LDS in the USA by Lee Trepanier Lynita K. Newswander

Author:Lee Trepanier, Lynita K. Newswander [Lee Trepanier, Lynita K. Newswander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602583276
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 2012-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

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MORMONISM AS THE AMERICAN NARRATIVE

An American Story

When Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in America in 1831, he was immediately struck by its intense “religious atmosphere.”1 He had the luck to arrive in New York City at the height of the religious activity known as the Second Great Awakening, and he observed the democratic nature of American religion from one extreme to another as he traveled across the nation: from raucous holy rollers to pious priests and everything in between. Given the generous standard for what was considered not only politically but also socially acceptable, he reasoned of religious practice in the United States that “if it does not give [Americans] the taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates their use of it.”2 It was his perception that American religion was central to the function and ideology of democracy, both the way it is theorized and the way that theory is translated into practice in stabilizing American institutions like the government. He found that religion operated differently in America, primarily because “the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom” were not in conflict here. Instead, they were “united intimately with one another: they reigned together on the same soil.”3 In fact, Tocqueville reasoned that the “democratic and republican” habits of religion in America combined with a sense of piety to make the United States “the place in the world where the Christian religion has most preserved genuine power over souls.”4

At the time of Tocqueville’s visit, the Mormon religion was just one year old. Membership was small, and those who practiced Mormonism were a notable exception to the general feeling of religious pluralism that Tocqueville experienced. Yet the religion itself—its doctrines, structures, culture, and social practices— had much in common with the more mainstream values of the era in which it was founded. In this sense, the story of Mormonism is, in many respects, a story of America itself. In recent years, scholars have called it “a very American gospel,” “intensely patriotic,” “a religious version of the American Dream,”5 “a theology of Americanism,”6 “quintessentially American,”7 and “the American religion”:8 all because it is so firmly rooted in the spirit and ideology of Jacksonian America.9 According to Harold Bloom, “what matters most about Joseph Smith is how American both the man and his religion have proved to be,” not only because they were intensely patriotic, but also because they and America as a whole relied on similar foundations of faith, industry, and individualism.10 Some even argue that the Mormon faith is more American than other more commonly practiced faiths in the United States, and that its particular combination of spiritualism and patriotism makes Mormons “American nationalists of a peculiar sort.”11 Others have said that Mormonism was “the first American religion” because the religion “was brand new, with a new identity,” like America itself.12

There are other specific ways in which the story of Mormonism and the story of America are similar. Most significantly, the tragedy and triumph of the LDS Church are much like what the nation as a whole was experiencing at the same historical moment.

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