Mormons in American Politics
Title | Mormons in American Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Luke Perry |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Total Pages | 184 |
Release | 2012-10-17 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN |
This book provides a comprehensive explanation of how the Mormons have transformed from a hated and persecuted fringe group to a well-established world religion with viable candidates for all levels of American government. The Mormon tradition is unfamiliar and mysterious to most Americans outside of the religion, and understandably generates much curiosity. Mormons in American Politics: From Persecution to Power provides an intellectual foundation of Mormon development and emergence in politics, comprehensively examining significant issues and developments from historical, theological, cultural, and modern perspectives. The work analyzes diverse, contemporary topics including Mormons in popular culture, Mormon understandings of the Constitution, the Mormon welfare program, Mormon opposition to same-sex marriage, and the global expansion of Mormonism. The book is ideal for scholars and students of American politics, history, and culture; Mormon studies; religious studies; and religion and politics; as well as general readers who are interested in Mormon religion and culture or the rise of Mormon figures in mainstream American politics.
Mormonism and American Politics
Title | Mormonism and American Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Randall Balmer |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Total Pages | 261 |
Release | 2015-12-08 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0231540892 |
When Joseph Smith ran for president as a radical protest candidate in 1844, Mormons were a deeply distrusted group in American society, and their efforts to enter public life were met with derision. When Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican in 2008 and 2012, the public had come to regard Mormons as consummate Americans: patriotic, family-oriented, and conservative. How did this shift occur? In this collection, prominent scholars of Mormonism, including Claudia L. Bushman, Richard Lyman Bushman, Jan Shipps, and Philip L. Barlow, follow the religion's quest for legitimacy in the United States and its intersection with American politics. From Brigham Young's skirmishes with the federal government over polygamy to the Mormon involvement in California's Proposition 8, contributors combine sociology, political science, race and gender studies, and popular culture to track Mormonism's rapid integration into American life. The book takes a broad view of the religion's history, considering its treatment of women and African Americans and its portrayal in popular culture and the media. With essays from both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, this anthology tells a big-picture story of a small sect that became a major player in American politics.
A Foreign Kingdom
Title | A Foreign Kingdom PDF eBook |
Author | Christine Talbot |
Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Total Pages | 273 |
Release | 2013-12-30 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0252095359 |
The years from 1852 to 1890 marked a controversial period in Mormonism, when the church's official embrace of polygamy put it at odds with wider American culture. In this study, Christine Talbot explores the controversial era, discussing how plural marriage generated decades of cultural and political conflict over competing definitions of legitimate marriage, family structure, and American identity. In particular, Talbot examines "the Mormon question" with attention to how it constructed ideas about American citizenship around the presumed separation of the public and private spheres. Contrary to the prevailing notion of man as political actor, woman as domestic keeper, and religious conscience as entirely private, Mormons enfranchised women and framed religious practice as a political act. The way Mormonism undermined the public/private divide led white, middle-class Americans to respond by attacking not just Mormon sexual and marital norms but also Mormons' very fitness as American citizens. Poised at the intersection of the history of the American West, Mormonism, and nineteenth-century culture and politics, this carefully researched exploration considers the ways in which Mormons and anti-Mormons both questioned and constructed ideas of the national body politic, citizenship, gender, the family, and American culture at large.
Seeking the Promised Land
Title | Seeking the Promised Land PDF eBook |
Author | David E. Campbell |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 309 |
Release | 2014-07-31 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1139992260 |
Mormons have long had an outsized presence in American culture and politics, but they remain largely unknown to most Americans. Recent years have seen the political prominence of Mormons taken to a new level - including the presidential candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney, the prominent involvement of Mormons in the campaign for California's Proposition 8 (anti-gay marriage), and the ascendancy of Democrat Harry Reid to the position of Senate Majority Leader. This book provides the most thorough examination ever written of Mormons' place in the American political landscape - what Mormons are like politically and how non-Mormons respond to Mormon candidates. However, this is a book about more than Mormons. As a religious subculture in a pluralistic society, Mormons are a case study of how a religious group balances distinctiveness and assimilation - a question faced by all faiths.
Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
Title | Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin E. Park |
Publisher | Liveright Publishing |
Total Pages | 294 |
Release | 2020-02-25 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1631494872 |
Best Book Award • Mormon History Association A brilliant young historian excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, uncovering a “grand, underappreciated saga in American history” (Wall Street Journal). In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establishing their own army and writing their own constitution. For those offenses and others—including the introduction of polygamy, which was bitterly opposed by Emma Smith, the iron-willed first wife of Joseph Smith—the surrounding population violently ejected the Mormons, sending them on their flight to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows how the Mormons of Nauvoo were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates Mormon history into the American mainstream.
Contingent Citizens
Title | Contingent Citizens PDF eBook |
Author | Spencer W. McBride |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Total Pages | 310 |
Release | 2020-05-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1501716743 |
Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the 1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality—the editors and contributors place Mormons in larger American histories of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full participants in the United States political system has ranged over time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing political needs and perceptions. Contributors: Matthew C. Godfrey, Church History Library; Amy S. Greenberg, Penn State University; J. B. Haws, Brigham Young University; Adam Jortner, Auburn University; Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University; Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont Graduate University; Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State University; Thomas Richards, Jr., Springside Chestnut Hill Academy; Natalie Rose, Michigan State University; Stephen Eliot Smith, University of Otago; Rachel St. John, University of California Davis
LDS in the USA
Title | LDS in the USA PDF eBook |
Author | Lee Trepanier |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 166 |
Release | 2012 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9781602585508 |
From the politics of Glenn Beck to reality television's Big Love and the hit Broadway show The Book of Mormon, Mormons have become a recognizable staple of mainstream popular culture. And while most Americans are well aware of the existence of Mormonism--and some of the often exaggerated myths about Mormonism--the religion's public influence has been sorely understudied. Lee Trepanier and Lynita K. Newswander move beyond clichéd and stereotypical portrayals of Mormonism to unpack the significant and sometimes surprising roles Mormons have played in the building of modern America. Moving from popular culture to politics to the Mormon influence in social controversies, LDS in the USA reveals Mormonism to be quintessentially American--both firmly rooted in American tradition and free to engage in the public square. Trepanier and Newswander examine the intersection of the tension between the nation's sometimes bizarre understanding of Mormon belief and the suspicious acceptance of the most well known Mormons into the American public identity. Readers are consistently challenged to abandon popular perceptions in order to embrace more fully the fascinating importance of this American religion.