Overview

Evangelical criticism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dates back to the earliest days of the Church. Nathaniel Wiewora uses the diverse animus expressed by evangelicals to illuminate how they used an imaginary Church as a proxy to disagree, attack, compromise, and settle differences among themselves. As Wiewora shows, the evangelical practice to contrast itself with the emerging faith not only encompassed but also went beyond religious matters. If Joseph Smith was accused of muddling religious truth, he and his followers also faced accusations of immoral economic practices and a sinful regard for wealth that reflected worries within the evangelical world. Attacks on Latter-day Saints’ emotional religious displays, the Book of Mormon’s authenticity, and the dangerous ideas represented by Nauvoo paralleled similar conflicts. Wiewora traces how the failure to blunt the Church’s success led evangelicals to change their own methods and pursue the religious education infrastructure that came to define parts of the movement.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nathaniel Wiewora
Publisher:   University of Illinois Press
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.367kg
ISBN:  

9780252087783

ISBN 10:   025208778
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   12 March 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction “The Greatest Fraud of Our Time in the Field of Religion”: The Overlapping Quality of Early Anti-Mormonism and Antebellum Evangelicalism “Restoration of Body and Mind”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of the Stone-Campbell Movement “Peddling the Holy Scriptures”: Anti-Mormonism and the Debate Over the Evangelical Relationship to the Market “God Has Been Pleased to Give a Revelation to Mankind”: Anti-Mormonism and the Evangelical Interpretation of the Bible “Mormonism, Whether Found . . . in Kentucky, or at Nauvoo”: Revivalism and the Rise of Mormonism “Apprehension for the Future”: Evangelical Institution-Building as the Response to Mormonism Epilogue Notes Index

Reviews

“Sins of Christendom is a sharp portrait of the relationship between early Mormons and their evangelical counterparts. Nathaniel Wiewora shows that these two movements have to be understood in tandem, as opposition to Joseph Smith and his followers helped many Protestants define their own boundaries of acceptable behavior and belief.”--John G. Turner, author of The Mormon Jesus: A Biography

Author Information

Nathaniel Wiewora is an associate professor of history at Harding University.

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