Ask An Expert: Research on Home Teaching?

Q: Are you aware of any studies or research relating to LDS home teaching, its history, relationship to similar home visitation that John Calvin instituted, or setting it in a sociological or anthropological background?

A: We received three responses from members of the MSSA.

Benjamin Pykles noted five publications in Mormon History on home teaching at the BYU library, including:

  •  Home Teaching–Attempts by the Latter-day Saints to Establish an Effective Program during the Nineteenth Century by Phelps, Gary L. 1975
  • Changes in the Numbers and the Priesthood Affiliation of the Men Used as Ward Teachers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1908-1922 by Israelsen, Vernon L. 1975
  • A Documentary History of the Lord’s Way of Watching Over the Church by the Priesthood Through the Ages by Anderson, Rex A. 1974
  • Elijah F. Sheets : The Half-century Bishop by Pace, D. Gene 1985
  • Home Teaching by Hartley, William G. 2000

Jeffery Johnson recommended a book with important research on the history of home teaching (formerly called “Block Teaching”):

  • My Fellow Servants: Essays on the History of the Priesthood, by William G. Hartley, (Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, 2010)

Armand Mauss suggested that you also contact Reid Neilson or another librarian at the LDS Library/Archives.  You can ask a librarian here.  He also suggested you consider contacting a member of the Church Research Information Division.

A House Full of Females: Faith and Family in Nineteenth-Century Mormon Diaries – Glenn Vernon Lecture at SSSR 2013

If you need another reason to attend the 2013 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion meetings in Boston, where the MSSA also meets, attending the Glenn Vernon Lecture is a pretty good one.  The Glenn Vernon Lecture will be given by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the Pulitzer-prize winning author and Harvard scholar.  Her lecture is titled, “A House Full of Females: Faith and Family in Nineteenth-Century Mormon Diaries.”  It promises to be an excellent presentation.