Showing results for "Mormons" in History

Across a wide array of religious traditions, temples are sacred, private spaces where observers can worship with other members of their congregation. Temple worship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church, is kept virtually secret from outsiders. And even Mormons themselves might find certain aspects of worship confusing. While respecting the privacy of church members, Jonathan A. Stapley's Holiness to the Lord provides an insightful, fresh overview of Latter-day Saints temple worship.

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than 50 women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical exposé, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.

The relationship between early Mormons and the US was marked by anxiety and hostility. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe. Mormons envisioned divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American people. For the Saints, these violent images promised a national rebirth that would vouchsafe the protections of the US Constitution and end their oppression.