Robert Bruce Flanders

ROBERT FLANDERS is chairman of the History Department at Southwest Missouri State University at Springfield. He helped organize and was the first president of the John Whitmer Historical Association—a group which "promotes interest in Latter-day Saint history and culture among those primarily (but not exclusively) of RLDS association."

Writing the Mormon Past

Articles/Essays – Volume 01, No. 3

Dialogue 1.3 (Fall 1966): 47–62
Understanding Mormon history involves appreciating some of the formidable obstacles which confront throse who seek to write it. There is still sensitivity among Mormons to probing that might bring embarrassment to cherished offical views of Latter-day Saint orgins, martyrs, or heroes.

Some Reflections on the Kingdom and the Gathering in Early Mormon History

Articles/Essays – Volume 03, No. 2

Dialogue 9.1 (Spring 1976): 34–42
Historical studies embrace the most extensive, intensive, and well-matured of the scholarly endeavors which have the Restoration as their subject. The paucity of critical writings in the various fields of theology and philosophy is by comparison especially striking.

The Kingdom of God in Illinois: Politics in Utopia

Articles/Essays – Volume 05, No. 1

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine, in a political frame of reference, the persistent question as to why the Mormons were so ferociously constrained from their attempt to establish at Nauvoo a society…

Dialogue East | Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action

Articles/Essays – Volume 05, No. 3

In the spring of 1970, with the biennial world conference of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints approaching, an acute polarization of theological positions and emotional sets seemed to have occurred in the movement over the identity, the character, and the mission of the (RLDS) church.

Some Reflections on the New Mormon History

Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 1

In the last quarter-century a significantly different understanding of the Latter day Saint past has begun to emerge in a series of books, journal articles, oral ad dresses at various conferences, and more informally, in…