March 1846 : John E. Page, Orson Hyde, and the Trajectories of Joseph Smith's Legacy
Documents, Volume 6: February 1838-August 1839
Early Mormon Adoption Theology and the Mechanics of Salvation
Early Mormon Priesthood Revelations : Text, Impact, and Evolution
Feeding the Flock : The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Church and Praxis
Freemasonry and the Origins of Modern Temple Ordinances
Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-making Heresy
Joseph (Smith) in Egypt : Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden
Joseph Smith's Polygamy
Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Levirate Widow
Keeping a Secret : Freemasonry, Polygamy, and the Nauvoo Relief Society, 1842-44
Kirtland Temple : The Biography of a Shared Mormon Sacred Space
Last Rites and the Dynamics of Mormon Liturgy
Manly Virtue : Defining Male Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism
Mexicans, Tourism, and Book of Mormon Geography
Mormon Christianity : What Other Christians can learn from the Latter-day Saints
Mormon Women's History : Beyond Biography
Mormonism and Anthropology : On Ways of Knowing
New Perspectives in Mormon Studies : Creating and Crossing Boundaries
Playing Lamanite : Ecstatic Performance of American Indian Roles In Early Mormon Ohio
Race and the Making of the Mormon People
Race and the Making of the Mormon People
Reconsidering Lucy Mack Smith's Folk Magic Confession
Salvation through a Tabernacle : Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment
Seer Stones, Salamanders, and Early Mormon "Folk Magic" in the Light of Folklore Studies and Bible Scholarship
The Case of the Missing Commentary
The Early Mormon Chain of Belonging
The Language of Heaven : Prolegomenon to the Study of Smithian Translation
The Mormon Jesus : A Biography
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
The Power of Godliness : Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology
The Reluctant Metaphysicians
To Mend A Fractured Reality : Joseph Smith's Project
Toward a Catholic History of Mormonism
William Smith's Patriarchal Blessings and Contested Authority in the Post-Martyrdom Church
Women and Mormonism : Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Wrestling the Angel : The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Cosmos, God, Humanity -
History of the Life of Oliver B. Huntington, Written by Himself, 1878-1900
"A Pentecost and Endowment Indeed" : Six Eyewitness Accounts of the Kirtland Temple Experience
"They Shall be Made Whole" : A History of Baptism for Health
"To Lie in Yonder Tomb" : The Tomb and Burial of Joseph Smith
"We Latter-day Saints are Methodists" : The Influence of Methodism on Early Mormon Religiosity
'All Things Move in Order in the City' : The Nauvoo Diary of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs
'Not to be Riten' : The Mormon Temple Rite as Oral Canon
'Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry' : The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism
'They Might Have Known That He Was Not a Fallen Prophet' : The Nauvoo Journal of Joseph Fielding
'What Has Become of Our Fathers?' Baptism for the Dead at Nauvoo
'Wild Bill' Hickman and the Mormon Frontier
4 Zinas : A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier
A Book of Mormons
A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (Commonly Called Mormons)
A Call to Arms : The 1838 Defense of Northern Missouri
A Correct Account of the Murder of Generals Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, on the 27th day of June, 1844
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume One, 1830-1847
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume Two, 1848-1852
A Girl's Letters from Nauvoo
A Pathway to Prophethood : Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet
A Textual History of the Book of Abraham : Manuscripts and Editions
Adam-ondi-Ahman
Adam-ondi-Ahman : A Brief Historical Survey
All Abraham's Children : Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage
An Intimate Chronicle : The Journals of William Clayton
An Ordered Love : The Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias--The Shakers, The Mormons, and The Oneida Community
Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Antebellum America
Becoming a People : The Beliefs and Practices of the Early Mormons, 1830-1845
Believing History : Latter-day Saints Essays
Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Bones in the Well : The Haun's Mill Massacre, 1838, A Documentary History
Building the City of God : Community and Cooperation among the Mormons
Carthage Conspiracy : The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith
Church, State, and Politics : The Diaries of John Henry Smith
Comparative Images : Mormonism and Contemporary Religions as Seen by Village Newspapermen in Western New York and Northeastern Ohio, 1820-1833
Death at Mormon Nauvoo, 1843-1845
Disease and Sickness in Nauvoo
Dissent and Schism in the Early Church : Explaining Mormon Fissiparousness
Doctrine and the Temple in Nauvoo
Doing the Works of Abraham : Mormon Polygamy : Its Origin, Practice, and Demise
Early Mormon Adoption Theology and the Mechanics of Salvation
Early Mormon Historiography : Writing the History of the Mormons, 1830-1858
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
Edward Hunter : Faithful Steward
Eliza R. Snow : The Complete Poetry
Eliza R. Snow and the Prophet's Gold Watch : Time Keeper as Relic
Encyclopedia of Mormonism : The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Female Life Among the Mormons ; A Narrative of Many Years' Personal Experience
From Historian to Dissident : The Book of John Whitmer
From Mission to Madness : Last Son of the Mormon Prophet
Gates Ajar : Death in Mormon Thought and Practice
George Laub's Nauvoo Journal
Give It All Up and Follow Your Lord : Mormon Female Religiosity, 1831-1843
Gleanings By the Way
Health and Medicine among the Latter-day Saints : Science, Sense, and Scripture
Hearken, O Ye People : The Historical Setting for Joseph Smith's Ohio Revelations
History of the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from November 1869 to June 1910
Illusions of Innocence : Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875
In Sacred Loneliness : The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith
Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon : Religious Solutions from Columbus to Joseph Smith
Inventing Mormonism : Tradition and the Historical Record
Isaiah in the Book of Mormon : Or Joseph Smith in Isaiah
John M. Bernhisel, Mormon Elder in Congress
Joseph (Smith) in Egypt : Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden
Joseph Knight's Recollection of Early Mormon History
Joseph Smith : 'The Gift of Seeing'
Joseph Smith : Rough Stone Rolling
Joseph Smith : The Making of a Prophet
Joseph Smith III : Pragmatic Prophet
Joseph Smith III's 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah
Joseph Smith Portraits : A Search for the Prophet's Likeness
Joseph Smith and Kabbalah : The Occult Connection
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith and the Clash of Sacred Cultures
Joseph Smith and the Manchester (New York) Library
Joseph Smith and the Masons
Joseph Smith's 19 July 1840 Discourse
Joseph Smith's Boyhood Operation : An 1813 Surgical Success
Joseph Smith's First Vision : Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts
Joseph Smith's Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question
Joseph Smith's New England Heritage
Joseph Smith's Performance of Marriages in Ohio
Joseph Smith's Prophecies of Martyrdom
Joseph Smith's Revision of the Bible : Fraudulent, Pathologic, or Prophetic?
Joseph Smith's Scriptural Cosmology
Joseph Smith, Jesus, and Satanic Opposition : Atonement, Evil, and the Mormon Vision
Joseph Smith, W. W. Phelps, and the Poetic Paraphrase of 'The Vision'
Kinderhook Plates Brought to Joseph Smith Appear to Be a Nineteenth-Century Hoax
Kirtland Council Minute Book
Last Rites and the Dynamics of Mormon Liturgy
Leaves from My Journal
Lost Legacy : The Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch
Memoirs of the Persecuted : Persecution, Memory, and the West as a Mormon Refuge
More Wives than One : Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910
Mormon Enigma : Emma Hale Smith
Mormon Polygamy : A History
Mormonism : embracing the origin, rise and progress of the sect
Mormonism Exposed, Being a Journal of a Residence in Missouri from the 28th of May to the 20th of August, 1838
Mormonism In All Ages : Or, The Rise, Progress and Causes of Mormonism
Mormonism Portrayed : Its Errors and Absurdities Exposed, and the Spirit and Designs of Its Authors Made Manifest
Mormonism Unvailed : Or, a Faithful Account of That Singular Imposition and Delusion From Its Rise to the Present Time
Mormonism Unveiled : Zion's Watchman Unmasked
Mormonism and Music : A History
Mormonism and the American Experience
Mormonism and the Male-Female God : An Exploration in Active Mysticism
Mormonism and the Mormons
Mormonism's 'Anti-Masonick Bible'
Mormons and Archaeology : An Outside View
Mormons and Native Americans : A Historical and Bibliographical Introduction
Moroni : Angel or Treasure Guardian?
Mound-builders, Mormons, and William Cullen Bryant
My Life's Review
Mysteries of Godliness : A History of Mormon Temple Worship
Mysteries of the Kingdom : More or Less
Nauvoo : A Place of Peace, a People of Promise
Nauvoo Polygamy : "... But We Called it Celestial Marriage"
Nauvoo Proxy Marriage Sealings, 1843-1846
Nauvoo's Masonic Hall
New Light on Old Egyptiana : Mormon Mummies 1848-71
Newel and Lydia Bailey Knight's Kirtland Love Story and Historic Wedding
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Oliver Cowdery's Kirtland, Ohio, 'Sketch Book'
On the Mormon Frontier : The Diary of Hosea Stout [1844-1861]
Parting the Veil : Joseph Smith's Seventy-six Documented Visionary Experiences
Personal Writings of Joseph Smith
Poetic Borrowing in Early Mormonism
Power from on High : The Development of Mormon Priesthood
Promises Made to the Fathers : Mormon Covenant Organization
Quest for Empire : The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History
Quest for Refuge : The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism
Quintessential Mormonism : Literal-mindedness as a Way of Life
Raising The Dead, Mormons, Evangelicals, and Miracles in America
Rediscovering the Context of Joseph Smith's Treasure Seeking
Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans
Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet, and the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon
Revelations and Translations, Volume 2 : Published Revelations of the Joseph Smith Papers
Revelations in Context : Joseph Smith's Letter from Liberty Jail, March 20, 1839
Salvation through a Tabernacle : Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment
Samuel Tyler Lawrence : A Significant Figure in Joseph Smith's Palmyra Past
Seeking the 'Remnant' : The Native American during the Joseph Smith Period
Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds : Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries
Some Themes of Counter-Subversion : An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature
Speaking in Tongues in the Restoration Churches
Still 'Side by Side'--The Final Burial of Joseph and Hyrum Smith
Studies of the Book of Mormon
Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith
Telling Stories about Mormons and Indians
The 'Beautiful Death' In the Smith Family
The Anointed Quorum in Nauvoo 1842-45
The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
The Book of Mormon : A Reader's Edition
The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse
The Burned-Over District : The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850
The Canes of the Martyrdom
The Cemetery Record of William D. Huntington, Nauvoo Sexton
The City of the Mormons : Or, Three Days at Nauvoo
The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California
The Complete Record of the Nauvoo Library and Literary Institute
The Crimsoned Hills of Onondaga : Josiah Priest's Hallucinatory Epic
The Danite Band of 1838
The Danites Reconsidered : Were They Vigilantes or Just the Mormons' Version of the Elks Club?
The Democratization of American Christianity
The Diaries of Charles Ora Card : The Utah Years 1871-1886
The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment : Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives
The Early Mormon Chain of Belonging
The Early Republic's Supernatural Economy : Treasure Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780-1830
The Early Temples of the Mormons : The Architecture of the Millennial Kingdom in the American West
The Facsimile Found : The Recovery of Joseph Smith's Papyrus Manuscripts
The First Mormon Temple : Design, Construction, and Historic Context of the Kirtland Temple
The Forms and the Power : The Development of Mormon Ritual Healing to 1847
The Heavens Resound : A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1838
The History of the Saints : Or, An Expose? of Joe Smith and Mormonism
The House of the Lord : A Study of Holy Sanctuaries Ancient and Modern
The Introduction of Mormonism to Finnish Society, 1840-1900
The Joseph Smith Translation and Ancient Texts of the Bible
The Joseph/Hyrum Smith Funeral Sermon
The Journals of William E. McLellin 1831-1836
The King Follett Discourse : Joseph Smith's Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective
The Kirtland Economy Revisited : A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics
The Kirtland Temple
The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests
The Mantle of Joseph : Creation of a Mormon Miracle
The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brother Brigham : A Collective Spiritual Witness
The Martyrdom Remembered : A One-hundred-fifty-year Perspective on the Assasination of Joseph Smith
The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism
The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon
The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven
The Mormon Culture of Salvation : Force, Grace, and Glory
The Mormon Hierarchy : Origins of Power
The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844
The Mormons
The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845-1846 : A Documentary History
The New England Origins of Mormonism
The Occult Connection? Mormonism, Christian Science, and Spiritualism
The Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 1 : Autobiographical and Historical Writings
The Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 2 : Journal, 1832-1842
The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting
The Prophet of the Nineteenth Century
The Reality of the Restoration and the Restoration Ideal in the Mormon Tradition
The Refiner's Fire : The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844
The Saintly Scoundrel : The life and times of Dr. John Cook Bennett
The Significance of 'O My Father' in the Personal Journey of Eliza R. Snow
The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' In Mormon Thought
The Story of the Book of Abraham : Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism
The Sword of Laban : Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind
The Translator and the Ghostwriter : Joseph Smith and W. W. Phelps
The Versatile W. W. Phelps--Mormon Writer, Educator, and Pioneer
The Village Enlightenment in America : Science and the Emergence of New Religious Ideas, 1830 - 1860
The Visionary World of Joseph Smith
The William E. McLellin Papers, 1854-1880
The Women of Mormondom
The Writing of Joseph Smith's History
The Zelph Story
Translating Time : The Nature and Function of Joseph Smith's Narrative Cannon
Trials of Discipleship : The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon
Truman Coe's 1836 Description of Mormonism
Vicissitudes Illustrated, in the Experience of Nancy Towle, in Europe and America
View of the Hebrews, or, The Tribes of Israel in America
When Souls Had Wings : Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought
Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord?
Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57
William Phelps's Paracletes, An Early Witness to Smith's Divine Anthropology
Winter Quarters : The 1846-48 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards
Women, Family, and Utopia : Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons
Writing to Zion : The William W. Phelps Kirtland Letters (1835-1836)