Item Detail
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22718
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1
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0
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English
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Praying with One Eye Open, A Gendered Interpretation of Mormon Joseph Standing's Murder in Appalachian Georgia
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Athens, GA
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University of Georgia
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Ph.D. diss.
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"In the fall of 1876, Mormon missionary John Hamilton Morgan answered a call from Church President Brigham Young. He was to go to the South, to join other elders there in a new effort to win converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Morgan quickly determined that he would make the mountainous counties of northwest Georgia his mission field, a region that locals soon dubbed "Utah." In one sense, Morgan's decision to concentrate his proselytizing efforts in north Georgia would seem to represent the emerging national obsession with Appalachia; however, his mission differed considerably from those of the mainstream Protestant denominations who would also turn their attention to the southern mountains in the last decades of the nineteenth century. As Morgan saw it, the True Gospel of the LDS Church offered spiritual deliverance to the unchurched souls of the region; further, the doctrine of "gathering" the Saints to Zion promised the poor farmers of northwest Georgia temporal relief. Under the influence of the Mormon message, most new Georgia Saints left their homes and relocated to a communitarian settlement in Manassa, Colorado, so conversion to Mormonism resulted in the physical separation of converts from loved ones and dependents from heads-of-households. The Mormon practice of plural marriage also convinced most nineteenth-century Georgians of the wickedness of the new religion, and invited suspicion that Mormon missionaries focused their efforts on north Georgia's women. In 1879, a mob of twelve men confronted two young Mormon missionaries, Joseph Standing and Rudger Clawson, as they made their way to a church conference in Chattooga County. In the confrontation, Standing was shot and killed. This study reveals the murder to be more than simply mountain lawlessness or religious persecution. The violence should also be understood as an attempt to control the religious beliefs and sexuality of north Georgia's women." [Author's abstract]