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    The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith
    Unavailable
    The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith
    Unavailable
    The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

    Written by Matthew Bowman

    Narrated by Mark Deakins

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An eminent scholar of American evangelicalism explores the history and reflects on the future of this native-born American faith and its connection to the life of the nation.

    In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith's early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church's origin and development, and explains how Mormonism came to be one of the fastest-growing religions in the world by the turn of twenty-first-century.

    Mormonism started as a radical movement, with a profoundly transformative vision of American society that was rooted in a form of Christian socialism. Over the ensuing centuries, Bowman demonstrates, that 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 clad in "magic underwear." Even today, the place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate on both sides of the political divide. It is a church with a powerful sense of its own identity and 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. In such a time, The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history-a frank and fair-minded demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 24, 2012
    ISBN9780449010624
    Unavailable
    The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith

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    Reviews for The Mormon People

    4/5

    27 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Written by a Mormon, this is a very evenhanded overview of Mormon history and culture, as well as a great depiction of the evolution of their beliefs.

      A friend of mine strongly considered converting to Mormonism when I was in high school (she later converted as an adult) and I've been curiously fascinated by the faith ever since. I very much enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about Mormon church history and beliefs.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I just moved to Utah from New York. I've been a Buddhist for many years and have had very little contact with Mormons... up until now! I figured I'd better get to know my neighbors a bit! This book was perfect. It's a bit on the boring side. It is just a quick march over the facts. An event like the Mountain Meadow Massacre gets maybe a page. But the context has been well set by the history up to that point, so a page lays out the basic facts reasonably well. I feel I could go read a book on that event and not be overly bewildered. The book covers the time from the lives of Joseph Smith's parents up to the early 2000s.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Interesting book about the history of the Mormon people.
    • 5/5
      This book tells the 180-year history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from its founding until present time. This book focuses on the development of Latter-day Saint teachings and practices through each stage of the church's history. Each era is shown in contrast, and often in reaction to, preceding generations in the church, as well as the circumstances that shaped the movement. As a lifelong Latter-day Saint and Mormon history hobbyist, I didn't expect to be surprised by anything in this book, since it was a broad overview of the church over a long period of time. But I had heard that this book was special, from a skilled writer and up-and-coming scholar who knew how to write for insiders and outsiders, drawing from all the best new research, marketed by a national publisher for the "Mormon Moment" during Romney's presidential race. Among its strengths, the book constructs a cohesive, complete story of the institution and the culture of its people, and its influence from and on the story of America. It convincingly engages with church controversies without trivializing the whole religious movement. It doesn't shy away from hard topics. Bowman's writing is very readable, even though he focuses on the history of thought, instead of popular culture and so many individual narratives. There were many points where I thought Bowman could delve into rationalizations and explain extra background, but that wasn't his goal. He needed to cover the big story without litigating every detail and putting everyone to sleep.I was most impressed with the chapters on the early 20th century, covering the intellectual leaders during the Progressive Era through to the 1930s and 1940s, leading to the conservative retrenchment of the 1950s and 1960s. I would guess LDS history usually focuses 80% on the first 50 years, and it was helpful to see the story in proportion. Understanding the 1920s-1960s explained SO MUCH about why the Church took its modern shape. This is not the book to explain every detail. It does not advocate or challenge modern debates. This book explains who and why Mormons are in America.
    • 4/5
      A very objective history of a religion that many Americans simply don't know too much about, stereotypes, politicians, and musicals notwithstanding. Filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

      Crams a good deal into some 200 pages - from the early historical struggles of the church and how it gradually became more integrated into American life. Discusses its controversies (polygamy, early territorial clashes) as well as its similarities to 'main-stream' Protestant Christianity - ethics, family life, missionary work, etc.

      Also has a very nice bibliography, from which I will gleefully steal further suggestions.

      1 person found this helpful