This special episode is a tribute and homage to LORE, by Aaron Mahnke. If you haven’t already, you should check it out.
In 1888 a Mormon woman in the Southern States mission of the LDS Church requested a visit from the missionaries. She said she was possessed by the devil and asked the elders to help her by the laying on of hands. They were happy to comply and the evil spirit was summarily dismissed. Then things took a turn for the worse.
This, and other stories of Mormon exorcism are featured in this special edition of the Maxwell Institute Podcast. Learn more about the history of Satan as he was understood before, during, and after the life of Jesus, through Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation, to the days of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and beyond.
About the Guest
No one has done more research on dispossession in Mormonism than religious studies scholar Stephen C. Taysom, associate professor in the department of philosophy and comparative religion at Cleveland State University. He is author of Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries. He edited Dimensions of Faith: Mormon Studies Reader. His article on Mormonism and exorcism was recently published in the journal Religion and American Culture. It’s called “‘Satan mourns naked upon the earth’: Locating Mormon Possession and Exorcism Rituals in the American Religious Landscape, 1830-1977.”
The post Mormon exorcism lore, with Stephen Taysom [MIPodcast #71] appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.
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Ravi M. Gupta is the Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Religious Studies Program at Utah State University. He is the author or editor of four books, including an abridged translation of the Bhagavata Purana (with Kenneth Valpey), published in 2016 by Columbia University Press. Ravi completed his doctorate in Hindu Studies at Oxford University. He lectures around the world on topics related to Vaishnava philosophy and Hindu devotional traditions.
Laurie Maffly-Kipp is the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. She taught religious studies and American studies for twenty-four years at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and is a prior president of the Mormon History Association. She’s written and edited many books about topics including African American religions, Mormonism, and Protestantism.
Martin Luther believed the Bible proved that the Catholic Church had gone astray. His efforts to bring reform to the church wound up leading to his excommunication and the Reformation was off and running. In the previous two episodes we heard from Craig Harline and Brad Gregory, talking about Martin Luther’s life and the Reformation more broadly. In this episode, Jennifer Powell McNutt talks about the Bible during the Reformation.
Jennifer Powell McNutt
Brad S. Gregory is a professor of European history at the University of Notre Dame and an award-winning author of books like Salvation at Stake and The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. His latest book is called 
What was Martin Luther trying to accomplish when he nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenburg church door? Would you believe he didn’t intend to start a new religious movement at all? Down the centuries Martin Luther has been lauded by some, lambasted by others. Was he an amazing hero or an arch heretic, or perhaps something different altogether?
Craig Harline is a professor of history at Brigham Young University and an award-winning author of books including Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl and Way Below the Angels, a memoir of his service as a Mormon missionary in Belgium. He specializes in Reformation-era Christianity. His latest book is called A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation.
Janan Graham-Russell is a writer and graduate of the Howard University School of Divinity. Her research focuses on womanist theology in Mormonism, and identity formation in racial communities. Her work has been featured in two books: Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, and A Book of Mormons, as well as The Atlantic. She will continue her research this fall within the PhD program in The Study of Religion department at Harvard University. This week Janan joined us here at the Maxwell Institute for a discussion on race, identity, and theology.
Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died at the hands of an angry mob in June of 1844. Shortly before his death he is reported to have made this bold declaration: “I should be like a fish out of water, if I were out of persecutions…the Lord has constituted me so curiously that I glory in persecution.”
Adam J. Powell is a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Theology & Religion at Durham University (UK). Prior to Durham, Dr. Powell was Assistant Professor and Director of the MA in Religious Studies at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. He has published on topics ranging from patristic theology to the history of sociology and from Mormonism to identity theory. He is the author of 
In the late nineteenth century, a newspaper written and published by women and for women sprung up in what most Americans thought was the unlikeliest of locations: Utah, the home of the Mormons. Along the top of the newspaper the masthead proudly declared its concern: “The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of All Nations.” It was called the Women’s Exponent. This declaration—and the paper’s articles on suffrage and women’s rights—puzzled onlookers who thought about the religion mostly as a strange polygamous sect.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, of Sugar City, Idaho, is a professor of history at Harvard University. She has served as president of the American Historical Association and the Mormon History Association. Her book A Midwife’s Tale received the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Her latest book is 
Jennifer Reeder (left) is the nineteenth century woman’s history specialist at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.