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S'està carregant… Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (1999)de Claudia L. Bushman, Richard Lyman Bushman
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Mormonism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, doubling its membership every 15 years. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal denomination of the Mormon church) is now 10 million strong, with more than half of its membership coming from outside the United States. More than 88 million copies of The Book of Mormon have been printed, and it has been translated into more than 50 languages. Mormons in America tells the tumultuous story of this religious group, from its humble origins in small-town New York State in 1830 to its present heyday. Claudia and Richard Bushman introduce us to charismatic leaders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, go deep behind Mormon rites and traditions, take us along the adventurous trail of the Mormon pioneers into the West, evoke the momentous erection of Salt Lake City in the desert, and draw us into the dozens of skirmishes, verbal attacks, and court battles between Mormons and their neighbors, other religions, the media, and the American government. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)289.3Religions Christian denominations Other Christian sects MormonismLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
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That is definitely the issue with this short, readable history. It is a history of Mormonism told very much from the Mormon standpoint. How did Mormonism come to be? It of course began with the... proclamations... of Joseph Smith. The questions about those gives us a good perspective on the book. The foremost biographer of Smith, Fawn M. Brodie, who was herself a Mormon, came to the agonized conclusion that Smith was engaged in a get-rich scheme. Alternately, Smith's revelations began when he was about the age when schizophrenics start to experience the symptoms of their horrid illness. Or, of course, Smith could have been the recipient of a genuine revelation.
This matter is not really discussed. Revelation is basically assumed. For readers who are members of the Saints, this will obviously be desirable. For readers who are not, it leaves glaring holes. And this tendency continues. For a book whose primary author is a woman, it seems surprisingly sympathetic to polygamy: it was doctrine, so it must have been right.
Also, it is worth noting that, when Joseph Smith died, Mormonism fractured. Brigham Young gathered by far the largest faction of the denomination, and took it to Utah -- but the other various sects are all Mormons, they just aren't "the" Mormons. But all we read is a brief mention of the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints. It is not wrong, but it is parochial and not what I would consider a complete history.
I would also say that the interesting part of the sect's history is the time from when Smith had his revelation until they abandoned polygamy in the 1890s. After that, although the Mormons were still extremely schismatic in theology, they were basically just another separatist sect in an America full of peculiar sects, large and small. But the book still devotes half its length to this relatively dull period.
Bottom line: If you are a Mormon, this is probably a good brief history. But if you are not, it raises far more questions than it answers, and it leaves out a lot of the good stuff to focus on the routine. A bad book? Not really. But one with a viewpoint that I find neither particularly interesting nor particularly useful. ( )