Paul Reeve, “Mormonism and the American Experience”

The Latter-day Saint tradition, or Mormonism, is the most remarkable of the new religious movements born during an explosion of denominational energy in the early American republic. The tradition traces its roots to the first vision received by its founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1820, when he was only 14 years old. Three years later, an angel revealed to Smith the location of a trove of ancient scriptures, engraved on gold plates and buried in a hillside in upstate New York. Smith’s translation of these plates became the Book of Mormon (1830), a uniquely American sequel to the Bible and the basis of the fundamental Mormon principle of ongoing revelation. Smith’s martyrdom in 1844 in Carthage, Illinois, at the hands of an angry mob foreshadowed the hostility the Saints would encounter as they trekked to the Great Basin to establish their American Zion in Utah. Yet despite the animosity between the Saints and the wider society, the LDS Church would go on to become a major institution that today claims some 15 million members worldwide. This course will explore the reasons for Mormon success and will wrestle with the meaning of the Latter-day Saint experience for American history and culture.