The Books of My Life: Mormonism

If Terryl Givens is the new face of contemporary Mormon academic apologetics and polemics, Richard Bushman is the, somewhat ironically, older face of Mormon academic apologetics and polemics. Bushman, author of the standard apologetic and polemical work on Mormon prophet and revelator Joseph Smith, has, over the course of his academic and apologetic and polemical career, straddled the divide between the new faithful Mormon Studies and the new critical Mormon Studies. Bushman's work has been praised and published both by FARMS, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, a kind of Mormon variant of the Roland Harrison and F.F. Bruce style of apologetics and polemics, an apologetics and polemics that adopted and adapted higher Biblical criticism to true believer apologetics and polemics, and the new critical Mormon Studies rebels, who borrowed heavily from the methods of post-1960s social and cultural history and sociology and the academic presses, most prominently the University of Illinois Press, which initially published much of the work of the new critically oriented Mormon Studies. As a result Bushman doesn't seem to have suffered as much criticism and in some cases invective from true believers of all strips as his cousins in the New critical Mormon Studies have.

Bushman's Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) concisely explores, in 130 pages, Mormon history, Mormon culture, and Mormon political forms. As Bushman notes, Mormon culture was, at its heart, a Jewish form of Christian restorationism that was biblical, prophetic, apostolic, and apocalyptic in orientation. Its power structure was and is patriarchal, centred, as it is around the male priesthood, and it is a religion that is, like Judaism, Anabaptism, and Quakerism, both a religious faith and an identity marker for its adherents. As Bushman notes, the central symbol of Mormonism, the eternal plan of salvation, is important in that, thanks to its linking of Mormon identity to the Mormon life cycle from pre-existence to post-existence, a very effective means of creating and recreating a sense of being Mormon in some way, shape, and form.

Bushman takes a largely functionalist and consensus approach to Mormon history and Mormon culture. While Bushman, for instance, sees continuity, if somewhat contradictorily, between primitive Mormonism, the Mormonism of Joseph Smith, 19th century post-Joseph Mormonism, and post-manifesto Mormonism, those of a more conflict bent see significant cultural change between 19th century and post-manifesto Mormon culture thanks to the demise of polygamy and theocratism, two things at the heart of Mormon culture and the plan of salvation, brought about, in part, because of WASP dominance and activism and American governmental intervention. Mormons, White outsiders in 19th and pre-World War II WASP America became, over the course of the mid and late 20th century, closer to the establishment mainstream as Whiteness broadened out in 20th century America to include Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Mormons, to chose four examples of groups made White in 20th century America. In the process, as conflict theorists note, Mormons became more American than their former American critics. Where Bushman sees Mormonism as a kind of prophetic hierarchical democracy, others, of a more conflict Weberian bent, see a bureaucracy that is both hierarchical and spherarchical and dominated, if not entirely, by the male powers that be in Salt Lake City. Mormonism, in this theoretical frame, is seen as more autocratic than "democratic", whatever that means, is seen as an autocracy that, like all autocracies, is characterised by varying degrees of mainstream conformity and, at the same time, by varying forms of outside the mainstream dissent.

If you are looking for a good apologetic and polemical oriented brief introduction to Mormonism, and yet another entry in the Mormon apologetics and polemics sweepstakes by the OUP, by a cosmopolitan believer, Bushman is your man, particularly if you are already a believer. If, however, you are looking for a more critical introduction to Mormonism, you might want to look elsewhere. I have long been fond of "gentile" Jan Shipp's Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, which focuses on pre-manifesto Mormonism.