Benjamin E Park
Biographic Data
| ID | 1108630 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin E Park |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin E |
| FAMILY NAME | Park |
| SIGNATURE | PARK B E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sam Houston State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
J. Reuben Clark's Fundamentalist Reasons for Rejecting Mormon Fundamentalism
John Taylor's September 1886 revelation was an impossibility for J. Reuben Clark. The newly-appointed First Presidency counselor had a very precise and systematic approach to religion, one that reaffirmed ecclesiastical authority, doctrinal purity, and historical consistency—all three principles that would be undercut should the alleged manuscript in John Taylor's hand be proven credible. The cognitive dissonance caused by the revelation, both it…
The November 2015 Policy and the Long History of LDS Ecclesiastical Exclusion
The decision by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to implement a new policy in November 2015 that categorized those who entered into a same-sex marriage as apostates, and restricted salvific ordinances from the children of such unions, came as a shock to many. But such an institutional practice of exclusion had a long history.Without documents from those who were in the room, we may never know the precise machinations tha…
The Long Road to the “Long-Promised Day
Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture
When fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as Church authorities grew increasingly outspoken in denouncing what Dallin Oaks called “alternative voices.” Ecclesiastical officials had issued a “Statement on Symposia” after Sunstone's 1991 conference that condemned …
American Religious Ecologies
Journal Article American Religious Ecologies Get access American Religious Ecologies, http://religiousecologies.org. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Reviewed fall 2022. Benjamin E Park Benjamin E Park Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 1, June 2023, Pages 192–194, https://do…
The Transcendentalists and Their World
Few books have been as heavily anticipated within the academic community as Robert Gross's The Transcendentalists and Their World. The sequel to The Minutemen and Their World (1976), this new work completes Gross's magisterial social history of the sleepy, yet significant town of Concord, Massachusetts, taking the story through the early republic and into the antebellum period. It is a model of exhaustive research, penetrating analysis, and movin…
Daniel T. Rodgers. As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon ; Abram C. Van Engen. City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism
One of the few things John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Barack Obama had in common was their attachment to a biblical phrase famously associated with a Puritan leader. “We are as a city on a hill,” they each trumpeted at formal gatherings, proclaiming America’s chosen status and reaffirming their grandiose future. It is a phrase with which most citizens are familiar, as John Winthrop’s “sermon” is nearly universally taught at hig…
William Law’s Diary and the Perils of Suspect Sources
Book Review| April 01 2021 William Law’s Diary and the Perils of Suspect Sources Benjamin E. Park Benjamin E. Park BENJAMIN E. PARK teaches American religious history at Sam Houston State University, and is the coeditor of Mormon Studies Review. His most recent books are Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier (W. W. Norton/Liveright, 2020), and A Companion to American Religious History (Wiley-Blackwell…
Modern Mormonism, Gender, and the Tangled Nature of History
Railroading Religion. Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West, by David Walker
Stephen C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins
American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 205–207 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.23 Book Review Stephen C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) Benjamin E. Park Sam Houston State University, Hunstville, USA The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has frequently been referred to as the “American religion,” primarily due to its bir…
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. By David W. BlightFrederick Douglass: America’s Prophet. By D. H. Dilbeck
One of the first jobs for which Frederick Douglass was ever paid—before editing his first of many newspapers and before taking his first of many government positions—was that of a preacher. And not just a preacher for abolition, though that was always at the forefront of his mind, but also a preacher for the old-fashioned gospel: sin, repentance, and faith. After arriving as a fugitive in New Bedford, Massachusetts, shortly following his escape f…
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1833
America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E. Park traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during the country's first five decades within the context of European discussions taking place at the same time. Focusing on three case studies - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina - Park examines the developing prac…
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833
Joseph Smith's Kingdom of God: The Council of Fifty and the Mormon Challenge to American Democratic Politics
This article contextualizes the origins and development of Joseph Smith's secretive Council of Fifty, a clandestine assembly whose minutes were sequestered from public access since their creation in 1844 and were only made available in September 2016. Organized by Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only months before his death at the hands of a mob in June 1844, the council was destined to introduce a …
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833
Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas
The Altar at Home: Sentimental literature and nineteenth-century American religionCLAUDIA STOKES
Sentimental literature has often been described as atheological and non-partisan, a retreat from the acrimonious debates of religious competition and healing balm for a divided culture. Yet in her
Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America
Following the death of Joseph Smith, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appropriated elements from their surrounding democratic culture, especially tensions of hierarchy and exclusion, in an attempt to consolidate the fledging Mormon movement through a vibrant patriarchal structure. In doing so, they echoed a powerful strain in antebellum society that feared the cultural changes taking place and worried that unfettered dem…
No prominent works on this page.
Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America
Following the death of Joseph Smith, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appropriated elements from their surrounding democratic culture, especially tensions of hierarchy and exclusion, in an attempt to consolidate the fledging Mormon movement through a vibrant patriarchal structure. In doing so, they echoed a powerful strain in antebellum society that feared the cultural changes taking place and worried that unfettered dem…
The Altar at Home: Sentimental literature and nineteenth-century American religionCLAUDIA STOKES
Sentimental literature has often been described as atheological and non-partisan, a retreat from the acrimonious debates of religious competition and healing balm for a divided culture. Yet in her
Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1833
America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E. Park traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during the country's first five decades within the context of European discussions taking place at the same time. Focusing on three case studies - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina - Park examines the developing prac…
American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833
Joseph Smith's Kingdom of God: The Council of Fifty and the Mormon Challenge to American Democratic Politics
This article contextualizes the origins and development of Joseph Smith's secretive Council of Fifty, a clandestine assembly whose minutes were sequestered from public access since their creation in 1844 and were only made available in September 2016. Organized by Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only months before his death at the hands of a mob in June 1844, the council was destined to introduce a …
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. By David W. BlightFrederick Douglass: America’s Prophet. By D. H. Dilbeck
One of the first jobs for which Frederick Douglass was ever paid—before editing his first of many newspapers and before taking his first of many government positions—was that of a preacher. And not just a preacher for abolition, though that was always at the forefront of his mind, but also a preacher for the old-fashioned gospel: sin, repentance, and faith. After arriving as a fugitive in New Bedford, Massachusetts, shortly following his escape f…
Modern Mormonism, Gender, and the Tangled Nature of History
Railroading Religion. Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West, by David Walker
Stephen C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins
American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 205–207 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.23 Book Review Stephen C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) Benjamin E. Park Sam Houston State University, Hunstville, USA The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has frequently been referred to as the “American religion,” primarily due to its bir…
William Law’s Diary and the Perils of Suspect Sources
Book Review| April 01 2021 William Law’s Diary and the Perils of Suspect Sources Benjamin E. Park Benjamin E. Park BENJAMIN E. PARK teaches American religious history at Sam Houston State University, and is the coeditor of Mormon Studies Review. His most recent books are Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier (W. W. Norton/Liveright, 2020), and A Companion to American Religious History (Wiley-Blackwell…
The Transcendentalists and Their World
Few books have been as heavily anticipated within the academic community as Robert Gross's The Transcendentalists and Their World. The sequel to The Minutemen and Their World (1976), this new work completes Gross's magisterial social history of the sleepy, yet significant town of Concord, Massachusetts, taking the story through the early republic and into the antebellum period. It is a model of exhaustive research, penetrating analysis, and movin…
Daniel T. Rodgers. As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon ; Abram C. Van Engen. City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism
One of the few things John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Barack Obama had in common was their attachment to a biblical phrase famously associated with a Puritan leader. “We are as a city on a hill,” they each trumpeted at formal gatherings, proclaiming America’s chosen status and reaffirming their grandiose future. It is a phrase with which most citizens are familiar, as John Winthrop’s “sermon” is nearly universally taught at hig…
Mormon Dissent in the Age of Fracture
When fifteen hundred progressive Mormons attended Sunstone Symposium in August 1992, they did so in protest. The symposium had become a center point in the growing battle between Latter-day Saint leaders and activists, especially as Church authorities grew increasingly outspoken in denouncing what Dallin Oaks called “alternative voices.” Ecclesiastical officials had issued a “Statement on Symposia” after Sunstone's 1991 conference that condemned …
American Religious Ecologies
Journal Article American Religious Ecologies Get access American Religious Ecologies, http://religiousecologies.org. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Reviewed fall 2022. Benjamin E Park Benjamin E Park Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 1, June 2023, Pages 192–194, https://do…
The Long Road to the “Long-Promised Day
J. Reuben Clark's Fundamentalist Reasons for Rejecting Mormon Fundamentalism
John Taylor's September 1886 revelation was an impossibility for J. Reuben Clark. The newly-appointed First Presidency counselor had a very precise and systematic approach to religion, one that reaffirmed ecclesiastical authority, doctrinal purity, and historical consistency—all three principles that would be undercut should the alleged manuscript in John Taylor's hand be proven credible. The cognitive dissonance caused by the revelation, both it…
The November 2015 Policy and the Long History of LDS Ecclesiastical Exclusion
The decision by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to implement a new policy in November 2015 that categorized those who entered into a same-sex marriage as apostates, and restricted salvific ordinances from the children of such unions, came as a shock to many. But such an institutional practice of exclusion had a long history.Without documents from those who were in the room, we may never know the precise machinations tha…
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