Item Detail
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28394
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9
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33
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English
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Ordering Antinomy : An Analysis of Early Mormonism's Priestly Offices, Councils, and Kinship
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Religion and American Culture : A Journal of Interpretation
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26
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2
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Oakland, CA
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University of California Press
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139-183
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Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith created a complex and hieratic priestly structure within a radically democratizing nation. His stated goal was to convey to all the faithful what he believed to be his own powers of prophecy and priestly mediation of divine presence. Thus, out of historiographic arguments about where to place Mormonism within the narrative of antebellum religious polity there arises a potentially more essential question: how did early Mormonism sustain any structural coherence, much less the order it was famous for? This essay argues that Smith avoided the atomization of his movement by creating three power structures and assigning every believer a status in each. Thus, status was not absolute or static: it shifted as the person moved among the three sites of power. Or, in other words, the degree and nature of the authority held by anyone at any give time was particular to the locus of the power – office, council, or kinship -- not the person. These shifting status relationships stabilized Mormonism’s potentially self-destructive antinomianism and, as a historiographical matter, have been mistaken for populism. The power struggles this occasioned within his movement, particularly over Smith’s inclusion of women in his priestly hierarchy, weakened his vision of reciprocal authority and shifting jurisdiction. Compromised by romanticized gender norms, but not abandoned, this power structure continues to constitute the governing structure of Mormonism, leaving it still republican in style, not substance. Historiographically, it is hoped that this closer analysis of Mormonism’s polity illuminates the existence of alternatives to regnant tropes on the nature of antebellum religion and contributes to better understanding of the means by which at least one perfectionist religion has survived notwithstanding its radically antinomian tendencies. [Publisher]
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Joseph Smith, Polygamy, and the Levirate Widow
Joseph Smith’s Kingdom of God : The Council of Fifty and the Mormon Challenge to American Democratic Politics
Kingdom of Nauvoo : The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
Latter-Day Prophets : Their Lives, Teachings, and Testimonies
Mormon Women's History : Beyond Biography
Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity
Railroading Religion : Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West
The Council of Fifty and the Perils of Democratic Governance
The LDS Gospel Topics Series : A Scholarly Engagement -
A Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ
A Demographic Portrait of the Mormons, 1830-1980
Among the Mormons : Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers
An Address to All Believers in Christ. By a Witness to the Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon
An Introduction to Mormon Administrative History
Augusta Joyce Crocheron : A Representative Woman
Common People : Church Activity During the Brigham Young Era
Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America
Having More Learning Than Sense : William E. McLellin and the Book of Commandments Revisited
History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I : History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself
Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841-44
Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845
Latter-day Saint Prayer Circles
Mormon Enigma : Emma Hale Smith
My Life's Review
Nauvoo : A Place of Peace, a People of Promise
Power from on High : The Development of Mormon Priesthood
Quest for Refuge : The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism
Radical Origins : Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors
Sacred Borders : Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America
The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
The Democratization of American Christianity
The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants
The Joseph Smith Papers : Revelations and Translations, Volume 1 : Manuscript Revelation Books
The Law of Adoption : One Phase of the Development of the Mormon Concept of Salvation, 1830-1900
The 'Leading Sisters' : A Female Hierarchy in Nineteenth Century Mormon Society
The Mormon Hierarchy : Origins of Power
The New England Origins of Mormonism Revisited
The New Mormon History : Revisionist Essays on the Past
The Politics of American Religious Identity : The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
The Words of Joseph Smith : The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph
"We Latter-day Saints are Methodists" : The Influence of Methodism on Early Mormon Religiosity