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Pioneers in the Attic

Online ISBN:
9780190933890
Print ISBN:
9780190933869
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Pioneers in the Attic

Sara M. Patterson
Sara M. Patterson
Professor of Theological Studies, Hanover College
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Published online:
21 May 2020
Published in print:
2 July 2020
Online ISBN:
9780190933890
Print ISBN:
9780190933869
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book argues that as the Latter-day Saint community globalized in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, its relationship to space transformed. Initially, nineteenth-century Mormons believed that they must literally gather together in their new Salt Lake Zion—their center place. They believed that Zion was a place you could point to on a map, a place you should dwell in to live a righteous life. Later Mormons had to reinterpret these central theological principles as their community spread around the globe. They began to make such claims as “We should spiritually gather together” and “Zion is wherever the people of God are.” But to say that they simply spiritualized concepts that had once been understood literally is only one piece of the puzzle. Contemporary Mormons still want to touch and to feel these principles. And so they mark and claim the landscapes of the American West with versions of their history carved in stone. They develop rituals that allow them not only to learn the history of the nineteenth-century journey West but also to engage it with all of their senses. This book examines the ways contemporary Mormons first spiritualized and then reliteralized and concretized several central theological concepts in order to emphasize and make meaningful a center place even as they become an increasingly place-less community.

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