Jan Shipps

This memorial essay blends professional and personal recollections, in part because its subject was adept at doing so herself. Reflecting on this dear friend, I have cobbled together a reminiscence that brings me comfort, even as I miss Jan's laugh, her addiction to checking all word choices in her thesaurus, her strong morning coffee, and her love of telling stories. What follows does not live up to her standards but is written in the sure knowledge that she would have loved the outpouring of affection and gratitude that accompanies this and other remembrances of her long and interesting life.Born Jo Ann Barnett in 1929, the remarkable woman who was known as Jan married Tony Shipps when she was nineteen. Jan grew up in the deep South—as anyone who ever heard her pronounce the word “evidence” will testify. She grew up in a family struggling to hold onto its commitment to education, music, and reading. Her father, as Jan used to say, ran a “one-horse coal mine” in Alabama. Her mother, Thalia, about whom she talked frequently, clearly was a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to Thalia, Jan studied piano and spent one year at college before the family's finances cratered so drastically that she had to come back home to work. Jan's talent as a musician frequently put food on the table, even after she married Tony. She often told stories of her work as a piano player in bars, clearly a role that she relished, in spite of (or likely more accurately, because of) the raucous tendencies of her audience.Jan and Tony moved to Michigan, where he trained as a librarian. They ran a home for “wayward girls,” with whom Jan soon realized strict discipline could protect everyone from catastrophe. Tony's talents lay more in collecting books, identifying the often-obscure sources of famous sayings, and publishing his erudite correspondence in the (London) Times Literary Supplement. He was a born librarian and his skills soon brought him to the attention of universities. His first really important job was at Utah State—a job shortened considerably by the fact that Tony did not like Logan, the university, or, it seems, the larger Mormon culture. Jan, on the other hand, found herself enthralled. She loved the beautiful mountains, the people she met, especially but not only the women, and the religion that permeated all aspects of life. “The Saints,” as she often said, appealed to her in deep and lasting ways. She began to understand that learning about these fascinating people and their faith was important to her—she finished her undergraduate degree at Utah State in 1961.Well before Jan was ready to leave Logan, Tony was offered a post more suited to his own preferences in Colorado. In Boulder, Jan began to train as a historian, completing a master's degree in 1962 and a PhD in 1965. Her thesis was a detailed study of Mormons and Mormonism as seen by others, especially as depicted in newspapers, magazines, and other print sources. She and Tony soon moved again, this time to Bloomington, Indiana. There, with her baby Stephen and with Tony coming home every day for lunch, Jan turned from that more limited study to a broad and sweeping study of the Saints, which became her field-defining work, Mormonism: A New Religious Tradition, first published in 1980. The book is bold, theoretically rich, and stunningly well-written. Jan Shipps arrived with a bang.1Well before the book was released, she was already known and admired in organizations such as the Mormon History Association (MHA), the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA), and more. As she often said, there are many “Mormonisms,” and Jan was interested in all of them. Her essay in the first issue of the Journal of Mormon History (1974), which the journal is republishing in this issue, testifies to Jan's influence and leadership. The questions raised in “The Prophet Puzzle: Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith” continue to shape scholarly and popular efforts to understand and make sense of Mormonism's founding figure. Her writing style was firmly in place in this article, which opened by noting that in upstate New York in the 1820s and ‘30s, “pathways to paradise ran in all directions.” But the many and varied “preachers and prophets” who offered such choices to spiritual pilgrims produced only one “important American religion: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” She argued that the Book of Mormon “plainly reflects the religious experiences and concerns that had been a part of [Joseph Smith's] life until [1830]” and urged scholars to recognize that visions and revelations are distinct and different: “God initiates the vision and man responds; man asks for revelations and God responds.” One is an eruption of the sacred, the second a pragmatic prophetic tactic.2 MHA president Benjamin Park notes that this article was also “revolutionary in that it pointed toward the eventual Mormon Studies movement, as part of the interdisciplinary field of religious studies, in which Jan's work was always considered pathbreaking and important.”By the mid-1980s, she was the editor of a book series at the University of Illinois Press, and had formed close friendships with other scholars and editors, including those she told me about later—Dean May, Doug Alder, Val Avery, Leonard Arrington, Liz Dulany, Juanita Brooks, Tom Alexander, Philip Barlow, Armand Mauss, Klaus Hansen, Greg Prince, Kathleen Flake, Polly Aird, her own student and dear friend Kathy Daynes, and many more, as well as several members of the Church Education System, whose work she found riveting, but who I found eye-glazingly immersed in minutia.3I met Jan in 1992, when I attended my very first MHA. I was a fledgling historian of Mormonism, a topic I came to because of my own experience in graduate school. In my second year as a PhD student at Princeton, I put together a bespoke reading course in American religious history with John Wilson, a member of the Religion Department and a specialist in history, titled Church and State in America, something that, as a lawyer, I also study with great interest. Three other graduate students signed on, and we had a genuine seminar. I put together the readings by weeks, generally two or three books and accompanying articles per week (Princeton is infamous for its gargantuan reading loads). I dedicated a full week to the Latter-day Saints, with two recent books and one older: Jan's Mormonism, Richard Bushman's first volume on Joseph Smith, and Leonard Arrington's older and wonderful Great Basin Kingdom (a doorstopper) from the late 1950s.At our meeting, I was stunned to learn that at least two of my fellow students felt that I had wasted their time. The third wasn't so contemptuous, but no fan of the reading either. They did not take the subject seriously, arguing that I had included charlatans and a fake prophet with other more suitable and worthy topics. The evening after our meeting, I simply could not shake my sense of distress—even outrage. I phoned the good Dr. Wilson at home, and he kindly took my call, telling me that he was not surprised to hear from me. He summarized brilliantly the central problem: I had been given a dose of anti-Mormonism, something that Professor Wilson by no means sanctioned, but that he saw more as a challenge to me. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked. And I began to understand that he treated this as a teaching moment. I wasn't quite sure exactly what I would do about it, I said, but I would get back to him.My own dissertation began to take shape then and there. Two years later, I came to Utah as a bona fide ABD student. I was greeted by the “white shirts” when I arrived at the old Church History Library and was told that there was nothing left to say about polygamy. I explained that I was most interested in the topic from outside the faith and had absolutely no interest in anyone's dirty laundry. David Whittaker took me under his wing, a great and generous effort that still strikes me as above and beyond the call of duty. I began to correspond with Davis Bitton, heard from the librarians about MHA, and began to appreciate how much I had to learn.I have to admit that my Princeton colleagues, even those who had not been in the seminar, thought my topic was ill-advised. The Mormons will check your footnotes, they predicted. They don't take anyone outside the faith seriously, others added. I could feel then, and do so now, John Wilson's clear-eyed injunction to push back against derision and to prove that “real” historians could find important insight in the Church History Library.Finally, I proposed a paper for MHA and met Jan there. Immediately, I felt her interest and her benevolence. I must have shown how green I was because almost immediately Jan took me aside. She gave me great pointers on how to describe the Latter-day Saints to those outside the faith, especially to scholars and the press. Her vocabulary lesson has stayed with me always. While I will never be anywhere near her league, I became then and still am aware that as people outside the faith, Jan—and now I and others in the field—owe a duty to be honest but respectful and to search for the words and phrases that would be recognizable to those who are part of (or orthogonal to) the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.When I met Jan, she was at the top of her game. Not only was her book a smash hit and already a classic, she was trusted as a commentator by smart journalists—Peggy Fletcher Stack springs to mind—and able to explain outside attitudes and actions to those inside the church in terms they could work with.4 I will never forget one trip that had Jan and me both at BYU. We were driving back up to the airport, and Jan's flight left several hours after mine. She called (then-Apostle, now a member of the First Presidency) Dallin Oaks, who picked up right away when he heard it was Jan calling. I left her at the Church Office Building, and he took her to lunch. For years, Jan laughed when she told this story—she said my jaw dropped! Also important, especially from the perspective of the church leadership, she could explain the Latter-day Saints sympathetically and honestly to those outside the faith. She always chose her words carefully, conveying her meaning with meticulous care for her subject and the audience. One dear friend described her talent as trilingual fluency: Jan spoke academese, mediaspeak, and Mormonish.5Jan could be a powerful and dogged critic, and she frequently called for the evidence behind a claim. She also was fierce in defense of new scholarship, especially work that pushed the boundaries and took chances, provided that such work met her standards (not an easy ask, for sure). By the mid-1990s, she had become a doyenne to the field, with deep influence among religious studies folk as well as Mormons. And here is where she began to see that the field could be expanded—deepened, broadened, situated more securely in academic circles: Mormon studies began to acquire a following. Of course, no individual is responsible for the creation of a new field, but Jan was as influential as anyone and more than almost everyone. Her development of the vision, her work to raise funds, and her support of candidates for inaugural jobs in the field were notable. Among her coterie that became holders of the first Mormon studies chairs are long-time friends Philip Barlow and Kathleen Flake. Jan took such joy in their success. She said that she was the grandmother (Leonard Arrington called her “den mother,” another term Jan used often) of Mormon history in general, and Mormon studies in particular.6We remained close as my own career unfolded on the East Coast, and I visited her many times in Bloomington at what she and Tony called Balmy Gilead Farm.7 When Tony moved to assisted living, Jan missed him terribly. I proposed that we consider working together on an article, and she leapt at the suggestion. We debated several topics, and Jan wanted badly to work both on Methodists (her own church) and the Saints—naturally, we read Chris Jones's fine work, and we began to explore the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre from the outside, thinking more generally about the violence and dispossession of Native peoples that were central to mid-nineteenth century westward migration, as well as the ways that religion played deeper roles than many of us have internalized. Jan and I decided that the Methodists had done their fair share of slaughtering and that one could imagine either Methodists or Latter-day Saints as victims of that massacre, an insight that became one of our central arguments.8We had a great time working together. We fought over more than we agreed on and enjoyed every battle because we both felt the work got better as a result. We developed a distinct voice as we debated which words were most apt, whether our introduction was too detailed or too general, how to work with informal family histories and make sure bloodthirsty men didn't hog all our attention, and more. Generally, there was a bottle of wine involved and plenty of Jan's very good cooking, especially her cheesy grits, my favorite.And speaking of libations, Jan was noted for her late-night soirées (often in her hotel room and lasting well past midnight) following the Presidential Banquet at MHA conferences. These celebratory gatherings generated energy, ideas, bonds, partnerships, and much candor and intuitive and social learning that complemented the formal sessions of each conference. I think perhaps they became part of the informal tensile strength of the Association. For at least three decades, Jan, as hostess, helped cement the intellectual and social values behind the growth of the field and the MHA. As a sage observer noted, we can learn from Jan's attention to the myriad ways of exchanging ideas; her soirées were “a testament to the worth and potency and distinctiveness of what the MHA hath wrought, and what current attendees might be well served to not to forget.”I close this brief essay with a few additional facts about Jan that may not be widely known outside her inner circle. First, Jan was always a terrible driver and she only got worse with age. It was literally terrifying to drive with her. She would stop cold in the middle of busy intersections, for example, because she forgot whether the light she had just passed was green or red. This is relevant because she had a challenging commute. She taught in the history and religious studies departments at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI, or “oowie-poowie,” as Jan put it). Her dear friend David Bodenhammer agreed to commute together with Jan to their jobs at IUPUI. She offered to drive first and he accepted. Decades later, David announced to a large audience that he shook with fear the whole trip and told Jan he would never agree to drive with her at the wheel again.9 Jan and I got to the point where she handed me the keys to her beloved Rav4 the moment I arrived (I tried to ignore the bent fenders and dents in the doors and such). Our mutual friend Philip Barlow commented that those alarming trips often included some brilliant analysis by Jan. One might say that she had an unerring grip on ideas and history, which was more reliable than her grip on the steering wheel. I can almost hear her laughing at that one.Second, Jan really hit her stride at about midnight. She would take us painstakingly over every topic sentence and every quotation in our draft article many times, as I yawned and occasionally even nodded off. She would poke me hard and laugh. She often sent out 3 am emails, particularly to her church study group that met on Sundays after the main church service —the participants had to read fast to get in their homework plus attend the discussion. Whenever I was in town, I would attend and was given the pleasure of seeing Jan in another of her elements—a sacred space, fellow parishioners, her dear friends Ed and Linda Stevenson, and the life of the mind in Bloomington.Finally, Jan was also a passionate liberal, something that may not have been obvious in the Great Basin but was central to her identity and her deep Methodist faith. She always pointed with pride to Utah's support for FDR during the Great Depression, when the voters defied the church and carried the state for the Democrats. Her cat was proudly called Hillary Rodham Shipps. Tony, more than his Tony moved from Balmy Gilead to Jan became about a and often make a long I up driving out to Indiana and the back to with me. He about at a old age. His were One just In some the could be said for Jan, who long and She was the years were and a of she also But only years before Jan published an article in the Journal of the that a from the History Association. I be my is that she was the ever so to Armand Mauss, and other friends who the creation of the Jan Shipps we have had the means of her and that Jan was a and She a and the of a smart When Jan of the article in her she with to us all attention to and deep commitment to These are their meaning and are in where we as colleagues, with fine work, it even better to and the to the Mormon History Association and the editor of its journal for this to an I am also to all the friends whom I to Jan and who gave their time and me think this and share our and the much of Jan.