7/20/2013

Latter Day Saints Culture, Literature And Mormon Poems

By Irma Farrell


Latter day Saints poetry, or Mormon poems, is poetry written by the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints about spiritual themes or topics. Latter day Saints have composed religious poetry since the beginning of the Church in the early nineteenth century. For them it is a form of art that can convey messages to the Holy Spirit.

An example would be Elders Journal, which was published at Far West in 1838, contained a beautiful poem that was a tribute to John Marsh. Some significant early known poets are Eliza Snow who penned O, My Father and Phelps who wrote The Spirit of God. Some known contemporary authors are John Talbot and Dilworth Young.

Even before The Book of Mormon was published in the 1830s, their literature had already begun. Since then they had included scriptures, dramas, poetry, fiction and others to their literature. Mormonism is a big religious and cultural group that is a large part of the LDS Movement.

It began in New York during the 1820s through the visions of Joseph Smith. Today they are understood to be members of LDS Church, but some of them are either not practicing the religion or independent from the church. They value their family, traditions and religion very much.

During the start of the nineteenth century, Mormonism and Protestant Christianity had very strong similarities. Although Mormons practice Christian, they also have rituals that are unknown to traditional Christianity. They firmly believed that God spoke through Smith and those who succeeded him to restore the truths of the original religion taught by Jesus Christ himself.

Plural marriage was formerly practiced by the members and was established by Joseph Smith, but in the later century this practice was heavily opposed by the members of the United States Congress. In the 1980 Manifesto of Wilford Woodruff, plural marriage was officially abolished. Although they identify themselves as Christians, there are some beliefs that differ from Christianity.

They believe in the Bible and other scriptures like the Book of Mormon. The book is a sacred text which they believe to contain writings of ancient prophets who live in the continent of America from 2200 BC to 421 AD. It was first published by Joseph Smith on March 1830. It has several original and distinctive discussions on subjects such as the fall of Adam and Eve.

A crucial event in the book is when Jesus appeared in America shortly after he rose from the dead. Like the Holy Bible, it is separated into shorter books, with the author as title of each book, then divided still into chapters then as verses. Today, the book has been translated into different languages and distributed to other countries.

Their writing is not necessarily about Mormons, but can be just about anything else, to be part of their literature. Today there a lot of Mormon authors who are in the limelight for their writings, like Stephanie Meyer who wrote the Twilight series, Orson Scott Card who wrote Enders Game and Anne Perry who wrote The Face of a Stranger. The stories and Mormon poems they make is just as brilliant as anything an American has written.




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