Make Yourselves Gods : Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism / Peter Coviello.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coviello, Peter, Author.

Series:

Class 200.

Chicago scholarship online.

Class 200: New Studies in Religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--History.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Latter Day Saint churches--History.

Latter Day Saint churches.

United States--Religion.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

From the perspective of Protestant America, nineteenth-century Mormons were the victims of a peculiar zealotry, a population deranged--socially, sexually, even racially--by the extravagances of belief they called "religion." Make Yourselves Gods offers a counter-history of early Mormon theology and practice, tracking the Saints from their emergence as a dissident sect to their renunciation of polygamy at century's end. Over these turbulent decades, Mormons would appear by turns as heretics, sex-radicals, refugees, anti-imperialists, colonizers, and, eventually, reluctant monogamists and enfranchised citizens. Reading Mormonism through a synthesis of religious history, political theology, native studies, and queer theory, Peter Coviello deftly crafts a new framework for imagining orthodoxy, citizenship, and the fate of the flesh in nineteenth-century America. What emerges is a story about the violence, wild beauty, and extravagant imaginative power of this era of Mormonism-an impassioned book with a keen interest in the racial history of sexuality and the unfinished business of American secularism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Prologue: Winter Quarters

1. Introduction: What We Talk about When We Talk about Secularism

2. Endless Felicity: The Radiant Body of Early Mormon Theology

3. Gods in Subjection: Women, Polygamy, and the Eternity of Sex

4. The Polygamist's Complexion; or, The Book of Mormon Goes West

5. Wards and Sovereigns: Deviance and Dominion in the Biopolitics of Secularism

6. Conclusion: Protohomonationalism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226474472

022647447X

OCLC:

1127196457