Item Detail
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30524
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1
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0
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English
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Tiny Zion : Harvest Hills, an Intentional Zionic Community
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Communal Societies
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Winter 2016
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36
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2
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Amana, Iowa
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Communal Studies Association
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288
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"Tiny Zion is a carefully researched, descriptively dense, and theoretically sophisticated study of the successes and failures of the small intentional residential community of Harvest Hills, founded in 1970 near Independence, Missouri, by members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), now known as the Community of Christ. As the much smaller of the two chief religious groups inspired by Joseph Smith Jr., the RLDS church's communal experimentation also has received much less attention than has the larger and more controversial Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), headquartered in Salt Lake City.
Monte's study details the founding, development, and decline of this small, suburban, residential community, now encompassing approximately fifty housing units. Over time the community has gradually lost much of its initial cohesion, as its most committed RLDS founding members, who shared the religiously inspired goal of building a cooperative Zionic community, increasingly gave way to non-RLDS residents, interested less in participating in the common life of Harvest Hills and more in simply finding an inexpensive bedroom community near Independence in which to live."