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Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism

byPeter Coviello

Peter Coviello examines Mormonism as a challenge to American ideas about religion, modernity, race, sexuality, family, and the secular. From nineteenth-century persecution and polygamy to assimilation and contemporary cultural visibility, Latter-day Saints repeatedly forced the nation to define which beliefs and practices counted as acceptably religious. The book combines history, criticism, and personal reflection to show that secularism is not the absence of faith but a political arrangement shaped by Protestant norms. Coviello uses Mormon experience to expose the unfinished work beneath American promises of religious freedom and pluralism.

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Publication date

2019

Format

Print edition

Pages

304

ISBN

9780226474168