Item Detail
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5149
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1
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2
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English
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The Church and Community : Personal Reflections on Mormon Intellectual Life
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Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
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Summer 1995
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28
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83-91
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"Boundaries delineating the degree of inclusion in and exclusion from both institutional and cultural Mormonism are defined, negotiated, and redefined through the interaction of the church, community, and its intellectuals. This essay, based primarily on personal experience and reflection, examines the relationship between Mormon social organization and intellectual life. I believe my own experience has made it impossible for me to be included in the church. Further delineation between the church and the community, a distinction fostered primarily by intellectuals, enables me to conceive of myself as a cultural Mormon while also providing a social context in which I can feel at home. This was not always so, and one of my purposes is to discuss the renegotiation of these boundaries, arguing that a distinction between the church and the community is not only analytically useful but is increasingly becoming a pronounced feature of social reality in Mormondom." [Author]