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Author: Benjamin E. Park Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631498665 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 578
Book Description
The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called “burned-over district” of upstate New York, which was producing seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith’s would endure, becoming the most significant homegrown religion in American history. How Mormonism succeeded is the story told by historian Benjamin E. Park in American Zion. Drawing on sources that have become available only in the last two decades, Park presents a fresh, sweeping account of the Latter-day Saints: from the flight to Utah Territory in 1847 to the public renunciation of polygamy in 1890; from the Mormon leadership’s forging of an alliance with the Republican Party in the wake of the New Deal to the “Mormon moment” of 2012, which saw the premiere of The Book of Mormon musical and the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney; and beyond. In the twentieth century, Park shows, Mormons began to move ever closer to the center of American life, shaping culture, politics, and law along the way. But Park’s epic isn’t rooted in triumphalism. It turns out that the image of complete obedience to a single, earthly prophet—an image spread by Mormons and non-Mormons alike—is misleading. In fact, Mormonism has always been defined by internal conflict. Joseph Smith’s wife, Emma, inaugurated a legacy of feminist agitation over gender roles. Black believers petitioned for belonging even after a racial policy was instituted in the 1850s that barred them from priesthood ordination and temple ordinances (a restriction that remained in place until 1978). Indigenous and Hispanic saints—the latter represent a large portion of new converts today—have likewise labored to exist within a community that long called them “Lamanites,” a term that reflected White-centered theologies. Today, battles over sexuality and gender have riven the Church anew, as gay and trans saints have launched their own fight for acceptance. A definitive, character-driven work of history, American Zion is essential to any understanding of the Mormon past, present, and future. But its lessons extend beyond the faith: as Park puts it, the Mormon story is the American story.
Author: Benjamin E. Park Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631498665 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 578
Book Description
The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in the so-called “burned-over district” of upstate New York, which was producing seers and prophets daily. Most of the new creeds flamed out; Smith’s would endure, becoming the most significant homegrown religion in American history. How Mormonism succeeded is the story told by historian Benjamin E. Park in American Zion. Drawing on sources that have become available only in the last two decades, Park presents a fresh, sweeping account of the Latter-day Saints: from the flight to Utah Territory in 1847 to the public renunciation of polygamy in 1890; from the Mormon leadership’s forging of an alliance with the Republican Party in the wake of the New Deal to the “Mormon moment” of 2012, which saw the premiere of The Book of Mormon musical and the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney; and beyond. In the twentieth century, Park shows, Mormons began to move ever closer to the center of American life, shaping culture, politics, and law along the way. But Park’s epic isn’t rooted in triumphalism. It turns out that the image of complete obedience to a single, earthly prophet—an image spread by Mormons and non-Mormons alike—is misleading. In fact, Mormonism has always been defined by internal conflict. Joseph Smith’s wife, Emma, inaugurated a legacy of feminist agitation over gender roles. Black believers petitioned for belonging even after a racial policy was instituted in the 1850s that barred them from priesthood ordination and temple ordinances (a restriction that remained in place until 1978). Indigenous and Hispanic saints—the latter represent a large portion of new converts today—have likewise labored to exist within a community that long called them “Lamanites,” a term that reflected White-centered theologies. Today, battles over sexuality and gender have riven the Church anew, as gay and trans saints have launched their own fight for acceptance. A definitive, character-driven work of history, American Zion is essential to any understanding of the Mormon past, present, and future. But its lessons extend beyond the faith: as Park puts it, the Mormon story is the American story.
Author: Betsy Gaines Quammen Publisher: Torrey House Press ISBN: 1948814153 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
"A deep, fascinating dive into a uniquely American brand of religious zealotry that poses a grave threat to our national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and other public lands. It also happens to be a delight to read." —JON KRAKAUER American Zion is the story of the Bundy family, famous for their armed conflicts in the West. With an antagonism that goes back to the very first Mormons who fled the Midwest for the Great Basin, they hold a sense of entitlement that confronts both law and democracy. Today their cowboy confrontations threaten public lands, wild species, and American heritage. BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN is a historian and conservationist. She received a doctorate in Environmental History from Montana State University in 2017, her dissertation focusing on Mormon settlement and public land conflicts. After college in Colorado, caretaking for a bed and breakfast in Mosier, Oregon, and serving breakfasts at a cafe in Kanab, Utah, Betsy has settled in Bozeman, Montana, where she now lives with her husband, writer David Quammen, three huge dogs, an overweight cat, and a pretty big python named Boots.
Author: Claudia Lauper Bushman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195150228 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 147
Book Description
The authors introduce the faith's charismatic early leaders, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, delve deeply into Mormon rites and traditions, follow the adventurous trail of Mormon pioneers into the West, evoke the momentous rise of Salt Lake City, and describe the numerous skirmishes and court battles between the Mormons and their neighbors, other religions, and the American government. They describe the church's formidable institutional apparatus, the unique role of women in Mormon affairs, both before and after the Mormons' practice of polygamy, and how the church has addressed the challenges of modernity. Throughout, the Bushmans demonstrate how the rise of a small and persecuted movement intersected and even transformed the history of the American nation.
Author: Duane Keown Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1479721069 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
Growing up in Cortez, Colorado, I was only forty miles from the Utah border. What societal differences those forty miles represent. I was quite oblivious to the history of the settlement and the societies that developed in the two corners of Utah and Colorado until I became a student at Brigham Young University in 1958. With Thirteenth Year in Zion, the LDS confront science, the ideals of America s separation of religion and government, and multicultural America. Chapters begin with a personal memoir from my time in Utah. The memoirs hold the reader s interest. But the book is much more than personal memoirs. I use the stories of my encounters to tie with Mormon behaviors that for nearly two centuries have isolated the Saints from mainstream America
Author: Edwin Brown Firmage Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252069802 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
The inability of American society to tolerate the peculiar institutions embraced by Mormons was one of the major events in the religious history of nineteenth-century America. Zion in the Courts explores one aspect of this collision between the Mormons and the mainstream: the Mormons' efforts to establish their own court system--one appropriate to the distinctive political, social, and economic practices they envisioned as Zion--and the pressures applied by the federal legal system to bring them to heel. This first paperback edition includes two new introductory pieces in which the authors discuss the Mormon emphasis on settling disputes outside the court, a practice that foreshadows current trends toward arbitration and mediation.
Author: Jared Farmer Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674036719 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 472
Book Description
Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no “Indian” legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it—once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion’s Mount tells the story of this curious shift. It is a quintessentially American story about the fraught process of making oneself “native” in a strange land. But it is also a complex tale of how cultures confer meaning on the environment—how they create homelands. Only in Utah did Euro-American settlers conceive of having a homeland in the Native American sense—an endemic spiritual geography. They called it “Zion.” Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, originally embraced Indians as “Lamanites,” or spiritual kin. On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning. This same pattern was repeated across the United States. Jared Farmer reveals how settlers and their descendants (the new natives) bestowed “Indian” place names and recited pseudo-Indian legends about those places—cultural acts that still affect the way we think about American Indians and American landscapes.
Author: Wallace Earle Stegner Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 9780803292130 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner tells about a thousand-mile migration marked by hardship and sudden death—but unique in American history for its purpose, discipline, and solidarity. Other Bison Books by Wallace Stegner include Mormon Country, Recapitulation, Second Growth, and Women on the Wall.
Author: Emily W. Jensen Publisher: ISBN: 9781935952909 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
A Book of Mormons not only provides a fascinating glimpse into a religion that has taken center stage in the last presidential election, but will prompt insights into what living an encompassing religion means both individually and for the community trying to understand exactly "What does it mean to be a Mormon today?" Mormonism is at a crossroads, having been under the microscopic lens of the media for the past five years, even as Mormons young and old grapple with the openness and accessibility of The Information Age. Both the institutional church and its lay members are working to better define the faith for outsiders as well as within. This collection of essays from a broad swath of Mormons -- some who live their faith quietly, others who wrestle with how it colors their professional endeavors -- is an attempt to broaden perspectives about Mormons and demystifying stereotypes.
Author: John J. Hammond Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1469190052 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 637
Book Description
A DIVIDED MORMON ZION: NORTHEASTERN OHIO OR WESTERN MISSOURI? This is Volume III of an epic, multi-volume work entitled The Quest for the New Jerusalem: A Mormon Generation Saga, which combines family, Mormon, and American history, focusing upon how the author's ancestors were affected by their conversion to the Mormon religion. In Volume I, four of the author's ancestral families the Carters, Hammonds, Knowltons, and Spencer's and the ancestors of Mormon Church founders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, are followed from the time they enter the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England in the 1600s down to the early 1800s. Toward the end of Volume I, the focus is upon Joseph Smith and his family, including their move from Vermont to western New York and their religious and occult "magic worldviews." Volume II takes up the narrative at about the year 1820, and involves a detailed, comprehensive, and critical look at the events in the life of Joseph Smith, Jr., during the decade in which he purportedly was visited by numerous heavenly messengers, received the "golden plates," translated the writing on the plates to produce the Book of Mormon, received priesthood authority from other heavenly messengers, published the Book of Mormon, and organized the Mormon Church. There is a detailed examination of the contentious debate concerning the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and the validity of Smith's 1820s visionary experiences. The later chapters describe the movement of Church headquarters from western New York to northeastern Ohio in early 1831, Smith's interest in western Missouri as the site for his New Jerusalem/Zion, and the conversion of the author's direct ancestor Simeon Daggett Carter. Volume III begins with a detailed look at the life of Sidney Rigdon, who played a significant role in the development of the Campbellite, Reformed Baptist, Disciples of Christ Church. When he became a Mormon in late 1830, he helped bring about the conversion of hundreds of his friends in the Campbellite movement, which caused Joseph Smith Jr. in early 1831 to change the headquarters of his fledgling Mormon Church from western New York to northeastern Ohio. A remarkable fusion then took place between Mormonism, as it had been formulated initially by Smith, and the new Campbellite doctrines, practices, and organization. In the summer of 1831 Smith and Rigdon visited Jackson County, Missouri, and numerous Smith revelations formally designated it as the site for the New Jerusalem/Zion, where, immediately after the city was built, Christ's Second Coming was to occur. The sites for the city and a temple were dedicated at Independence, but Smith returned to Ohio, continued to live at Kirtland, and made the decision to build the first temple there, much to the chagrin of the Mormons who had obeyed his revelations and were "gathering" to Missouri. This led to a serious rift between Ohio and Missouri leaders, many of the latter Smith's earliest disciples from New York. Ancestrally, the focus of this volume is upon the four Carter brothers Simeon, John S., Gideon, and Jared--who joined the Mormon Church in the 1831-32 period. While Simeon (the author's great, great grandfather) did not keep a journal, and Gideon's journal is very brief, Jared's is one of the most important documents in early Mormon history, and John S.'s shorter journal is also very valuable. Jared was a kind of religious fanatic--with utopian views on faith healing, the power of prayer, and prophecy--yet nevertheless he became president of the Kirtland High Council and a member of the prestigious three-man Kirtland Temple (Building) Committee. John S. became a leader of the Church in the northeastern New York/Vermont region and brought a large company of saints to Kirtland in early 1833. All four Carter brothers became important early missionaries, and four separate chapters document their activities.
Author: Benjamin E. Park
Author: Benjamin E. Park
Author: Betsy Gaines Quammen
Author: Claudia Lauper Bushman
Author: Eran Shalev
Author: Duane Keown
Author: Edwin Brown Firmage
Author: Jared Farmer
Author: Wallace Earle Stegner
Author: Emily W. Jensen
Author: John J. Hammond