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Show shrugged off the mantle of Babylon, the raiments of Zion were not fashioned out of whole cloth but woven from the multi-cultural fibers which were found along its path. The making of Mormon society was not accomplished through the process of acculturation, the blending of immigrants into a dominant New England culture, but of syncretism, the melding of the various cultures into an essentially new, Mormon culture. William Wilson, in discussing the folklore of Mormon Scandinavian immigrants, suggests that these immigrants "did not become Yankees or English; they became Mormons--which is what the Yankees and English also became. 1156 The historian Dean May has rephrased Toqueville 1 s famous question, "Who is this man, this Mormon? 1157 The answer lies in understanding the process which brought him (and her) into existence, a process that can best be viewed within the context of Mormon society itself. The purposes and ideals of the movement may be extracted from Joseph Smith's revelations and from Brigham Young's sermons, but seeing how such abstractions were translated into everyday life offers an opportunity to see how Zion worked for those that built and ,,W.fl used it. 52 |
