“Out of the Sphere of Religion”: The Sacred, the Profane, and the Mormons
“Out of the Sphere of Religion”: The Sacred, the Profane, and the Mormons
This chapter outlines the problem nineteenth-century writers and critics of Mormonism faced in reconciling a rhetoric of vituperation and a practice of exclusion with an ideology of Jeffersonian religious toleration and pluralism. One of the challenges Mormonism—like other heterodoxies—presented to its detractors, in other words, was that its religious radicalism was an opportunity for toleration at the same time it was an occasion for outrage. At those times when outrage carried the day, the pressures of pluralism made it desirable to cast the objectionability of Mormonism in nonreligious terms.
Keywords: mormonism, nineteenth-century writers, vituperation, exclusion, jeffersonian religious toleration, pluralism, toleration
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
