America's Homegrown Faith (feat. Benjamin Park)

How is it that Mormonism can be considered "America's most successful, homegrown religion" and yet have undergone vast assimilation to American culture in the late 19th and 20th centuries? Dr. Benjamin Park, Associate Professor of History at Sam Houston State University, details Mormonism's evolutions and transitions from its inception to today on this episode of Scholars & Saints. Drawing on his book, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism, Dr. Park takes host Nicholas Shrum on a historical tour of Mormon history. He investigates instances of Mormon cultural assimilation, racial relations, educational practices, and the broader role that Mormonism plays in understanding American history and its undergirding religious influences.

To find out more about Dr. Park and his upcoming projects, click here.

Transcript

00;00;02; - 00;02;02

Nicholas Shrum

You're listening to Scholars and Saints, the University of Virginia Mormon Studies podcast. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism, where we engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up-and-coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism’s relevance to the broader study of religion. Scholars and Saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. The podcast was founded by UVA Religious Studies PhD candidate Stephen Betts. For the past several years, Stephen spoke with dozens of Mormon studies scholars and helped connect thousands of listeners to the world of Mormon Studies. Starting this year in 2024. I, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD student in Religious Studies at UVA, will carry on the podcast’s goal of exploring some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge methods in Mormon Studies and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of Religious Studies. On today's episode, I speak with Dr. Benjamin E. Park about his recent book, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism, that was published with Liveright at the beginning of this year, 2024. In this wide-spanning survey of the history of American Mormonism, Benjamin Park takes the reader from Mormonism's earliest beginnings in upstate New York to the first decades of the 21st century. Drawing upon newly accessible sources, Park discusses how the American homegrown faith has evolved and developed over its nearly 200 year history. With plenty of conflict, debate, retrenchment, and assimilation highlighting its pages, American Zion takes on the daunting task of synthesizing decades of scholarship on Mormon Studies, while providing its own unique insights. In our discussion today, we touch on just a few of the fascinating moments where American society influenced Mormonism, and where Mormonism in turn, helped shape the contours of America's political, cultural, and religious landscape. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Dr. Benjamin Park.

00;02;10 - 00;02;36

Nicholas Shrum

Welcome to Scholars and Saints, the UVA Mormon Studies podcast. Today we're going to be speaking with Dr. Benjamin E. Park. He's an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University, and he is most recently the author of American Zion: A New History of Mormonism. It's a fantastic book. It was published with Liveright with W.W. Norton and Company and, just at the beginning of this year. So thank you so much for being on the podcast, Dr. Park.

00;02;37 - 00;02;39

Ben Park

It's a privilege to be here.

00;02;40 - 00;02;51

Nicholas Shrum

So, to begin, I was wondering if you could speak with the listeners, a little bit about your background, your educational background and, what kind of projects you've done up until American Zion?

00;02;52 - 00;04;16

Ben Park

Yeah, I was an undergraduate student at Brigham Young University, where I had the great privilege and honor to work as a research assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers Project. And that was really my introduction into both the historical world and the Mormon history realm. I left BYU, did a master's degree in theology at the University of Edinburgh, then a second master's degree in politics from the University of Cambridge, where I ended up staying and did my PhD in history and determined I wasn't going to write much on Mormonism, that I wanted to follow what is sometimes called the Richard Bushman model of establishing a long career outside of Mormonism and then coming back to Mormonism later on. And I wrote my dissertation, my first book on early American political culture that doesn't mention Mormonism at all. And then in 2016, the LDS church released, The Council of Fifty minutes, which I saw as a great opportunity to write about democratic discontent in early America. So that prompted me to write a book, Kingdom of Nauvoo, which was released in 2020. And then I wrote this most recent book, American Zion. So, broadly speaking, I'm a scholar of American religion, culture, and politics, especially the intersections of those three. Starting out in early America, but my scholarship has taken me much broader, chronologically, since then.

00;04;17 - 00;04;59

Nicholas Shrum

Absolutely. And I love Kingdom of Nauvoo. I have not read, your first book, but, Kingdom of Nauvoo is excellent, and I'm glad that you mentioned that the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints History Department had published, The Council of Fifty minutes, because that allowed you to have some new insights into that chapter of Mormon history. I'm curious about, you mentioned in the introduction to American Zion, that there have been new sources made available for for a history like this. Can you comment briefly on the kind of new sources that you were most excited about to consult as you started thinking through American Zion and writing it?

00;05;00 - 00;05;52

Ben Park

Yeah, there have been a number of really, really important collections and documents that the LDS church has made available and most recent decades, the Josepht Smith Papers Project, of course, being the most famous. But other publication projects of the church include The First Fifty Years of the Relief Society, The Emmeline B. Wells Diaries, The Eliza R. Snow Discourses, and the George Q. Cannon Diaries. But then there's also just a plethora of sources that they've not only made available to research in their archives, but also in digitized forms online. For instance, the Relief Society board minutes from the Progressive Era were made available online recently. And then you have a number of periodicals. And so, it's a historian's dream to have so many sources at your fingertips and the LDS church and their historical departments are to be commended for that.

00;05;53 - 00;06;23

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah. We recently had Dr. Patrick Mason on the podcast, and he spoke about how one of the things that makes the study of Mormonism in American religious history so, perhaps, unique is the, again, the plethora of sources that you mention. So I'm curious how you decided from this huge, huge amount of sources, what types of sources did you choose to use in your narrative? And I'm curious about your thought process of why.

00;06;24 - 00;08;38

Ben Park

Yeah. First, I wanted a couple of central themes when I set out on this book. My own background and expertise and interest drove me to look at the intersections between church and state, faith and intellect, obedience and dissent. So, of course, I'm prone to be looking at individual sources, events that play into those themes. But more so when I was charting out each individual chapter that would cover between 20 and 30 years, I wanted to find people and sources that could serve as a narrative spine of that chapter. And so every time I would be looking at a chronological period, I would think, “okay, who are some individuals I could highlight that could be my my key storytellers here.” Especially if they had left sources behind. And then I would use those sources. I would read those sources and see, okay, what themes are coming out of this? And I allowed them to kind of dictate how to use the source rather than me forcing my interpretations on them. Some of those sources were easier to decide than others. I mean, Lucy Mack Smith, in her memoir from the earliest decades of the church, is well known and popular for a reason. Because it is a phenomenal look into religious imagination and class anxiety and the experiences of the saints. Others were more of a surprise. Iin the 1850s period, I found the dispatch of letters from a woman named Phoebe Pendleton Woodbury, who was an adult convert who left her adult children behind back in the East when she moved to Utah. And, well, a move that traumatized her to separate her from her family, but ended up meaning that she was writing monthly letters back to her family back East describing what life like was out in Utah. And so I was able to narrate the 1850s period, a time of war, an expansion of polygamy and conflict and reformation through the lens of this woman who I didn't even know her name before encountering her letters. So I tried to find sources that both reflect the broader themes of the book, as well as sources that can provide enticing and poignant characters that move the narrative along.

00;08;39 - 00;09;36

Nicholas Shrum

Well, you do a wonderful job narrating the stories of these really fascinating characters. One of the things that I think is very admirable about American Zion is that it is able to tell the stories of women, people of color, of lesser known figures, but as well as placing some of the more well-known, biographical narratives of church leaders  that people familiar with Mormon history might have read or heard before. You weave those very, very well together. I'm curious about the title of of the book. We can talk about the “American Zion” part, but I'm actually really curious about the subtitle: “A New History of Mormonism.” How does American Zion intervene or contribute to your understanding of Mormon studies scholarship and just Mormon history broadly?

00;09;37 - 00;11;39

Ben Park

Yeah. Well, the first and boring answer is that the subtitle was given to me by the press, and I wish I could take some claim to it, but the press basically said, “hey, you can have whatever you want as a title, but your subtitle is going to be ‘A New History of Mormonism,’” in part because it, you know, it's provocative, it draws readers, it states its purpose. But I wouldn't sign off on it if it weren't weren't something that I agreed with. So what's new in this history? I think there's a few new things that set it apart. First, there are all these sources that have been made available in the last decade that previous general syntheses were not able to take advantage of. There's also been a lot of developments in the historical field, a lot of great histories, especially on the 20th century, that were, I think, only now, more so than a decade or two decades ago can we actually assess the history of Mormonism, the 20th century, within its broader American context? And third, I think there are questions that our community are asking now that are different than before. If you think back to, say, Matt Bowman's phenomenal The Mormon People, a wonderful synthesis that was published in the midst of the Mormon moment. That book matched the time. It was a triumphant introduction of Mormonism to the broader world that was embracing diversity in an age of Obama, in the midst of Mitt Romney's presidential run. In 2024, America's in a very different place. We are divided in these culture wars where everything seems to be separated on ideological grounds, and we are a nation of partisans. And so we're asking questions of how did we come to this great division, and how did Mormonism become such a contested both internally and externally community? And so I think my book tries to address that, just like any synthetic work is reflective of its era. So I think my book takes advantage of these new sources. It builds on new scholarship, and it speaks to some pressing questions of today.

00;11;40 - 00;12;34

Nicholas Shrum

Well it absolutely does. And, I think that especially the last several chapters, as you're going through the 20th and the 21st century, definitely shows that this is an evolving faith. This is, especially within its American context, it is representative of the American story. And in fact, you say in the introduction that, “the Mormon story is the American story.” What kinds of stories within Mormonism do you feel tell the story of the United States, broadly speaking? And there's a lot that we can go into. I have lots of favorite stories from this book that perhaps in the 19th century. What kinds of stories do you feel like Mormonism represents for the broader American story?

00;12;35 - 00;15;20

Ben Park

Yeah, I can highlight at least three. First, the period of mo ocracy and democratic rule or overrule, if you will, of 1830s America, where in an age of Andrew Jackson and massive democracy and democratic spread as captured in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America during that decade, lots of people were able to take advantage of of this democratization process. But there are also many who worried about its limits or maybe its consequences. And so when the Mormons start getting lots of converts and establishing their own headquarters and various communities and terrifying their neighbors, that resulted in a conflict of democracy. And so when the mob kicks the Mormons out of Jackson County, Missouri, they had to justify doing so in Democratic terms. And whether that be defining that the Mormons as a non-religion or saying that they're acting and in undemocratic ways, in the end, ironically, promoting an undemocratic response as illiberal streak that has been at the heart of the American experience, that often crops up in these various moments. And then you look at the 1850s when Mormons are trying to settle Utah in the Great Basin Valley, and the question of what are we going to do with these western territories is at the forefront of the American mind. How are we going to balance liberty and expansion and white supremacy while America seems to be teetering out of control with all this expansive impulses and especially this place like Utah, which is filled with in what appears to be Anglo-American settlers, that aren't acting like white Americans, that raises questions of of federal overrule. And then, of course, that bleeds into the final issue of the 19th century that I highlight a lot, which is that debates over religious liberty in the 1880s, when the federal government tries to crack down on the Mormon practice of polygamy, and Latter-day Saints argued that this is our sincerely held belief, and so therefore we have the right to practice it and ended up practicing several decades worth of civil disobedience against these federal laws of polygamy and resulting and conceding on grounds and issuing the official manifesto in 1890 renouncing polygamy. And just in the 19th century. And of course, I could mention several points in the 20th century, too. But just in the 19th century, all of those key moments of Mormonism are also key for understanding American religious, American political, and American cultural history, which is why Mormonism needs to be rooted at the center of the American story.

00;15;21 - 00;16;41

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you. Yeah, I, I see American Zion, being successful in ways similar to Spencer Fluman's A Peculiar People. Patrick Mason's book on anti-Mormon violence in the South, and others that  do a really good job of showing how central Mormonism is in the 19th century to the American story and the questions that the United States was trying to wrestle through with concepts of political philosophy and with gender and with race. We recently spoke with Paul Reeve about his book as well. And I think that American Zion complements those very well. You have a line early on in the book as well, and I'm wondering if you could comment on it, where you say that “Mormonism is arguably America's most successful homegrown religion.” And maybe staying in the 19th century,  think it's pretty clear from the things that you just said about surviving mobocracy and challenging the American political order, sexual, and gender roles and theocracy in the West. I'm curious about how you see Mormonism being successful in the 19th century.

00;16;42 - 00;18;04

Ben Park

Yeah. And of course, that term “successful” is loaded. And there's plenty of other groups that could lay claim on that, whether it be the Christian Scientists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, all these groups that are also growing in the 19th century and have some claim to success. In the Mormon term, they're a group that captures the national imagination more than all the others. They're able to accrue a number of converts, political, economic power, their own territory for a while. They were able to capture the national imagination that very few groups were able to do during the era. So I think they were successful in both quantitative gathering as well as qualitative discussions and imaginative obsessions. And further, I argue that they're successful because they they represent, they embody a lot of these crucial themes of American history writ large. And they're successful in that they serve as a mirror for understanding broader American concerns and anxieties. And so that's why, yes, it's a bit preposterous to say. And it's not something that can be scientifically measured. But I argue that Mormonism is the most successful homegrown religion in the 19th century because of all those factors.

00;18;05 - 00;18;53

Nicholas Shrum

One of my favorite research interests and in reading Mormon history has been this question of assimilation into American culture. And I think the title of the book, American Zion, speaks to some of those concepts of assimilation, or at least laying claim to American identity. Can you comment on your take on how American Zion builds on or complicates narratives of assimilation of Mormons, especially around the turn of the century? So I'm thinking of Thomas Alexander's Mormonism in Transition and others that make an argument about how Mormons become more American during that roughly 50-year period after the 1890 Manifesto.

00;18;54 - 00;22;14

Ben Park

Yeah. So I think there are a couple of huge, monumental scholarly works that still shaped the way we view Mormon assimilation to American culture. You already mentioned Thomas Alexander's Mormonism in Transition, more influential than the nearly any other book in Mormon history, and still a great, great read. And those who look at my end notes realize that I in particular, most scholars in general, still rely on it. Another book that addresses a theme is Armaund Mauss's famous Angel and the Beehive, which argues that Mormonism often vacillates between these periods of retrenchment and assimilation, that when their leaders feel they are growing too close to American culture, they retrench andwWhen they are becoming too isolated, they assimilate. My intervention there is kind of a “yes and.” I'm not overturning either of those golden calves of Mormon historiography. I think the major points of those books are solid. But that this assimilation, first, talking about Alexander's assimilation during the transition era, that it iss assimilation not just into a unified American culture, but it's assimilating into particular spheres of American culture. And that in doing so, they're rejecting others. There is no uniform Americanism that Mormonism is going to assimilate into. They're going to choose aspects of Mormonism to adopt while ignoring others. And I argue that in the first few decades of the 20th century, there are a number of potential trajectories that Mormonism could have taken, all of which could be seen as assimilation, whether it be into a much more conservative American culture, in the wake of the modernist fundamentalist wars, or perhaps in the more modernist ways. There were prominent saints that I try to highlight in my book that highlight all these different avenues, and that by the 1930s, several leaders, most notably J. Reuben Clark, who joined the First Presidency in 1933, end up closing off some of those assimilation routes while vindicating others. And so when you're talking about assimilation, you have to talk about assimilation into what? And for wha consequence? And then when you talk about the assimilation versus retrenchment eras of, are the Mormons assimilating or entrenchment at these various periods, I came to see it as more of a porous activity where assimilation/retrenchment would take place at the same time, that often you can assimilate in some aspects and that grants you capital to retrench in others. And so you look at J. Reuben Clark, he is very willing to assimilate Mormonism into a Republican partisan and political culture, while still retaining retrenching on some of the Mormon fundamental beliefs like prophetic infallibility, or priesthood authority, and Joseph Smith's First Vision, and biblical inerrancy, and all these different points. So I think when we think about Mormon assimilation, we need to consider what are they assimilating into and what they're not, and how that assimilation often works hand in hand at the same time, with retrenchment.

00;22;15 - 00;23;16

Nicholas Shrum

That's a very good point. And I think that the book does that very successfully. I think at many points deliver very well on one of the promises of the introduction, where it says it “emphasizes the contingent nature of the church's evolution and highlights moments when the tradition might have taken a different route.” And you already started to speak about one of those moments that I see is one of the major hinge points in your narrative, there in the 1930s when J. Reuben Clark becomes a counselor in the First Presidency. Specifically, I'm wondering if you can speak about the role of education during this point, of the narrative use of Brigham Young University, and other educational institutions and pursuits of the church are highlighted quite frequently. So I'm wondering if you can talk about education and that moment of the 30s and what might it have looked like? But what ways did the church go?

00;23;18 - 00;25;52

Ben Park

One of the things that prompted my first interest in Mormon history was being a student at BYU, and recognizing a lot of the conflicts that are taking place on campus, with some student protests and agitation and tensions between professors and administration. And then when I started looking back into the history, I realize that it's always been that way, that education in general and BYU in particular, has always been ground zero for a lot of the central tensions of modern Mormonism. And in no time was this more the case than in the 1930s. I mentioned before that there are several Latter-day Saints, including several Latter-day Saint leaders, in the early 20th century who were trying to push Mormonism in a particular cultural assimilation vein, including toward a modernist understanding of education. And several of those people were teaching at BYU, were being trained to teach at BYU. And one of the people who hated that trajectory was J. Reuben Clark, who even though he was well-educated on his own and was a very bright individual, he, like many anti-scientist figures of the 1920s and 1930s who are affiliated with the more conservative and partisan culture, denounced those reforms and said that they need to return to their fundamental values. And so as early as the early 1930s, J. Reuben Clark is writing to Heber J. Grant, another church leader, saying, we need to cut down on these pseudo-intellectual reformers in the church who are giving up the fundamentals of the gospel. And that term, of course, has a lot of cachet capital in the broader American culture, because this was a time when many people were embracing the term fundamentalists. And so J. Reuben Clark decides to push and vindicate his own form of these Mormon fundamentals. And he does so in a very prominent lecture that he delivers in 1938 that comes to be known as “The Charted Course of LDS Education” that becomes quasi-scripture for LDS educators ever since. And so he cuts off a lot of the the BYU's associations with some of these other schools. He tells church professors that you need to focus on these fundamentals, which he then defines. And in many ways, he charts the path that LDS education has taken ever since.

00;25;53 - 00;26;54

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you for that. Yeah, the trajectory ever since these roughly 1930s moments in church education and with the leadership of J. Reuben Clark, he's becoming, I think, in Mormon studies, a much more central figure to think about and analyze. So I think American Zion does a great job with that. Moving through the 20th century, we get to the 1950s where you have a wonderful chapter entitled, “One Family Under God,” where it's kind of seen as a bit of an apotheosis of sorts, where Mormonism really seems to align with those spheres that you're talking about, particular spheres of assimilation. I wonder if you can speak about that moment and how does Mormonism  in the 50s and leading into the 60s and 70s, how does it align with particular parts of American culture?

00;26;55 - 00;29;06

Ben Park

Yeah, I think, first, it's notable to point out that this is just a few decades after Mormons were seen as outcasts from American society. But by 1950, in the post-World War II era, Mormons had taken this new, privileged position to where they are nearly accepted as full Americans. So you have church leaders and church figures on the covers of prominent newspapers like, Newsweek and Time magazine. You have Ezra Taft Benson serving in Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential cabinet. You have the broader nation celebrating the centennial celebration of the pioneers arriving in Utah, which is ironic, given those pioneers were leaving America a century before. So Mormons are finally reaching that long held goal of being accepted at the very time that American culture is going to start fragmenting into these various partisan culture wars that in many ways frame modern America. So it's one of the great ironies that Mormons come to embrace some of the forms of patriotism and belonging, like the family, like Americanism, at the very time that those ideas start fracturing. And so Mormons fall into that same sphere. You have several Mormon leaders divided over some of the central issues, whether it be civil rights, gender issues, politics, Ezra Taft Benson, of course, being a prominent figure who is pushing a particular vision of what Mormonism and American politics should look like, but others offering competing visions. And so the great irony of that chapter, titling it “One Family under God,” is that it begins in an era where Dwight Eisenhower is president and David O. McKay as LDS prophet, both envision within a generation that the nation and the church will come together and be unified, yet both end up leaving office and leaving this world within a couple of decades, seeing the opposite happen and seeing the nation fracture, and them not being united.

00;29;07 - 00;29;48

Nicholas Shrum

And you spoke about how they start to assimilate into these particular spheres of American culture where they're welcome in some respects. But then it's just at the at the time when American society also starts to fracture,that phrase, “an age of fracture,” going into the 60s and 70s, you spoke about, issues concerning race. And that's been a important topic within Mormon studies for quite a while now. But, how does American Zion, contextualize and situate some of those stories of people of color, within the faith, especially in the 20th century?

00;29;49 - 00;31;41

Ben Park

Yeah, there's a few things that I aim to do in the book with regard to race that were really important to me. First, I wanted to center the idea of race throughout the book to show that there are questions about racial inclusion and racial equality, whether it has to do with African-Americans, indigenous Americans, or, toward the end of the book, Hispanic Americans, that those are issues that are at the forefront of the Latter-day Saint story. But more than that, more than just telling the institutional history, I wanted to make sure that I told the story through the voices of those from these marginalized groups. So I tried to find Black Mormon voices, Indigenous Mormon voices, Hispanic Mormon voices who can explain what they were going through rather than just talking about the broader institutional issues. So, for instance, in the 1950s and 1960s, when I discuss the church's response to the Civil Rights era, of course, there's lots of i on Ezra Taft Benson, who sees the Civil Rights movement as a conspiratorial linkage to the broader Communist war. And I discussed how Hugh B. Brown tries to push back on it, and there's these compromises on it. But then I both start and end those sections, discussing some Black Latter-day Saints who are trying to carve out their own space, which was increasingly difficult to do so. And then when I discuss the end of the racial restriction in 1978, I made sure to start that conversation with the Genesis Group, the Black Latter-day Saint organization. And I ended it with Darius Gray and his reaction to the racial restriction’s end. And so I wanted to both foreground the element of race, but also foreground the voices of those who were impacted by those policies and ideas.

00;31;42 - 00;32;49

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, I think it does a fantastic job. One of the things that I think American Zion does a good job of is demonstrating that there was never just one particular Mormonism. There's always been some tension, some push and shove in the the overall trajectory of the faith, especially in the United States. And so it's not just a story of the institutional church becoming more conservative. It's also a story of, like you were saying, people of color and even, some people in the leadership, claiming their own interpretation of what Mormonism can be. Which leads me to my question that I'm particularly interested in, especially at UVA and the Religious Studies department. I'm curious if you could reflect on the role that religion, and, however one wants to define that, but how does it operate in the narrative broadly and then in the lives of the people that you write about?

00;32;51 - 00;34;36

Ben Park

Yeah, it's a good question because it's one that I constantly struggle with and how to foreground in my own research and writing. My earliest articles that I wrote and in the field of Mormon studies were intellectual histories, where I'm tracing out the niceties of these different ideas about embodiment and deification and salvation. And then the more I've gotten into it, the more elastic I see the religion category, and I see religion more as something that's practiced and implemented. And so while I definitely keep ideas like, all of Mormonism’s unique doctrines, whether it be the tripart heaven or, prophetic authority or the Book of Mormon and its contributions to a broader atonement discourses, I try to always keep those grounded in how those affected everyday Latter-day Saints and their neighbors. So I end up defining religion as action. Which sometimes gets me in trouble because I like the ideas. I think the ideas matter. But I also want to see those ideas implemented. When I wrote the whole manuscript, including the epilogue, my editor read the epilogue and he said, “so much of this is about ideas, but so much of your book is not. How do you reconcile that?” And I had to realize that it's because I'm defining ideas through the anxieties and activities that result from them, rather than tracing out the particulars of individual beliefs. So when I define the category of religion, I define it as action. And that's what I try to keep at the forefront of my narrative.

00;34;37 - 00;35;41

Nicholas Shrum

Well, I think that, as a religious historian and one trained in intellectual history, that it shines through quite well how those ideas influence practice, but how also practice was influenced by various movements going on around it. My I think my favorite line from the book is from the epilogue where you say “the Mormon faith was born from a desire to address problems that society seemed unable to solve.” I'm wondering if you can reflect on this sentence and this idea, which I think is a through line of of American Zion, of addressing problems. What did Mormonism see or what did some people see that Mormonism as a faith, as a religion, what could it try to solve? You don't have to talk about all of the parts of the book, but maybe if you have a story or a part of it that you think is particularly emblematic of that strain.

00;35;43 - 00;38;28

Ben Park

Yeah. One of the through lines, not just in the book, but in my entire scholarly efforts has been where democracy seems to fall apart. And to Joseph Smith and many of the early Latter-day Saints, they believed that human rule and democratic governance had only brought chaos, and that there had to be the strong hand of God, the voice of authority that could come in and lead people to truth and to firm ground. And so I think perhaps the best example of this was when Joseph Smith organized the Council of Fifty. And this brings full circle on our conversation, right, because that's what led to me writing Kingdom of Nauvoo, which bled into writing this American Zion, that by 1844, Joseph Smith and his closest followers believed that democracy had failed, that the American government was no longer able to protect those on the fringes, and that something had to be done to restore the rights and liberties of God's true believers. And so they established a theocratic organization that would eventually introduce world order. Now, of course, they did not succeed in that. The Council of Fifty did not last very long, nor did it have very many achievements. But that impulse, that idea of cutting through the morass of chaos and uncertainty and anarchic society is something that I think everyone can sympathize with. We're all trying to look for truth in a world of fiction. We're all trying to find some kind of stability. To use a metaphor from the Book of Mormon, right, we're all looking for that iron rod that can lead us to what our values dictate, are the rightful conclusion. And so that's why I foregrounded that at the center of the book is that these are sincere individuals trying to establish a sense of permanence in a world of uncertainty. And it's through that desire, through that anxiety that you can both understand and explain a lot of what took place in Mormon history. In fact, one of the the titles that I proposed for the book and I wanted to be was “Longing for Zion,” because I felt that that impulse was one of the central themes or theses of the book. I end up giving that up because I wanted American in the title, and we wanted to keep it short. But that impulse remained.

00;38;29 - 00;39;37

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you for reflecting on that. I really hope that people go pick up a copy of this book. I think it's really interesting, especially to my peers in the religious studies departments across the United States, that Mormonism really is a fascinating case study, especially in the American context. Dr. Park's book highlights many voices, and is a wonderful synthesis of many of the themes and trajectories of Mormonism, across race and gender and sexuality. Fascinating and important parts on the role and the place of LGBT individuals in the church near the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century. And before I ask you about what projects you're working on next, I'm going to ask you kind of a dangerous question for a historian. But as this is a Mormon studies podcast, I'm curious about what you think the future of Mormonism might be, given the sources that you've gone through in American Zion, what's next for Mormonism in the United States, or where do you see it maybe going?

00;39;38 - 00;42;10

Ben Park

Yeah, it is a dangerous question, but but it's always a good one and one that I get at most of the stops in my discussion on the book. On the one hand, Mormonism has proven, as I've tried to show in the book, that religions succeed when they're constantly able to adapt to the times, even while maintaining an appeal to permanence. Stephen Taysom, who I know you've had on the program before, who wrote a phenomenal biography of Joseph F. Smith, he frequently says that religion needs two things to survive: one, it needs to convince its followers that it never changes, and two, it needs to change along with its follower’s desires and anxieties. And so I think it'd be foolish not to expect Mormonism two evolve going forward. However, and this is a big however, Mormonism, is able to enjoy a degree of cultural acceptance and power now because they're in a particular cultural block than they ever have before, and it's falling within that particular rut, that particular trajectory that actually makes me somewhat skeptical that there's going to be major changes going forward, because they have achieved a degree of stability. Now I'm going to qualify that by saying that as the church becomes increasingly global, that those global tensions and anxieties and needs are going to be shaping the church a lot more than American policies have, which is why the the new Bushman Chair holder, Laurie Maffly-Kipp and her forthcoming book is going to be so crucial in framing the Mormon story going forward within its global context, because one would hope that it's not going to remain as wedded to American culture and politics and so forth as it has in the past. And I will say, to wrap up that answer, that Leonard Arrington, who was the church historian in the 1970s, knew more about Mormon history than anyone else in his day, on January 1st, 1978, he wrote in his diary his predictions for the coming year, and he predicted that there weren't going to be any major changes in the church when it comes to race. And of course, only five, six months later, you get the official declaration to which end of the racial restriction. And I share this to say that historians make horrible prophets. So if you are gambling people out there, do not put any money on my words.

00;42;11 - 00;42;41

Nicholas Shrum

Noted. But I do appreciate your thoughts. I think that especially in the world of religious studies, a book like American Zion asks and makes us ask a lot of questions about how Mormonism operates in the lives of its practitioners and with the broader culture and it's hard not to have an eye towards the future. So I really appreciate your thoughts there. As we wrap up, would you mind telling listeners what your next projects are or are you taking a break?

00;42;42 - 00;43;14

Ben Park

If I took a break, I think I'd get bored. I was very privileged last year to have a long research fellowship that took me in Boston, where I looked through all the public and private writings of Theodore Parker, who was an abolition minister in Boston during the 1840s and 1850s. And I'm currently writing a book on religion and the abolitionist movement, specifically in Boston, during the years leading up to the Civil War, as a way to tell the story of national fracture.

00;43;15 - 00;43;47

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Well, we will all be looking forward to that. But thank you again for this, for writing this book, and taking on kind of a daunting task to synthesize so much scholarship. For those that pick up a copy of the book, the bibliography is quite impressive with the the amount of sources and secondary literature that Dr. Park is able to navigate and implement into the narrative. So I appreciate you being on the podcast. Are there any last thoughts or things you'd like to leave listeners with?

00;43;47 - 00;44;22

Ben Park

No, just a pleasure to be on. I love this podcast, and I also want to express my deep love and appreciation for the Mormon studies community. I recognize how absurd and preposterous it is to try to write a general synthesis, given the mountains and mountains of scholarship. And even if I appreciate you saying my end notes are full of all these sources, there are so many more I could have mentioned. And the Mormon studies community, the Mormon history field is a wonderful place that I hope is as forgiving of my oversights and mistakes as they are welcoming of my arguments.

00;44;22 - 00;44;48

Nicholas Shrum

Well, I thought it was wonderful. And again, it's another great addition to the conversation on the place of Mormonism in the United States. And then, yes, as you mentioned, with our incoming chair, Dr. Maffly-Kipp, more Mormons outside of the United States and Canada than within it. And so it's just a continuing story. So thank you for adding your piece to it.

00;44;48 - 00;44;49

Ben Park

My pleasure.

00;44;52 - 00;45;09

Nicholas Shrum

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversations soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production-editing, and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit mormonguitar.com. Thank you for listening.