Item Detail
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18128
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10
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41
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English
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From Peoplehood to Church Membership : Mormonism's Trajectory since World War II
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Church History
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June 2007
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76
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no.2
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Cambridge University Press
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241-261
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In this presidential address to the American Society of Church History, Shipps describes how Christians "are bound into faith communities" through two "metaphors." The first metaphor relates to how their church is the body of Christ made up of a set of members and a head. The second metaphor is how Christians see themselves as the house of Israel, a chosen people, tied "into a kinship group that is a party to a new covenant with God." In North America, the latter idea came to be tied to "civic rather than religious exeptionalism." In other words, America itself was a chosen land populated by exceptional people. Therefore, competing denominations ceased to lay claim to being a chosen people and instead stated that their denomination was the rightful body of Christ. Initially, Mormonism seemed to emerge as this type of Christian denomination. But it evolved into a separate, distinct people bound together by kinship and covenants. This lasted until after World War II. Following the war, members began leaving the Mormon Culture Region and settling around the United States either for educational or career purposes. Missionaries were being prepared for future leadership in the Church, and converts began to outnumber those born into the Church. New stakes were formed and chapels and temples were built around the world. All lesson manuals were correlated at Church headquarters to ensure that members everywhere were being taught the same doctrine. In addition, Church leadership, in response to criticism, began to emphasize their belief in Jesus Christ as their savior and the head of the Church. All of these factors, according to Shipps, are combining to erode the Mormon sense of peoplehood and ethnicity. Mormons are members of a Church rather than a distinct, cohesive group, and "being the Body of Christ is becoming the ruling metaphor for the Latter-day Saints' religious understanding of themselves" while "their once literal peoplehood is ever more metaphorical."
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Communitarianism and Consecration in Mormonism
Frontier Religion : Mormons and America, 1857–1907
Frontier Religion : Mormons and America, 1857-1907
Musical Form in Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
On the Existential Impossibility of a Religious Identity : I'm a Mormon
Pioneers in the Attic : Place and Memory Along the Mormon Trail
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Vernacular Mormonism : The Development of Latter-Day Saint Apocalyptic (1830-1930) -
A Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Apostate Believers : Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Encounter with Mormon History
Brigham Young and His Times : A Continuing Force in Mormonism
By the Hand of Mormon : The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion
Causes of the Utah War Reconsidered
Differing Visions : Dissenters in Mormon History
Divergent Paths of the Restoration : A History of the Latter-day Saint Movement
DNA Mormon : D. Michael Quinn
Encyclopedia of Mormonism : The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
From Mission to Madness : Last Son of the Mormon Prophet
Great Basin Kingdom : An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith III : Pragmatic Prophet
Joseph Smith : Rough Stone Rolling
Joseph Smith : the First Mormon
Joseph Smith : The Making of a Prophet
Lost Legacy : The Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch
Mormonism in Transition : A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930
Mormonism : The Story of a New Religious Tradition
Mormon Mavericks : Essays on Dissenters
Mormons and music : maintaining and mainstreaming sectarian identity
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Religious Activities and Development in Utah, 1847-1910
Sojourner in the Promised Land : Forty years among the Mormons
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith
The Church and Colonel Sanders : Mormon Standard Plan Architecture
The Doctrinal Impact of the King Follett Discourse
The German-Speaking Immigration to Utah, 1850-1950
The Journals of William E. McLellin 1831-1836
The Mormon Culture Region : Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of the American West, 1847-1964
The Mormon Hierarchy : Origins of Power
The Mormon Question : Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America
The Mormons : Or Latter-Day Saints
The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine
The Rise of Mormonism
The Story of the Latter-day Saints
The Sword of Laban : Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind
Things in Heaven and Earth : The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet
To Transform History : Early Mormon Culture and the Concept of Time and Space
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