Matthew Godfrey
I am the Senior Managing Historian for Outreach and Engagement in the LDS Church History Department. I am also a general editor with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. From 2013-2021, I was the managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers, responsible for the 15 historians who work on the project. From 2002-2010, I was a historical consultant with the company Historical Research Associates, Inc. I was head of the company's History Division from 2006-2010 and was president of the company from 2008-2010.
I have a Ph.D. in American and Public History from Washington State University. I am the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921 (USU Press, 2007) and a co-editor of The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (University of Utah Press, 2019). I have also authored essays published in The Public Historian, Agricultural History, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, the Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, and Mormon Historical Studies.
In addition, I do contract history work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, focused on the Corps' civil works mission. I have been the author or co-author of numerous historical studies for the Corps.
I have a Ph.D. in American and Public History from Washington State University. I am the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921 (USU Press, 2007) and a co-editor of The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (University of Utah Press, 2019). I have also authored essays published in The Public Historian, Agricultural History, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, the Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, and Mormon Historical Studies.
In addition, I do contract history work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, focused on the Corps' civil works mission. I have been the author or co-author of numerous historical studies for the Corps.
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Books by Matthew Godfrey
closer to God and facilitated his reception of revelation. Natural
surroundings led to questions that revelations answered,
while also providing Joseph Smith with proof of God’s existence and
helping him achieve a mindset where he could commune with God.
In addition, nature became the backdrop for visions and spiritual
impressions that were less uplifting and more instructive regarding
danger or unease in the world. At other times, pondering the natural
environment allowed Joseph Smith to receive inspiration about both
the history and the potential of an area. Joseph Smith’s revelations
could thus be spurred by the environment while also affecting how
Smith and others regarded nature.
Since Joseph Smith’s revelations, Mormons have interacted with nature in significant ways—whether perceiving it as a place to find God, uncorrupted spaces in which to build communities to usher in the Second Coming, wildness needing domestication and control, or a world brimming with natural resources to ensure economic well-being. The essays in this volume—written by leading scholars in both environmental history and Mormon history—explore how nature has influenced Mormon beliefs and how these beliefs inform Mormons’ encounters with nature. Introducing overarching environmental ideas, contributors examine specific aspects of nature and Mormon theology to glean new insights into the Mormon experience.
As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon church's involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support.
Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.
Papers by Matthew Godfrey
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dictated a pay order to his
clerk Howard Coray for Mary Ann Angell Young, the wife of apostle Brigham Young, who was serving a mission in England. The pay order requested that Newel K. Whitney, a bishop in Nauvoo who was operating a store in the area, allow “Mrs Young” to obtain “any thing she wants” from him. This brief, four-line note—published in Documents, Volume 7 of the Joseph Smith Papers and available on the Joseph Smith Papers website—seems relatively insignificant on its face. Yet digging into the context behind the pay order illuminates the responsibility Church leaders had to care for the families of missionaries, the suffering that these families sometimes experienced, and the economic climate in Nauvoo, Illinois, that exacerbated their difficulties. Exploring the history around the pay order helps to restore Mary Ann’s sacrifices and perseverance to the narrative of Brigham Young’s mission to England and provides texture and nuance to the story.
closer to God and facilitated his reception of revelation. Natural
surroundings led to questions that revelations answered,
while also providing Joseph Smith with proof of God’s existence and
helping him achieve a mindset where he could commune with God.
In addition, nature became the backdrop for visions and spiritual
impressions that were less uplifting and more instructive regarding
danger or unease in the world. At other times, pondering the natural
environment allowed Joseph Smith to receive inspiration about both
the history and the potential of an area. Joseph Smith’s revelations
could thus be spurred by the environment while also affecting how
Smith and others regarded nature.
Since Joseph Smith’s revelations, Mormons have interacted with nature in significant ways—whether perceiving it as a place to find God, uncorrupted spaces in which to build communities to usher in the Second Coming, wildness needing domestication and control, or a world brimming with natural resources to ensure economic well-being. The essays in this volume—written by leading scholars in both environmental history and Mormon history—explore how nature has influenced Mormon beliefs and how these beliefs inform Mormons’ encounters with nature. Introducing overarching environmental ideas, contributors examine specific aspects of nature and Mormon theology to glean new insights into the Mormon experience.
As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon church's involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support.
Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dictated a pay order to his
clerk Howard Coray for Mary Ann Angell Young, the wife of apostle Brigham Young, who was serving a mission in England. The pay order requested that Newel K. Whitney, a bishop in Nauvoo who was operating a store in the area, allow “Mrs Young” to obtain “any thing she wants” from him. This brief, four-line note—published in Documents, Volume 7 of the Joseph Smith Papers and available on the Joseph Smith Papers website—seems relatively insignificant on its face. Yet digging into the context behind the pay order illuminates the responsibility Church leaders had to care for the families of missionaries, the suffering that these families sometimes experienced, and the economic climate in Nauvoo, Illinois, that exacerbated their difficulties. Exploring the history around the pay order helps to restore Mary Ann’s sacrifices and perseverance to the narrative of Brigham Young’s mission to England and provides texture and nuance to the story.