Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons And The Unfinished Business Of American Secularism

Description

From the perspective of Protestant America, nineteenth-century Mormons were the victims of a peculiar zealotry, a population deranged––socially, sexually, even racially––by the extravagances of belief they called “religion.” Make Yourselves Gods offers a counter-history of early Mormon theology and practice, tracking the Saints from their emergence as a dissident sect to their renunciation of polygamy at century’s end. Over these turbulent decades, Mormons would appear by turns as heretics, sex-radicals, refugees, anti-imperialists, colonizers, and, eventually, reluctant monogamists and enfranchised citizens. Reading Mormonism through a synthesis of religious history, political theology, native studies, and queer theory, Peter Coviello deftly crafts a new framework for imagining orthodoxy, citizenship, and the fate of the flesh in nineteenth-century America. What emerges is a story about the violence, wild beauty, and extravagant imaginative power of this era of Mormonism—an impassioned book with a keen interest in the racial history of sexuality and the unfinished business of American secularism. Contents......Page 8 Prologue: Winter Quarters......Page 10 Axiomatic......Page 30 1. Introduction: What We Talk about When We Talk about Secularism......Page 32 Joy......Page 58 2. Endless Felicity: The Radiant Body of Early Mormon Theology......Page 60 3. Gods in Subjection: Women, Polygamy, and theEternity of Sex......Page 98 Extermination......Page 142 4. The Polygamist’s Complexion; or, The Bookof Mormon Goes West......Page 144 5. Wards and Sovereigns: Deviance and Dominionin the Biopolitics of Secularism......Page 180 Theodicy......Page 222 6. Conclusion: Protohomonationalism......Page 224 Acknowledgments......Page 250 Notes......Page 254 Index......Page 302