The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation"The past few decades have witnessed an increasing reaction of the Mormons against their own successful assimilation", Armand Mauss writes in The Angel and the Beehive, "as though trying to recover some of the cultural tension and special identity associated with their earlier 'sect-like' history". This retrenchment among Mormons is the main theme of Mauss's book, which analyzes the last forty years of Mormon history from a sociological perspective. At the official ecclesiastical level, Mauss finds, the retrenchment can be seen in the greatly increased centralization of bureaucratic control and in renewed emphases on obedience to modern prophets, on genealogy and vicarious temple work, and on traditional family life; retrenchment is also apparent in extensive formal religious indoctrination by full-time professionals and in an increased sophistication and intensity of proselytizing. At what he refers to as "the folk or grassroots level", Mauss finds that Mormons have generally been compliant with the retrenchment effort and are today at least as "religious" on most measures as they were in the 1960s. A sizable segment of the Mormon membership, Mauss asserts, has gone beyond "Mormon" retrenchment to express itself in a growing resort to Protestant fundamentalism, both in scriptural understanding and in intellectual style. The author calls on a wide array of sources in sociology and history to show that Mormons, who by mid-century had come a long way from their position as disreputable "outsiders" in a society dominated by the mainline religions, seem now to be adopting more conservative ways and seeking a return to a more sectarian posture. |
Contents
The Mormon Movement in Metaphor and Theory | 3 |
Mormons as a Case Study in Assimilation | 21 |
Mormon Religious Beliefs at Midcentury | 33 |
Mormon Social and Political Beliefs at Midcentury | 46 |
Midcentury Mormon Peculiarity and Its Prospects | 60 |
The Official Response to Assimilation | 77 |
Two Case Studies | 102 |
The GrassRoots Response to Official Retrenchment | 123 |
Modern Mormon Religiosity and Its Consequences | 141 |
The Institutional Matrix | 157 |
Expressions of Folk Fundamentalism | 177 |
Present and Future | 196 |
Survey Methods and Measurements | 215 |
Common terms and phrases
American Apostle assimilation beehive Bible Book of Mormon California chapter Christian Church Education System church leaders church leadership church members Clark comparisons conservative correlation course cultural decades denominations doctrine earlier Elder especially ethnic Ezra Taft Benson fundamentalism fundamentalist Glock Glock and Stark grass-roots increased institutional intellectuals issues Joseph Fielding Smith Joseph Smith kind Lamanites least Ludlow Mauss McConkie membership ment midcentury mission mission presidents missionary mons Mormon church Mormon community Mormon converts Mormon history Mormon missionaries Mormon samples movement non-Mormon O'Dea official Opinion Research Corporation orthodoxy political posture President priesthood prophetic question Quinn recent religion religious commitment responses retrenchment Salt Lake City San Francisco Mormons scholarly scriptures seminary Shepherd and Shepherd sixties Southern Baptists spiritual stake presidents Stark and Glock Sunstone surveys temple tendency tion traditional Mormon twentieth century wards
Popular passages
Page 231 - Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 20, 251-261. *Bahr, HM (1982). Religious contrasts in family role definitions and performance: Utah Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, and others.