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Journal articles on the topic 'Mormons and Mormonism'
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1
Simpson, Thomas W. "Mormons Study “Abroad“: Brigham Young's Romance with American Higher Education, 1867-1877." Church History 76, no. 4 (December 2007): 778–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640700500055.
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Because Mormons could never fully realize their separatist dreams of a visible Zion in North America, the history of Mormonism has involved highly complex contacts and negotiations with non-Mormons. In their attempts to convert, resist, or appease outsiders, Mormons have engaged in a distinctive dialectic of secrecy and self-disclosure, of esoteric rites and public relations. The result has been an extended process of controlled modernization.Narratives of this process have focused on the 1890 “Manifesto” of LDS President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff, the momentous declaration that Latter-day Saints must cease to contract plural marriages. The Manifesto put an end to the intense federal persecution of the 1880s, when government agents imprisoned or exiled husbands of plural wives, confiscated Mormon assets, abolished Utah women's right to vote, and secularized Mormon schools. President Woodruff's truce with the federal government brought Mormons a relative peace and an important sign of acceptance: the granting of statehood to Utah in 1896.
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Morris, Paul. "Polynesians and Mormonism." Nova Religio 18, no. 4 (2014): 83–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.18.4.83.
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Polynesia has a particular place in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The region that heralded the Church’s first overseas missions includes seven of the world’s top ten nations in terms of the proportion of Mormons in the population, and it is home to six Mormon temples. The Polynesian Latter-day Saint population is increasing in both percentage and absolute numbers, and peoples in the Pacific “islands of the sea” continue to play a central role in the Mormon missionary imaginary. This article explores Polynesians in the LDS Church and critically evaluates different theories seeking to explain this growing religious affiliation. Scholars of Mormonism and commentators explain this growth in terms of parallels between Mormonism and indigenous Polynesian traditions, particularly family lineage and ancestry, and theological and ritual affinities. After evaluating these claims in light of scholarly literature and interviews with Latter-day Saints, however, I conclude that other reasons—especially education and other new opportunities—may equally if not more significantly account for the appeal of Mormonism to Polynesians.
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O'Brien, Hazel. "The Marginality of ‘Irish Mormonism’." Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR) 21 (January 8, 2020): 52. http://dx.doi.org/10.18792/jbasr.v21i0.40.
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This article builds upon existing literature which demonstrates the complex interconnections of Catholicism, Irishness, and whiteness in the Republic of Ireland. Using this multifaceted inter-relationship between religious, national, and racial identities as its starting point, this article analyses negotiations of Irishness, community, and belonging amongst adherents of Mormonism in Ireland.
This article firstly argues that as members of a minority religion Mormons in Ireland of all backgrounds are stigmatised and marginalised from Irish narratives of ‘belonging’. Secondly, this article determines that as the majority of Mormons in Ireland are white Irish, in keeping with the majority population, they view themselves and are viewed by others as both insiders and outsiders within their own country. Thirdly, this article demonstrates how Mormons in Ireland with racialised identities also navigate a complex system of racial, religious, and national affiliations. Thus, this article establishes that Mormons of all backgrounds in Ireland struggle to gain acceptance and belonging within the national narrative of belonging.
Finally, this article identifies the processes through which Mormons in Ireland work to create belonging to the national narrative. For some, emphasising their identity as Christian is a way to find commonality with the majority Catholic population in Ireland. For others, a celebration and reinterpretation of Irishness is used as a tool to build a dual sense of belonging; to others within an increasingly diverse Mormon community in Ireland, and to the wider society.
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Forsberg Jr., Clyde. "Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism." International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2, no. 1 (August 14, 2011): 29–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v2i1.29.
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In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.
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Decoo, Ellen, and Chia Longman. "Gesprekken met mormoonse vrouwen in Vlaanderen." Religie & Samenleving 16, no. 3 (October 1, 2021): 226–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.54195/rs.11460.
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Latter-day Saints (Mormons) living outside the ‘Mormon Culture Region’ in the Western United States usually form small minorities. As Mormonism upholds conservative gender norms, we investigated how a sample of thirteen Mormon women living in Flanders (Northern part of Belgium) experienced their relation with the Flemish secular-liberal environment. The research used the framework of structural ambivalence to assess how these women cope with conflicting norms on marriage age, male-only priesthood and familial dilemmas. Results show how respondents use arguments and strategies to handle or to avert ambivalence.
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Powell, Randy. "Social Welfare at the End of the World: How the Mormons Created an Alternative to the New Deal and Helped Build Modern Conservatism." Journal of Policy History 31, no. 04 (September 11, 2019): 488–511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0898030619000198.
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Abstract:It is common for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be considered one of the most conservative religious groups in the United States. What is less well understood is as to when the relationship between Mormonism and American conservatism began. While some historians point to the social upheavals in the 1960s and 1970s as the glue that united Mormons and conservatives, the connection began decades earlier during the Great Depression. Leaders of the Mormon Church interpreted Roosevelt’s New Deal as the fulfillment of eschatological prophecy. Envisioning themselves saving America and the Constitution at the world’s end, Mormon authorities established their own welfare program to inspire Latter-day Saints and Americans in general to eschew the New Deal. Anti–New Dealers used the Mormon welfare plan to construct a conservative ideology. Accordingly, Mormons are essential elements in the formation of a political movement that revolutionized the United States.
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Simpson, Thomas W. "The Death of Mormon Separatism in American Universities, 1877–1896." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 22, no. 2 (2012): 163–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2012.22.2.163.
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AbstractThe transformation of Mormonism from a small, persecuted sect into an established, global faith has attracted scholarly attention for decades. By all accounts, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were critical for the church's evolution and modernization. The rapidity of the change, however, leaves nagging questions. After years of costly, principled resistance, how could Mormons, with any semblance of dignity and self-respect, suddenly embrace the institutions and values of their tormentors? How did members of the nineteenth century's “most despised large group” become so loyal to the United States in the twentieth?This essay explores the unique, crucial role that American universities played in fostering Mormon-Gentile reconciliation. Right when the animosities were at fever pitch—in the decades between the death of Brigham Young (1877) and Utah's admission into the Union as the forty-fifth state (1896)—the American university became a liminal, quasi-sacred space where Mormons experienced a radical transformation of consciousness and identity. In the process, they developed an enduring devotion to non-Mormon institutions and deference to non-Mormon expertise. These extra-ecclesial loyalties would dismantle the ideological framework of Mormon separatism and pave the way for Mormons' voluntary reimmersion into the mainstream of American life.
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Hernandez, Daniel. "A Divine Rebellion: Indigenous Sacraments among Global “Lamanites”." Religions 12, no. 4 (April 19, 2021): 280. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12040280.
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This essay engages with some of the experiences and metaphysics of Indigenous peoples who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism/LDS/the Church) by responding to their structural construction as “Lamanites”. Lamanites have been interpreted within Mormonism to be ancestors of various global Indigenous peoples of the “Americas” and “Polynesia”. This essay reveals how contemporary Indigenous agency by presumed descendants of the Lamanites, who embrace both an Indigenous and a Mormon identity, shifts the cosmology of the Church. Interpretations of TheBook of Mormon that empower contemporary Indigenous agency paradoxically materialize a divinely inspired cultural rebellion within the Church itself. However, this tension that is mediated by Lamanites in the Church is not framed as an exclusive response to the Church itself but, rather, to a larger global hegemony of coloniality to which the Church is subject. These Lamanite worldviews can be understood as a process of restoring ancestral Indigenous sacraments (rituals) through Mormon paradigms, which are found and nurtured in the cracks and fissures of both the material and ontological infrastructure of Mormonism’s dominant paradigm. When Indigenous Mormons assert autonomous authorship of their own cosmogony and metaphysics, the Church beliefs of restoring a ‘primitive Christian church’ and ‘becoming Gods’ is creatively transformed into a more relevant and liberating possibility here and now.
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Anoszko, Sergiusz. "Teologia misji i ruch misyjny w nauczaniu wczesnego Kościoła Jezusa Chrystusa Świętych w Dniach Ostatnich (mormonów)." Annales Missiologici Posnanienses 22 (August 4, 2023): 99–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/amp.2017.22.8.
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Mormons are particularly concerned about missionary work, putting much effort into converting non-Mormons into their faith. The proposed text attempts to focus on the goals of the missionary activity of this quasi-Christian new religious movement, to explain the processes by which the Mormons formed their view of conversion and how to achieve them in daily life during missionary work at the early stages of the history of the denomination. An analysis of the idea of mission in the teaching and practice of the Church of Joseph Smith allows us to gain an understanding of the general theological and anthropological principles of modern Mormonism.
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Bennett, James B. "“Until This Curse of Polygamy Is Wiped Out”: Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 21, no. 2 (2011): 167–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2011.21.2.167.
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AbstractDuring the final quarter of the nineteenth century, black members of the Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church published a steady stream of anti-Mormonism in their weekly newspaper, the widely read and distributedSouthwestern Christian Advocate. This anti-Mormonism functioned as way for black ME Church members to articulate their denomination's distinctive racial ideology. Black ME Church members believed that their racially mixed denomination, imperfect though it was, offered the best model for advancing black citizens toward equality in both the Christian church and the American nation. Mormons, as a religious group who separated themselves in both identity and practice and as a community experiencing persecution, were a useful negative example of the dangers of abandoning the ME quest for inclusion. Black ME Church members emphasized their Christian faithfulness and American patriotism, in contrast to Mormon religious heterodoxy and political insubordination, as arguments for acceptance as equals in both religious and political institutions. At the same time, anti-Mormon rhetoric also proved a useful tool for reflecting on the challenges of African American life, regardless of denominational affiliation. For example, anti-polygamy opened space to comment on the precarious position of black women and families in the post-bellum South. In addition, cataloguing Mormon intellectual, moral, and social deficiencies became a form of instruction in the larger project of black uplift, by which African Americans sought to enter the ranks and privileges of the American middle class. In the end, however, black ME Church members found themselves increasingly segregated within their denomination and in society at large, even as Mormons, once considered both racially and religiously inferior, were welcomed into the nation as citizens and equals.
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Ormsbee, J. Todd. "‘Like a Cord Snapping’: Toward a grounded theory of how devout Mormons leave the LDS Church." Critical Research on Religion 8, no. 3 (June 2, 2020): 297–317. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050303220924096.
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This study describes the cultural, cognitive, social, and emotional work that once-devout members of the LDS Church must engage in to leave the church and divest themselves of Mormon culture. A Grounded Theory approach with a multi-modal memoing process showed that, for the devout, leaving the LDS Church and Mormon culture is not a singular event, but rather a process of gradual transformation that requires time and effort, passing through a series of punctuating events. Formerly devout ex-Mormons had to confront various problems, including the LDS Church’s truth claims and ethical contradictions from within the particular Mormon framework that leavers believed in and followed, which in turn had shaped and constrained both their leaving process and their post-Mormon selves. Interview data revealed a necessary reconstruction of post-Mormon emotionalities. And devout women who left Mormonism bore an added burden of overcoming internalized misogyny.
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Dransfield, Scott. "Charles Dickens and the Victorian “Mormon Moment”." Religion and the Arts 17, no. 5 (2013): 489–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685292-12341297.
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Abstract The growth of Mormonism in England in the middle of the nineteenth century presented a number of challenges relating to the cultural status of the new religion and its followers. Charles Dickens’s “uncommercial traveller” sketch describing a group of 800 Mormon converts preparing to emigrate to the United States, “Bound for the Great Salt Lake,” represents the challenge effectively. While Mormons were quickly identified by their heresies and by those qualities that characterized cultural and religious otherness, they were also observed to possess traits of Englishness, reflecting the image of a healthy working class. This article considers the tensions among these contradictory qualities and traces them to a middle-class “secular gospel” that Dickens articulates in his novels. Dickens utilizes this “gospel”—an ethic that valorizes work and domestic order as bearing religious significance—to perceive the followers of the new religion.
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Stuart, Joseph R. "“A More Powerful Effect upon the Body”: Early Mormonism's Theory of Racial Redemption and American Religious Theories of Race." Church History 87, no. 3 (September 2018): 768–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640718001580.
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This paper examines Joseph Smith's construction of a racialized theology, which drew upon conceptions of Abrahamic lineage and the possibility of “racial redemption” for peoples of African descent through conversion to Mormonism. This ran against the grain of his Protestant and Catholic contemporaries’ religious understandings of race. He expanded upon earlier iterations of his ideas with the introduction of new rituals and liturgy related to LDS temples. Smith's wife may have invited a person of African descent to participate in this new liturgy before his murder in June 1844. The views he expressed about peoples of African descent before his death are inchoate, although high-ranking Mormons related to Smith seemed to have agreed with the possibility of racial redemption. After Smith's death, Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders framed the LDS temple and priesthood restriction in terms of Smith's liturgy rather than any of Smith's varied teachings on race. This paper also argues that Mormonism's racial restriction arose from its roots in the sealing ritual rather than ecclesiological power structures. Mormonism's racial doctrine has often been described as a “priesthood ban,” referring to ecclesiastical authority. However, this discounts the religious contexts in which it arose and excludes the experiences of women and children, who were not allowed to participate in the endowment or sealing ordinances. This paper places Mormonism's temple liturgy at the front and center of the LDS Church's priesthood and temple restriction.
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Launius, Roger D. "Mormons and mormonism in U.S. government documents: A bibliography." Government Publications Review 17, no. 5 (September 1990): 468–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-9390(90)90060-q.
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Kline, Caroline. "Review of Irish Mormons: Reconciling Identity in Global Mormonism." Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association 2, no. 1 (2024): 117–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.54587/jmssa.0206.
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Grow, Matthew J. "The Whore of Babylon and the Abomination of Abominations: Nineteenth-Century Catholic and Mormon Mutual Perceptions and Religious Identity." Church History 73, no. 1 (March 2004): 139–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640700097869.
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In 1846, Oran Brownson, the older brother of the famed Catholic convert Orestes A. Brownson, penned a letter to his brother recounting a dream Orestes had shared with him much earlier. In the dream, Orestes, Oran, and a third brother, Daniel, were “traveling a road together.” “You first left the road then myself and it remains to be seen whether Daniel will turn out of the road (change his opinion),” Oran wrote. At approximately the same period in which Orestes converted to Catholicism “because no other church possessed proper authority,” Oran joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he believed that “proper authority rests among the Mormons.” Indeed, in an era characterized by denominational proliferation, democratization, and competition, Catholic and Mormon claims to divine authority proved appealing to some Americans, like the Brownsons, wearied by the diversity and disunity of the Protestant world. Oran cautioned Orestes to not trust polemical literature against Mormonism, but to “get your information from friends and not enemies.” Orestes could have repeated the same warning about Catholicism, given the number and intensity of nineteenth-century attacks on both Catholics and Mormons. Leaving mainstream Christianity to join the most despised religions in nineteenth-century America, the Brownson brothers embarked on spiritual quests that few contemporary Americans would have understood, much less approved.
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Freeman, Erik J. "Marianne Meets the Mormons: Representations of Mormonism in Nineteenth-Century France." Journal of Mormon History 49, no. 3 (July 1, 2023): 152–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/24736031.49.3.08.
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Peck, Steven L. "Latter-Day Saint Theology of a Material, Embodied Deity vis-ä-vis Evolutionary Conceptions of Embodiment, Agency, and Matter." Journal for the Study of Religion 35, no. 1 (July 27, 2022): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v35n1a1.
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Do Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have anything to contribute to theological conversations about the nature of God? The article explores this question through the lens of Latter-day Saint conceptions of matter and agential embodiment that may be useful in generalizing material theologies and provide a resource for other material-based views of deity. The argument will examine the question by first exploring the nature of agency articulated from three perspectives: 1) Process thinking in the life sciences; 2) materialist feminism; and 3) evolutionary biology. The article then suggests that the materialism of Mormonism, while in the first stages of theological engagement, is likely to provide possible dialogues with other religious traditions, looking at mattered and embodied conceptions of deity, including trinitarian ones.
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Peck, Steven L. "Latter-Day Saint Theology of a Material, Embodied Deity vis-ä-vis Evolutionary Conceptions of Embodiment, Agency, and Matter." Journal for the Study of Religion 35, no. 1 (July 27, 2022): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2022/v35n1a1.
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Do Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have anything to contribute to theological conversations about the nature of God? The article explores this question through the lens of Latter-day Saint conceptions of matter and agential embodiment that may be useful in generalizing material theologies and provide a resource for other material-based views of deity. The argument will examine the question by first exploring the nature of agency articulated from three perspectives: 1) Process thinking in the life sciences; 2) materialist feminism; and 3) evolutionary biology. The article then suggests that the materialism of Mormonism, while in the first stages of theological engagement, is likely to provide possible dialogues with other religious traditions, looking at mattered and embodied conceptions of deity, including trinitarian ones.
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Callahan, Clark, Hannah Chudleigh, and Tom Robinson. "Political Media Narratives and Mormon Perspectives of Mitt Romney." Journal of Communication and Religion 42, no. 2 (2019): 21–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jcr20194229.
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Recently, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced unprecedented public attention in what has been termed “The Mormon Moment.” While there has been an increased media focus on the religion, research into how Mormons perceive that attention is lacking, especially regarding the attention directed toward recent political candidate Mitt Romney. The purpose of this research is to fill the gap by analyzing the Mormon community’s perspectives of Mitt Romney. The current study uses Q-methodology and personal interviews to access Mormon’s perceptions of the media and politics. Results indicate that Mormons fall into four perceptual categories, indicating greater diversity within the Mormon community previously recognized.
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Yorgason, Ethan. "Re-creating Homeland and Ethnicity in the Pacific through Religion: The Case of Polynesian Conversion to Mormonism." Association of Korean Cultural and Historical Geographers 35, no. 1 (April 30, 2023): 99–118. http://dx.doi.org/10.29349/jchg.2023.35.1.99.
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This article analyzes a case in which homeland and ethnicity were simultaneously re-conceived due to the influence of religion— the case of Polynesian Mormons. Through religious conversion, these Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) were assigned and came to accept new claims about their ethnic origin and homeland. In particular, through the Book of Mormon scriptural story they came to believe their ancestors had “House of Israel” heritage via an American-continent homeland. The paper reviews both religious place-making and homeland concepts within cultural geography, arguing that the mutual constitution of ethnicity and homeland deserves more attention. It contextualizes this case of homeland/ethnicity creation in relation to examples from the Pacific Islands and around the world. It then uses historical and discourse analysis to show how the new homeland narrative was created for (and partly along with) Polynesian Mormons, as well as how the central church sought to sustain the narrative for more than 100 years. It concludes by assessing the implications of this case and pointing to resonances with the place-centric nature of many of Korea’s new religions.
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Flake, Kathleen. "Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 13, no. 1 (2003): 69–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2003.13.1.69.
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In the winter of 1905, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (L.D.S. or the “Mormons”) departed Utah on two, seemingly disparate, missions to the east coast. One contingent went to defend their church at Senate hearings in Washington, D.C.; the other, to Vermont to dedicate a monument to church founder Joseph Smith. These forays into national politics and religious memory re-fashioned Latter-day Saint identity, as well as public perception of Mormonism, for the remainder of the twentieth Century They also illuminate one of the quotidian mysteries of religion: how it adapts to the demands of time yet maintains its sense of mediating the eternal. It is axiomatic that religious communities are not exempt from the human condition; they must adapt to their temporal circumstances or die. What is not as often recognized is that churches bring a particular burden to this task because they offer their believers the hope of transcending time.
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McGraw, James S., Samuel O. Peer, and Matthew R. Draper. "Reactionary Deconversion from Mormonism: Polarization of Ideological and Behavioral Religiosity Among Active and Former Mormons." Review of Religious Research 60, no. 4 (July 9, 2018): 535–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13644-018-0343-8.
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Mcconkie, Mark L., and R. Wayne Boss. "Od Values and Mormonism: Creating Adaptive Systems." Public Administration Quarterly 30, no. 1 (March 2006): 109–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/073491490603000106.
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Our central thesis is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nicknamed “Mormons”, has created a culture which is not only friendly to but which also encourages change. This culture grows out of doctrinal preferences which recognize the importance of change to processes of personal and institutional growth, and which has therefore been receptive to administrative practices which encourage the same behaviors, albeit under a different nomenclature, that OD theory, practice, and interventions support.
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McBride, Spencer W. "When Joseph Smith Met Martin Van Buren: Mormonism and the Politics of Religious Liberty in Nineteenth-Century America." Church History 85, no. 1 (February 29, 2016): 150–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640715001390.
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In the nineteenth century, the Mormons were a minority religious group living on the fringes of the United States in both a geographic and social sense. Yet, in the twenty-first century, historians are increasingly realizing that the history of this marginal religious “other” sheds a great deal of light on the American past broadly conceived. This essay briefly describes an important moment in early Mormon history that illuminates our developing understanding of religious liberty in the early American republic, and the political obstacles Americans outside mainstream protestant Christianity faced in their efforts to obtain equal treatment under the law as American citizens.
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Reed, Sarah C. "The Cosmopolitan Saint: Nephi Anderson’s Scandinavian-American Mormon Identity." Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 25 (December 1, 2018): 14–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.29173/scancan150.
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ABSTRACT: Norwegian immigrant Nephi Anderson (1865-1923) was Mormonism’s first popular author and wrote a regional bestseller that stayed in print over 100 years. Despite the fact that many of his works have Scandinavian characters and international settings, scholars have considered Anderson’s texts primarily for their Mormonism and not in terms of his ethnic identity or portrayal of an international church. This parallels the scholarly reception of the Mormon Scandinavian immigration to the United States, which privileges American over Scandinavian and Mormon above American. In this article, I offer a critical reevaluation of Anderson’s works to show their place in Scandinavian-American or “immigrant” literature, preserving Norwegian cultural heritage as it intersects Mormonism.
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Fleming, Stephen J. "“Congenial to Almost Every Shade of Radicalism”: The Delaware Valley and the Success of Early Mormonism." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 17, no. 2 (2007): 129–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2007.17.2.129.
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AbstractWith many theories about the rise of Mormonism, this article turns to early Mormonism's growth in the Delaware Valley for insights. By testing the relative wealth of the converts, this article argues that Mormon conversion was not a product of deprivation as the converts tested were somewhat wealthier than their neighbors and were drawn from across the socioeconomic spectrum. Instead of appealing to the dispossessed, Mormonism offered a radical supernatural biblical message that appealed to certain cultural and religious orientations. Mormonism was successful among Methodists in central New Jersey, whose religious practice was still full of the enthusiasm common to Methodism's early years in America. Many of these Methodists saw Mormon supernaturalism as a welcome addition to their experience, while the considerably more formal Methodists on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware were much less receptive to Mormonism. A Quaker heritage among the converts was common on both sides of the river. The converts were principally not practicing Quakers but still maintained aspects of their heritage and were, thus, termed “hickory” Quakers. Such individuals were common in the Delaware Valley since so many Quaker's had been cut off from the fold largely resulting from the mid-eighteenth-century Quaker reformation that reinstituted strict guidelines on the membership. Yet, the reformation did not reinstitute the enthusiasm of the Quakers’ early years that had been lost after its first generation. The lapsed Quakers who were drawn to Mormonism's supernatural worldview had a romantic inherited memory of Quakerism's origins and were eager to join a religion that manifested the fervor of Quakerism's origins. Thus, Mormonism was congenial to both these kinds of religious radicalism.
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Foster, Lawrence. "Sex and Conflict in New Religious Movements: A Comparison of the Oneida Community under John Humphrey Noyes and the Early Mormons under Joseph Smith and his Would-Be Successors." Nova Religio 13, no. 3 (February 1, 2010): 34–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2010.13.3.34.
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Efforts to introduce unorthodox sexual and marital practices have often caused dissension in new religious movements. The nineteenth-century Oneida Perfectionist and Mormon communities highlight the profound impact such practices may have on group cohesion and development. Conflicts over the introduction of complex marriage almost led John Humphrey Noyes' Oneida Community to disband in 1852, yet the group survived and prospered for another quarter century until renewed internal and external tension precipitated the group's formal demise in 1881. Serious internal and external challenges associated with polygamy also developed within the larger, rapidly expanding Mormon community in Illinois under Joseph Smith Jr., during the early 1840s, and in Utah under Brigham Young until 1877. Not until the LDS Church began to give up plural marriage and make other significant accommodations to American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, was Mormonism eventually freed to begin its rapid expansion throughout the United States and worldwide after World War II. The article concludes that although alternative marriage and sexual practices may have initially served as powerful commitment mechanisms, such controversial practices appear to have had a net negative impact upon the long-term development of both groups.
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Hales, Scott. "“This Earth Was Once a Garden Place”: Millennial Utopianism in Nineteenth-Century Mormon Poetry." Religion and the Arts 17, no. 4 (2013): 381–415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685292-12341285.
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Abstract In preparation for Christ’s Second Coming, nineteenth-century Mormons worked tirelessly to build Zion, a holy city where they could weather the latter-days and plan for the Millennium. Among those who contributed their talents to Zion were poets who set their millennial longing in verse. Their body of work shows how early Mormons drew upon the Bible, new Mormon doctrines, and existing poetic forms to create a literary complement to the developing Mormon eschatology. It also shows how the Mormon concept of Zion evolved over time as historical circumstances necessitated doctrinal adaptations that affected the way Mormons envisioned their earthly haven.
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A. Engbers, Trent. "POLITICS OF POLYGAMOUS PEOPLE: HOW A MINORITY RELIGION CAN HELP US UNDERSTAND RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA." POLITICS AND RELIGION JOURNAL 7, no. 2 (December 1, 2013): 373–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.54561/prj0702373e.
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When Texas State Troopers invaded the Yearning for Zion Ranch occupied by polygamist Mormon’s in 2008, it was the third major raid in American history. Yet, fundamentalist Mormons represent a small and little understood element of the American religious landscape. Nonetheless their struggles in America represent the evolving conflicts between politics and private religious life. This study introduces the doctrine of plural marriage as understood by Fundamentalist Mormons and uses it as a case study to consider five aspects of the relationship between religions and politics in America. This includes a discussion of when government chooses to intervene in the practice of religious groups and the responses of those groups to government involvement, the impact of the federal system on religious actors, the dynamic justifications given for involvement and the constant tension between public concerns and private devotion.
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Beckstead, Robert, Bryce Blankenagel, Cody Noconi, and Michael Winkelman. "The entheogenic origins of Mormonism: A working hypothesis." Journal of Psychedelic Studies 3, no. 2 (June 2019): 212–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/2054.2019.020.
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Historical documents relating to early Mormonism suggest that Joseph Smith (1805–1844) employed entheogen-infused sacraments to fulfill his promise that every Mormon convert would experience visions of God and spiritual ecstasies. Early Mormon scriptures and Smith’s teachings contain descriptions consistent with using entheogenic material. Compiled descriptions of Joseph Smith’s earliest visions and early Mormon convert visions reveal the internal symptomology and outward bodily manifestations consistent with using an anticholinergic entheogen. Due to embarrassing symptomology associated with these manifestations, Smith sought for psychoactives with fewer associated outward manifestations. The visionary period of early Mormonism fueled by entheogens played a significant role in the spectacular rise of this American-born religion. The death of Joseph Smith marked the end of visionary Mormonism and the failure or refusal of his successor to utilize entheogens as a part of religious worship. The implications of an entheogenic origin of Mormonism may contribute to the broader discussion of the major world religions with evidence of entheogen use at their foundation and illustrate the value of entheogens in religious experience.
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Phillips, Rick. "Rethinking the International Expansion of Mormonism." Nova Religio 10, no. 1 (August 1, 2006): 52–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2006.10.1.52.
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ABSTRACT: The rapid international expansion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter——day Saints——the LDS, or Mormon Church——prompts some sociologists to claim that Mormonism is an incipient world religion. This expansion also serves as the basis for several sociological theories of church growth. However, these observations and theories rely on an uncritical acceptance of the LDS Church's membership statistics. This article uses census data from nations around the world to argue that Mormon Church membership claims are inflated. I argue that Mormonism is a North American church with tendrils in other continents, and that calling Mormonism a "world religion" is premature.
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Reesman, Jeanne Campbell. "The Mountain Meadows Massacre, as Told by Mark Twain and Jack London." Mark Twain Annual 20 (November 1, 2022): 9–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0009.
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Abstract This article addresses Mark Twain’s as well as Jack London’s writing about the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre against settlers moving west; this occurred in newly colonized Mormon land in Utah. The Mormons used local Indians as scapegoats, but the survivors pinned the event solely on Mormon shoulders. Interestingly, in contrast to most other writers and journalists, neither Twain in Roughing It nor London in The Star Rover simply paints a picture of Mormon atrocity, but instead tries to enter the minds of the persecuted Mormons as well.
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Cheng, Hongmeng. "A Review of Mormon Studies in China." Religions 12, no. 6 (May 21, 2021): 375. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12060375.
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Mormon studies in China began in the early 1990s and can be divided into three phases between the years of 2004 and 2017. The first Master’s and Doctoral theses on Mormonism were both published in 2004, and journal articles have also been increasing in frequency since then. The year of 2012 saw a peak, partly because Mormon Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination for the 2012 US presidential election. In 2017, a national-level project, Mormonism and its Bearings on Current Sino-US Relations, funded by the Chinese government, was launched. However, Mormon studies in China is thus far still in its infancy, with few institutions and a small number of scholars. Academic works are limited in number, and high-level achievements are very few. Among the published works, the study of the external factors of Mormonism is far more prevalent than research on its internal factors. Historical, sociological, and political approaches far exceed those of philosophy, theology, and history of thoughts. To Mormon studies, Chinese scholars can and should be making unique contributions, but the potential remains to be tapped.
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Stone, Heather J. "“A Crater in the Mind”: Seismic Shifts in Mormon Ideologies of Mental Illness." Journal of Communication and Religion 41, no. 3 (2018): 81–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jcr201841319.
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This study claims the Mormon ideograph of <intelligence> limited church members’ capacity to conceptualize mental illness as a disease process and encouraged members to perceive prolonged mental illness as a failure of personal agency. I examine how two church insiders used culturetypal rhetoric to create a new emancipatory discourse that sanctioned medical intervention without requiring Mormons to surrender ideological commitments. Scholars have shown that altering ideographic control over a society is usually accomplished by those outside the power structure using counter-cultural rhetoric. Mormonism’s mental illness discourse demonstrates that insiders can introduce ideological reform without deconstructing a religious organization’s fundamental principles.
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Lundahl, Craig R. "A Nonscience Forerunner to Modern Near-Death Studies in America." OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying 28, no. 1 (February 1994): 63–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/6etm-wday-y33f-fn4n.
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This article presents information on a nonscience forerunner, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to both the work of the original psychical researchers and modern near-death studies. It examines Joseph Smith's early knowledge of the death experience and his teachings on death, five historical Mormon NDE accounts predating 1864 and two NDEs of young people in the late 1800s, other Mormon teachings on the death experience before 1886, and the Mormon sources of knowledge on the death experience and the NDE prior to scientific investigations. The study shows Bible passages and Mormon scriptures were the basis for Mormons understanding the death experience. Early Mormon NDEs provided NDE information to Mormons that recent NDEs are providing to researchers today. Some evidence suggests that early Mormon NDEs reaffirmed Mormon teachings on the death experience rather than gave origin to them. The developing system of knowledge in the field of Near Death Studies is confirming early Mormon observations on the death experience.
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Barlow, Philip L. "Joseph Smith's Revision of the Bible: Fraudulent, Pathologic, Or Prophetic?" Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 1 (January 1990): 45–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017816000005526.
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Joseph Smith, the nineteenth-century Mormon founder, is often accounted for in one of three ways. Either he was a prophet in the almost fundamentalist sense that many Mormons hold him to have been, or he was a charlatan as many others have judged, or else he was a mentally deranged charismatic. In what has been the most influential study of Smith during the last half-century, Fawn Brodie bridged the latter two categories. Brodie alleged that Mormonism's founder was initially a conscious fraud who fabricated his first visionary experience; only gradually, by a series of wondrous psychological acrobatics, did he later come to take himself seriously as one called of God.
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Leone, Mark P. "El Nuevo Templo Mormón en Washington, D. C." Vestígios - Revista Latino-Americana de Arqueologia Histórica 15, no. 2 (August 19, 2021): 121–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.31239/vtg.v15i2.35410.
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Este articulo tiene como objetivo discutir arqueológicamente la Catedral Mormona de Washington, construida por la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días, en el condado de Montgomery, Maryland, Distrito de Columbia. Esta peculiar y sorprendente construcción refleja a través de su materialidad las aspiraciones e ideales mormones, que por su vez son exhibidos para el resto de la nación. A partir de un análisis estructural de su arquitectura, la arqueología crea herramientas para entender y generar interpretaciones sobre el universo mormón.
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Leamaster, Reid J., and Mangala Subramaniam. "Career and/or Motherhood? Gender and the LDS Church." Sociological Perspectives 59, no. 4 (August 2, 2016): 776–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0731121415603852.
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This article examines the ways in which the gendered religious schemas pertaining to career and motherhood are set up and reinforced by the Latter Day Saints (LDS) Church and how these schemas affect the everyday lives of Mormons. We show how gender, class, and region intersect and impact how religious individuals interpret gendered religious schemas. Analysis of qualitative interview data shows that for very religious men and women, the gendered cultural schemas of work and motherhood are distinct and tend to constrain women. Considering the intersections of class with gender, the analysis shows that some middle-class Mormons reject oppositional cultural schemas and value work and career for women. Further, we find that Mormons outside of the cultural stronghold of Utah are more likely to reject Mormon religious schemas that pit career and motherhood as competing ideologies. In fact, some women participants describe being enabled in their careers by Mormon religious schemas.
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Talbot, Christine. "MORMONS, GENDER, AND THE NEW COMMERCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS, 1890–1920." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 16, no. 3 (June 23, 2017): 302–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s153778141700007x.
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In the early twentieth century, new forms of commercial entertainment—dance halls, movie theaters, amusement halls and parks, saloons and the like—emerged in urban areas, providing new ways for young Americans to amuse themselves. This essay explores the distinctive Mormon response to these new forms of amusement. Mormon leaders took up other progressive reformers’ concerns about early twentieth-century amusements, but refracted them through a distinctively Mormon lens that was at once gendered and uniquely religious. Mormons rejected the progressive double standard that sought to constrain women's, more than men's, participation in these new entertainments, focusing on restraining both genders equally. While many progressives held women more responsible for the sexual transgressions they worried resulted from these new forms of entertainment, Mormons held men and women equally accountable. Moreover, while other progressives sought (and largely failed) to provide alternative, more wholesome, entertainment for American youth, Mormons successfully provided family and Church amusements that kept their youth safely ensconced within the Church community. By the end of the 1910s, Church leaders had officially institutionalized the provision of amusement for its members and the Church formally became a social as well as religious organization.
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Mueller, Max Perry. "The “Negro Problem,” the “Mormon Problem,” and the Pursuit of “Usefulness” in the White American Republic." Church History 88, no. 4 (December 2019): 978–1012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640719002488.
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By examining Booker T. Washington's (little studied) relationship with Mormon elites, this article introduces the category of “usefulness” to scholars who investigate how racially and religiously marginalized Americans have sought acceptance in the “white American republic.” Washington's 1913 visit to Utah was the high point in a decade-long public campaign of mutual admiration. Washington and the Mormons’ high regard for each other—an aberration in much of black-Mormon relations—was based on similar histories of discrimination at the hands of white Protestant Americans. It was also based on similar beliefs that to overcome their status as “problem” people, Washington-led blacks and Mormons had to prove their “usefulness”—a form of respectability politics—to themselves and to the American republic. To do so, they pointed to the fruits of their own and each other's usefulness: economic productivity, educational advancement, and middle-class mores. While these fruits were similar, the roots were different, and racialized. For the Mormons, usefulness arose from a post-polygamy Mormon religion through which they asserted their whiteness. For Washington, usefulness arose not from the “Negro” church—the only independent black institution in American history—but from educational institutions like Tuskegee, which promoted black advancement under the control of white supremacy.
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Mackay, Thomas W. "Mormon as Editor: A Study in Colophons, Headers, and Source Indicators." Journal of Book of Mormon Studies (1992-2007) 2, no. 2 (October 1, 1993): 90–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/44758923.
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Abstract The Book of Mormon contains various colophons and source indicators that signal documents or authors that Mormon and the writers of the small plates used, quoted, paraphrased, or summarized in composing the final text. Some of these headers have been italicized and separated out by the printer; others form an integral part of the text but could as well have been separated and italicized. Mormon’s extensive notation of sources is another set of evidence for the intricate and complex nature of the text and, simultaneously, of the magnitude of Mormon’s work as an ancient editor and historian.
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Van Dyk, Gerrit. "Understanding Mormonism." Theological Librarianship 12, no. 1 (April 24, 2019): 50–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.31046/tl.v12i1.531.
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Over the past couple of decades, the media and popular culture have been increasingly interested in members of the LDS Church, its leadership, and its practices. With all of this recent interest, it is possible that a religious studies librarian at an institution of higher education or at a theological seminary could conceivably receive an occasional query regarding Mormonism, either out of popular culture curiosity or for academic investigation. This essay will review major sources in this growing field for any who wish to either assist patrons in comparative religion projects related to Mormonism, develop a working collection in Mormon studies, or both.
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Wiles, Lee. "Mormonism and the World Religions Discourse." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 27, no. 1 (February 9, 2015): 1–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341265.
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This article examines the ways in which the status of Mormonism within academic comparative religion discourses is quite different from that which has evolved among Latter-day Saint leaders and within the burgeoning field of Mormon studies. Whereas Mormonism is a quasi-Christian New Religious Movement in most world religions textbooks and reference works, some scholars of Mormonism have advanced the expanding Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into the position of world religion. In doing so, they have adopted the terminology of a broader taxonomy largely without regard for maintaining its established demarcations. This classificatory tension, which will likely increase in the future, reveals some of the underlying logics, semantic confusions, and power dynamics of comparative religion discourses, ultimately problematizing the categories of Christianity, world religion, and New Religious Movement as currently constituted.
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Stevenson, Russell W. "The Celestial City: “Mormonism” and American Identity in Post-Independence Nigeria." African Studies Review 63, no. 2 (June 2020): 304–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2019.21.
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Abstract:This article uses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in post-independence Nigeria to examine the transition from individuated agents of religious exchange to integration into global corporate religiosity. Early Latter-day Saint adherents saw Mormonism as a mechanism by which they could acquire access to monetary resources from a financially stable Western patronage, despite political animosity due to Mormonism's racist policies and sectional tumult during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Drawing on oral and archival records, this article highlights how Mormonism as an American-based faith was able to be "translated" to meet the exigencies of indigenous adherents.
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Elisha, Omri. "Sustaining Charisma Mormon Sectarian Culture and the Struggle for Plural Marriage, 1852––1890." Nova Religio 6, no. 1 (October 1, 2002): 45–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2002.6.1.45.
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Through the latter half of the nineteenth century, Mormons in the United States engaged in a highly charged struggle to defend a religious principle——plural marriage (polygyny)——against political and cultural opposition among non-Mormon groups and institutions. The practice of plural marriage, however, remained statistically rare, hierarchical, and rooted in Victorian marriage and family norms. Moreover, the struggle took place as Mormon communities and businesses gradually assimilated to mainstream institutional and political economics. This article asks why, in light of such ambiguities, the Latterday Saints defended plural marriage with such vigor, capitulating only in the face of the most aggressive federal anti-polygamy legislation. I argue that plural marriage was a vital symbol of early Mormon sectarian identity, and that sustained activism in support of the principle allowed Mormons to embody the radical "peculiarity" of the church's charismatic origins. This has theoretical implications for an understanding of charisma as a complex and fundamentally socio-cultural phenomenon.
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Vanasse-Pelletier, Mathilde. "Échapper à la menace du fondamentalisme religieux." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 47, no. 3 (August 28, 2018): 396–417. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0008429818769470.
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Cet article aborde la manière dont sont construites les catégories de « déviance » et de « normalité » en lien avec la religion mormone (fondamentaliste et mainstream) dans la série de téléréalité Breaking the Faith. Cette série diffusée à la chaîne TLC en 2013 présente des jeunes membres de l’Église fondamentaliste de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours (FLDS) s’adaptant à la vie à l’extérieur de leur groupe d’origine, dans la capitale du mormonisme mainstream (LDS), Salt Lake City. Nous mettons à jour, en nous basant sur une perspective constructiviste de la déviance, plus particulièrement la théorie de l’étiquetage, la manière dont la religion (monogame) de l’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours est représentée comme légitime et normale en contraste avec celle des groupes mormons polygames, présentés comme déviants. Pour ce faire, la trame narrative de la série est étudiée, ainsi que les modalités de mise en scène – teintées d’une rhétorique anti-sectes – dans lesquelles s’ancrent les représentations de ces nouveaux mouvements religieux.
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Yorgason, Ethan. "Mormon Ideological Mappings of the Last Days." Nova Religio 17, no. 1 (February 2013): 59–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2013.17.1.59.
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This article addresses the geo-eschatological ideologies associated with Mormonism. Recent scholarship points to the significance of geopolitical thought within religion to society’s broader geopolitical inclinations. This article reports on a survey of 817 Mormon university students’ geographical/political/social expectations for the “Last Days.” Results show confidence in their church’s institutional and doctrinal roles, but ambivalence toward various geopolitically laden popular discourses in Mormonism and Christianity. American respondents have higher levels of certain types of ideological and geopolitical concern than do their Asian and Pacific Islander counterparts. Cleavages in respondents’ social and geopolitical thought show important associations with ideological variation.
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Oman, Nathan B. "Nomos, Narrative, and Nephi: Legal Interpretation in the Book of Mormon." British Journal of American Legal Studies 11, no. 2 (November 1, 2022): 297–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2022-0004.
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Abstract The Book of Mormon helped launch one of America's most successful religions, and millions around the world accept it as scripture. It is thus one of the more influential books to have been published in the United States. Ironically, precisely because of its role in the founding of Mormonism, the text of the Book of Mormon has often been ignored. Recently, however, the Book of Mormon has begun to attract the attention of scholars whose interest in the text goes beyond either religious devotion or the academic study of Mormonism. Rather, they look to the text as a literary creation of interest in its own right. This article brings this new approach into dialogue with the influential legal theory of Robert Cover. In so doing, it breaks new ground in the study of law and literature and shows how a close reading of the Book of Mormon text reveals a subtle debate about the nature of rule following that intersects with contemporary discussions in legal theory. These narratives illustrate an important feature of what we might call the phenomenology of legal experience, namely the way in which law carries within itself—rightly or wrongly—claims to transcendence.
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Prilutskiy, Vitaliy. "The Final Period of Mormon Migration and the Development of Utah (1869—1911)." OOO "Zhurnal "Voprosy Istorii" 2022, no. 2-1 (February 1, 2022): 18–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.31166/voprosyistorii202202statyi11.
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The article examines the last stages of migration to Utah of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons (1869-1890 and 1890-1911). It is shown that Utah became the center of Mormon migration and colonization, where waves of newly converted Mormons from Western Europe, Canada and the eastern states of the United States rushed. The study made it possible to analyze the ideological rationale for resettlement, the ethnic composition of the settlers, the specifics of the development of the lands of the American West, the peculiarities of the migration of the Saints across the continent - to the territory of Utah, and to characterize its results by the beginning of the ХХШ century.