American Jesus by Stephen Prothero

Author:Stephen Prothero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

JESUS FOUND: TWENTIETH-CENTURY MORMONISM

In the 1890s, Mormons began to reinvent themselves as a model minority. While textual Mormonism had been Apostolic and temple Mormonism Abrahamic, twentieth-century Mormonism was assimilationist. This assimilation proceeded along two tracks. In the past Mormons had thumbed their noses at both the United States and the Protestant denominations. Now they Americanized and Protestantized their tradition.40

Certain distinctive practices and propositions were not negotiable. Mormons continued to accept the Bible as God’s word only “as far as it is translated correctly.” They affirmed ongoing revelation. They insisted that both Jesus and God the Father have bodies made of flesh and blood. They described Jesus as the literal offspring of Mary and God the Father. They affirmed that salvation comes not by faith alone but via faith and “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” They asserted that by participating in temple rites individuals “may obtain exaltation and even reach the status of godhood.” Finally, Mormons held on to their self-conception as a “peculiar people,” though the markers of their outsiderhood noticeably changed. Instead of defining their distinctiveness in terms of community practices such as polygamy and theocracy, they turned inward, adopting strict rules for individual behavior. The “Word of Wisdom,” a code of conduct prohibiting the use of tobacco, alcohol, and hot tea and coffee, was ignored for decades after Brigham Young made it a commandment in 1851. During the early twentieth century, it became a key marker of Mormon identity—and as of 1921 observance of it became a prerequisite for admission to the temple. Later in the century, Mormons returned to the Book of Mormon as a marker of difference, inserting study of that text into their Sunday school curriculum in 1972 and transforming it into “the keystone of our religion” in the 1980s and 1990s. But this new emphasis in no way undercut the Mormons’ commitment to Jesus. On the contrary, as they dug into their New World scripture they rediscovered, as Susan Easton Black wrote in Finding Christ Through the Book of Mormon (1987), that Jesus was “the central focus” of the book.41

Still, accommodation was the rule for twentieth-century Mormons. Just as other Americans were transforming Jesus into a national celebrity, the Mormons rediscovered Jesus. In an effort to create a subculture comfortably aside the cultural and religious mainstream, they once again described their restoration project more in Christian than in Hebraic terms. According to Gordon and Gary Shepherd’s careful study of sermons delivered at important Mormon meetings called general conferences, distinctive Mormon themes such as the “Great Apostasy” of Christendom declined sharply after 1890. The all-important endowment ceremony was streamlined, and LDS leaders toned down or eliminated controversial elements, including an “oath of vengeance” against enemies of the faith and depictions of Christian ministers as tools of Satan. Mormon hymn books increasingly printed Protestant standards, while Protestantizing the lyrics of popular Mormon hymns. A Hebraicized verse from the Mormon classic The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning, which referred to

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