... in the snowball sample no longer self-identified as Mormon, and participants in the survey were younger than other surveys have found. Direct correspondence to Lain A. B. Mathers, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 4112 Behavioral Sciences Building, 1007 W. Harrison St. (MC 312), Chicago...

...Ryan T. Cragun; Ronald Lawson Proselytizing religions provide fertile ground for testing theories about supply- and demand-side factors since they tend to grow rapidly and maintain relatively accurate membership data ( Stark 1984 ). Previous research has analyzed Latter-day Saint (Mormon) growth...

...This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent interest in things Mormon, and the most telling preoccupation that unites them, the chapter finds...

... places. His additions to scripture blend audacity and self-effacing, summarily annihilating the principle of sola scriptura, even as the personality delivering its coup de grace for Mormons is subsumed in the voice of God. As for place, Smith literalized the concept of Zion...

...This chapter argues that Joseph Smith is a genuine prophet of world historical importance. In a bold reversal (a non-Mormon), it takes such status as a historical given and a starting point that can enrich our study of various prophethoods, rather than as a laurel to be disputed about...

... Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints RLDS church now Community of Christ RLDS Church Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints now Community of Christ Nibley Preston Proctor Scot and Maurine Smith Joseph F Snow Eliza R Snow Lorenzo Vogel Dan ed Early Mormon Documents...

...A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon. Larry E. Morris, Oxford University Press (2019). © Larry E. Morris. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190699093.003.0002 This chapter discusses Joseph Smith’s First Vision and his vision of the angel and the gold plates. Some historians have argued...

...This essay explores Mormonism’s paradoxical relationship with American free market capitalism. Examining a series of case studies from Mormonism’s past, as well as several important Mormon economic thinkers, I argue that there is no single “Mormon” position on economics. Rather, there are a variety...

... to prod the LDS Church to publicly support civil rights. The church did so, but it also used the language of American freedom to defend its internal policies that restricted African American Latter-day Saints to second-tier status within the church. The role of Temple Square as a magnet for intra-Mormon...

... LDS stance toward Catholic Church Equal Rights Amendment New Christian Right Book of Mormon Civil rights Evangelicals Quinn D Michael Brigham Young University Clark J Reuben Kimball Spencer W McConkie Bruce R Petersen Mark E Family significance for LDS reputation Feminism Gender roles...

...While the activism of Mormon feminists has gained considerable media attention in recent years, conservative Mormon women have used blogs and social media to advance anti-feminist positions and articulate their divergent interpretations of official Mormon discourse. Much as earlier Mormon women’s...

...Since the 1960s, Mormons have staked out socially conservative positions on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage that has brought them into political alignment with other religious conservatives, particularly with conservative evangelicals. At the same time, however, conservative...

...By the sesquicentennial celebration of the 1847 arrival of Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley, the LDS Church was a global institution whose ties to the spaces of the American West had undergone a major transformation. Because of the scattering of church members around the globe, many...

...In the years since 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown rapidly in terms of both numbers and public prominence. It now claims some 15 million members worldwide. While most scholarship on Mormonism concerns its colorful but now well-known early history, the essays...

...This chapter introduces the religious tensions created in Nauvoo, Illinois, by the return of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) to the region in the twentieth century and their historical restoration of the city that was once their headquarters. It places the restoration...

...This chapter examines the preparation for and eventual abandonment of Nauvoo, Illinois, by the Mormons following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism). It marks the failed attempts to sell properties by the faith’s new leader...

...Though Nauvoo was abandoned by most Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, Emma Smith, the widow of Church founder Joseph Smith, and her children remained in the city, maintaining a Mormon presence in western Illinois. This chapter examines the rise of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ...

...At the end of the twentieth century, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) embarked on the most ambitious project in the history of Nauvoo’s restoration, the reconstruction of the famed Nauvoo temple. While the branches of Mormonism had settled their differences...

...This chapter explores the future for faith and community relations in Nauvoo as a result of the city’s twentieth-century restoration boom. It examines the directions taken by the various constituents, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), the Reorganized Church...

... as well as of men, or how they would write about Puritans if they explored the lives of women as well as of men. Furthermore, the book examines how historians would tell the story of Judaism, witchcraft, Mormonism, the origins of the Catholic Church in the United States, or the women's rights movement...