Joseph Fielding Smith

A Mormon Theologian
Author: Matthew Bowman
An intellectual biography of the Latter-day Saint theologian
Cloth – $110
978-0-252-04595-0
Paper – $14.95
978-0-252-08805-6
eBook – $14.95
978-0-252-04713-8
Publication Date
Paperback: 09/10/2024
Cloth: 09/10/2024
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About the Book

In the early and mid-twentieth century, Joseph Fielding Smith’s (1876–1972) life as a public historian and theologian shaped the religious worldview of generations of Latter-day Saints. Matthew Bowman examines Smith’s ideas and his place in American religious history. Smith achieved position and influence at a young age, while his theories about the age of the earth and the falseness of evolutionary theory brought fame and controversy. As Bowman shows, Smith’s strong identity as a Saint influenced how he blended Protestant fundamentalist thought into his distinctly LDS theological views. Bowman also goes beyond Smith’s well-known conservatism to reveal him as an important thinker engaged with the major religious questions of his time.

Incisive and illuminating, Joseph Fielding Smith examines the worldview and development of an influential theologian and his place in American religious and intellectual history.

About the Author

Matthew Bowman is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, with a joint appointment as an associate professor of history and religion. His books include Christian: The Politics of a Word in America .

Reviews

"Joseph Fielding Smith: A Mormon Theologian is a nuanced and compelling analysis of a man whose outlook, strange and misguided as it may seem to us today, continues to shape the ecclesiastical world we inhabit." --Utah Monthly

"An impressive glimpse into the world and thought of one of the most influential writers and theologians in the world of 20th century Latter-day Saints." --Times & Seasons

Blurbs

“Bowman’s exemplary study traces how Joseph Fielding Smith simultaneously resisted and accelerated Mormonism’s engagement with modernity. It captures how Smith realized a specific subset of Mormon possibilities and, then, how his life and work restructured the field of potential futures open to Mormonism as a whole. Required reading.”--Adam S. Miller, author of Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology