Customer Reviews

Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Eric A. Eliason, ed. Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. ix + 250 pp., with index. $17.95 (paperback); $39.95 (hardback).

This collection of eleven Mormon studies makes available to the Saints the work of such scholars as Nathan O. Hatch, Richard T.Hughes, and Rodney Stark, each well known for his work on American religion and its history. Eliason has augmented these papers with some of the better work by Latter-day Saints and others. However, only a few of the essays have been revised or updated for this volume. It is noteworthy that Eliason has reprinted a portion of Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76--93. This remarkable book--a major study in anti-Mormon rhetoric--was not widely known by Latter-day Saints until the publication in 2002 by Oxford University Press of Givens's By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion. The other essays are much better known to Latter-day Saint scholars. Eliason's introduction to this volume constitutes a well-documented, candid overview of the range of topics covered in this anthology.