Download or read book The Mormon People Their Character and Traditions written by Thomas G. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book People of Paradox written by Terryl L. Givens and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-29 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Mormon People written by Matthew Bowman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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
Download or read book Race and the Making of the Mormon People written by Max Perry Mueller and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region written by Ethan R. Yorgason and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-02-12 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique study, Ethan R. Yorgason examines the Mormon "culture region" of the American West, which in the late nineteenth century was characterized by sexual immorality, communalism, and anti-Americanism but is now marked by social conservatism. Foregrounding the concept of region, Yorgason traces the conformist-conservative trajectory that arose from intense moral and ideological clashes between Mormons and non-Mormons from 1880 to 1920. Looking through the lenses of regional geography, history, and cultural studies, Yorgason investigates shifting moral orders relating to gender authority, economic responsibility, and national loyalty, community, and home life. Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region charts how Mormons and non-Mormons resolved their cultural contradictions over time by a progressive narrowing of the range of moral positions on gender (in favor of Victorian gender relations), the economy (in favor of individual economics), and the nation (identifying with national power and might). Mormons and non-Mormons together constructed a regime of effective coexistence while retaining regional distinctiveness.
Download or read book Mormon Studies written by Ronald Helfrich, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mormonism arose in early 19th century New York and has fired the imaginations of its devotees, critics, and students ever since. Some intellectuals and academics read Mormonism as the product of economic change wrought by the Erie Canal in the Burned-over District of western New York State and upper north-eastern Ohio. Others read Mormonism as an authoritarian reaction to Jacksonian democracy. Finally, some, including most of those who became Mormons in the early 19th century and most of those who are believing Mormons today, read Mormonism as the intervention of God in human history. This book engages with Mormon Studies from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the end of the 20th century. It covers those who fought over Mormonism's truth or falsity, on those who tried to understand Mormonism as a religious and sociological phenomenon, and on those who explored the history of Mormonism from a more dispassionate perspective. It concludes with an exploration of the culture war that erupted as Mormon Studies professionalized particularly after the 1960s.
Download or read book Mormon History written by Ronald Warren Walker and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Doctrine Philosophy History of Mormons written by Joseph Smith Jr. and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 14253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eBook collection has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Standard Works: The Bible (King James Version) The Book of Mormon (Another Testament of Jesus Christ) The Doctrine and Covenants The Pearl of Great Price Doctrine: Lectures of Faith by Joseph Smith The Wentworth Letter by Joseph Smith Discourses of Brigham Young Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage The Great Apostasy by James E. Talmage The Government of God by John Taylor Items on the Priesthood, presented to the Latter-day Saints by John Taylor A New Witness for God by B. H. Roberts The Mormon Doctrine of Deity by B. H. Roberts Defense of the Faith and the Saints by B. H. Roberts Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith A Rational Theology, as Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day by John A. Widtsoe Joseph Smith as Scientist by John A. Widtsoe Key to the Science of Theology by Parley P. Pratt A Voice of Warning by Parley P. Pratt Letters Exhibiting the Most Prominent Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints History: History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Story of the Mormons by William Alexander Linn Essentials in Church History by Joseph Fielding Smith Biographies of Mormon Leaders: The Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet by George Q. Cannon The Mormon Prophet and His Harem (Biography of Brigham Young) by C. V. Waite The Life of John Taylor by B. H. Roberts Wilford Woodruff, Fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow by Eliza R. Snow The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
Download or read book Godforsaken Idaho written by Shawn Vestal and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine stories illuminate what it means to be Mormon and how faith serves to humanize, in a work that includes a seriocomic portrait of a young Joseph Smith.
Download or read book Mormonism in Transition written by Thomas G. Alexander and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Sanctuary written by Louis P. Nelson and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-14 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines a diverse set of spaces and buildings seen through the lens of popular practice and belief to shed light on the complexities of sacred space in America. Contributors explore how dedication sermons document shifting understandings of the meetinghouse in early 19th-century Connecticut; the changes in evangelical church architecture during the same century and what that tells us about evangelical religious life; the impact of contemporary issues on Catholic church architecture; the impact of globalization on the construction of traditional sacred spaces; the urban practice of Jewish space; nature worship and Central Park in New York; the mezuzah and domestic sacred space; and, finally, the spiritual aspects of African American yard art.
Download or read book The Mountainous West written by William Wyckoff and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional interpretations of the American West have concentrated on the importance of its aridity to the region's cultural evolution and development. But the West is marked by a second fact of physical geography that distinguished it (from the experiences of settlers) from the east. As pioneers struggled with the climate west of the hundredth meridian, they were also confronted by mountains strewn across the region and offering their own set of limitations and opportunities. This volume focuses on these green islands of the Mountainous West that have witnessed patterns of settlement and development distinct from their lowland neighbors. In thirteen essays, the contributors address the mountains by means of five themes: the mountains as barriers to movement, islands of moisture, a zone of concentrated resources, an area of government control, and a restorative sanctuary. The focus ranges from California's Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Montana. William K. Wyckoff is an associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University. He is the author of The Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape and of articles in many journals, including The California Geographer, Social Science Journal, Geographical Review, and Journal of Historical Geography. Lary M. Dilsaver is a professor in the Department of Geology and Geography, University of South Alabama. The author, with William Tweed, of Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, he has also written articles in journals such as Geographical Review, Annals of Tourism Research, and Yearbook of the Association of Pacific CoastGeographers.
Download or read book Sisters in Spirit written by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book of essays about Mormon women, all written and edited by scholars who are themselves Mormon women, is a brave and important work. Readers will fully appreciate just how brave and important it really is, however, if they can see how this work of historical theology fits into the history of historical writing about Mormon women, as well as how it fits into Mormon history itself. "The women who contributed to this book are among the best of the Mormon literati . . . they] hold that there is hope within the church for change, for reform, for expansion of the place of women." -- Women's Review of Books "Historians of women in America have a great deal to learn from the history of Mormon women. This fine set of essays provides an excellent introduction to a subject about which we should all know more." -- Anne Firor Scott, author of Making the Invisible Woman Visible.
Download or read book Solemn Covenant written by B. Carmon Hardy and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his famous Manifesto of 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff called for an end to the more than fifty-year practice of polygamy. Fifteen years later, two men were dramatically expelled from the Quorum of Twelve Apostles for having taken post-Manifesto plural wives and encouraged the step by others. Evidence reveals, however, that hundreds of Mormons (including several apostles) were given approval to enter such relationships after they supposedly were banned. Why would Mormon leaders endanger agreements allowing Utah to become a state and risk their church's reputation by engaging in such activities--all the while denying the fact to the world? This book seeks to find the answer through a review of the Mormon polygamous experience from its beginnings. In the course of national debate over polygamy, Americans generally were unbending in their allegiance to monogamy. Solemn Covenant provides the most careful examination ever undertaken of Mormon theological, social, and biological defenses of "the principle". Although polygamy was never a way of life for the majority of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, Carmon Hardy contends that plural marriage enjoyed a more important place in the Saints' restorationist vision than most historians have allowed. Many Mormons considered polygamy a prescription for health, an antidote for immorality, and a key to better government. Despite intense pressure from the nation to end the experiment, because of their belief in its importance and gifts, polygamy endured as an approved arrangement among church members well into the twentieth century. Hardy demonstrates how Woodruff's Manifesto of 1890 evolved from a tactic to preservepolygamy into a revelation now used to prohibit it. Solemn Covenant examines the halting passage followed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it transformed itself into one of America's most vigilant champions of the monogamous way.
Download or read book The Antipolygamy Controversy in U S Women s Movements 1880 1925 written by Joan Smyth Iversen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first study of the antipolygamy movement in the United States traces its growth from a Utah-based women's group into a national crusade where it sparked a debate in suffrage politics. The author analyzes this debate, highlighting the differing views of marriage, family, and the role of women held by suffrage leaders, Mormon women, and antipolygamy reformers. Antipolygamy rhetoric masked a more significant debate within women's groups about the structure and meaning of the American family. Coming in the post-Civil War period, the antipolygamy agenda reflects an attempt to re-construct the Republican family, diminish patriarchal authority, and improve the status of women. The reaction of the antipolygamy women was also more than a struggle for power. Their adherence to the Republican family was a discourse involving not just rhetoric, but a whole range of cultural forms and institutions which provided women with status, moral authority, and an identity. Often the fear of polygamy was mingled with anxiety over the increase in divorce and the emergence of the new woman. Ironically, by the end of the long congressional battle over Utah and the Mormons, both the rhetoric of polygamy and antipolygamy were used against the women's movement.
Download or read book Joseph Smith s Polygamy Volume 2 History written by Brian C. Hales and published by Greg Kofford Books. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few American religious figures have stirred more passion among adherents and antagonists than Joseph Smith. Born in 1805 and silenced thirty-nine years later by assassins’ bullets, he dictated more than one-hundred revelations, published books of new scripture, built a temple, organized several new cities, and became the proclaimed prophet to tens of thousands during his abbreviated life. Among his many novel teachings and practices, none is more controversial than plural marriage, a restoration of the Old Testament practice that he accepted as part of his divinely appointed mission. Joseph Smith taught his polygamy doctrines only in secret and dictated a revelation in July 1843 authorizing its practice (now LDS D&C 132) that was never published during his lifetime. Although rumors and exposés multiplied, it was not until 1852 that Mormons in Brigham Young’s Utah took a public stand. By then, thousands of Mormons were engaged in the practice that was seen as essential to salvation. Victorian America saw plural marriage as immoral and Joseph Smith as acting on libido. However, the private writings of Nauvoo participants and other polygamy insiders tell another, more complex and nuanced story. Many of these accounts have never been published. Others have been printed sporadically in unrelated publications. Drawing on every known historical account, whether by supporters or opponents, Volumes 1 and 2 take a fresh look at the chronology and development of Mormon polygamy, including the difficult conundrums of the Fannie Alger relationship, polyandry, the “angel with a sword” accounts, Emma Smith’s poignant response, and the possibility of Joseph Smith offspring by his plural wives. Among the most intriguing are the newly available Andrew Jenson papers containing not only the often-quoted statements by surviving plural wives but also Jenson’s own private research, conducted in the late nineteenth century. Telling the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from the records of those who knew him best, augmented by those who observed him from a distance, may have produced the most useful view of all.
Download or read book Religion and Public Life in the Mountain West written by Mark Silk and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004-05-26 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huge mountain ranges and vast uninhabited areas characterize the Mountain West. The region is home to several dense urban centers, but there is enough space between cities for three very distinct religious cultures to develop. Arizona and New Mexico's religious public life is still dominated by the Catholic church which was in place three centuries before these areas became U.S. states. Mormons came to Utah and Idaho in the 19th century to set up their own church-state and only later were admitted to the Union. Religious minorities from Native Americans to 'mainstream' Protestants must contend with these religious establishments. In the third subregion of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana no one religious body dominates and many inhabitants claim no religious affiliation at all. Religion and Public Life in the Mountain West explores these three distinct religious regions but then goes on to see how they work together and what they have in common.