Item Detail
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21915
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37
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0
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English
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Zion Rising : Joseph Smith's Early Social and Political Thought
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Tempe, AZ
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Arizona State University
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429
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Ph.D. diss.
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"The dissertation explores the early social and political thought of Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Mormon religious tradition. The research is based on a close study of Smith's scriptural and personal writings, augmented by historical sources produced by his early followers and others. Smith's thought is also set in the broader context of early American cultural and political history. In his youth, Joseph Smith experienced the revivals of the Second Great Awakening and the denominational competition for converts that followed in their wake. Confused and upset by doctrinal disputes, Smith sought for religious truth directly from God. In addition to answering his questions, his early visions and revelations foretold that the contention in American society would escalate into violence, war, and destruction. But Smith also proclaimed that a new nation, called Zion, would arise. Further revelations established Zion's laws and government and conceived a new balance between individual freedom and social harmony. Joseph Smith directed his followers to migrate to Jackson County, Missouri, where they attempted to stake out Zion's territory. He prophesied that Zion would grow in size and power as America and the nations of the world fell to ruin. In the short term, Smith's plan was to fill the county with his followers and take the reins of local government through ordinary democratic channels. Once in power, the Mormons could make a political space for themselves in which to live by divine law. The early settlers of Jackson County resented the Mormon community's solidarity, its growing numbers, and the swagger of its overzealous nationalists. When the Mormons became a real political threat, the early settlers forcibly drove them from the county. The magnitude of their losses in land and improvements required the Mormons to seek aid from the state of Missouri in returning to the county. Joseph Smith had to accommodate the Zion project to the broader political landscape. The effort to reoccupy their land, which never succeeded, led to a tenuous reengagement with American political culture." [Author's abstract]
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A "Distinction Between Mormons and Americans" : Mormon Indian Missionaries, Federal Indian Policy, and the Utah War
"All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual" : Worship Through Corporeality in Hasidism and Mormonism
Contextualizing Revelations: Changing Attitudes towards Sacred Texts in the Church of Christ, 1829–1831
Documents
Documents, Volume 6: February 1838-August 1839
Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America
Eternity in the Ether
God and the People Reconsidered : Further Reflections on Theodemocracy in Early Mormonism
God and the People : Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism
If You Build It, They Will Come: The Field of Book of Mormon Reception History
Joseph Smith as the Philosopher-King : Neoplatonism in Early Mormon Political Thought
Joseph Smith for President : The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom
Kingdom of Nauvoo : The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
Know Brother Joseph : New Perspectives on Joseph Smith's Life and Character
Layered Grief in the Burned-over District : Religious Ecstasy as a Healing Balm
Media as compromise : a cultural history of Mormonism and new communication technology in twentieth-century America
Mormon Conquest : Whites and Natives in the Intermountain West
Mormon Envoy: The Diplomatic Legacy of Dr. John Milton Bernhisel
Proclaim Peace: The Restoration's Answer to an Age of Conflict
Religion of a Different Color : Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness
Revelations in Context: The Stories Behind the Sections of the Doctrine and Covenants
Slavery, Early Latter-day Saint Constitutionalism, and the Limits of the Right to Petition
Terrible Revolution : Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
The Danite Constitution and Theories of Democratic Justice in Frontier America
The Joseph Smith Papers : Administrative Records, Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846
The Joseph Smith Papers Documents, Volume 13: August-December 1843
The Joseph Smith Papers : Documents, Volume 2 : July 1831–January 1833
The Joseph Smith Papers : Documents, Volume 6 : February 1838–August 1839
The Natural World and the Establishment of Zion, 1831-1833
The Power of Godliness : Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology
"The Wars and the Perplexities of the Nations" : Reflections on early Mormonism, violence, and the state
To Fill up the World : Joseph Smith as Urban Planner
To Mend A Fractured Reality : Joseph Smith's Project
To the "Honest and Patriotic Sons of Liberty" : Mormon Appeals for Redress and Social Justice, 1843-44
"We do not love war, but ..." : Mormons, the Great War, and the crucible of nationalism
"We Do Not Love War, But ..." : Mormons, the Great War, and the Crucible of Nationalism
What is Mormonism? A Student’s Introduction