52 Theological librarianship • Vol. 12, No. 1 april 2019

its place in American religious history.4 Matthew Bowman’s The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith is also an important overview of the tradition, meant primarily for a general audience.5 In 1992, Macmillan published an Encyclopedia of Mormonism, a comprehensive guide to various aspects of the faith and its history.6 The resource has since migrated to an online platform and is updated periodically by Brigham Young Univer-sity personnel. More recently, Oxford and Columbia have released two volumes that complement the Ency-clopedia, the Oxford Handbook to Mormonism (2016), and the Columbia Sourcebook to Mormons in the United States (2014).7 The Handbook is an edited volume with dozens of article-length chapters written by leading Mormon studies scholars. Topics range from Mormon history and culture to the growth of the religion globally. While not as comprehensive as the Encyclopedia, to be sure, these chapters offer an in-depth look at the major issues and questions asked by Mormon studies scholars today. The Sourcebook instead allows Mormons to speak for themselves on these same topics. The editors include sermons, opinion editorials, speeches, letters, and poetry written by Mormons throughout the history of the faith. Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia is a more condensed but still valuable reference book, with entries from over fifty scholars in the field.8 Finally, the Church itself published in 2004 a glossary of terms entitled True to the Faith: A Gospel Reference, named after a beloved hymn in the tradition.9 This small volume contains brief descriptions of what members of the Church believe about such doctrines as baptism for the dead and eternal marriage, or social issues like abortion, gambling, or homosexuality. It can be found free online on the Church’s website, www.lds.org.

Sacred Texts

Any serious study of a religious tradition must include time, effort, and space for the sacred texts of that people. Aside from the Book of Mormon, the sacred work from which Church members gained their nick-name “Mormons,” the Church also has two other canonized scriptures in addition to the King James Version of the Bible. The first, the Doctrine and Covenants, is a text of recorded revelations to early church leaders about the management of the Church itself; it contains some doctrine as well. The second, called the Pearl of Great Price, is a collection of other translated sacred works by Joseph Smith, as well as a personal history he wrote in which he relates his claims of theophany, visitation by angels, and his call as a prophet, like Moses and Elijah. The King James Version is likely readily available in any theological library, and one can purchase the other three “Standard Works,” as members call them, in a “triple combination.” They can also be found for free online at www.lds.org/scriptures. Penguin Books has also published a popular edition of the Book of Mormon, which includes a fine introduction by Laurie Maffly-Kipp.10

A fair amount of scholarship has been written on the Book of Mormon and on the Mormon reception of the Bible. Philip Barlow’s trailblazing work, Mormons and the Bible, opens the scholarly discussion of how Mormons create, adapt, and engage with sacred texts.11 Barlow reviews how Mormons have utilized the Bible in their praxis and doctrine over time. In a landmark study By the Hand of Mormon, Terryl Givens approached the Book of Mormon for the first time as an academic (rather than polemical or apologetic) enterprise, using reception

4 Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).

5 Matthew Burton Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012).

6 Daniel H. Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992).

7 Terryl Givens and Philip L. Barlow, The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Terryl Givens, Reid L. Neilson, and Michelle Taormina, The Columbia Sourcebook of Mormons in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

8 W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall, Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010).

9 True To The Faith: A Gospel Reference (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 2004).

10 The Book of Mormon (Penguin Classics; New York: Penguin Books, 2008).

11 Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-Day Saints in American Religion (Updated Edition; Reli-gion in America Series; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).