Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the 1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality-the editors and contributors place Mormons in larger American histories of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full participants in the United States political system has ranged over time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing political needs and perceptions.

Contributors: Matthew C. Godfrey, Church History Library; Amy S. Greenberg, Penn State University; J. B. Haws, Brigham Young University; Adam Jortner, Auburn University; Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University; Patrick Q. Mason, Claremont Graduate University; Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State University; Thomas Richards, Jr., Springside Chestnut Hill Academy; Natalie Rose, Michigan State University; Stephen Eliot Smith, University of Otago; Rachel St. John, University of California Davis

About the Author

Spencer W. McBride is Historian and Documentary Editor at the Joseph Smith Papers, and is author of Pulpit and Nation. Follow him on X @SpencerWMcBride.
Brent M. Rogers is Associate Managing Historian with the Joseph Smith Papers, and the author of Unpopular Sovereignty. Follow him on X @brentrogers2121.
Keith A. Erekson is an author, teacher, and public historian who serves as director of the Church History Library. Follow him @KeithAErekson.

Reviews

Contingent Citizens is an excellent addition to the canon of Mormon studies and its transcending beyond the Americanization model sets the contours of future scholarly investigation of Latter-day Saint political history for the next generation.

* Journal of Mormon History *

This new volume, Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions of Latter-day Saints in American Political Culture, is a reminder that the Mormon Moment of the early twenty-first century was only one of many times that Mormons have been in the national spotlight-in both negative and positive ways. [T]he message of Contingent Citizens is that the Latter-day Saint experience should be understood as an illustrative example of a religious group deeply embedded in American society and politics.

* Journal of Church and State *

[T]his new collection edited by Spencer W. McBride, Brent M. Rogers, and Keith A. Erekson is dazzling in its insights and the depth and cogency of its analysis. I am also struck by the consistency across these essays of imaginative, adroit archival research and highly original analysis, as well as by the thematic harmony across several overlapping political concepts, giving the volume a coherence that is unusual in edited collections of this size. For many reasons, this book is an excellent addition to the general historiography of American religion.

* Mormon Studies Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501749544
Author Spencer W. McBride
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm