PhD Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation

My studies include Semitic languages, biblical and Jewish studies, history of science, and history of Christianity, from the New Testament period through the Reformation and modern America. I completed all the coursework for a PhD in Comparative Semitics (essentially Old Testament Languages and Literature+ Arabic) at the University of Chicago, but ultimately received my PhD in American Religious History from Claremont. 

I was the University of Utah’s Tanner Fellow for Mormon Studies (2022-23) and defended my dissertation in late 2024.  

  “The Scientist is Wrong”: Joseph Fielding Smith, George McCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the Twentieth Century is now available publicly from ProQuest.  I explore how the  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — i.e. Mormonism— wrestled with the quintessential American crux of creationism/evolution in the 20th century. Placing that conflict within a broader American cultural context, I locate its roots within the non-exegetical nature of the LDS tradition, unacknowledged hermeneutical assumptions, competing ideas of science and expertise, and a religious devotion to education and science. I also trace the surprisingly deep influence of Seventh-Day Adventist George McCready Price and Christian fundamentalism on Joseph Fielding Smith, and, post-1954, LDS more generally.  Because of differing paradigms, different ideological camps of Latter-day Saints competed to claim the authority of science.

“We have never seen such a thoroughly researched dissertation”— my dissertation committee

“A masterpiece” — evolutionary biologist Steven L. Peck (who has written on this topic)

“A tour-de-force”— NASA  scientist David H. Bailey (who has written on this topic)

With most of my content here, I’m trying to cross boundaries by translating the secular, academic, and technical for a non-specialist and confessional community. 

All posts, pages, papers, etc. are copyright to Ben Spackman, 2019, all rights reserved.