Author: Matthew Bowman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644911
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
“From one of the brightest of the new generation of Mormon-studies scholars comes a crisp, engaging account of the religion’s history.”—The Wall Street Journal With Mormonism on the nation’s radar as never before, religious historian Matthew Bowman has written an essential book that pulls back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church’s origins and explains how the Mormon vision has evolved—and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots. The place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate, yet the faith has never been more popular. One of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it retains an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture. Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history—a frank and balanced demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many. With a new afterword by the author. “Fascinating and fair-minded . . . a sweeping soup-to-nuts primer on Mormonism.”—The Boston Globe “A cogent, judicious, and important account of a faith that has been an important element in American history but remained surprisingly misunderstood.”—Michael Beschloss “A thorough, stimulating rendering of the Mormon past and present.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] smart, lucid history.”—Tom Brokaw
The Mormon People
Author: Matthew Bowman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644911
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
“From one of the brightest of the new generation of Mormon-studies scholars comes a crisp, engaging account of the religion’s history.”—The Wall Street Journal With Mormonism on the nation’s radar as never before, religious historian Matthew Bowman has written an essential book that pulls back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church’s origins and explains how the Mormon vision has evolved—and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots. The place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate, yet the faith has never been more popular. One of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it retains an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture. Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history—a frank and balanced demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many. With a new afterword by the author. “Fascinating and fair-minded . . . a sweeping soup-to-nuts primer on Mormonism.”—The Boston Globe “A cogent, judicious, and important account of a faith that has been an important element in American history but remained surprisingly misunderstood.”—Michael Beschloss “A thorough, stimulating rendering of the Mormon past and present.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] smart, lucid history.”—Tom Brokaw
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644911
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
“From one of the brightest of the new generation of Mormon-studies scholars comes a crisp, engaging account of the religion’s history.”—The Wall Street Journal With Mormonism on the nation’s radar as never before, religious historian Matthew Bowman has written an essential book that pulls back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church’s origins and explains how the Mormon vision has evolved—and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots. The place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate, yet the faith has never been more popular. One of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it retains an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture. Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history—a frank and balanced demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many. With a new afterword by the author. “Fascinating and fair-minded . . . a sweeping soup-to-nuts primer on Mormonism.”—The Boston Globe “A cogent, judicious, and important account of a faith that has been an important element in American history but remained surprisingly misunderstood.”—Michael Beschloss “A thorough, stimulating rendering of the Mormon past and present.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] smart, lucid history.”—Tom Brokaw
Race and the Making of the Mormon People
Author: Max Perry Mueller
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469633760
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
The nineteenth-century history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Max Perry Mueller argues, illuminates the role that religion played in forming the notion of three "original" American races—red, black, and white—for Mormons and others in the early American Republic. Recovering the voices of a handful of black and Native American Mormons who resolutely wrote themselves into the Mormon archive, Mueller threads together historical experience and Mormon scriptural interpretations. He finds that the Book of Mormon is key to understanding how early followers reflected but also departed from antebellum conceptions of race as biblically and biologically predetermined. Mormon theology and policy both challenged and reaffirmed the essentialist nature of the racialized American experience. The Book of Mormon presented its believers with a radical worldview, proclaiming that all schisms within the human family were anathematic to God's design. That said, church founders were not racial egalitarians. They promoted whiteness as an aspirational racial identity that nonwhites could achieve through conversion to Mormonism. Mueller also shows how, on a broader level, scripture and history may become mutually constituted. For the Mormons, that process shaped a religious movement in perpetual tension between its racialist and universalist impulses during an era before the concept of race was secularized.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469633760
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
The nineteenth-century history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Max Perry Mueller argues, illuminates the role that religion played in forming the notion of three "original" American races—red, black, and white—for Mormons and others in the early American Republic. Recovering the voices of a handful of black and Native American Mormons who resolutely wrote themselves into the Mormon archive, Mueller threads together historical experience and Mormon scriptural interpretations. He finds that the Book of Mormon is key to understanding how early followers reflected but also departed from antebellum conceptions of race as biblically and biologically predetermined. Mormon theology and policy both challenged and reaffirmed the essentialist nature of the racialized American experience. The Book of Mormon presented its believers with a radical worldview, proclaiming that all schisms within the human family were anathematic to God's design. That said, church founders were not racial egalitarians. They promoted whiteness as an aspirational racial identity that nonwhites could achieve through conversion to Mormonism. Mueller also shows how, on a broader level, scripture and history may become mutually constituted. For the Mormons, that process shaped a religious movement in perpetual tension between its racialist and universalist impulses during an era before the concept of race was secularized.
The Mormon People
Author: Matthew Burton Bowman
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0679644903
Category : Mormon Church
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A religious historian explores the 180-year history of Mormonism, discussing the church's origins and development, its position as one of the fastest growing religions in the world, and its connection to American life.
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0679644903
Category : Mormon Church
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A religious historian explores the 180-year history of Mormonism, discussing the church's origins and development, its position as one of the fastest growing religions in the world, and its connection to American life.
People of Paradox
Author: Terryl L. Givens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198037368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe. Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States. Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198037368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe. Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States. Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.
A Peculiar People
Author: J. Spencer Fluhman
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807837407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Though the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, it does not specify what counts as a religion. From its founding in the 1830s, Mormonism, a homegrown American faith, drew thousands of converts but far more critics. In "A Peculiar People", J. Spencer Fluhman offers a comprehensive history of anti-Mormon thought and the associated passionate debates about religious authenticity in nineteenth-century America. He argues that understanding anti-Mormonism provides critical insight into the American psyche because Mormonism became a potent symbol around which ideas about religion and the state took shape. Fluhman documents how Mormonism was defamed, with attacks often aimed at polygamy, and shows how the new faith supplied a social enemy for a public agitated by the popular press and wracked with social and economic instability. Taking the story to the turn of the century, Fluhman demonstrates how Mormonism's own transformations, the result of both choice and outside force, sapped the strength of the worst anti-Mormon vitriol, triggering the acceptance of Utah into the Union in 1896 and also paving the way for the dramatic, yet still grudging, acceptance of Mormonism as an American religion.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807837407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Though the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, it does not specify what counts as a religion. From its founding in the 1830s, Mormonism, a homegrown American faith, drew thousands of converts but far more critics. In "A Peculiar People", J. Spencer Fluhman offers a comprehensive history of anti-Mormon thought and the associated passionate debates about religious authenticity in nineteenth-century America. He argues that understanding anti-Mormonism provides critical insight into the American psyche because Mormonism became a potent symbol around which ideas about religion and the state took shape. Fluhman documents how Mormonism was defamed, with attacks often aimed at polygamy, and shows how the new faith supplied a social enemy for a public agitated by the popular press and wracked with social and economic instability. Taking the story to the turn of the century, Fluhman demonstrates how Mormonism's own transformations, the result of both choice and outside force, sapped the strength of the worst anti-Mormon vitriol, triggering the acceptance of Utah into the Union in 1896 and also paving the way for the dramatic, yet still grudging, acceptance of Mormonism as an American religion.
Hearken, O Ye People
Author: Mark Lyman Staker
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 737
Book Description
Best Book Award — Mormon History Association Best Book Award — John Whitmer Historical Association More of Mormonism’s canonized revelations originated in or near Kirtland than any other place. Yet many of the events connected with those revelations and their 1830s historical context have faded over time.Barely twenty-five years after the first of these Ohio revelations, Brigham Young lamented in 1856: “These revelations, after a lapse of years, become mystified [sic] to those who were not personally acquainted with the circumstances at the time they were given.” He gloomily predicted that eventually the revelations “may be as mysterious to our children . . . as the revelations contained in the Old and New Testaments are to this generation.” Now, more than 150 years later, the distance between what Brigham Young and his Kirtland contemporaries considered common knowledge and our understanding of the same material today has widened into a sometimes daunting gap. Mark Staker narrows the chasm in Hearken, O Ye People by reconstructing the cultural experiences by which Kirtland’s Latter-day Saints made sense of the revelations Joseph Smith pronounced. This volume rebuilds that exciting decade using clues from numerous archives, privately held records, museum collections, and even the soil where early members planted corn and homes. From this vast array of sources he shapes a detailed narrative of weather, religious backgrounds, dialect differences, race relations, theological discussions, food preparation, frontier violence, astronomical phenomena, and myriad daily customs of nineteenth-century life. The result is a “from the ground up” experience that today’s Latter-day Saints can all but walk into and touch.
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 737
Book Description
Best Book Award — Mormon History Association Best Book Award — John Whitmer Historical Association More of Mormonism’s canonized revelations originated in or near Kirtland than any other place. Yet many of the events connected with those revelations and their 1830s historical context have faded over time.Barely twenty-five years after the first of these Ohio revelations, Brigham Young lamented in 1856: “These revelations, after a lapse of years, become mystified [sic] to those who were not personally acquainted with the circumstances at the time they were given.” He gloomily predicted that eventually the revelations “may be as mysterious to our children . . . as the revelations contained in the Old and New Testaments are to this generation.” Now, more than 150 years later, the distance between what Brigham Young and his Kirtland contemporaries considered common knowledge and our understanding of the same material today has widened into a sometimes daunting gap. Mark Staker narrows the chasm in Hearken, O Ye People by reconstructing the cultural experiences by which Kirtland’s Latter-day Saints made sense of the revelations Joseph Smith pronounced. This volume rebuilds that exciting decade using clues from numerous archives, privately held records, museum collections, and even the soil where early members planted corn and homes. From this vast array of sources he shapes a detailed narrative of weather, religious backgrounds, dialect differences, race relations, theological discussions, food preparation, frontier violence, astronomical phenomena, and myriad daily customs of nineteenth-century life. The result is a “from the ground up” experience that today’s Latter-day Saints can all but walk into and touch.
Peculiar People
Author: Ronald L. Schow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781560850465
Category : Homosexuality
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Mormons embrace the term "peculiar people" as a badge of honor. It represents pride in being God's people and therefore different from the rest of society. The term is equally applicable to gay Mormons who experience misunderstanding, guilt, and derision, often at the hands of fellow parishioners for whom discrimination is now a distant memory. In Peculiar People, a wealth of resources chronicles the experiences of LDS homosexuals. Those who have chosen celibacy are occasionally admitted into full church fellowship. Others, fearing censure and humiliation, conceal their orientation. Many decide that they "will not go where they are not welcome" and drift away from the community that once nurtured them. The church views same-sex intimacy as sin, though stops short of advising homosexuals to marry heterosexuals. For some time now church clerics, social workers, theologians, and sociologists have been engaged in debate about what place such people should occupy in the church community and what remedies or consolations should be offered them. To this discussion, Ron and Wayne Schow and Marybeth Raynes contribute their wide professional experience and bring a range of perspectives to this volume.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781560850465
Category : Homosexuality
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Mormons embrace the term "peculiar people" as a badge of honor. It represents pride in being God's people and therefore different from the rest of society. The term is equally applicable to gay Mormons who experience misunderstanding, guilt, and derision, often at the hands of fellow parishioners for whom discrimination is now a distant memory. In Peculiar People, a wealth of resources chronicles the experiences of LDS homosexuals. Those who have chosen celibacy are occasionally admitted into full church fellowship. Others, fearing censure and humiliation, conceal their orientation. Many decide that they "will not go where they are not welcome" and drift away from the community that once nurtured them. The church views same-sex intimacy as sin, though stops short of advising homosexuals to marry heterosexuals. For some time now church clerics, social workers, theologians, and sociologists have been engaged in debate about what place such people should occupy in the church community and what remedies or consolations should be offered them. To this discussion, Ron and Wayne Schow and Marybeth Raynes contribute their wide professional experience and bring a range of perspectives to this volume.
Ites
Author: David Butler (Seminary teacher)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781609079383
Category : Book of Mormon
Languages : en
Pages : 107
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781609079383
Category : Book of Mormon
Languages : en
Pages : 107
Book Description
The Urban Pulpit
Author: Matthew Burton Bowman
Publisher: OUP Us
ISBN: 0199977607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Matthew Bowman explores the world of a neglected group of American Christians: self-identified liberal evangelicals who sought to reconcile traditional evangelical spirituality with progressive views on social activism and theological questions.
Publisher: OUP Us
ISBN: 0199977607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Matthew Bowman explores the world of a neglected group of American Christians: self-identified liberal evangelicals who sought to reconcile traditional evangelical spirituality with progressive views on social activism and theological questions.
The Mormon Hierarchy
Author: D. Michael Quinn
Publisher: Mormon Hierarchy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 968
Book Description
The Mormon church today is led by an elite group of older men, nearly three-quarters of whom are related to current or past general church authorities. This dynastic hierarchy meets in private; neither its minutes nor the church's finances are available for public review. Members are reassured by public relations spokesmen that all is well and that harmony prevails among these brethren. But by interviewing former church aides, examining hundreds of diaries, and drawing from his own past experience as an insider within the Latter-day Saint historical department, D. Michael Quinn presents a fuller view. His extensive research documents how the governing apostles, seventies, and presiding bishops are likely to be at loggerheads, as much as united. These strong-willed, independent men-like directors of a large corporation or supreme court justices-lobby among their colleagues, forge alliances, out-maneuver opponents, and broker compromises. There is more: clandestine political activities, investigative and punitive actions by church security forces, personal "loans" from church coffers (later written off as bad debts), and other privileged power-vested activities. Quinn considers the changing role and attitude of the leadership toward visionary experiences, the momentous events which have shaped quorum protocol and doctrine, and day-to-day bureaucratic intrigue from the time of Brigham Young to the dawn of the twenty-first century. The hierarchy seems at root well-intentioned and even at times aggressive in fulfilling its stated responsibility, which is to expedite the Second Coming. Where they have become convinced that God has spoken, they have set aside personal differences, offered unqualified support, and spoken with a unified voice. This potential for change, when coupled with the tempering effect of competing viewpoints, is something Quinn finds encouraging about Mormonism. But one should not assume that these men are infallible or work in anything approaching uninterrupted unanimity.
Publisher: Mormon Hierarchy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 968
Book Description
The Mormon church today is led by an elite group of older men, nearly three-quarters of whom are related to current or past general church authorities. This dynastic hierarchy meets in private; neither its minutes nor the church's finances are available for public review. Members are reassured by public relations spokesmen that all is well and that harmony prevails among these brethren. But by interviewing former church aides, examining hundreds of diaries, and drawing from his own past experience as an insider within the Latter-day Saint historical department, D. Michael Quinn presents a fuller view. His extensive research documents how the governing apostles, seventies, and presiding bishops are likely to be at loggerheads, as much as united. These strong-willed, independent men-like directors of a large corporation or supreme court justices-lobby among their colleagues, forge alliances, out-maneuver opponents, and broker compromises. There is more: clandestine political activities, investigative and punitive actions by church security forces, personal "loans" from church coffers (later written off as bad debts), and other privileged power-vested activities. Quinn considers the changing role and attitude of the leadership toward visionary experiences, the momentous events which have shaped quorum protocol and doctrine, and day-to-day bureaucratic intrigue from the time of Brigham Young to the dawn of the twenty-first century. The hierarchy seems at root well-intentioned and even at times aggressive in fulfilling its stated responsibility, which is to expedite the Second Coming. Where they have become convinced that God has spoken, they have set aside personal differences, offered unqualified support, and spoken with a unified voice. This potential for change, when coupled with the tempering effect of competing viewpoints, is something Quinn finds encouraging about Mormonism. But one should not assume that these men are infallible or work in anything approaching uninterrupted unanimity.