In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death

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In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (eBook) Pub. Date: 12/1/2011 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death Pub. Date: 1/2/2012 Publisher: Oxford University Press

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Overview

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Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism's earliest beliefs and practices.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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Mormonism is much in the news these days, primarily due to two Mormons running for the presidency. In fact, from its earliest days, the religion of the Saints has attracted notice for its expansive doctrinal innovations and its unusual lifestyle. In this groundbreaking and important volume, Brown, assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Utah, delves deeply into the many streams of thought that informed Smith’s formulation of the life hereafter. He shows how, when integrated into the larger Mormon scheme of temple-based worship, priesthood authority, and the ongoing ministration of angels, while somewhat foreign to modern thought, early Mormon beliefs display “a stunning ambition and coherence.” And this is, after all, the genius of Joseph Smith. Emerging at a time of intense religious competition, Smith and his closest associates developed a wonderfully complex belief system that mapped out the next life with clarity and consistency. Brown offers us a masterful look at this intriguing aspect of the Mormon worldview. This is must reading for students of the American religious tradition. (Jan.)

Library Journal

As a discipline, Mormon studies has advanced to the point where development of Mormon doctrine has become a significant topic of research, exemplified by Douglas J. Davies's The Mormon Culture of Salvation and Devery S. Anderson's mesmerizing The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846–2000. Brown (pulmonary & critical care medicine, Univ. of Utah Sch. of Medicine) ably tackles Mormon beliefs about death in a highly readable series of connected essays. Most important to Brown's work is the relationship between Joseph Smith's confrontation with death and illness in his own family and the larger culture of death in the early 19th-century United States, the context that was the basis of Smith's evolving thought on death and the interconnecting Mormon doctrines of the preexistence of souls, Mother in Heaven, angels, and the embodiment of God. VERDICT Readers should not be put off because Brown is not a professional historian. He has covered the primary sources in depth and unearthed little-used materials to support his argument. Students of American religious history will be interested in this readable book as will a more general readership.—David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780199793570
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 1/2/2012
Pages: 408
Sales rank: 295,160
Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Samuel Brown is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Utah/Intermountain Medical Center and the translator of Aleksandr Men's Son of Man.

Part I: Death, Dying, and the Dead Chapter 1. ''Melancholly Reflections'': Joseph Smith and Holy Dying Chapter 2. The Corpse and its Rest Chapter 3. Relics, Graves, and the Treasure Quest Chapter 4. Hallowed Ground: Tombs, Indians, and Eden Chapter 5. Seerhood, Pure Language, and the Silence of the Grave

Part II: Everlasting Communities Chapter 6. The New and Everlasting Covenant Chapter 7. Negotiating Death and Afterlife in Nauvoo Chapter 8. The ''Lineage of my Preast Hood'' and the Chain of Belonging Chapter 9. Divine Anthropology: Translating the Suprahuman Chain Chapter 10. ''Death Cannot Conquer the Hero Again'': The Death and Afterlife of a Martyr

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In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death

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Overview

Editorial Reviews

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