The Latter-day Saint Legal Tradition (feat. Nathan Oman)

Perhaps no religion has had a more contentious or complex relationship with American law than Mormonism: from 19th century debates over polygamy to questions of church affiliated states. So how has Mormonism, particularly the Latter-day Saint tradition, negotiated the Western legal tradition within its own belief systems? And what is the Latter-day Saint legal tradition, whether explicit or implicit, that's emerged from these engagements?

These are just a few of the many gripping questions William & Mary Law Schools' Rita Anne Rollins Professor of Law Nathan Oman asks in his 2026 book Living Oracles: Law and the Latter-day Saint Tradition. Professor Oman joins host Nicholas Shrum to kick off the newest season of Scholars & Saints through a comparative analysis and historical engagement of Latter-day Saint legal perspectives. Their conversation explores 19th and 20th century church courts, the evolving view of a divinely inspired U.S. Constitution, religious vs. secular views of marriage, and so much more. 

To learn more about Professor Nathan Oman, visit his faculty webpage.

Transcript

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Nicholas Shrum

You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The UVA mormon Studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up and coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism relevance to the broader study of religion, scholars, and saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

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Nicholas Shrum

The podcast goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge methods in Mormon studies, and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the University of Virginia.

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Nicholas Shrum

UTC. Last chance for me.

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Nicholas Shrum

Today on the podcast, I speak with Nathan Oman, the Rita and Rollins Professor of Law at William and Mary Law School, about his book Living Oracles Law and the Latter Day Saint Tradition, published with Oxford University Press this year in 2026. As a scholar of law and religion, Nathan Ohman describes how he came to write about latter day Saint approaches to law, its conflicts with the legal system, and within what Ohman calls the Latter day Saint legal tradition.

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Nicholas Shrum

Unique interpretations of concepts such as divine and natural law, legal obligation, freedom and equality, and then how that tradition has approached marriage, polygamy, religious freedom, property and contract. Living oracles is also the first comprehensive history of the Latter day Saint judicial system, including its rise in the 19th century, changes in the early 20th century, and then the eventual fall during the second half of the 20th century.

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Nicholas Shrum

We cover a lot of fascinating topics during this conversation, and I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Professor Nathan Ohman.

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Nicholas Shrum

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Scholars and Saints, the University of Virginia mormon studies podcast. Really excited today to have Nathan Ohman, who is the author of a recent volume from Oxford University Press published this year called Living Oracles Law and the Latter Day Saint Tradition. Excited to have Professor Ohman, who is the Rita and Rollins Professor at William and Mary Law School.

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Nicholas Shrum

Nathan Ohman has published widely and in Mormonism and legal studies in a variety of venues, including some recent volumes with covered books, that dive into concepts of the law and the restoration, Scripture and theology. And so this most recent volume is, an exploration of similar themes, but excited to have him tell us a little bit more about that project.

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Nicholas Shrum

So welcome to the podcast.

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Nathan Oman

Thanks for having me.

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Nicholas Shrum

Just to to start off, it's helpful for listeners to get a sense of your background, how you've come into Mormon studies, your previous education and projects, and kind of what your work looks at broadly, if you wouldn't mind.

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Nathan Oman

So I'm trained as a, lawyer and a legal scholar. So that means I don't have a PhD in history or anything like that, which is pretty, standard in the legal academy. So I got my, law degree at Harvard Law School. And so my, my primary interest is in law, and in the legal academy, we study law in lots of different ways.

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Nathan Oman

So people do legal history, people do economic analysis of law, people do sort of philosophical analysis of law. So, the legal academy has got a very high, tolerance for sort of eclecticism and dilettantes and, which has worked out very nicely, for me in terms of my interests, in terms of my interest in women's studies.

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Nathan Oman

I was sort of a mormon studies baby. In some ways, my, both of my parents were, pretty, deeply involved in Mormon intellectual life growing up. And so I was just sort of, grew up, aware of, and interested in, scholarly and academic studies of the latter day Saint tradition.

00;04;21;04 - 00;04;42;14

Nathan Oman

And then, when I went to law school, I started, learning about and became aware of, the, legal history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. And to me, that was really fascinating, the story of all the different ways in which, legal conflict, has been a driving force in Mormon history.

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Nathan Oman

And then the other, important sort of influence on me in law school is, and more broadly in my, my academic legal career. So I've just been interested in law and religion that is independent of like any interest in Mormonism. I'm just very interested in the way in which, religious, thought has informed legal thought.

00;05;02;27 - 00;05;34;16

Nathan Oman

And so, for example, when I was in law school, I studied, like Islamic law, I studied Jewish law. I've written about, like the influence of Protestant theology on the development of law. So I have a longstanding interest also, just generally in the interaction between, law and religion and my my interest in Mormonism is sort of like a, sort of specialized or concentrated, part of that broader interest.

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Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, it definitely shows in the book, for listeners that I hope will go pick up a copy of this book, they'll notice that it's, the book is separated into two parts. One, the first part is, is law and latter day Saints theology. And then the second part is more of a case study, examination of various latter day Saint experience with the law and what you were just saying about your experience writing about other religious traditions and law.

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Nicholas Shrum

I think, shows up quite, quite well and prominently in that first part, being able to kind of position Mormonism, law, tradition, and, you know, intersections of the law and put it in a conversation in these more comparative ways with and, yeah, like you said, Islam and Judaism. And it's really admirable how you do that. So what led you to, research and write Living Oracles at this time?

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Nicholas Shrum

What what kind of what did that path look like from your other legal work?

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Nathan Oman

So I've, I've been a law professor now for about 20 years, and I've written a number of articles on law and Mormonism. So I'd written, historical pieces that had looked at particular aspects of, of Mormon legal history. I'd also been invited to write articles that were had a sort of more theoretical or philosophical or theological bent.

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Nathan Oman

Right. So, for example, I was I was asked to contribute to a collection, do a mormon chapter for a collection on, conscience in the law from the point of view of different religious traditions. So, a number of years ago, John Whitty, who was the, director of the center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

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Nathan Oman

He was, editing a series, from Cambridge University Press. And the idea behind that series was that there would be a volume on various different legal traditions. Right. And their approach and, to the law, both sort of, theoretically. And then their, their legal experience. And and John, Professor Whitty suggested that I might be interested in writing, Mormon, Mormonism volume for that series.

00;07;42;03 - 00;08;05;23

Nathan Oman

So that series has been canceled. But I nevertheless thought that it was actually a really interesting idea for a, for a book. Right? To try and blend, together, legal history, but also trying to think through the relationship between, Mormon theology or Mormon thought and then questions in legal theory and legal philosophy. And so that was the genesis of, of this book.

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Nathan Oman

I always sort of wanted to do a book on law and Mormonism, but in terms of the particular way I did this book right, which is a mixture of legal theory and legal history. My my inspiration for that really was these conversations with John Wheatley. And some of these other volumes that had been done.

00;08;25;08 - 00;08;48;04

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. I'm glad that you were able to to keep working with that, that other project and the ideas from that, and that it was able to, find fruition in this book. You had mentioned that this, this book, Living Oracles, is kind of a, a mixture of scholarly analysis. Right. So how how would you position yourself within the field?

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Nicholas Shrum

For instance, in the preface, you say that this is, quote, a lawyer's and a law professor's book. So not a standard work of history sociology like we've had on the podcast previously, though, maybe Samuel Brunson's work, in between the the temple and the tax collector is, is one of the closer, kinds of studies. So, how would you position yourself in the kinds of the way that you approach, Mormonism in your book?

00;09;16;03 - 00;09;18;19

Nicholas Shrum

How how do you position yourself?

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Nathan Oman

I think fundamentally, what I'm interested in trying to uncover in this book is what, if anything, has the Mormon tradition had to say, about law? And what can we learn about law from latter day Saint, legal experience? So those are the kinds of questions that a legal scholar would ask. When looking at, a religious tradition or a legal phenomenon.

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Nathan Oman

Right. And so, where that would be, I suppose, different than a lot of what happens in Mormon studies is, a lot of Mormon studies is done by historians, and those historians are trained and think in terms of, the academic discipline of history. And so, they tend to, be very allergic to presentism. Right.

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Nathan Oman

The notion that I'm going to read, I'm going to read the past as a way of trying to make sense or make points about the future. Now, between you and I, I think actually historians are doing this all the time. I think that contemporary concerns structure historical research agendas constantly. Right. And, but, you're supposed to kind of feel guilty about presentism as a, as a historian.

00;10;32;14 - 00;10;54;27

Nathan Oman

So as a law professor, I just don't feel guilty about presentism. I think like asking questions about, the, the law and the present is a perfectly respectable thing to do. That's what I've been doing for 20 years, as a legal academic. And so, I'm interested in looking at the past in part to understand the past, but also as a way of thinking about the, the, about law in the present.

00;10;55;04 - 00;11;18;19

Nathan Oman

Now, I think that means you still have to be historically responsible, right? I think you you are, you are, responsible to, canons about, what constitutes good history and what constitutes bad history. And you need to be sophisticated in your engagement with the past. And I try to do that in this book. But it it does mean that I think I look at things in a slightly different way.

00;11;18;22 - 00;11;51;20

Nathan Oman

One way I think this might show up, right, is I'm oftentimes in this book when I'm telling stories about Mormon legal history, I'm trying to nest these stories in broader stories about law and religion and oftentimes the stories that I'm testing them in are, really broad stories. Right? So, I talk about, I might talk about some aspect of, of Mormon legal history and start by talking about, like, law in the Roman Republic or, medieval debates between, church and state.

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Nathan Oman

Those are not really being offered as like, grandiose accounts of Mormon origins. What I'm interested in doing is sort of conceptually positioning, the latter day Saints experience in this in the broader context of, debates and, controversies over the relationship between law and religion. And I what I want to draw out is sort of what might, what we might think of as being sort of typical or unique or unexpected about the latter day Saint experience.

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Nathan Oman

And so I'm less interested, right, in questions about, origins or immediate context or something like that, which I think a more traditional historian would be focused in and would be somewhat allergic to the the way in which I'm framing these questions, which I think is just goes to the fact that I'm, I'm trying to ask slightly different questions than what I think a traditional historian would ask.

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Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, that's I think that's totally understandable. But it's again, I think especially in that first half of the book, the way that you're able to place Mormonism and certain concepts like natural law and metaphysics, obligations to obey the law, divine secular law, that these, those are concepts, and, and traditions that have a very, very long history that to just place it right into the 1830s is not going to give you the full flavor of how, totally normal or how totally radical and on a spectrum, those kinds of concepts might be as they showed up in Mormonism, one other thing that might be helpful for readers, if they're they're listening to this

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Nicholas Shrum

before they read, is you use the word tradition, throughout the entire book as a concept, to kind of gap between history and theory and then how you as a legal scholar are thinking about that. So how does viewing Mormonism as a legal tradition rather than just a theology or a history? And you've already you've already touched on this, but I'm just curious specifically with the word tradition, what does that mean to you and how does that guide you?

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Nathan Oman

So, as I mentioned, I'm very interested in sort of, theoretical or philosophical questions about the law and the way in which, Latter-Day Saints, or Mormonism more broadly, we might think about Mormonism as sort of speaking to those questions. And one of the problems that you have is that, there isn't a tradition of, like, latter day Saint jurisprudential writing, or a latter day Saint sort of, theoretical or philosophical writing on the law.

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Nathan Oman

There are there are bits and pieces, right. There are, snippets of ideas that show up all over the place. But what you don't have is like, something that looks like, say, the canon law tradition or the halachic tradition in Jewish law, where there's a long sort of history of, of, self-conscious discourse about the law. So if for doing the kinds of things that I want to do, that creates a kind of methodological problem.

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Nathan Oman

So, that's actually a methodological problem that exists in the law itself. Because oftentimes, law just develops as a practice, oftentimes in response to sort of very concrete historical problems or practical issues that, judges or legislators are, dealing with. And then over time, what happens is this, these practices sort of build up till we have a body of law.

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Nathan Oman

And then there is a kind of legal scholarship that comes in after the fact and says, okay, let's take the this body of law and let's ask ourselves sort of normative questions about the law. Like what? What are the normative, goals or purposes that the law is trying to pursue. And internally, from the point of view of the law, what is the meaning of the of legal structures?

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Nathan Oman

So when a legal theorist is doing that, they're not.

00;15;55;10 - 00;15;55;28

Nicholas Shrum

Really.

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Nathan Oman

Doing history, they're not really doing legal history, although they're going to be informed about legal history. And they're not really quite doing just ordinary law. They're doing something that, among legal scholars is called interpretive reconstruction. And that idea is, is we're trying to come up with a theory or account of the law. And so, I think we can treat the Mormon tradition a little bit the way that we would treat a pre theoretical, Corpus Uros a body of law that then we're trying to produce some sort of interpretive reconstruction about.

00;16;35;01 - 00;17;07;23

Nathan Oman

So in a lot of those chapters, I'm, I am I'm not just reporting on what latter day Saints think or have said in the past, I think I'm doing something that is a little bit more synthetic where I'm trying to say, here's sort of inchoate, ideas and practices within Mormonism. And if we try to articulate those in a more coherent, manner, then we can put them into dialog with this long tradition of legal thought and then sort of see what comes out of that dialog.

00;17;07;23 - 00;17;32;11

Nathan Oman

And that's the approach that I'm taking. In, particularly the first part of the book. And I want to try and be explicit about that. I don't want, you know, historians to be reading this and think, oh my gosh, this is really bad history. Which would be fair, because I'm not actually, doing history in those, those, particularly about first part of the book, I'm trying to do something that I think looks a lot more like legal theory.

00;17;32;14 - 00;18;00;21

Nicholas Shrum

I think that's really helpful. And, for, for readers, that is, I think just that explanation and kind of that, that preface to the things that we're going to talk about, these, these specific examples of how this tradition, how you are, what was the the word you used? Reconstruction. Right. This interpretive reconstruction of something, it's we're going to see that across these, these case studies.

00;18;00;24 - 00;18;23;07

Nicholas Shrum

So maybe we can jump into those, just starting off that that your your book begins with a discussion of, of natural law and metaphysics, which is a great example of, a tradition in, in legal studies, right? That goes back centuries and centuries. Right. So you in one of your chapters, you argue that Mormonism has a conflicted relationship with the natural law.

00;18;23;10 - 00;18;52;04

Nicholas Shrum

And you note that Mormonism shares this teleological view of human happiness with a with a more classical tradition. That's, but it's post Cartesian metaphysics complicates things. So I'm curious about how you, understand latter day Saints grounding their concept of law. You know, compared to natural law that maybe those in Catholic Studies and others might, more readily understand that, if that makes sense.

00;18;52;06 - 00;19;16;28

Nathan Oman

Yeah. Well, let me let me take a stab at, trying to answer. Sure, sure. So if we natural law is is a sort of protean concept, right? It's been used in lots of different ways at different points, in history, if you talk about natural law, amongst legal philosophers today, there's going to be sort of two broad ways or schools in which people are going to talk about they're going to talk about, what is sometimes called classical natural law theory.

00;19;17;06 - 00;19;42;19

Nathan Oman

And that's really is a way of thinking about law that emanates from the work of, Saint Thomas Aquinas. And then it is, it's sort of refined and articulated, through, you know, thinkers like Suarez and Molina and proven Dorf and Grotius, and then there's something called the new Natural law, which the sort of big bang for this is, thinker named John Finnis.

00;19;42;22 - 00;20;08;13

Nathan Oman

And what he's trying to do is kind of provide an updated version of Thomas, for the, for the modern world. So if we think about just the classical natural law tradition, one of the sort of key claims that that tradition makes is that, moral and legal obligations can be known rationally, that they exist objectively and that in some sense they emanate from nature.

00;20;08;16 - 00;20;40;14

Nathan Oman

And, this idea that obligations emanate from nature is, I think, tied up in classical natural law theory with, acquaintance's sort of Aristotelian metaphysics, and particularly the idea that everything in existence has some end or teleology towards which, it is directed. Right. And so because, nature has teleology has directions, goals, purposes that are inherent in nature itself.

00;20;40;16 - 00;21;07;01

Nathan Oman

Natural law can extract from existence the sort of ends and purposes of of existence and from those get moral and legal principles. So key to that way in which, nature serves as a basis for legal and moral principles, is this idea that nature is teleological. So within latter day Saint metaphysics, it's not clear that nature in general is teleological.

00;21;07;01 - 00;21;35;29

Nathan Oman

In, in latter day Saint metaphysics, and the, the the thing, the crucial break that latter day Saints make with Aquinas and metaphysics. Right. Is that latter day Saints don't believe that the world is created ex nihilo. And they believe that human souls are co-eternal with God. And so the relationship between the divine and existence is actually quite different in Mormonism than it is in classical natural law theory.

00;21;36;04 - 00;22;05;15

Nathan Oman

So the fact that God creates the universe out of nothing, and then that God has moral ends and purposes. So the, the, teleological, aspects of existence that are, identified or seen by Aquinas are seen as sort of imminent emanations of God's mind. It's not clear that you can make that move within Mormon, metaphysics. It might be that as God has organized the world out of matter and organized, he has purposes.

00;22;05;17 - 00;22;41;02

Nathan Oman

But the matter is kind of recalcitrant right there. There are limits on on metaphysical limits on, God's power. So it's not clear within Mormon metaphysics that there the nature is actually teleological. And in a lot of ways, when latter day Saints talk about nature, they tend to talk about nature in sort of Cartesian, Newtonian terms. So if you look up, for example, natural law and you just, do text searches in corpuses of latter day Saint, writings, natural law is usually used to refer to something like Newtonian law, rather than to something like Aquinas in, natural law.

00;22;41;08 - 00;23;07;07

Nathan Oman

And so the, the, the, the tight connection, between, nature, teleology, morality and God that exists in classical natural law theory, I think is severed in Mormon metaphysics. And so it makes it sort of complicated to, the question to what extent, Mormonism can sort of take on natural law arguments, which is the question that I'm sort of, asking in that chapter of the book.

00;23;07;10 - 00;23;26;01

Nicholas Shrum

It's it's it's a really awesome part of the book that, readers have already gotten a sense of just how, I don't want to use the word dense, because I don't want to say that it's un we can't understand it because you actually write very clearly, but you are getting into some really deep territory that the in, in Mormon vernacular, right?

00;23;26;01 - 00;23;45;28

Nicholas Shrum

We might call things like deep doctrine, things like, you know, what is the existence of, of, of humans in relationship to God. And, you know, when you invoke the term metaphysics. Right. I actually have a quick question for you that I'm wondering if you could answer because I think that your book answer that, you know, talks about this in a really good way.

00;23;46;00 - 00;24;06;17

Nicholas Shrum

And we'll we'll come back to this when we talk about the obligation to obey in the Mormon law tradition. But, latter day Saints often talk about free agency. And this pop, this concept pops up quite a bit in your book. One of the things that sometimes I'll hear in Mormon circles, right, is that God gives free agency.

00;24;06;19 - 00;24;15;14

Nicholas Shrum

And I'm kind of curious that the way that you've constructed, that you've interpreted, these sources that you're looking at, what do you think of a, of a statement like that?

00;24;15;16 - 00;24;47;29

Nathan Oman

I think, latter day Saints are quite, we, various things equivocate quite a bit on what they mean by free agency. And it seems to me is that they, they tend to be combining two concepts together. So one concept is, an idea of free will, right? That, human beings are responsible for the choices that they make because they have the power to make these choices, and they have the power to make choices other than the choices that they would have made.

00;24;48;02 - 00;25;12;08

Nathan Oman

So that's a sort of, that's a claim or an idea about sort of the nature of human, the sort of human soul, the nature of, of, human choice. And that's one thing that we can mean by free agency is something like free will. I will say, free will does not have a ton of implications, I think, for law.

00;25;12;10 - 00;25;38;28

Nathan Oman

Now there's a separate idea in, Mormon discourse when we talk about free agency and that is that free agency is part of sort of God's plan for humanity. And that that plan involves human beings living their lives in a particular kind of, moral context. Right? A context in which they have sort of limited knowledge about God and his purposes.

00;25;38;28 - 00;26;13;00

Nathan Oman

There's like a veil of forgetfulness. And we, we people can, receive revelation from God, but God doesn't sort of spell out or answer all of their questions. So there's a certain kind of, epistemic limitations that people operate under. And then they exist in a world where there are choices, there are alternatives, that there are, given and are allowed to choose between and that, going through this process, what latter day Saints will talk about like mortality or something like that, going through the process of sort of living in this particular kind of moral context is an important part of God's plan.

00;26;13;03 - 00;26;38;09

Nathan Oman

That is not really an idea about freewill. Freewill is is sort of present in that. But that's there are a bunch of other concepts, around, that, that are different. So if we adopt a version of Mormonism that sees, human souls as being co-eternal with God, and this, that, that's language like Joseph Smith uses, it's not clear that God creates free will.

00;26;38;09 - 00;27;07;11

Nathan Oman

Freewill might be an inherent sort of, characteristic of these co-eternal intelligences with God, but we could nevertheless say that God creates this, sort of mortal context in which people make choices under certain circumstances, and then that does certain things to their soul in the onward progression towards exaltation, something like that. And so then in that sense, it does make sense, I think, to talk about God as creating free agency.

00;27;07;13 - 00;27;28;01

Nathan Oman

But it's very, very difficult, like because latter day Saints simply are very seldom are precise about what they mean by these terms and are often times equivocate. And that's like most people aren't precise most of the time, and most people equivocate most of the time. Right? So we only try to get precise, when we're we're asking some sort of specific or technical question.

00;27;28;03 - 00;28;00;10

Nicholas Shrum

Well, I think that would probably include me that I'm not, usually precise in the words, you know, the terms and the concepts that I am thinking about. But I appreciate you kind of taking us down a little bit of a, you know, indulging me on a little bit of a digression, but that's kind of an example of, I mean, when you're getting into these, you know, these meaty topics, you know, latter day Saints that are going to read this or people that are unfamiliar, kind of with how the latter day Saints, how latter day Saints in history have engaged with these broader, concepts.

00;28;00;15 - 00;28;35;21

Nicholas Shrum

These are kind of implications that sometimes can come up. So I, I appreciate that. Wanted to, move on to another concept that you engage in the first half of the book. This, this idea of the obligation to obey. Right. And so you trace a shift from the, you know, the earlier 19th century that oftentimes, you know, Mormons are engaging in a more, a resistance to, you know, the obligation to obey, though sometimes that pops up in, in different contexts that there is, an obligation to obey.

00;28;35;21 - 00;29;03;01

Nicholas Shrum

But then later you kind of trace this how it moves towards a more what I would call an aggressive loyalty right to the law. That's embodied in things like the articles of faith, but then are regularly referred to, especially in the 20th century. So can you explain what you mean by an expressive obligation and how, how that, that, that, that shift has how that shift happens over the course of the 19th to the 20th century?

00;29;03;01 - 00;29;09;05

Nicholas Shrum

I know that's a big that's a big topic, but kind of what does that look like? For, for listeners.

00;29;09;07 - 00;29;34;25

Nathan Oman

So, I'm interested in this question of, to what extent does, Mormonism make claims about the nature of legal authority? So the fundamental question, moral question we have about legal authority is, is the fact that something is a legal rule. Does that create a moral obligation? Now, I can have a moral obligation to, like, not murder people.

00;29;34;25 - 00;29;56;27

Nathan Oman

And then the law says I shouldn't murder people. And then we say, I have a moral obligation to follow the law, but that could be totally independent of the law. It could just be like the law happens to coincide, with what I, what I think are my, my pre legal moral obligations. So I'm interested in the more specific question of does the law, just as law generate a moral reason, generate a moral obligation?

00;29;57;04 - 00;30;18;26

Nathan Oman

And it seems to me, is that latter day Saints of over the course of their history, have actually, they're sort of two strands of latter day Saint thought on this question. There is a strand of of latter day Saint thought that says, human laws don't have authority because moral authority ultimately flows from God.

00;30;18;29 - 00;30;46;21

Nathan Oman

And human laws are human creations. They're not divine creations. And so there's a sort of usurpation that happens if, human law claims that it could have, can, generate, moral obligations on its own or that it's the obligations of human law, would trump, the obligations divine law. And this is like very, explicitly articulated by, for example, John Taylor in this book, the government of God that he publishes in the 1850s.

00;30;46;23 - 00;31;10;15

Nathan Oman

And then there's a second strand, that actually goes all the way back to the early restoration. You find it in what is today section 134, the Doctrine and Covenants, which was a statement, on behalf of the church, was prepared by Oliver Cowdery that says no, laws can serve, divine purposes and that a latter day Saints have an obligation to, obey and and follow and honor the law.

00;31;10;17 - 00;31;36;17

Nathan Oman

So what I was interested in, or what I looked at in the 20th century is, just how, generally speaking, have latter day Saints talked about the law. So if you look at things like General Conference addresses or something like this, where the question of legal obedience comes up, what have generally speaking, people said and what they have said is usually something along the line of latter day Saints have, an obligation to be good citizens.

00;31;36;19 - 00;31;58;03

Nathan Oman

They should they should be, expressing their loyalty to, the governments where they live. And they have an obligation to obey the law so that sort of is a lot of kind of pre theoretical, discussion of law. And so what I wanted to do is to, try to think through what I see as being the underlying argument.

00;31;58;06 - 00;32;27;06

Nathan Oman

So in the philosophy of law, there's a long history of what are called expressive obligations, expressive arguments for legal obligations. So the earliest example of this actually goes all the way back to Plato in one of his dialogs called The creator. And here's the idea is that you have an obligation to express a particular attitude. And so in the Plato's Crito, Socrates talks about his obligation to express gratitude towards the city of Athens.

00;32;27;08 - 00;32;50;13

Nathan Oman

And then it would be immoral if he was not to express gratitude towards the city of Athens. And then, the next step in the argument is, well, you have an obligation to to make some kind of expression. And then obeying the law is the way in which you discharge that obligation, that expressive obligation. So Socrates has an obligation to express loyalty to the laws of Athens.

00;32;50;15 - 00;33;12;15

Nathan Oman

Okay. He expresses or, gratitude. Sorry. He has an obligation to express gratitude towards the city of Athens. And the way in which he expresses his gratitude is by following the law. And if he didn't follow the law, then he would not be expressing gratitude. So obedience is seen as an expressive action, and you have certain kinds of expressive obligations.

00;33;12;18 - 00;33;32;17

Nathan Oman

So it seems to me, is that modern latter day Saint arguments about the law, if you try to cash them out in philosophical terms, oftentimes have this structure is latter day Saints understand themselves as having certain kinds of expressive obligations, certain obligations things are supposed to say or not say so like they are supposed to like testify about the gospel.

00;33;32;17 - 00;33;57;29

Nathan Oman

That's an expressive obligation. It's an obligation to say certain things. And one thing that they, have consistently it's been consistently articulated over the last hundred years, is that latter day Saints have an obligation to express loyalty to the secular governments where they live. Right. And why do they have that obligation? Well, they've got that obligation because expressing loyalty to secular governments is important for doing the Lord's work.

00;33;57;29 - 00;34;29;06

Nathan Oman

I think a largely defensive right is the latter day Saints had a, a history of being objects of legal hostility. You avoid legal hostility by expressing loyalty. You need to avoid legal hostility because otherwise that will inhibit God's work of building Zion or expanding the kingdom or whatnot. So the way in which you express loyalty to the government is by obeying, sustaining the law, and honoring the law and honoring is actually an interesting word in this context, because honoring is an expressive thing, right?

00;34;29;06 - 00;35;05;00

Nathan Oman

Honoring is like gratitude. It's something it's it's something that one expresses about something else. And so, I think that in the 20th century, if we cash out Mormon discourse in somewhat more, formal philosophical terms, what has been articulated as a sort of uniquely latter day Saint reason, to obey the law is this expressive obligation to, express loyalty towards secular regimes and that that obligation is ultimately grounded in the latter day Saint obligation to build Zion.

00;35;05;03 - 00;35;26;08

Nathan Oman

And so that is a somewhat odd kind of argument, for legal obligation. And so one of the things I'm interested in this chapter is sort of exploring, what are what are some of the implications, of that argument and sort of what are the tensions, within that way of thinking about legal obligation?

00;35;26;10 - 00;35;52;14

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. It's it's really helpful. And it just a really fascinating part, of the book that I think for, for people like myself that are really interested in in Mormon history and thinking about the relationship between, religion and society. And then when you have things like laws that that prohibit things that sometimes might, you know, contradict or clash, right, with what we perceive as religious obligations or things like that.

00;35;52;14 - 00;36;14;21

Nicholas Shrum

This is a really helpful framing, and interpretation of that. I wanted to to jump and, you know, as we're, we're, we're nearing to the other part of the book where you talk about these different kind of case studies. One of those that I found really fascinating and I'd love to hear you talk about is the church court system, which you called the rise and fall of the latter day Saint Jude.

00;36;14;23 - 00;36;26;14

Nicholas Shrum

Judiciary. Could you talk about kind of this idea of an ecclesiastical legal system that you kind of chart its, its demise across, Mormonism history?

00;36;26;16 - 00;36;51;19

Nathan Oman

Yeah. So the second part of the book, I just, picked out what I thought were aspects of latter day Saints history and experience where there's just been a lot of latter day Saints engagement with the law and on certain topics and, and sort of in that second half of the book, what I want to do is, instead of doing sort of these kind of theoretical legal theory exercises is try and uncover some of that, history and experience.

00;36;51;22 - 00;37;18;04

Nathan Oman

So latter day Saints, very early on, create, institutions that adjudicate, okay, we call them courts. They don't always get called courts. But clearly, like adjudication is a really central thing that latter day Saints are doing. Joseph Smith's seems his his his way of thinking institutionally about the church. He mostly seemed to think in terms of counsels, he didn't really think about in terms of like congregational structures or something like that.

00;37;18;04 - 00;37;42;01

Nathan Oman

So he thought about it largely in terms of councils. And he thought about one of the main things that councils did is they adjudicated. And you actually can find this, almost as soon as the church is operating, like within less than a year. One of the things that the church is doing is it's disciplining its members. It's holding trials, for people that have done things that they shouldn't have done in the eyes of the church, and then the church is sort of meeting out sanctions to them.

00;37;42;03 - 00;38;03;02

Nathan Oman

And so adjudication just shows up super early on in, latter day Saints history. And, the latter day Saints, by the end of Joseph Smith's life, have generated a fairly created a fairly complicated three tiered judicial structure where there's bishops courts and then there's High councils, and then there's a sort of High Court at the First Presidency.

00;38;03;05 - 00;38;26;19

Nathan Oman

And in the 19th century, this judicial, machinery is used amongst latter day Saints to resolve what we would think of as civil disputes. So not sort of ecclesiastical matters so much as just like the ordinary kinds of arguments that arise in social life. Right? Your cow broke into my garden and like, destroyed my crops, and I want compensation.

00;38;26;26 - 00;38;48;04

Nathan Oman

So, things that we would, as a modern lawyer, you would think of as, like a property dispute or a tort dispute or a contract dispute. Those kinds of disputes ended up in church courts, and church courts would resolve them. And in fact, latter day Saints, were taught that, it was unchristian like conduct for one latter day Saint to sue another latter day Saint before the secular courts.

00;38;48;04 - 00;39;18;04

Nathan Oman

You weren't supposed to do that. You were supposed to take your disputes to church courts. That rule is not is very imperfectly followed by latter day Saints. There's lots of secular litigation amongst latter day Saints, in the 19th century, but there is, an enormous amount of, of, litigation that's being handled in church courts, and the church court system as it develops in the 19th century, that's mostly what it's doing, is it's mostly a dispute resolution mechanism for latter day Saints.

00;39;18;06 - 00;39;46;22

Nathan Oman

And then, at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, that process fades away. And, the church court system, stops resolving civil disputes. It's it's a sort of complicated and messy process. There's isn't a clear sort of end date, for that. But, over the course of the 20th century, the, the church stops exercising jurisdiction over civil disputes.

00;39;46;25 - 00;40;22;21

Nathan Oman

And so then there's a question of, okay, if this is no longer if the church court system is no longer being used as a dispute resolution mechanism, what should it be used for? And during the course of the 20th century, that dispute resolution mechanism is sort of repurposed as a pastoral tool. So, church discipline and church discipline conceived in very legalistic terms, that is, with institutions that look very, very court like, right, now becomes involved in, in sort of processes of counseling and personal repentance.

00;40;22;24 - 00;40;53;00

Nathan Oman

And that sort of, I think reaches kind of a high watermark in like the 1960s and 1970s where, the church court system is not resolving civil disputes. It's almost entirely a pastoral tool, but it's actually quite complicated and very judicial looking pastoral tool. And then from that high watermark, what I see is a process of, of decline, that is that church discipline becomes much less court like, much less legal, like, it becomes much more informal.

00;40;53;00 - 00;41;19;09

Nathan Oman

It starts looking much, much more like counseling. And there's just a lot less of it than there used to be. And so that's why I talk about both the rise of the latter day Saints judiciary, but also the decline of the latter, say, Saint judiciary, because I think today, church membership councils, as they're called, are nowhere near as legal and court like, as the church court system was in the 19th century.

00;41;19;11 - 00;41;46;12

Nicholas Shrum

I might ask, can this is, I think, one of my favorite chapters. Just because I don't know that there's been many people that have written about, the church disciplinary structure other than, you know, high profile cases like the September 6th and things like that. But this is something that for many latter day Saints is a is a lived experience that they've, that they've encountered or they know somebody that that has, you know, or they've been they participate in it.

00;41;46;14 - 00;42;10;26

Nicholas Shrum

From a, from a leadership perspective, I'm curious just as a methodological question, how do you how do you assess, kind of the the claim that you make here about how it's declined from being more, legalistic? More disciplinary towards what you call this pastoral, more counseling like thing because these are behind most of the time behind closed doors.

00;42;10;26 - 00;42;16;03

Nicholas Shrum

What kind of what kind of sources do you use to to arrive at those, those conclusions?

00;42;16;05 - 00;42;39;19

Nathan Oman

It's really difficult to research. The church court system because, blessedly, the church Archives has come up with, fairly consistent rules about what kinds of documents you have access to and what kinds of documents you don't have access to. So we're no longer in a world where, like a general authority says, I don't want people to see that document.

00;42;39;19 - 00;43;02;22

Nathan Oman

They yank it. There's a there are consistent criteria. And the presumption is, is that documents are available. And, there's a huge wealth of materials that are available through the church archives. But one of the things that the church has taken a position on is that the, documents that are generated in, disciplinary procedures are not available to the public.

00;43;02;25 - 00;43;32;28

Nathan Oman

So, how do you research? I research this by looking in basically four sources. So one is for 19th century sources. I succeeded in, obtaining permission, from the church to look at the records of 19th century church courts, that dealt with civil disputes. And because other researchers hadn't had seen those in the past, I was able to actually identify particular records that I wanted to see that I knew were about civil disputes.

00;43;33;00 - 00;43;55;21

Nathan Oman

They weren't about capacity or sexual misconduct or something like that. And, the church gave me access to those records. So I have seen a lot of like 19th century, church court records, in addition to which there are some 19th century church court records that are just generally available, and have been published, by the, by the church or have been published by other folks.

00;43;55;23 - 00;44;20;26

Nathan Oman

So for the 19th century, I've seen the documents in cases, and that's primarily where I'm getting my sense of how they operate in the 20th century. It's much more difficult. So in the 20th century, there are a couple of sources you can look at. The most important source that I looked at is, the the church begins publishing handbooks, telling, local leaders how the church is supposed to function.

00;44;20;28 - 00;44;46;05

Nathan Oman

About 1900, over the course of the 20th century, in succeeding editions, those handbooks start becoming more elaborate. And in the 1920s, they begin containing instructions on the procedures for church courts. So, it is possible to get access to those, handbooks. And I actually have a complete set, that I obtained in my research.

00;44;46;08 - 00;45;08;22

Nathan Oman

And so what I'm able to do is just trace out, the, development of rules over time. And that is the sort of thing that, as a lawyer, you're very comfortable doing, right, is is looking at the way that rules, develop over time. And then we can sort of tell a story that's just about that story about the development of those rules over time.

00;45;08;24 - 00;45;44;01

Nathan Oman

And there are some really striking things that happen, with the development of those rules over time. The other source that you can look at is there are, diaries and, other sources where people mention or discuss church discipline. Oftentimes those sources are not particularly elaborate, but if you go poking around for them long enough, you can get, you can get a pretty big cross-section of people, just mentioning or discussing, church discipline.

00;45;44;06 - 00;46;11;12

Nathan Oman

And then you take those little snippets and you arrange them chronologically on a timeline, and you can sort of see themes that are changing over time. And you can compare that with the, the development of rules. And that sort of helps you, generate, history on how to think about this. And, one of those sources that I look at is, like public, discussions by latter day Saint leaders about church discipline.

00;46;11;12 - 00;46;34;06

Nathan Oman

Those are actually very rare. But there have been a few times, where, church leaders have written or spoken in public forums about, church discipline in the 20th for 21st centuries. And then the last source you can look at is every so often there will be sort of high profile, instances of church discipline that will end up in other sources.

00;46;34;06 - 00;46;55;14

Nathan Oman

So there'll be stories that, like journalists will talk about. There have been a few instances where church trials have resulted in litigation, before the secular courts. And so those give you another insight. Those actually tend to be sort of the most dangerous sources to use because by definition, the kinds of church discipline that ends up in the New York Times is not typical.

00;46;55;17 - 00;47;20;24

Nathan Oman

Right. And so it's, I think it's actually a huge mistake, to, construct your vision of, of how church discipline develops over time and how the Mormon court system develops over time by looking at those high profile cases. But when you read those against the background of all of these other sources, they can be a valuable thing that helps you sort of tell a story about the development of the church court system, over the 20th century.

00;47;20;24 - 00;47;47;19

Nathan Oman

And I will say, the 20th century in the 21st century was the hardest part to to research and write. There's been a fair bit of work that had been done on civil disputes in church courts in the 19th century. But as far as I know, no one had ever sat down and just tried to, like, do the very simple project of just write a history of the Mormon court system, from, you know, 1900 to the present.

00;47;47;21 - 00;48;06;08

Nathan Oman

And as far as I know, this puts the first time that, anyone's tried to do that, and it's it's hard to do. And I've done the best that I think I can do, and I would love it if someone was able to get access to, materials that I had access to and fill in the gaps and show where I'm wrong and the story that I'm telling.

00;48;06;11 - 00;48;15;26

Nathan Oman

But I do think there is a story to be told about the 20th century development and, and ultimately kind of decline of the the Mormon court system.

00;48;15;29 - 00;48;40;19

Nicholas Shrum

No, thank you for that. That brief of excellent explanation of kind of how you constructed this because, again, for some reason, my own point of view, I thought this was one of the most fascinating chapters, partly because people haven't written about it or, like you mentioned, when like the concept of church discipline comes up, it's often in these high profile venues, it's written about in a, in a, in a certain way.

00;48;40;21 - 00;48;44;09

Nicholas Shrum

And I think you just do a really good job. And it's really interesting reading.

00;48;44;11 - 00;48;47;02

Nathan Oman

I mean, there were there were some interesting. Oh, sorry.

00;48;47;03 - 00;48;48;10

Nicholas Shrum

Go ahead. Please, please go ahead.

00;48;48;12 - 00;49;12;12

Nathan Oman

I was just going to say, one of the interesting things, to look at, for me, was when I started looking at the development of ideas of apostasy in the 20th century, because there have been a number of, sort of very high, high profile, apostasy cases, starting with Sonja Johnson, in the sort of late 1970s, early 1980s, that, that have gotten a lot of media attention.

00;49;12;19 - 00;49;40;20

Nathan Oman

And if you look at these cases, apostasy looks like, a sort of disciplinary concept that's used for sort of boundary maintenance for want of a better term, sort of boundary maintenance on the theological left. Right. So it's boundary maintenance against sort of liberals or intellectuals or progressives or something like that. And, one of the things that I found, if you if you trace out, the, development of the idea of apostasy in these other sources.

00;49;40;20 - 00;50;20;21

Nathan Oman

So in the development of rules about apostasy, and then you look at sources other than sort of high profile cases that make it into the media, I think, actually that that idea that apostasy is, is about boundary maintenance on the left, I think is just flat wrong. I think apostasy over the course of the 20th century was primarily about, boundary maintenance, on the sort of theological right, if you will, and the main object of apostasy adjudication in church courts, over the last, 100 years, I think, overwhelmingly has been polygamists, or people who are sympathetic or adjacent to polygamists.

00;50;20;24 - 00;50;37;01

Nathan Oman

And I think in, in sort of brute demographic terms, that's largely what apostasy is about. And these the, the sort of high profile cases like the September 6th, are actually sort of, odd nonstandard uses of apostasy. That's not primarily what it's been used for.

00;50;37;04 - 00;51;05;16

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah. Thank you for for talking about kind of how that. Yeah. Discipline. Right. We often do think of it as, as, being, geared towards that, what you call the theological left. But as you explain. Right often or, you know, most prominently, it has been, geared towards the theological right and polygamy. And so I'm actually would love for you to, talk a little bit about one of your chapters where you talk about the theology of the ceiling.

00;51;05;19 - 00;51;34;05

Nicholas Shrum

So latter day Saints, practice ceiling as a as a temple, right? As a religious ordinance, that, is related to marriage. But then that gets complicated with the history of polygamy. One of the things I'd love for you to talk about is how the church has over it, over its history, developed its policy and its theology of of sealing, especially as it relates to, post polygamy.

00;51;34;05 - 00;51;55;08

Nicholas Shrum

Right? Because we're we're more familiar. We discussed on this podcast and I think people are familiar that, you know, polygamy, as, as a practice begins to start to fade away in the 1890s. And then by, you know, the early decades of the, of the 20th century becomes, as you mentioned, the kind of the definition of apostasy yet theologically.

00;51;55;14 - 00;52;06;18

Nicholas Shrum

Right, there are still roots that men and women are able to be sealed to multiple partners. I wonder if you can kind of talk about that, that history that that history and kind of the implications there.

00;52;06;20 - 00;52;07;02

Nathan Oman

Sure.

00;52;07;02 - 00;52;07;28

Nicholas Shrum

00;52;08;00 - 00;52;28;22

Nathan Oman

So, one of the topics that Latter-Day Saints have expanded, the most legal, attention on over the course of their history is marriage. And so I actually have in the book actually have two chapters on marriage. I don't have any other topic, but I've got two chapters on it. But there's just like, so much, latter day Saint thought and energy that's gone into marriage.

00;52;28;24 - 00;52;49;17

Nathan Oman

And one of the things that I wanted to do in that, discussion, if I could, was sort of decenter polygamy and in some ways, not neces, and particularly decenter the legal story, which is central to the way we talked about polygamy, which is the federal government's anti polygamy crusade in the 1880s. So I talk about that.

00;52;49;19 - 00;53;10;06

Nathan Oman

But that's a story that a lot of, of historians have talked about in the past. And, a lot of them have talked about it much better than, than I would, folks like, Sally Gordon, I think have just done excellent work there. And so what I wanted to do was say, okay, well, what else can we say about marriage other than talking about polygamy and the anti polygamy battles in the 1880s?

00;53;10;09 - 00;53;34;23

Nathan Oman

And one thing that stood out to me is that, latter day Saints have what amounts to a religious law of marriage, because in latter day Saints temples, the latter day Saints perform sealing rituals which are, in some sense, marriages. And so, I was I was thinking about this. I thought, well, there would be that's marriage.

00;53;34;23 - 00;53;52;10

Nathan Oman

And there are rules that would govern when you can get sealed and when you cannot get sealed. And so that looks like a religious law of marriage. And I know from comparative, study in law and religion. Right. Is that, religious law of marriage is really common, like lots of, of traditions have a religious law of marriage.

00;53;52;10 - 00;54;18;29

Nathan Oman

And so I was very interested in the idea of just sort of thinking about, sealing rules as a religious law of marriage and then trying to sort of work out what has been the history and story of the development of that religious law of, of marriage. And so, I actually came to the topic initially by just trying to work out what were the rules, when did they get promulgated and how did they get developed over time?

00;54;19;01 - 00;54;42;08

Nathan Oman

So, modern latter day Saints are very comfortable thinking about the church as being a sort of integrated institution that has, like, consistent policies and rules. Right. That was not really the way that the church worked, in the 19th century. There, for example, there's no handbooks, or rule books that explain how you're supposed to do things.

00;54;42;08 - 00;55;12;00

Nathan Oman

And in fact, for On sealing Rules, there was sort of different approaches that were taken to sealing rules depending on like, which church leader was conducting the ordinance or maybe which of the pioneer temples the ordinances were being. Performed in. And you don't really start getting an effort to create a consistent set of rules around sealing in tell the sort of, last decade of the 19th century, early 20th century.

00;55;12;07 - 00;55;38;23

Nathan Oman

And that, of course, is the point time at which the latter day Saints sealing regime is sort of coming apart from the, the just secular law of marriage. And there's a sort of complicated story about that. But, for our purpose, the only thing you need to know is that under territorial law, there was not a sharp distinction between the secular law of marriage and the church practice of marriage.

00;55;38;26 - 00;56;19;24

Nathan Oman

But those separate out in, the, the late 19th or early 20th century, and then you start getting rules. So, one of the big questions would be, what is the effect of polygamy and the abandonment of polygamy on those sealing rules? Modern latter day Saints, are aware, of that. There is a rule that says that a, a living man can be sealed while alive to multiple, living women, but a living woman cannot be sealed, to multiple living men.

00;56;19;26 - 00;56;43;14

Nathan Oman

Or multiple men. A living room can't be sealed to multiple, men. And so that is oftentimes people oftentimes think like that's a continuation of sort of 19th century polygamy that's being surreptitiously sort of continuing into the present, in those sealing rules. And one of the interesting thing I found is that story is not quite right.

00;56;43;16 - 00;57;06;19

Nathan Oman

So in the 19th century, divorce was actually pretty common and relatively easy among latter day Saints. And so if, couple was married, and they were sealed and then they were subsequently divorced, the woman would be able to remarry and actually get a second sealing without the without anything happening to the previous sealing.

00;57;06;22 - 00;57;35;07

Nathan Oman

And you have the same rule for men. So actually, during the period of polygamy, there were women that were sealed to multiple living men. And there were, of course, men that were sealed to multiple living women. And the sealing rule itself is sort of in terms of people's capacity, is is, symmetrical. And in fact, in the 19th century, there doesn't really seem to have been much of an idea of cancellation, of sealing.

00;57;35;07 - 00;57;58;22

Nathan Oman

So latter day Saints today have the idea that people are can be sealed in the temple in a marriage, and then the First Presidency has the authority to dissolve that sealing by canceling it. Brigham Young did not cancel sealings. Nobody asked him to cancel sealings. And in fact, there are sermons where he just claims the authority to cancel sealings.

00;57;58;24 - 00;58;21;16

Nathan Oman

The development of, the idea of cancellation, it seems a little bit difficult to figure it out. And I may have the timing of this slightly wrong, but, on my reading of the sources that I found, it really kind of developed in the 1890s. But it's not seen as being a prerequisite for a man or a woman who's been previously sealed before they can be sealed a second time.

00;58;21;22 - 00;58;47;22

Nathan Oman

There's no, requirement that they receive, cancellation of the previous sealing. And so that cancellation is seen as sort of an extraordinary remedy. If there was some, like, really bad thing that had happened, like I my previous spouse had apostatize or they, they were abusive or something. There might be a cancellation of sealing, but otherwise people could just remarry and the previous sealing was just left undisturbed.

00;58;47;24 - 00;59;27;10

Nathan Oman

And so you had men and women, that if they were married and sealed and then divorced or they were married, sealed and then widowed, they could have a second sealing without any cancellation of the previous sealing. And then the rule shifts. It's not entirely sure exactly when it shifts, but you clearly have rules, in place, by the 1930s, by about 1930 that says that a woman, if she is divorced or widowed, cannot be sealed a second time unless her previous sealing is canceled.

00;59;27;18 - 00;59;58;11

Nathan Oman

But a man can be sealed a second time after divorce or being widowed without canceling the previous sealing. So that kind of looks like polygyny. But that rule is developing really about 1925 or something like that. And initially that is the rule for both living sealings. But because Latter-Day Saints do work for the dead, that's also the rule for, posthumous sealings that are conducted in temples.

00;59;58;14 - 01;00;33;09

Nathan Oman

So, if I was looking at, say, my great grandmother and I, I knew that she had been married to multiple men. I was supposed to, seal her to the husband. That she would have wanted to have been sealed to in life. That's not quite as absurd as it sounds, because, a lot of early 20th century temple work is actually being done for sort of pioneer era, latter day Saint, ancestors that didn't have a chance to go to the temple during their lifetimes.

01;00;33;16 - 01;00;59;07

Nathan Oman

But as you sort of get higher up the chain of ancestors, this becomes quite fictitious. And then it's the, the rule is that you are supposed to just seal, woman to whoever was her first husband. Now, I will say that was not the rule for posthumous sealings prior to the early 1930s. So prior to the early 1930s, the procedures are kind of complicated.

01;00;59;07 - 01;01;30;23

Nathan Oman

But if you look at the effect of the procedures, if everything was going according to plan, a woman would have been sealed to every man, to whom she had been married in her lifetime, or at the very least, she would have been sealed to every man to whom she had been married in her lifetime that had resulted in descendants, and so there was this idea that posthumous sealings sort of mirror, living sealings and women can be sealed to multiple people.

01;01;30;25 - 01;01;57;08

Nathan Oman

So you get the development of that rule in the 1930s. And, it's it's I have theories about why that rule developed at that point in time that I can go into. What I don't have is like strong evidence that explains why that rule is, is changed at that point in time. Then, there's a shift that happens after World War two.

01;01;57;11 - 01;02;15;27

Nathan Oman

And the shift that happens after World War two is the church starts building temples all over the world, and the latter day Saints develop this idea that temple attendants and temple worship should be a regular part of latter day Saints devotional lives. That had not been the idea prior to World War Two. Latter day Saints might go to the temple once in their lifetime.

01;02;15;29 - 01;02;42;22

Nathan Oman

And now, Latter-Day Saints are being encouraged to go to the temple regularly and do posthumous temple work. But in order for them to go to the temple regularly and do posthumous temple work, there have to be names for them to do temple work with. And most latter day Saints aren't doing family history work. And so the church was providing names, and the church was going to provide names by just extracting genealogical information from genealogical records.

01;02;42;25 - 01;02;59;22

Nathan Oman

And the problem there is you you would see some of those records, but you wouldn't see all of the records in someone's life. So I might have a church register that showed, you know, in 1650, Mary Smith married John Smith. I don't know when I just look at that parish record. She might have been married previously to someone else.

01;02;59;22 - 01;03;19;05

Nathan Oman

That's in some other parish record that I don't have in front of me. Right. This could be her second husband or her third husband. We just have no idea from looking at that record on its own, whether or not she had been married to someone else. And so then the question is, is do we hold off on performing that sealing for Mary Smith until we established that John Smith was her first husband?

01;03;19;10 - 01;03;40;28

Nathan Oman

Because that's what the rule that was promulgated in the 1930s said you were supposed to do. And, Howard Hunter, who was an apostle who was in charge of this issue, the Temple Department went to present David O. McKay and basically said, look, under, the rule, that rule that a woman can only be sealed to one person.

01;03;41;00 - 01;04;23;26

Nathan Oman

That rule will make it so that we can't operate temples, because we will not be able to do name extraction, sealing ordinances from name extractions because, we logistically just can't figure out if if this person has had multiple spouses. So David Ann McKay at that point kind of has a as a dilemma, right? She can insist that sealing ordinances follow that rule that's developed in the 1930s that looks something like an attempt to sort of create eternal polygyny, maybe, but it has a particular sort of model about how eternal families are supposed to function.

01;04;23;28 - 01;04;49;12

Nathan Oman

And sealing ordinances might are only supposed to follow that particular, eternal model of eternal families. You can either do that, or you can have regular temple attendance as a part of latter day Saint devotional life. But you can't do both. You can't do both. You've got to make a choice. Do you want regular temple attendance, or do you want sealing rules that tightly track a particular model of of eternal families?

01;04;49;14 - 01;05;22;01

Nathan Oman

And president McKay chooses, temple attendance. He chooses regular temple attendance over a very sort of tight model of posthumous, sealing ordinances. And so then you get a rule that says, if a woman is dead, then that woman can be sealed to all of the men to whom she was sealed while alive. So, so then, for dead people, the male sealing rules and the female sealing rules are symmetrical.

01;05;22;03 - 01;05;52;18

Nathan Oman

And that's basically put in place by president McKay. There are some there are some complications. It takes a decade or two for everything to sort of work its way out. But what we have is a sort of two track system for living people. The sealing rules were put in place about 1925, and there is something like, sort of vision of, or the possibility of eternal polygyny that's sort of implicit in those rules.

01;05;52;20 - 01;06;20;12

Nathan Oman

But for what's odd, right, is that the rules for living people seem to contemplate, polygamy after you're dead. But the rules for dead people don't assume polygamy after your dead. They just seal everybody to everybody. And we just don't have a tight model about what that means. So, what we have is a sort of tension or contradiction, within those rules.

01;06;20;14 - 01;06;42;10

Nathan Oman

And so this is why when people say, like, latter day Saints still believe in eternal polygamy, because they look at the the ceiling rules, you could just as easily say they don't believe in eternal polygamy because of the posthumous sealing rules. And what we actually have are inconsistent sealing rules. And the reason they're inconsistent is because they were developed at different points in time in history.

01;06;42;12 - 01;07;07;01

Nathan Oman

And the, the, the system of rules as a whole tends to be very conservative. So they don't they're not going to alter, previous sealing rules unless they feel some necessity for doing so. And so you get different rules for living and and dead people. And what you don't have is like a single, clear model that eternal families must look like this.

01;07;07;01 - 01;07;18;18

Nathan Oman

And that's why we perform sealing ordinances in this particular way. Church actually says we're not quite sure exactly what eternal families are supposed to look like, but we do know we're supposed to be performing these sealing ordinances in the temple.

01;07;18;20 - 01;07;32;03

Nicholas Shrum

Such a fascinating history, because I mean it. And and just to be clear, that is that that formulation that president McKay puts into place in the 1960s, that is the current.

01;07;32;05 - 01;07;59;09

Nathan Oman

Yeah. So to this day it develops. It develops in stages. So originally, the rule that women, the original rule, women can be sealed to all the men to whom they were a lot, who to whom they were married while there live originally, that rule applies only to the name extraction program. Then it applies to all posthumous temple.

01;07;59;09 - 01;08;00;04

Nicholas Shrum

Work.

01;08;00;07 - 01;08;29;06

Nathan Oman

Except for people that were latter day Saints. While alive. Right. So then I'm doing I'm not. It's not I'm not submitting names. It's not a name extraction name, but I'm just submitting names, my ancestors and seal them. Everyone, unless they were latter day Saints while alive. And then the rule is changed so that even if you are a latter day Saint while alive, once you're dead, you can be sealed to all of your, folks.

01;08;29;09 - 01;09;05;06

Nathan Oman

To whom you were married while alive. And so, like, it's, David in case sort of plants the seed and makes the fundamental choice. But then it takes, a couple of iterations of the rule to work that out. There's one other thing that I think, it's important to realize during this process is that even though the the rule unquote, after about 1925, 1930, is that a living woman cannot be sealed a second time after widow being widowed or divorced without the First Presidency canceling the previous sealing.

01;09;05;06 - 01;09;36;20

Nathan Oman

That's the basic rule. The First Presidency has always retained discretion to make exceptions. And as near as I can tell from records that I have been able to see in journals and diaries, those exceptions were have been quite readily granted. Right. So, David O. McKay was asked repeatedly, if he would approve the sealing, for example, of young couple is married.

01;09;36;23 - 01;09;58;00

Nathan Oman

The, husband goes off to war and World War two or Korea or Vietnam. Young husband is is killed. The widow remarries and wants to be sealed the second time in the temple, but does not wish to cancel the sealing to her widowed husband. So that question went to the to the First Presidency on multiple occasions.

01;09;58;02 - 01;10;21;07

Nathan Oman

And every at least all of the records that I have seen, recounting that the first pregnancy granted an exception and the woman was sealed the second time. So even the the rule for living, women has always been subject to exceptions. And those exceptions have been have been I don't know if they've been routinely. Granted, it's hard to know, but have been frequently granted.

01;10;21;07 - 01;10;23;13

Nathan Oman

I think it's safe to say.

01;10;23;15 - 01;10;59;29

Nicholas Shrum

A really important history. I think for, for people interested in Mormon studies and then for latter day Saints to be aware of as well. And one of my favorite parts of this is that it's, you know, the catalyst for these kinds of changes is related to something like, we need enough names to, to, to do these practices that, you know, administrative logistics in a sense, right, help precipitate these, you know, pretty profound questions for latter day Saints that do impacts their lives in the way that they think about their kin and that the people that came before them.

01;11;00;03 - 01;11;35;25

Nathan Oman

I think that's right. Although I would I would resist the idea of administrative logistics. If by administrative logistics we mean something like, like a, a sort of trivial choice or something like that, or it's merely ministerial choice, I think David O. McKay, when he altered the rule for deceased, women, I think he's actually, he's actually making a fairly profound choice about the nature of latter day Saint sealing practices.

01;11;35;28 - 01;12;12;02

Nathan Oman

Right. So he's he's making a choice between a, a sort of tight model, of sealing ordinances that tightly mirror some particular conception of eternal families. Verses. Right? Widespread access to, temple worship and like, posthumous work for the dead as a major project for the church. And so, the, the if if he had insisted on the previous rule, then, there would have been two consequences.

01;12;12;04 - 01;12;34;11

Nathan Oman

One is, as a practical matter, there just would have been less, temple worship by contemporary latter day Saints. And that's like a matter of sort of social practice. But there also would have been a sort of profound theological consequence, and that is that the church would have been doing much less work for the dead. It would have been doing much less redeeming of the dead in latter day Saint terms.

01;12;34;11 - 01;12;58;15

Nathan Oman

And it otherwise would have done. And so, I think president McKay was making, sort of, deep, judgment, or revelation, however you want to talk about that as a latter day Saints. If you're an insider. But I think it's, it's a, it's a, it's a fundamental, decision about, the nature of latter day Saint temple work.

01;12;58;18 - 01;13;20;04

Nathan Oman

And what are the what are the the purposes of, of latter day Saint, temple work? So, yeah, it's it's precipitated by a, sort of narrow administrative question, but that narrow administrative question sort of raises profound issues. And I have to say, as a lawyer, this is kind of your stock in trade as a lawyer, right.

01;13;20;06 - 01;13;39;04

Nathan Oman

Oftentimes very, mundane minor ministerial questions like, will lead to profound and far reaching judicial opinions. And, I think there's a sort of analogous thing that's happening with those temple rules.

01;13;39;06 - 01;14;22;13

Nicholas Shrum

Well, thank you for that explanation and for, for recounting that that story. The last thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on, to an extent that you feel comfortable at. Your last chapter deals with the Constitution, which is pretty, appropriate given, Mormonism history. And then especially given, you discuss how roughly since the Mormon moment that we kind of call it around 2011, 2012, and then more recently, at the beginning of this decade with, you talk about the, the state representative, I believe, from Arizona, that that discusses this Mormon belief in a divinely inspired U.S. Constitution.

01;14;22;16 - 01;14;49;06

Nicholas Shrum

And you, you trace a history from a more 19th century, appreciation for the Constitution, and, and you discuss what that actually means. To more, the more familiar, I think, in, in Mormon studies, analysis of that in the 1950s and during the Cold War, of, the Constitution that is divinely inspired that we think of as our Taft Benson and, and others like that.

01;14;49;09 - 01;15;16;06

Nicholas Shrum

But then you, you make a pretty compelling argument that since that time, there's been a decline, of sorts, that is largely driven by the church's internationalization and this is a question that I have both as a latter day Saint. Also, it relates to, to my work when I'm looking in the 20th century and, especially American latter day Saints relationship to the American state and kind of what role that plays.

01;15;16;08 - 01;15;40;09

Nicholas Shrum

I'm curious, first of all, your thoughts, if there's anything you want to add about that history, but then I am interested in this big, this bigger question of how does a global church today, reconcile something that is in the Doctrine and Covenants? Right. It's it's it's written in, in Scripture and depending on your theological orientation, that might take on a lot of strong resonance that you're going to be very attached to.

01;15;40;09 - 01;15;54;16

Nicholas Shrum

But, you know, when more than half of the church is found outside of the United States, what do you do with something that has played such a prominent part, in the church's understanding of relationship to states and things like the Constitution?

01;15;54;19 - 01;16;20;28

Nathan Oman

So there's a chapter in the book on the Constitution. The Constitution was one of those things like polygamy, that I was actually kind of eager to sort of decenter from the discussion of law in latter day Saints. So there's a lot of people have talked about, like the Mormon doctrine of the divinely inspired Constitution. And I was very, consciously trying to highlight the ways in which latter day Saints have engaged in the law other than through the Constitution.

01;16;21;00 - 01;17;02;02

Nathan Oman

So when it came to the idea of the Constitution, I was interested in, basically two questions. One is how is it that the Constitution came to appear in latter day Saints scripture? And and what did it sort of originally mean as it appeared in latter day Saints scripture? And then the second thing that I was interested in is the different ways in which the US Constitution had been used theologically over the course of, the life of the LDS church and, here, my interest, in part is sparked by the latter day Saints are not alone in sort of generating theologies of the US Constitution.

01;17;02;05 - 01;17;25;04

Nathan Oman

Because of the idea of continuing revelation and an open canon. The way that shows up in latter day Saint discourses is unique. And in some ways, like the stakes are raised because it's there in scriptural text. But lots of, religious groups in the United States have sort of come up with constitutional theologies. And I was interested in how of latter day Saints use this concept.

01;17;25;04 - 01;17;50;06

Nathan Oman

And what I found is that it had been it's been used and invoked in, in lots of different ways over the course of the history of the church. Sometimes, it for want of a better term, it's kind of been a theological asset. It's, it's been an important concept that, latter day Saints have been able to use to resolve particular theological conundrums they might have or to solve social problems they had.

01;17;50;06 - 01;18;21;12

Nathan Oman

Like it was really important in sort of the integration of latter day Saints back into American society after, the end of the, manifesto and the end of the polygamy battles. Sometimes it's actually been something of a theological embarrassment. Right? So at the sort of height of Mormon independence, where and, Mormons are trying to sort of create a quasi independent state of Deseret out in the, saying that the 1850s and 1860s and they're anticipating the sort of imminent collapse of the United States.

01;18;21;14 - 01;18;45;14

Nathan Oman

The, the idea that the Constitution is like this divinely inspired becomes a little bit of a theological embarrassment. And like Orson Pratt is trying to kind of find ways of massaging, massaging that. So, I think, the, important thing to realize is that the Constitution has been used in lots of different ways, theologically by latter day Saints over the course of their history.

01;18;45;16 - 01;19;29;07

Nathan Oman

And the valorization of the Constitution as this divinely inspired, document, is, an idea that really, as contemporary latter day Saints, but it's really an idea that's developed after World War II to, and it is a deeply American idea, and it's an idea that is, embedded in the sort of, the political problematic, if you will, of the Cold War of thinking about sort of apocalyptic, confrontation between superpowers in which, literal nuclear apocalypse is sort of hanging in the background and, the Constitution becomes a way of sort of theology izing that moment.

01;19;29;10 - 01;19;58;27

Nathan Oman

So, that theology has almost entirely disappeared from official church discourse. So that is what happens in way of talking about the Constitution. You don't see that in general conference addresses. You don't see it in, in church teaching materials or anything like that. And I think that's because, as you you mentioned, as the church expands internationally, those very American stories about the Constitution, they're not super meaningful to non, American Latter day Saints.

01;19;58;27 - 01;20;26;22

Nathan Oman

They might not even make sense or be comprehensible in some ways to those a latter day Saints. So then, what is salvaged and how do you handle that shift? One way that that shift has been handled is, if you look at the text of the Constitution or, sorry, the text of the Doctrine and Covenants, the phrase divinely inspired constitution does not appear in that text.

01;20;26;24 - 01;20;55;24

Nathan Oman

And the notion of like the Constitution or Scripture of Scripture or something like that, the notion that, like the text of the Constitution was somehow inspired the way that latter day Saints think that like revelations in the doctrine, common sense is part. That's that idea simply isn't textually present. In the Doctrine and Covenants. And so in some ways, the, the very text that sort of authorizes the valorization of the Constitution actually also licenses a sort of retreat from a really heavy valorization of that of the Constitution.

01;20;55;29 - 01;21;17;19

Nathan Oman

And there were, you know, going back to the 1980s, you have people like Rex Lee or Dallin Oaks that are offering a sort of more chastened notion of a, divinely inspired constitution. So, Rex Lee, in a speech at BYU, notes, for example, that the original text of the Constitution created a constitutional right to the international slave trade.

01;21;17;21 - 01;21;36;18

Nathan Oman

Right. So a constitutional right to do something, that is unequivocally evil, and it's clearly present in the text of the Constitution. And so Rex Lee says you can't think about the Constitution as inspired, the way that you think that Scripture is inspired, given that it has an odious provision, like the slave importation clause, in it.

01;21;36;24 - 01;21;59;17

Nathan Oman

So you get to backing away from the idea of, of the Constitution as divinely inspired. And I think the text of Scripture makes that relatively easy. The other, thing that happens is that in the past, the Constitution and sort of theology thing about the Constitution was used by latter day Saints as a way of doing civic theology.

01;21;59;23 - 01;22;25;26

Nathan Oman

So it was a way for latter day Saints to talk about their relationship to civic authority and the importance of ideas about, religious freedom. And, and that idea of, of associating the Constitution with religious freedom that goes all the way back to Joseph Smith in the original, revelations. So that that civic theology, continues within the church.

01;22;25;29 - 01;22;48;27

Nathan Oman

Those continue to be issues that like church leaders and latter day Saints talk about, but they no longer use the language of the Constitution to talk about those issues as much. And so what we get instead is, we talk about civic loyalty. And the more common text that we use for that is, the 12th article of Faith.

01;22;48;29 - 01;23;08;25

Nathan Oman

And then you get discussions not about the Constitution per se, but about religious freedom. And the nice thing about religious freedom is that's an idea that travels internationally. And if you look at the legal issues that the church faces that are really difficult, existentially important legal issues, most of those are not happening in the United States today.

01;23;08;27 - 01;23;30;17

Nathan Oman

The me, the most potent legal challenges that a latter day Saints face in today's world, are occurring outside of the United States and non American legal systems. And in that context, like the Constitution, the US Constitution is not a useful thing to talk about. But religious freedom is. And so you see this discourse about religious freedom, that's developed, within the church.

01;23;30;23 - 01;23;41;16

Nathan Oman

And that is a discourse that's grounded, I think, in those original, revelations and their concerns. But it's a it's a way of talking about it that has a more universal appeal.

01;23;41;18 - 01;24;03;11

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Well, thank you for, for for contextualizing kind of latter day Saint, approaches to the Constitution and explaining kind of where it sits today. And I think that's a really helpful, argument that you make for it for the field in Mormon studies. So moving into some of our concluding questions, again, thank you for your time today.

01;24;03;13 - 01;24;25;02

Nicholas Shrum

Why should people, these are questions always ask of all of all the authors, why should people not necessarily interested in in Mormon studies, read a book like this one? And so what does it contribute to the history of American religion or legal studies or religious studies? What what do you see as being, why this would be worthwhile for people to investigate and take the time to read?

01;24;25;04 - 01;24;43;27

Nathan Oman

So, I guess I can answer that question in two ways. So, people are interested about law and people who are interested in religion. So for people that are interested in religion but aren't necessarily interested in law, I think this book, should be of interest to them, for two ways. And, in, in two ways.

01;24;43;29 - 01;25;18;11

Nathan Oman

So the first is, I think, one of the drivers of religious change, and development in the latter day Saints tradition has been secular law. I don't think when the, only driver, obviously. But, there are moments in latter day Saints history where major theological, doctrinal, sort of ecclesial logical, and devotional shifts have happened in a latter day Saint tradition because of external secular legal pressure.

01;25;18;14 - 01;25;55;09

Nathan Oman

And so I think for scholars of religion, just thinking about the role of law in the development of religion is important. And I think the latter day Saints experience is a really, powerful illustration of that. And so I hope that the book would be of interest, to scholars of religion for that reason. The other, reason that I think the book might be of interest to scholars of religion is that latter day Saints have, in various ways have developed their own way of thinking about the law and, one of the important things I think about religion and this is I think this is an an insight to scholars of

01;25;55;09 - 01;26;22;21

Nathan Oman

religion, certainly is that religion is about more than just, sort of theology is about God, right? Or it's more about it's about more than, formal liturgy. Religion is also about sort of a worldview that people develop about how they see and understand the world. And one of the really, really important bits of our social world is the fact that we live in a social world that's populated, by powerful, state bureaucracies that are organized around the idea of law.

01;26;22;23 - 01;27;03;29

Nathan Oman

And so just looking at examples of the way in which religious traditions have, conceptualized their relationship to that important social fact, I think, is we're studying, for scholars of the law in some ways, I think, there are kind of inverse, insights. So, scholars of the law, I don't think have been very good at recognizing the way in which, religious thought has informed legal thought, that, legal scholars have a tendency to treat, religion as this exogenous thing that's largely sort of unrelated to the law, except when, like, the law bumps up against it.

01;27;03;29 - 01;27;30;24

Nathan Oman

And then we have, like, church state issues under the free exercise or establishment Clause. But I think actually religion is a way in which we think about and see the world and religion has been really, important in, the way in which people have thought about the law. And there have been scholars of law and religion, that I think I've done an excellent job, thinking about this relationship, scholars like Harold Berman or John Witty.

01;27;30;26 - 01;28;09;05

Nathan Oman

And I hope that this book, could be seen, within the tradition of that scholarship as another, example of trying to show the way in which, religion, and religious thought is a way in which people view the law just the way that economic thought or critical race theory, or neuroscience or all of these other differing, ways of viewing, the world that are, regularly appear in legal scholarship that religion is, is worthy of sort of being in that same, group.

01;28;09;07 - 01;28;29;21

Nathan Oman

And I think that the book should be of interest to those people, even if they're not particularly interested in Mormonism. Mormonism is a weird enough and colorful enough story that I hope it can hold your attention. And it does, I think, provide some really vivid, illustrations of those important facts about the relationship between law and religion.

01;28;29;23 - 01;28;54;09

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Thank you. And then the last kind of more broad question, and feel free to answer it however you'd like, but so since this is a religious studies podcast, it's been housed in the religious studies department at UVA. I'm wondering if you could comment on how this, this project in particular influenced or confirmed or changed how you approach religion as, a variable in the kind of studies that you do.

01;28;54;09 - 01;29;06;04

Nicholas Shrum

So maybe a way of asking is, asking that is how do you see it operating in the book? And you kind of touched on that in your last comment. But, with this project in particular, how did it influence that for you?

01;29;06;07 - 01;29;37;29

Nathan Oman

So I initially came to the study of, law and Mormonism, through the lens of constitutional law. So I was first introduced to it as a topic, by reading the Supreme Court's decisions that were issued in the 1880s in the anti polygamy battles. And so I came to the topic, of thinking about the, of religion primarily in the through the traditional categories of church and state.

01;29;38;02 - 01;30;00;10

Nathan Oman

And over the course of my career, two things have happened. So one is that over time, I've just become less interested in constitutional law than I was when I first started studying law. The legal universe is just vast and fascinating. And in some ways, I think constitutional law is just a lot less, interesting and important than people oftentimes make it out to be.

01;30;00;12 - 01;30;42;07

Nathan Oman

And people assume that it is. The second thing that I found is that the latter day Saint engagement with the law is, much, much, much broader than, latter days Saint engagement with the Constitution or constitutional litigation on behalf of latter day Saints, or by latter day Saints. And one of the things that, came out to me in this book and that I try to emphasize in the book in large part by sort of de-emphasizing, traditional constitutional stories about Mormon legal history, is that latter day Saint engagement with the law has been very broad and very deep on a lot of different topics, beyond simply questions of church, state,

01;30;42;09 - 01;31;03;02

Nathan Oman

First Amendment, adjudication as important as those are. And so that's something that over the course of researching and writing and doing the research and writing that ultimately led to this book over, you know, the course of many years, I've come to be convinced that there's just much, much more to the latter day Saint legal experience.

01;31;03;02 - 01;31;16;29

Nathan Oman

A latter day Saint engagement law than church state issues, and that church state laws is at best an incomplete and at worst a distorting way of thinking about the relationship between law and the latter day Saint tradition.

01;31;17;01 - 01;31;44;06

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you for that. And again, for listeners, I, I, I will reiterate again, this book has so many really deep and rich, stories and analysis related to those stories. And we we barely scratched the surface on them there. There are more chapters, there are more topics, especially to what you're speaking of, that it's not just, you know, First Amendment constitutional law questions that even though we've discussed a few of those.

01;31;44;06 - 01;32;08;14

Nicholas Shrum

Right. But that, it gets into questions of property and it gets into questions of, you know, more theological questions of, you know, who has authority to do what in certain times. And, so I just really appreciate the, the care and the depth that you put into this book. And then and finally, the last question I always ask is, what is next for you in your scholarly projects or are you taking a break?

01;32;08;16 - 01;32;28;27

Nathan Oman

Nope. I continue to do, scholarly work. So I have a kind of two track, research agenda, and I always have, and that is that I do, work on law. On religion. That is largely, but not exclusively focused on the Mormon experience. And then I do work in legal theory that is largely about contract law.

01;32;28;29 - 01;32;53;06

Nathan Oman

And so in my contract law hat, I'm doing a lot of work with sovereign debt and contracts that, governments enter into when they borrow money and the legal consequences of those. So that's probably, somewhat far afield from, this podcast, in my law and religion, research is I, of late, I am focusing in on, the legal experience of Joseph Smith.

01;32;53;09 - 01;33;30;15

Nathan Oman

And, that is actually not been my focus. I'm, I'm, perhaps somewhat odd in scholars of Mormonism in that I traditionally have not been horribly interested in Joseph Smith. I've oftentimes found, like the 1880s and 1890s, much more interesting to me as a lawyer, than the 1830s or 1840s. But with the publication of the Joseph Smith papers and this massive tsunami of, legal materials related to Joseph Smith's life that have been made available, and we're still in the process of interpreting, I feel like there's a lot of sort of undiscovered country, in, Mormon legal history.

01;33;30;15 - 01;33;43;05

Nathan Oman

And in thinking about the relationship between law and Joseph Smith. And so I'm working on projects that are taking advantage of that work from the Joseph Smith papers. And, and looking at that law in, the life of Joseph Smith.

01;33;43;08 - 01;34;10;11

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Well, we will all wait anxiously for those other projects and even the projects and sovereign debt sound fascinating. Even though I'm far afield from those things. Again, thank you so much, Professor Ohman, for for taking time. I feel like we covered a lot of ground. Talking about your your really fascinating and well written book, Living Oracles Law and the Latter Day Saint Tradition, again published with Oxford University Press this year.

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Nicholas Shrum

Thank you so much, Professor Oman.

01;34;12;06 - 01;34;15;11

Nathan Oman

Thank you for having me.

01;34;15;14 - 01;34;31;28

Nicholas Shrum

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversation soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stuart for production, editing, and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit Mormon guitar.com. Thank you for listening.

01;34;32;01 - 01;34;39;16

Nicholas Shrum

I made my way. From Sin City.