Rosalynde Frandsen Welch
Seven Visions of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants
One way to understand the Doctrine and Covenants is Joseph Smith's quest to see the face of Christ and to share that vision with his people. Seven pivotal revelations show us how Joseph achieved that vision, what he came to know of the Savior, and how we too can learn to see and know Christ. For Joseph, deep and collaborative study of the scriptures was the portal to visionary experience. Learning how and why to approach scripture like Joseph did can reinvigorate our own study and show us Christ in new ways.
Matt Harris
Dr. Matthew L. Harris is a specialist in US history with a particular focus in religion and the law, church and state, civil rights, Legal history, Constitutional history, American Religions, and Mormon Studies. He received a BA and MA in history from Brigham Young University and an MPhil and PhD, also in history, from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024); Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right (University of Utah Press, 2020); The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement (Signature Books, 2020); Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2019); The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (University of Illinois Press, 2015); Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); and (with Thomas S. Kidd) The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America (Oxford University Press, 2012).
He is currently at work on two book-length manuscripts: J. Reuben Clark and the Making of Modern Mormonism (under contract; University of Illinois Press); and Hugh B. Brown: Mormonism’s Progressive Apostle. His article “Mormonism’s Problematic Racial Past and the Evolution of the Divine-Curse Doctrine,” published in The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, won the Vera Jean and J. Talmage Jones Award from the Mormon History Association in 2014. His work has been featured on CSPAN, the Religious News Service, and dozens of social media outlets. In addition, he has been interviewed by Newsweek, Longreads, and several other national news outlets for his expertise on right-wing extremism.
Matt Harris
Dr. Matthew L. Harris is a specialist in US history with a particular focus in religion and the law, church and state, civil rights, Legal history, Constitutional history, American Religions, and Mormon Studies. He received a BA and MA in history from Brigham Young University and an MPhil and PhD, also in history, from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024); Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right (University of Utah Press, 2020); The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement (Signature Books, 2020); Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2019); The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (University of Illinois Press, 2015); Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); and (with Thomas S. Kidd) The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America (Oxford University Press, 2012).
He is currently at work on two book-length manuscripts: J. Reuben Clark and the Making of Modern Mormonism (under contract; University of Illinois Press); and Hugh B. Brown: Mormonism’s Progressive Apostle. His article “Mormonism’s Problematic Racial Past and the Evolution of the Divine-Curse Doctrine,” published in The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, won the Vera Jean and J. Talmage Jones Award from the Mormon History Association in 2014. His work has been featured on CSPAN, the Religious News Service, and dozens of social media outlets. In addition, he has been interviewed by Newsweek, Longreads, and several other national news outlets for his expertise on right-wing extremism.
Joseph Spencer
When Nibley met the Temple
Hugh Nibley remains a towering influence in the intellectual culture of the Latter-day Saints, but little work has been done to put his thinking in context. He was and is known as a defender of the faith, and his interest in Latter-day Saint temple ritual is notorious, but what originally prompted his lifelong pursuit of understanding the idea of the temple? In this talk, I will investigate both the academic context out of which Nibley's interest was born and the Latter-day Saint theological context to which Nibley brought that interest between the late 1930s and the middle 1960s. The story is one of maverick methods and political cynicism, dawning apologetic possibilities and novel theologies. Above all, the story is one that might reveal the twenty-first-century relevance of a thinker who is now often taken to be a relic from a past age.
Margaret Olsen Hemming
Liberation Theology and the Book of Mormon: A Gospel for the Least of These
This presentation introduces key concepts of liberation theology, emphasizing its focus on God's preferential option for the poor and marginalized. Drawing on the works of Christian theologians such as Miguel de la Torre and Delores Williams, we will explore how this work challenges dominant theological narratives by centering the experiences of the oppressed. We will then turn to The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, a commentary series that examines the Book of Mormon’s engagement with issues of racism, sexual violence, economic inequality, and war. By reading the text through a liberationist lens, we will consider how the Book of Mormon offers a prophetic critique of systemic injustice and calls readers to a faith that actively resists oppression and fosters collective liberation. Finally, we will do some interactive work together in reading and rereading Book of Mormon text to see what messages we can uncover.
Esther Hi'ilani Candari
As a fine artist who often focuses on the intersection of gender, race, and religion in my work, I have spent most of my professional life considering and researching the implications of how we do or do not represent God, Christ, and other sacred and revered beings in Latter Day Saint, and broader Christian culture. The advent of AI image generation has added a layer of complexity to this conversation by highlighting and amplifying the biases in our current canon of images and by sparking questions about the role of authorship in religious imagery.
Ben Spackman
Genesis in the Twentieth Century: The Church, Creation, and Evolution
During the twentieth century, scientific discoveries, synthesis, and mutual reinforcement between scientific fields led to biological evolution's widespread acceptance among scientists, including LDS scientists. Similarly, due to new discoveries and maturing analysis, biblical scholars across differing religious commitments— including some inerrantist evangelicals— came to understand Genesis in such a way that it offered no opposition to biological evolution. During this same time period, as Latter-day Saints gained highly competent scholars in both science and scripture, the Church moved from a position of wary openness to evolution to a semi-official rejection of it and embrace of creationism.
Ben Spackman
Genesis in the Nineteenth Century: Joseph Smith and the Double-Creation Problem
The first chapters of Genesis confront the reader with not one but two creation stories which are inconsistent with each other. Combining intellectual work with revelation, Joseph Smith provided successively better solutions to this problem, first in the Book of Moses, then the Book of Abraham, finally solving it in the Temple liturgy. Understanding this history illustrates both how divine inspiration works with human intellect in a composite process of progress, and how questions and problems may serve as catalysts to revelation.
Deidre Nicole Green
Prepared from the Foundation of the World: Book of Mormon Insights on the Atonement of Jesus Christ
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