A Servant of the Most High God: Elijah Able and the Priesthood Restriction

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Juan Valladares and Dr. Gerrit van Dyk, Religion and Family History Department Project Purpose The goal of this project is twofold: first, we outlined the life and ministry of Elijah Able, an early Mormon Pioneer and the first well documented African American man to be ordained to the Priesthood. Second, we historically analyzed “the priesthood […]

A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation

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Haley Wilson and Thomas Wayment, Ancient Scripture The following are a few key passages from the article we wrote together. When we first started the project our goal was the following: to compare the changes made by Joseph Smith to the Bible with contemporary commentaries of his day. In so doing I hope to tentatively reconstruct […]

The Papers of Jay Jensen and the Japan First Mission

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Academic objectives of our research project have been extremely successful. Several of our students produced papers from our research and presented them at a regional conference of the Association for Asian Studies. One of our students published her essay in the Religious Education student journal and won an award for her contribution. We have produced […]

Utah Territory in Official Civil War Records

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Kenneth L. Alford, Church History and Doctrine Evaluation of how well the academic objectives of the proposal were met The purpose of this project was to find, transcribe, assemble, categorize, organize, edit, and publish (both a printed version and an electronic database version) the official records relating to Utah Territory’s involvement in the Civil War. […]

MEG Grant Final Report 2014-2015

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Robert P. Minert, Ph.D., A.G., Religious Education In 2013, I was awarded a mentoring grant under the MEG program for calendar years 2014-2015. The grant was for $20,000, all money stipulated for use as student wages. Advanced students of Germanic family history and German language were hired to extract data on German immigrants from old […]

Reexamining Creation: Understanding the Relationship between the Qal and Piel Uses of ברא

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Juan Pinto and David Seely, Ancient Scripture The first chapter of Genesis begins with two Hebrew words that have been the focus of much debate among biblical scholars. The second word, ברא , most often translated as created, has a history and nuanced meaning that has proven particularly difficult to pin down. Though it is […]

Women and Early Twentieth-Century LDS Missiology

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Louisa Greear and Michael MacKay, Religious Education Introduction As a research assistant for Dr. Michael MacKay and Dr. Gregory Wilkinson, I transcribed journals from missionaries in the Frist Japan Mission. As I transcribed these journals, a particular person really jumped out at me: Edna Harker Thomas. Sister Thomas was not only the wife of the […]

Their Hispanic Heritage: The Preservation of Different Cultures in LDS Spanish-speaking Congregations

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Jeremy Ingersoll and Gerrit van Dyk, Religion In the early ‘90s, ninety-four Hispanic members of the LDS church were interviewed by the BYU Redd Center for Western Studies and provided oral histories. All interviewees were from a Spanish-speaking country or were the children of parents who came to the United States from a Spanish-speaking country, […]

From Punjab to Provo: Assimilation and Alienation of Asian Mormons in the Heart of LDS Culture

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Rabia Cheema and Gregory Wilkinson, Religion Department Introduction After moving to the United States and especially in a culture like BYU, I wanted to share my experiences as an immigrant. Through this paper, I wanted to open up about the struggles that I believe that almost every immigrant in the United States goes through. To […]