Dismantling Deseret: How the Mormons Became More Mormon by Changing the Meaning of Being Mormon

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Religious Change: Micro, Meso, and Macro

Abstract

This paper explores the late-19th and early-20th Century dismantling of the Mormon state of Deseret and the Church’s subsequent embrace of monogamy, the free market, and democratic pluralism as it entered the United States. Given the centrality to the Church’s moral project of each of the things being abandoned, these changes to belief and practice represent a complete about-face on the Church’s goals, content, and everyday experiences. Furthermore, these changes were facilitated by the same cultural resource of divine revelation used to establish them in the first place. The central puzzle animating this study is how the Church managed to make such profound changes to core and salient beliefs and practices while continuing to maintain distinctiveness and demand commitment from adherents and without de-legitimizing the principle of divine revelation in the process. I argue this was accomplished through ritually celebrating the changes, avoiding both a story of religious decline or religious accommodation.

Author

• Nathan D. Wright, Bryn Mawr College