| Description |
Especially after the murder of their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and their exodus to the Salt Lake Valley, nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints were committed to establishing a righteous new nation called Zion, a nation they hoped would soon supplant the United States and the other wicked nations of the earth. At the turn of the twentieth century, in an effort to heal their contentious relationship with their countrymen, the Mormons began to recast Zion as a patriotic church that would now play an active role in restoring America to its rightful place as God's favored nation. This shift in Mormon thought from Zion nationalism to American exceptionalism engendered a new political mentality among the Latter-day Saints. In contrast to early Mormonism's parochial focus on God's kingdom and commitment to political unity, the primary characteristics of modern Mormon political thought were integration into the mainstream and, especially before the 1980s, partisan and ideological diversity. Twentieth-century Mormons mostly agreed that they had a special responsibility to work for the good of the American nation but, no different from other Americans, they frequently disagreed over how best to do this. iv After uncovering their nineteenth-century roots, this dissertation then explores the major strands of Mormon political thought that took shape over the course of the twentieth century. It does so through an examination of the writings and public discourse of a wide variety of Latter-day Saint leaders and lay members as they responded to some of the most important national and international issues of the century, namely the various reform movements of the Progressive Era, the League of Nations, the New Deal, World War II and American militarism, domestic anticommunism, compulsory union membership, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the arms race, among several others. Along the way, this study shows how and why Mormons went from resisting political pluralism in the nineteenth century, grudgingly and then enthusiastically welcoming it at the start of the twentieth, and then, during the final quarter of the century, entering a new era of political homogeneity now tied to the Republican Party. |
