Latter-day Saint Perspectives

The Interview: Bruce A. Van Orden, emeritus professor of church history and doctrine at BYU, has completed a comprehensive biography of one of the most interesting converts to early Mormonism.  We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps chronicles the vast contributions of Phelps to early Mormonism and the attempts to build Zion. Phelps’s activities went far beyond composing his noteworthy hymns. To date, the Joseph Smith Papers Project has published seventeen volumes. These books demonstrate the pivotal roles Phelps played in the early days of the LDS Church, often at the side of Joseph Smith himself. Van Orden drew extensively from the Joseph Smith Papers volumes and online resources. He also researched thoroughly Phelps’s writings in newspapers and almanacs he edited or co-edited such as the Evening and the Morning Star, the Upper Missouri Advertiser, the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, the Northern Times, the Times and Seasons, The Wasp, the Nauvoo Neighbor, the Deseret N