Item Detail
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27965
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1
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0
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English
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The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism
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Mormonism and American Culture
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New York, NY
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Harper & Row
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29-34
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Mario De Pillis, an assistant professor at Massachusetts University, admits that the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith inherited certain Puritan attitudes of mind--moralism, commitment to social order, and individual self-control--but insists that in initiating Mormonism Smith responded to specific social conflict and social change in the rural America of the 1830s. Though the means of new revelation, new scripture, and new priesthood and church government, the prophet provided some socially uprooted Americans with authoritarian foundations for their community that were lacking in religiously pluralistic America. In so arguing, De Pillis seems to tie the Mormons, to some extent at least, to those conservative groups in New England and New York that promoted social reform for purposes of social control. If Mormon means were radical their purpose was essentially conservative. [Editors' summary]