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NEILSON, REID L. (EDITOR) WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY ALEXANDER, THOMAS G. & SHIPPS, JAN. ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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NEILSON, REID L. (EDITOR) WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY ALEXANDER, THOMAS G. & SHIPPS, JAN. In The Whirlpool: The Pre-manifesto Letters Of President Wilford Woodruff To The William Atkin Family, 1885-1890.
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman: 2011. h Hardcover with dustjacket. Brand new book.
A Latter-day Saints president's personal letters leading up to the end of polygamy. Political and religious turmoil in the late 1800s plagued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leaders. As Utah statehood loomed, Congress aggressively moved against Mormons who engaged in polygamy. More than a thousand men were jailed and others were forced into hiding. One of those who went into hiding in 1879 was Wilford Woodruff, who became church president in 1887. Woodruff sought sanctuary with the family of William and Rachel Atkin and others throughout the 1880s. This never-before-published collection of Woodruff's letters to the Atkins, edited by Reid L. Neilson, reveals the church leader's political and spiritual conflicts in the five years leading up to his 1890 Manifesto, which officially disallowed polygamy. Woodruff's nearly 60 letters reproduced here depict a man "in the midst of a whirlpool." The church leader believed he and his people were being denied the basic American right to practice the religion of their choice, yet he recognized that polygamy was incompatible with American society. The letters also reveal Woodruff's humanityÑhis longing to be with friends, his sorrow over the loss of his first wife, and his struggle with illness. Essays by Neilson, Jan Shipps, and Thomas G. Alexander provide context for Woodruff's writing. Neilson discusses the Atkins' family life, Alexander offers a history of plural marriage among Mormons, and Shipps analyzes the impact of the Manifesto on Mormon women and men. Nearly 20 images further flesh out the correspondence and its depiction of Mormon peopleÑwho were then, like Woodruff, in the midst of change. Reid L. Neilson is Managing Director of the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and author and editor of numerous books on Mormonism. Thomas G. Alexander is Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr., Professor of Western American History Emeritus at Brigham Young University and author of Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930. Jan Shipps is Professor of History and Religious Studies at Indiana UniversityÑPurdue University at Indianapolis. A former president of the Mormon History Association, she is the author of the highly acclaimed Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition.
Price:
29.95 USD
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