February 7-8, 2020 — Center for Latter-day Saint Arts Dallas Festival

Miller Eccles Study Group Texas is thrilled to participate in “The Better Part: Women, Art, Faith” — the first-ever satellite festival of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, which will be held in Dallas on February 7 and 8, 2020.

Highlights of the festival include:

• A keynote address by Sister Sharon Eubank, First Counselor, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Relief Society.
• An exhibition of New Testament artwork by Jorge Cocco Santangelo.
• A group exhibition of artwork by Latter-day Saint women artists.
• Presentations by Neylan McBaine, Jeannie S. and John W. (Jack) Welch, Heather Belnap, Richard Bushman and many others.
• A chamber concert featuring works composed and performed by Latter-day Saints.

The full program is included below.

All events are free and open to the public.  All who are interested are invited to attend.

To register, click here, or go to http://www.centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org.

DATES:

Friday, February 7, 7 pm.
Keynote address by Sharon Eubank and opening of exhibitions.

Saturday, February 8, 9 am to 5 pm.
A day filled with presentations on the arts.

Saturday, February 8, 7 pm.
Chamber Concert

LOCATION:

All events will be held at:

Museum of Biblical Art
7500 Park Lane
Dallas, Texas 75225

October 18-19, 2019–Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson

We are thrilled to welcome Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson, the co-directors of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, as our October 2019 speakers.

Throughout the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, art has played an important part of our faith.  Within months of the Church’s official formation, the prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation calling for the selection of sacred hymns.  “For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, and the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.”  (D&C 25:11).

And in the late 1800’s, as construction on the Salt Lake City temple was nearing completion, the First Presidency sent five artists to Paris to study painting so that they could more beautifully decorate the sacred interior spaces of the “House of the Lord”.

President Spencer W. Kimball began a 1967 speech to the faculty and staff of Brigham Young University by saying: “In our world, there have risen brilliant stars in drama, music, literature, sculpture, painting, science, and all the graces.  For long years I have had a vision of members of the Church greatly increasing their already strong positions of excellence till the eyes of all the world will be upon us.”  Later in the same speech he said: “We are proud of the artistic heritage that the Church has brought to us from its earliest beginnings, but the full story of Mormonism has never yet been written nor painted nor sculpted nor spoken.  It remains for inspired hearts and talented fingers yet to reveal themselves.” (fn to Gospel Vision of the Arts speech).

Today, almost 180 years after the Lord’s instruction to prepare a hymnal for use by Church members, and more than 50 years after President Kimball’s call to Latter-day Saints to achieve the highest levels of artistic excellence, the full depth, breadth, and beauty of the artistic contributions of Latter-day Saints is still being revealed.

You won’t want to miss this opportunity to meet Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson, the visionary founders of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, and to learn more about this unique organization that is devoted to exploring the artistic heritage of our people and revealing a fuller story of our faith.

Please join us!

DATES AND LOCATIONS:

Friday, October 18, 7 pm (McKinney)
Playful Corp.
300 E. Davis Street
McKinney, Texas 75069

Saturday, October 19, 1 pm (Arlington) [[NOTE TIME CHANGE]]
3804 Indian Springs Trail
Arlington, Texas 76016

THE TOPIC:

“What Is the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts Up To?”

Founded as the Mormon Arts Center in 2017, the New York City-based Center for Latter-day Saints has already held three successful summer festivals, published award-winning books, released twenty podcast episodes, created the “Come Follow Me (Art Companion)”, and has commenced work on a comprehensive catalog of music compositions by Latter-day Saint composers, along with several other significant objectives.  The two founders of the Center, Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson, will explain how it all began and what it hopes to accomplish.  They will also offer some answers to the question: “How can Latter-day Saints teach their children about our rich artistic tradition?”

THE SPEAKERS:

Richard Bushman was born in Salt Lake City in 1931 and brought up in Portland, Oregon.  He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University and taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware.  He retired as Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia University in 2001 and was visiting Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University from 2008 to 2011.  He is the author of a number of books including Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. He served as Co-General Editor of the Joseph Smith Papers until 2012, and in 1997 founded the Mormon Scholars Foundation which fosters the development of young LDS scholars.  He is now co-director of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City.  With his wife Claudia Bushman, he is the father of six children and twenty grandchildren.  He has served as a Bishop and Stake President and currently is Patriarch of the New York Young Single Adult Stake.

As a librettist and poet, Glen Nelson has created texts and collaborated on four operas, and multiple cantatas, oratorios, art songs, and choral works with composers Murray Boren, Royce Twitchell, Lansing McLoskey, Daniel McDavitt, and Ethan Wickman. He is the author of twenty books, the most recent of which is Joseph Paul Vorst, which was the subject of a retrospective exhibition of the artist at the Church History Museum. As a ghostwriter, four of his books have been New York Times bestsellers. He founded Mormon Artists Group in 1999. He is the co-director of Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. In 2018, the Church History Museum acquired for their permanent collection the Glen and Marcia Nelson Collection of Mormon Art, which included 169 works by Latter-day Saint artists—paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, textiles, artists’ books, and ephemera—dated from 1875 to 2017.

August 9-11, 2019 — Thomas A. Wayment

Miller Eccles Study Group Texas is thrilled to welcome BYU professor Thomas A. Wayment as our August 2019 speaker.

In the introduction to his groundbreaking new book “The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-Day Saints,” which was co-published by BYU’s Religious Study Center and Deseret Book, Thom wrote:

“This translation is not an attempt to replace the King James Bible for Latter-day Saint readers, but it is an invitation to engage again the meaning of the text for a new and more diverse English readership. … This translation intentionally engages the possibility that the New Testament can be rendered into modern language in a way that will help a reader more fully understand the teachings of Jesus, his disciples, and his followers. … I hope this attempt to translate the Greek of the New Testament will not be seen as combative or even controversial.  Instead, I hope it can become a study tool, an aid to inviting readers into the text so that new meaning can be discovered, and new inspiration can be found.”

With the Church’s “Come, Follow Me” curriculum focused on the text of the New Testament this year, there is no better time than now to find out if Thom has been successful in accomplishing his goals.

We invite you to join us as we continue to seek new meaning and inspiration in the timeless text of the New Testament with Thomas A. Wayment.

STUDY GROUP DATES AND LOCATIONS:

Friday, August 9, 7 pm (McKinney)
Playful Corp.
300 E. Davis Street
McKinney, Texas 75069

Saturday, August 10, 7 pm (Arlington)
3804 Indian Springs Trail
Arlington, Texas 76016

FIRESIDE DATE AND LOCATION:

Sunday, August 11, 6 pm
Arlington Stake Center
3809 Curt Drive
Arlington, Texas 76016

THE STUDY GROUP TOPIC

“The Translator’s Art and the Legacy of the King James Bible”

In this presentation Thom will discuss the different translation events of the Restoration, and he will compare his translation process to that of the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, and the King James Bible.  He will walk the audience through these various translation experiences in order to explain and clarify the similarities and differences. He will focus his attention on what it means to translate, and how the Restoration has promoted the concept of authority to translate and how it has also connected that endeavor to prophetic authority. In that context, he will discuss some of the difficulties and challenges he has faced in producing a new translation of the New Testament.

THE FIRESIDE TOPIC:

“Translating the New Testament for Latter-day Saints”

In this presentation, Thom will share some of the experiences that led him to translate the New Testament, the insights he gained while doing so, what went into producing the notes for “The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints,” and how he envisions this new translation working for Latter-day Saints as they seek inspiration in their study of the New Testament.

THE SPEAKER:

Thomas A. Wayment is a professor of classical studies at Brigham Young University, where he previously worked as a professor of ancient scripture and as publications director of the Religious Studies Center. He received his BA in Classics from the University of California at Riverside and his MA and PhD in New Testament studies from the Claremont Graduate School. Dr. Wayment’s research interests include papyrology, community formation, and Christianity at Oxyrhynchus.  He is the author of numerous articles for the Church’s “Religious Educator” magazine.

April 12-14, 2019 — Steve Harper

© BYU PHOTO 2018
All Rights Reserved

Miller Eccles Study Group Texas is thrilled to welcome Steven C. Harper as our April 2019 speaker.

The accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision have been controversial from the beginning.  In the years immediately following his theophany, Joseph Smith told his story to multiple audiences on multiple occasions, and he published two accounts of the First Vision while he was still alive.  Several other documents and first-hand descriptions related to the First Vision have also been published.

The many accounts of the First Vision have created fertile ground for historical investigation, especially by critics who have been unwilling to accept the faith claims inherent in the Prophet Joseph’s story.  The criticisms have been so persistent that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decided in 2013 to publish an essay explaining how variances among the accounts can be reconciled.

Steven C. Harper is the leading historian of the First Vision, having published numerous articles on the topic, as well as two books: Joseph Smith’s First Vision (Deseret Book, 2012), and the forthcoming First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (Oxford University Press, 2019).  His study group presentations on April 12 and 13 will include some of the research findings contained in his forthcoming book.

Steve was also the editor, managing historian, and one of the authors of, Saints, volume 1.  He will offer six reasons why Latter-day Saints need Saints at a devotional fireside in Arlington on April 14.

Please join us for these informative presentations.

STUDY GROUP DATES AND LOCATIONS:

Friday, April 12, 7 pm (McKinney)
Playful Corp.
300 E. Davis Street
McKinney, Texas 75069

Saturday, April 13, 7 pm (Arlington)
3804 Indian Springs Trail
Arlington, Texas 76016

FIRESIDE DATE AND LOCATION:

Sunday, April 14, 6 pm
Arlington Stake Center
3809 Curt Drive
Arlington, Texas 76016

THE STUDY GROUP TOPIC:

“How Joseph Smith Remembered His First Vision: A Theory Based on the Accounts and the Psychology of Memory”

To a nerdy historian like Steve Harper, the best thing about the Harry Potter stories is the pensieve, the magical bowl of memories in which an observer can sift through another person’s past. Steve’s talk will be the closest thing to looking in the pensieve at Joseph Smith’s memories of his first vision.  It has become common to account for variety in Joseph’s first vision accounts by saying he intended them for different audiences. However true that may be, it’s not the best explanation. Steve will provide a better one based on intimate knowledge of all the vision accounts in light of what we now know about the way memories form and get recalled.

THE FIRESIDE TOPIC:

“Why Latter-day Saints need Saints”

Are you one of the 340,000 people who has a print copy of Saints in one of fourteen languages? Are you one of the 834,000 people who have installed Saints in your Gospel Library app and read or listened to a combined 80 million chapters so far this year? Would you like to learn more about where Saints came from and hear six reasons why Latter-day Saints need Saints? Steve Harper was a general editor, the managing historian, and one of the writers. He’ll speak to us about what he learned along the way and what it feels like to lose your memory.

THE SPEAKER:

Steven C. Harper is a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University.  In 2012 Steve was appointed as the managing historian and a general editor of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days.  He was named editor in chief of BYU Studies Quarterly in September 2018. He earned an MA in American history from Utah State University and a PhD in early American history from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  He began teaching courses in religion and history at BYU Hawaii in 2000 and joined the Religious Education faculty at BYU in 2002.  That year he also became a volume editor of The Joseph Smith Papers and the document editor for BYU Studies. He taught at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2011–2012.  His first book was Promised Land (Lehigh University Press, 2006), a study of Lenape or Delaware Indians’ responses to a fraudulent 1737 land deal in colonial Pennsylvania.  He also authored Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants (Deseret Book, 2008), Joseph Smith’s First Vision (Deseret Book, 2012), and First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (Oxford University Press, 2019), along with dozens of articles.

January 25-26, 2019 — Jonathan Stapley

The history of Latter-day Saint ordinances is fascinating, and thanks to the excellent work of Jonathan Stapley, has recently become much more accessible.  In early 2018, Oxford University Press published Stapley’s landmark work The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology.

Recent Miller Eccles Study Group Texas presenter Jill Mulvay Derr praised the book:

“This imaginative and impeccably documented inquiry into the Mormon ordering of cosmos and community probes the connection between liturgical and ecclesiastical structures and casts new light on both.  Drawing upon his prodigious research in personal narratives and institutional sources that span decades of Mormon history, Stapley demonstrates how successive changes in Mormon rituals have affected the beliefs and experiences of ordinary women and men.  The book’s detailed and even-handed treatment of such complicated and contested issues as shifting conceptualizations of priesthood and women’s longtime participation in healing rituals makes it a fascinating read, a valuable reference, and a helpful bridge between the Mormonism of the present and its all-too-distant past.”

We hope you’ll join us to learn more about The Power of Godliness.

STUDY GROUP DATES AND LOCATIONS:

Friday, January 25, 7 pm (McKinney)

**NEW LOCATION**
Playful Corp. (Office Building)
300 E. Davis Street
McKinney, Texas 75069

Saturday, January 26, 7 pm (Arlington)

Baird Residence
3804 Indian Springs Trail
Arlington, Texas 76016

THE STUDY GROUP TOPIC:

“Women, Liturgy, Authority”

Mormon conceptions of priesthood, gender, and authority are of intense social interest, but have proved challenging to understand for both scholars and believers alike.  In this presentation, Stapley will share several key findings from his book that connects the present to the past in comprehensible ways.  From the priesthood language of the Nauvoo Temple to the diverse liturgy of the church, Stapley will discuss the ways in which members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints order their universe.

THE SPEAKER:

Jonathan Stapley is an award-winning historian, scientist, and Chief Technology Officer of a company he founded.  Oxford University Press published his volume, The Power of Godliness in early 2018.  Stapley received his Ph.D. from Purdue University and has been active in the field of Mormon History for over a decade.  He also writes for the academic history Juvenile Instructor blog, and at By Common Consent, a Mormon blog.