Monday, July 22, 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.

The Elders Journal, which was published in 1838 in Far West, has a tribute John Marsh in a form of a beautiful poem. The author of O, My Father which is Eliza Snow and author of The Spirit of God who is Phelps are some of the early known Mormon poets who are significant in their crafts. David Wright and John Talbot are some of the significant contemporary poets.

Their literature is considered to begin a few years before the publication of The Book of Mormon. Since then, their literature has grown to include more scriptures, as well as history, fiction, biographies, hymns, dramas, poetry, and others. They are a cultural and religious group related to Mormonism, the main branch of the Latter Day Saints 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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