BYU Studies

This essay by Elena Jarvis Jube tied for first place in the 2020 Richard H. Cracroft Personal Essay Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies. The author was confronted with the possibility of the death of her fourteen-year-old son. The teenager suffered for days or weeks before being treated for a cyst in his skull. As she watched her son’s suffering, she cried for the suffering of all children, all mothers, and all humanity. Although her son lived, she still felt immense grief. She draws meaning from the words of Dostoevsky and finds in Jesus’ beatitude “Blessed are they that mourn” a reminder of the connection between grief and love, that all our sorrow for another person matters.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - It is a privilege to be with you as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the dedication of the Jerusalem Center and the impact it has made on the lives of so many students, faculty, administrators, members of the Church from around the world, and those who currently reside in the Holy Land. A heartfelt welcome to all. The Jerusalem Center and the events leading to its completion and dedication in 1989 may best be summed up by a response given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland during an interview with a well-known Utah news anchor. When asked about the acquisition of property and construction of the Center, Elder Holland said, “It was nothing short of a miracle. It was a miracle!” Seeing that this conference revolves around Jerusalem, a land of miracles, Elder Holland’s statement seems apropos for much of my own presentation. My assignment is to share in brief the “beginnings” of the Church and its involvement in the sacred land where our Savior lived, died, and was resurrected. While the majority of this presentation will focus on Orson Hyde, the first portion of it is devoted to shedding light on Joseph Smith and his prophetically motivated influences on Hyde’s mission and the gathering of dispersed Israel.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - A timeline of important events beginning with the first mission call to the Holy Land in 1840 and ending in the year 2020.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - The Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was dedicated on May 16, 1989. Located on Mount Scopus, the Center offers an amazing view of Jerusalem and puts the Center’s students in the heart of Jerusalem within easy walking distance of the Mount of Olives and the Old City. During the past thirty years, the Jerusalem Center has made a significant impact on Jerusalem as well as on all those who have studied and worked there. Known locally as “The Mormon University,” this beautiful building with its many arches provides an inspiring venue for studying history, culture, and scripture; for community outreach; and for promoting the concept that Israelis and Palestinians can work harmoniously together. The thirtieth anniversary of the Center’s dedication provided a good vantage point from which to assess and commemorate this wonderful building and the study-abroad and other programs it houses. As the anniversary neared, several individuals approached the Jerusalem Center Provo Office suggesting something be done to celebrate it. We express gratitude to them for their interest in the Center and particularly note the encouragement received from Grant Underwood, Amber Taylor, and Jeffrey R. Chadwick.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - A poem by Tyler Chadwick.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In the spring of 2015, I encountered two worlds within twenty-four hours—worlds yoked by creed but divided by demographic and disposition. On a crisp Wednesday evening in May, I was invited to attend a cocktail reception at the New York Yacht Club for a celebration among Jews, Catholics, and Evangelicals honoring the legacy of a man named Dietrich von Hildebrand, a philosopher and anti-Nazi hero during World War II. The room was filled with intellectuals, politicos, bankers, and think-tankers, and they were largely male and all Caucasian. These were true believers, and yet they felt isolated in their faith amid a secular elite, beleaguered as well by a mainstream culture that seemed increasingly hostile to some fundamental principles. … Not twenty-four hours later I was sitting in the front row of Bethel Gospel Assembly Church in Harlem, waiting for graduates of Nyack College to walk down the aisle and receive their hoods. Nyack is a Christian university whose campus in Battery Park draws from the hundreds of storefront churches that line the boroughs beyond Manhattan. The pews were overflowing with immigrant families, Asians, Latins, and African Americans hailing from Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and beyond, with the bulk of the international students coming from the Majority World. I watched a seventy-nine-year-old grandmother ascend the stage and collect her diploma for the first time, followed by a Chinese woman in a wheelchair, followed by a single mother, followed by an ex-offender.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - In their work An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America, authors Richard E. Turley Jr. and Clinton D. Christensen have compiled a documentary history of the 1948 journey of Apostle Stephen L Richards and his wife, Irene Merrill Smith Richards, to South America. Turley is a former assistant Church historian and former managing director of the Department of Public Affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Christensen has spent much of his career at the Church History Department collecting Latter-day Saint history from Latin America. An Apostolic Journey recounts how Richards inspected missionary work in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil and offered suggestions to missionaries, to mission presidents, and later to General Authorities of the Church about the growth of missionary work in the postwar era. His journey marked the first visit of a General Authority to South America in over two decades.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - Even considering the fine books and articles on the history of Latter-day Saint women that have been written in the last fifty years, there are still innumerable questions about early Utah women to be explored. For example, how did the votes of women in territorial Utah from 1870 on affect local and territorial elections? Who were the first female politicians in Utah, and what did they accomplish? In what ways were Latter-day Saint women involved in the national suffrage movement in the United States? How did Kanab, Utah, come to have an entire slate of female city officials, and what did they achieve during their service? In addition, there are questions specifically related to the Relief Society: What did the sisters achieve in their work of saving wheat, raising silkworms and spinning silk, and training midwives? Furthermore, beyond a purely academic or historical interest, individuals yearn to know more about the lives and experiences of their own foremothers, actual and spiritual. There are many resources that can provide insights into these and other questions about historical Latter-day Saint women. Some materials are focused on Mormon studies, but others are much broader. All the resources described in this article are open access, which means they can be searched for free anytime from anywhere. Some resources provide just references, while others include the full text of various documents. This article will be a journey through the world of libraries, archives, and publications of all types.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - A poem by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

Volume 59:3 (2020) - This is half of an interview conducted by Cherry B. Silver on August 8, 2019, in the BYU Studies offices. The other half will be published in a later issue. Many thanks to Laurel Barlow for transcribing the recording. When, as a young woman living in the Boston area, Jill Mulvay Derr heard a lecture by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher about Eliza R. Snow, she immediately felt a great desire to become involved in researching historical Latter-day Saint women. She got her first job as a researcher in the Church History Department at Church headquarters, locating and compiling the poetry of Eliza R. Snow; four decades later she retired from the department as a senior research historian. In her long and prolific career, Derr has also pursued research, writing, and teaching at Brigham Young University in the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, where she eventually served as associate director and then director, and also as an associate professor of Church history. She was president of the Mormon History Association and helped organize the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team. Derr has published a number of landmark books, including Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints (with Kenneth W. Godfrey and Audrey M. Godfrey); Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (with Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Janath Russell Cannon); Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry (with Karen Lynn Davidson); The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (with Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow); and The Life and Faith of Eliza R. Snow (with Karen Lynn Davidson). Throughout her career, she has studied the life and contributions of Eliza R. Snow and is writing a scholarly biography on this important figure in Church history.