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Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism

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Marvin S. Hill's "Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism" (1989) analyzes Mormonism as a movement steeped in disgust for American society and an attempt to build a refuge that would be able to weather a great apocalypse that was soon to come upon the Earth. Those who embraced Mormonism, Hill argued, saw little of worth in American civilization. "They wanted a society that would exclude unnecessary choices and would exclude pluralism," he wrote. "Above all, they wanted to diminish the secular influences that pluralism engendered" (p. 14).

The Latter-day Saint movement was founded on a paranoia that the world had gone awry and would subvert or coopt them if it had the chance. The result was an effort to close off the outside world, "to revitalize this magical world view [of Medieval society, to] combine it with elements of more traditional Christianity, and [to] establish a theocratic society where the unconverted, the poor, and the socially and religiously alienated could gather and find a refuge from the competing sects and the uncertainties they engendered" (p. 17).

It is a powerful thesis, masterfully argued and one that should be pondered seriously by all those seeking to understand the early history of Mormonism.

I highly recommend this book. Although it is out of print, find a second-hand copy, read it, and lend it to your friends.