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Jesus blessing two men who are kneeling in prayer.

Lusting for Zion

A new book questions what we think we know about heterosexuality and Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
by John G. Turner via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on January 23, 2025
A political cartoon depicting Brighma Young walking in front of a group of his wives, the majority of whom are depicted as non-white.

The Sovereignty of the Latter-day Saints

Less about morality than about rights, the Mormon War of 1858 hinged on the issue of polygamy, pitting a Utah community against federal authorities.
by Katie McBride Moench via JSTOR Daily on August 28, 2024
Jack-o-lantern and calendar day October 31.

The Politics of Trunk or Treat

Nostalgia, idealism, and the policing of childhood.
by Paul Musgrave via Systematic Hatreds on October 31, 2023
Salt Lake Temple

How September 1993, When LDS Leaders Disciplined Six Dissidents, Continues to Trouble the Church

Many faiths face conflicts over institutional control. In Latter-day Saints history, the episode around the ‘September Six’ is particularly memorable.
by Benjamin E. Park via The Conversation on September 13, 2023
The angel Moroni delivering the plates of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.
original

Sacred Places

A visit to the site of Joseph Smith’s divine revelation makes for a different kind of public history experience.
by Ed Ayers on February 27, 2023
A glimmering white Mormon church has two towering spires on each side, and is strikingly symmetrical. It is flanked by rows of palm trees.

Building Mormonism

History and controversy in the architecture of the Latter-day Saints.
by Greg Allen via Art In America on December 22, 2022
Walmart Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith As Lieutenant General Of The Nauvoo Legion

The Fallacy of Religious Freedom

When the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith ran for president, he wasn’t seeking further glory but a policy change in religious liberty.
by Tamarra Kemsley via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 11, 2021
The Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Salt Lake City

The Most American Religion

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis.
by McKay Coppins via The Atlantic on December 16, 2020

The Forged Letter that Began a Mormon Succession Crisis

Miles Harvey on the life and times of James J. Strang.
by Miles Harvey via Literary Hub on July 15, 2020
Book of Mormon

Mormons Confront a History of Church Racism

The Mormon church is still grappling with a racial past.
by Matthew Bowman via The Conversation on May 29, 2018
Brigham Young

The Reds Under Romney’s Bed

The most ambitious social experiment in American history that until 1877, explicitly rejected the core values of Victorian capitalism.
by Mike Davis via Los Angeles Review of Books on October 25, 2012
View from Nauvoo from across the Mississippi River
original

Community Ideal

Visiting the sites of two 19th-century utopian experiments in the American Midwest.
by Ed Ayers on August 29, 2023
Detail of faces on a family tree.

The Pocahontas Exception: America’s Ancestor Obsession

The ‘methods and collections’ of genealogists are political because they have a great deal in common with genealogy as a way of doing history.
by Thomas W. Laqueur via London Review of Books on March 30, 2023
Artwork of trees with multicolored roots.

Yearning for Roots

We're born with a hunger for connection with our ancestors – both biological and spiritual.
by Peter Mommsen via Plough Magazine on December 5, 2022
Drawing of a man looking up at a DNA strand spiraling upwards from him

Our Obsession with Ancestry Has Some Twisted Roots

From origin stories to blood-purity statutes, we have long enlisted genealogy to serve our own purposes.
by Maya Jasanoff via The New Yorker on May 2, 2022
Photos of children from the cover of "The Crisis," 1916

‘Anxious for a Mayflower’

In "A Nation of Descendants," Francesca Morgan traces the American use and abuse of genealogy from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Roots.
by Caroline Fraser via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2022
A lithograph of a Shaker congregation worshipping by performing a step dance.

The Sects That Rejected 19th-Century Sex

Why three religious groups traded monogamy for celibacy, polygamy, and complex marriage.
by Stewart Davenport via Zócalo Public Square on February 14, 2022
Miners with pick axes sit on rocks.

How Yellowcake Shaped The West

The ghosts of the uranium boom continue to haunt the land, water and people.
by Jonathan P. Thompson via High Country News on July 30, 2021

On Ancestry

A scholar of the history of race sets out on an exploration of his own family roots, and despite his better judgement, is moved by what he discovers.
by Justin E. H. Smith via jehsmith.com on May 6, 2020
A a spotlight on a man in chains.

California's Forgotten Slave History

San Bernardino, California's early success rested on a pair of seemingly incongruous forces: Mormonism and slavery.
by Kevin Waite, Sarah Barringer Gordon via Los Angeles Times on January 19, 2020
Psychedelic swirling bright colors.

The Fascinating History of Mescaline, the OG Psychedelic

From prehistoric caves, through Aztecs, Mormons, Beat poets, Jean-Paul Sartre and a British MP.
by Mike Jay, Max Daly via Vice on May 15, 2019
Cover of John Krakauer's book "Under the Banner of Heaven," featuring the Utah landscape.

Abusing Religion: Polygyny, Mormonisms, and Under the Banner of Heaven

How stories of abuse in minority religious communities have influenced American culture.
by Megan Goodwin via The Revealer on February 20, 2019

Pregnant Pioneers

For the frontier women of the 19th century, the experience of childbirth was harrowing, and even just expressing fear was considered a privilege.
by Erin Blakemore, Sylvia D. Hoffert via JSTOR Daily on June 5, 2018

Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal

A digital exhibit on the history and legacy of the canal.
by Heidi Zimmer, Dan Ward via Digital Public Library of America on January 1, 2018
Pilgrims going to church armed with guns.

God and Guns

Patrick Blanchfield tracks the long-standing entanglement of guns and religion in the United States. Part 1 of 2.
by Patrick Blanchfield via The Revealer on September 25, 2015

Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on February 1, 2025
Damaged glass negative showing children looking at the U.S. Constitution, 1920.
partner

A Nation Is a Living Thing

In the 1920s, many in the U.S. fought for a living Constitution. Plenty of others wanted it dead.
by Michael D. Hattem via HNN on August 6, 2024
The Glen Canyon Dam.

Dubious Dam

A conversation with Erika Marie Bsumek about one of the worst boondoggles in the Southwest.
by Tom Zoellner, Erika Marie Bsumek via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 11, 2024
Residents of Icaria, Iowa.

The 19th-Century Novel That Inspired a Communist Utopia on the American Frontier

The Icarians thought they could build a paradise, but their project was marked by failure almost from the start.
by John Last via Smithsonian on November 28, 2023
The ‘Grizzly Giant’ sequoia tree in Mariposa Grove, Yosemite, California.

Emerson & His ‘Big Brethren’

A new book explores the final days of Ralph Waldo Emerson - traveling from Concord to California, and beyond.
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
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