Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Practice: Sacraments, Authority, Gifts, Worship

Terryl L. Givens

Oxford University Press, USA

In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe. Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States. Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.

People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture

Arts & Photography

Religious

Oxford University Press

In this first volume of his magisterial study of the foundations of Mormon thought and practice, Terryl L. Givens offers a sweeping account of Mormon belief from its founding to the present day. Situating the relatively new movement in the context of the Christian tradition, he reveals that Mormonism continues to change and grow. Givens shows that despite Mormonism's origins in a biblical culture strongly influenced by 19th-century Restorationist thought, which advocated a return to the Christianity of the early Church, the new movement diverges radically from the Christianity of the creeds. Mormonism proposes its own cosmology and metaphysics, in which human identity is rooted in a premortal world as eternal as God. Mormons view mortal life as an enlightening ascent rather than a catastrophic fall, and reject traditional Christian concepts of human depravity and destiny. Popular fascination with Mormonism's social innovations, such as polygamy and communalism, and its supernatural and esoteric elements—angels, gold plates, seer stones, a New World Garden of Eden, and sacred undergarments—have long overshadowed the fact that it is the most enduring and even thriving product of the 19th century's religious upheavals and innovations. Wrestling the Angel traces the essential contours of Mormon thought from the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the contemporary LDS church, illuminating both the seminal influence of the founding generation of Mormon thinkers and the significant developments in the church over almost 200 years. The most comprehensive account of the development of Mormon thought ever written, Wrestling the Angel will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Mormon faith.

Wrestling the Angel

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

With more than 140 million copies in print and serving as the principal proselytizing tool of one of the world’s fastest-growing faiths, the Book of Mormon is undoubtedly one of the most influential religious texts produced in the Western world. This compact volume offers the only concise, accessible introduction to this extraordinary work.  Givens examines the Book of Mormon primarily in terms of the claims that its narrators make for its historical genesis, its purpose as a sacred text, and its meaning for its audiences. The author traces five governing themes ― revelation, Christ, Zion, scripture, and covenant ― and analyzes the Book’s central doctrines and teachings. Some of these resonate with familiar nineteenth-century religious preoccupations; others consist of radical and unexpected takes on topics from the Fall of Man to Christ’s mortal ministries and the meaning of atonement.  This introduction surveys the contested origins and production of a work held by millions to be scripture and reviews the scholarly debates that address questions of the record’s historicity.

Book of Mormon, The

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

"An anthology of essays by specialist scholars on topics distinctive to Latter-day Saint religion, about which there have been more than one school of thought with a significant history of discussion but that have not been authoritatively resolved"--

Yet to Be Revealed

BYU Studies

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Books by Terryl L. Givens