The Mormon Frontier (feat. Konden Smith Hansen):
Season 2, Episode 4

Hosted by Stephen Betts. 

Today on Scholars and Saints we’re talking about the ways in which the American Frontier acted as a kind of religion of “Americanness” in 19th century America. We’ll talk about how Latter-day Saints fit into that American Frontier religion, and how they negotiated and contested the boundaries of Americanness and good religion in their encounters with Protestants. Ultimately, this is a story about secularization, in which we learn that for Mormons, “becoming secular” didn’t mean becoming areligious; secularization was a constant process of creative give and take in an American culture that was learning to tell new stories about itself.