![cover image](/img/covers/9781469628653.jpg)
American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867-1940
Thomas W. Simpson
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 08/2016
Pages: 246
Subject: Religion, Education
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9780000000000
eBook ISBN: 9781469628653
DESCRIPTION
At the outset, Mormon women and men were purposefully dispatched to such universities to "gather the world's knowledge to Zion." Simpson, drawing on unpublished diaries, among other materials, shows how LDS students commonly described American universities as egalitarian spaces that fostered a personally transformative sense of freedom to explore provisional reconciliations of Mormon and American identities and religious and scientific perspectives. On campus, Simpson argues, Mormon separatism died and a new, modern Mormonism was born: a Mormonism at home in the United States but at odds with itself. Fierce battles among Mormon scholars and church leaders ensued over scientific thought, progressivism, and the historicity of Mormonism's sacred past. The scars and controversy, Simpson concludes, linger.
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