‘Kingdom Come’: Representing Mormonism through a geopolitical frame

This paper extends the reach of ‘popular geopolitics’ by exploring the geopolitical frame that American popular/news magazines use to portray a major religion in the United States: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the most prominent body known as Mormonism). It asserts that magazines often represent this type of Mormonism as a geopolitical entity, and sometimes even as a geopolitical threat. Prior to the early twentieth century, these portrayals were hegemonic, given the national government's distrust of Mormonism. But echoes of an earlier and more virulent geopolitical discourse have persisted, long after the federal government made its peace with Mormonism. This paper defines and analyzes twentieth-century magazines' geopolitical discourse on Mormonism, particularly in relation to Mormon spatiality. In doing so, it puts forward concepts of geopolitical optic and logic in order to more effectively distinguish between variations in geopolitical language.     

No Grounds for Conversation: The Regional Construction of Fundamental Difference between Mormonism and Socialism

This paper explores a missed opportunity for serious conversation or even alliance between some adherents of socialism and Mormonism. The Americanization of Mormons and Utah around 100 years ago opened Mormons up to broader alliances than had been possible during most of the 19th century. A few Mormons and socialists thought that intersections between the two groups' egalitarian ideologies could be fruitfully explored. However, this potential evaporated as Mormonism and socialism were culturally constructed as antithetical within regional life. Through this case, the paper comments on alliance-building strategies within radical politics and the practice of critical human geography.     

The Baptism of an Indian Juggler: Event and Narrative in the Swedish Press, 1827–1852

In 1827, an Indian juggler named Mooty Madua Samme converted to Christianity in Stockholm, Sweden. This historical event got much attention in the press at the time – as did his succeeding marriage to a Swedish woman named Erica – and was celebrated as a victory for the Evangelical Lutheran faith. Later, in the 1840s, a narrative depicting the event spread via a travelogue by Xavier Marmier, which was translated and mediated through the Swedish press, and reacted to by Samme's priest; in the 1850s, Samme's name surfaced again – now in context of the contemporary freedom of religion debates in Sweden. In this article, we explore Samme's baptism (and interrelatedly, his marriage) by looking at newspaper mediations of the event and the related narratives. Seen from a microhistorical perspective, we show how Samme's conversion and religious otherness was utilised in contemporary religious and political discussions, and we argue that the event and narratives surrounding the baptism can augment our understanding of the Swedish nineteenth century religio-cultural landscape in which he was situated.     

Some Recent Trends in the Study of Religion and Youth

From the beginning of the twenty‐first century there has been a sharp increase in research on the ways in which young people engage with religion and spirituality. Three trends are apparent: first, there has been a shift away from focusing on the formal processes of young people's religious socialisation and a realisation that youth exercise considerable agency in their construction of personal and group identities; second, the 1970s and 1980s assumption that religion was in decline in developed countries and was of little interest to young adults has been challenged by the growth of trans‐national religions including Pentecostal Christianity, and by the emergence of a myriad spiritualities and identity‐conferring subcultural groups including Paganism, Satanism, Goth culture and vampirism; and third, there is an increased acceptance that youth is less a uniform stage that all human beings undergo, and is more intimately connected to the specific historical, geographical, economic, and social context in which it is experienced. This article reviews four recent publications on religion, spirituality and youth, three of which are from Australia. The fourth volume is an international edited collection containing studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, and a small number of European countries.     

Mormon Masculinity: Changing Gender Expectations in the Era of Transition from Polygamy to Monogamy, 1890–1920

During the period from 1890 to 1920, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS) perceived a crisis in the lives of their boys. Like their Protestant contemporaries, Latter‐day Saints spent much time attempting to find a solution. At the same time, the LDS church was experiencing its own unique set of upheavals. In 1890, one of the central tenets of Mormonism – polygamy – had to be replaced with sexual practices that aligned the LDS with wider American society. It was during this transitional period that members and authorities of the LDS church sought to gain respectability in American culture by emphasising the morality and value systems they shared with their middle‐class Protestant contemporaries. As Mormons restructured marriage around the practice of monogamy, they placed the burden of the refashioned religious identity almost exclusively upon men and their bodies. The new Mormon man ushered the LDS church into the American mainstream while maintaining an acceptable difference from that mainstream culture.     

Dedicated spirits: religious mediators and romantic ideas in the late nineteenth century

This article reconstructs a transatlantic community of discourse that used Romantic ideas to mediate between science and religion in order to create a framework for modern belief. The pragmatist William James, Scottish freelance intellectual Thomas Davidson, and ethical culturalist William Mackintire Salter in the United States, and the psychic researcher Frederic Myers and self‐published philosopher Shadworth Hollway Hodgson in England inherited a supreme concept of immanence from Romanticism, which they brought to their fight against dogmatism in religion and materialism in science. Emphasizing the freedom of the individual mind to believe on the basis of experience, these religious mediators oriented their new science of religions by the compass of democratic values. Their approach to modern belief contributes to the current revision of a strictly declensionist secularization by suggesting, in part, that religion among intellectuals was neither exclusively Christian in the late nineteenth century nor necessarily stifled by the impact of Darwinian evolution.     

Mormons,Civil Authorities and Lutheran Clergy in Finland, 1875–1889

This article explores the reactions of civil authorities and Lutheran clergy to Mormon activity in Finland between the years 1875 and 1889. At this time, Mormonism was introduced to the country by missionaries who were mainly Swedish natives and who proselytized in the Swedish-speaking coastal areas. Although the impact was numerically small in terms of conversions, the Mormon presence was regarded by the civil authorities and the Lutheran clergy as sufficiently serious to warrant action. Civil authorities responded for example by confiscating Mormon literature and issuing warnings and threats of arrest to missionaries. Clergy, acting from a religious perspective and seeking to impede the spread of new religious movements that they regarded as spiritually harmful, interrupted preaching meetings and warned their parishioners against the perceived heresy. Enforced legislation and strong societal opposition was an important reason for the meagre harvest of Mormon converts in 19th-century Finland as opposed to the other Nordic countries.     

America’s ‘Religion of Civility’ and the Calvinization of the World

This article examines the importance of Calvinism in producing the public/political “mind-set” of the United States, and how, after the Second World War, the export of this mind-set was as significant as the export of democracy, rock-’n’-roll, jeans, and Coca-Cola. It discusses the historical legacy and evolution of Calvinism from a civil religion to a religion of civility, and how the form and manner of Calvinist thinking—more specifically its ethic and aesthetic—has persisted in a secular manner so that much that Calvin would have found damnable is now intrinsic to the “religion of civility.” It then concludes that the central principles and practices of this religion of civility have had success within nations already “Christianized” but, perhaps understandably, not outside of that sphere.     

A Sacred Space for Women: Hymnody in Emma Hale Smith's Theology

Emma Smith oversaw the compilation of the first Mormon hymnal in 1835 and then prepared a second hymnal in 1841. This article contextualises and discusses Smith's significant assignment, and considers how a woman's hymn selections influenced early Mormonism. It also considers what Smith's hymnals reveal about her own life story and what her life story reveals about her hymn selections. While Smith's first hymnal highlights the emphasis she placed on immediately establishing a city of Zion in preparation for the millennial reign of a triumphal Christ, her second hymnal underscores the need to develop and foster a personal relationship with a merciful Saviour. Smith's 1835 hymnal emphasises being a Zion people immediately, whereas her 1841 hymnal, compiled in the context of intense personal and collective trials and religious persecution, highlights the importance of striving to become a more Zion‐like people over time. The different doctrinal emphases reflects their respective Mormon cultures at the time of compilation, and captures how the church responded to and grappled with its failure to establish Zion immediately. As a compiler of hymns, Smith clearly plays a significant role in Mormon history, while also demonstrating how women could impact their particular religious communities.     

Sounding “brown”: Everyday aural discrimination and othering

Recent political geographic scholarship has revisited the relevance of banal, everyday nationalism in the context of identity. This article contributes to that literature by focusing more specifically on the role of sound – accent and language – in everyday, banal “othering” and discrimination driven by heightened nationalism. Examining sound, both how it is perceived and experienced, lends insights into how nationalism and exclusion play out in everyday life. Contextualizing and nuancing broader issues of “othering” and discrimination through sound demonstrates that exclusion is not always visual or overt. Based on three years of fieldwork and interviews with Indian Tamils living in the United States, this research examines the banality of nationalism in aural encounters. First, it highlights subtle othering and microaggressions as well as their physical, emotional, and psychological effects. Second, it demonstrates how language and accent can be used to “flag” otherness in ordinary daily interactions and spaces. Third, it shows how attention to aural ‘flagging’ reveals nuance of complex identities often binarized during climates of heightened nationalism. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that the impacts of nationalism are embedded in people's daily lives and identities through subtle discriminatory aural encounters.     

Correspondence

Abstract

One root of the resurgence of interest in the place of religion in human affairs lies in the postmodernist critique of materialist explanations, combined with the heightened sense of living in a new, possibly ‘post-secular’, age distinct from classical modernity. Secular ideologies such as Marxism have lost ground since the end of the cold war saw the resurgence of ethnic and religious violence in some of the successor states to Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The theocratic character of the Iranian revolution and the rise of the religious right in the United States also help to explain why religion is the defining characteristic of the new order which Samuel Huntington portrays as the ‘clash of civilizations’. The events following 11 September 2001 have done little to distract from the preoccupation with religious fundamentalism.     

Sexual citizenship in Belfast,Northern Ireland

In this article we examine the contours and construction of sexual citizenship in Belfast, Northern Ireland through in‐depth interviews with 30 members of the GLBT community and a discursive analysis of discourses of religion and nationalism. In the first half of the article we outline how sexual citizenship was constructed in the Irish context from the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, arguing that a moral conservatism developed as a result of religious reform and the interplay between Catholic and Protestant churches, and the redefining of masculinity and femininity with the rise of nationalism. In the second half of the article, we detail how the Peace Process has offered new opportunities to challenge and destabilise hegemonic discourses of sexual citizenship by transforming legislation and policing, and encouraging inward investment and gentrification.     

Religious Cultural Hybridity in Chudosik (Ancestor Memorial Service/Ceremony) in Korean Protestantism

This article attempts to examine Chudosik in Korean Protestantism. The distinctive characteristics of Chudosik can be understood in terms of regarding religion as cultural practices. If so, Chudosik can be seen as a religious practice in everyday life of Korean Protestants. By conducting an ethnographic fieldwork in Seokkyo Korean Methodist church, I conceptualise five practical characteristics of Chudosik: indigenous, transformational, spiritual, pragmatic, and compounded. These characteristics show how the religious practices of Seokkyo congregation members keep both traditional socio‐cultural values and the features of Christian service in order to satisfy their demand, and how they transform their religious practices. In this sense, Chudosik represents the cultural hybridity of Korean Protestantism. It is also a spontaneous output of the Korean Protestants’ cultural habitus and the Korean context. Furthermore, in regard to Chudosik, it is also possible to say that Protestantism is re‐embodied onto Korean culture.     

MILITARY ASSISTANCE,FOREIGN POLICY,AND NATIONAL SECURITY

From the inauguration of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) in 1950, until its termination in the early 1960s, Norway was among the main European beneficiaries of military assistance from the United States. Previous research on this subject has mainly seen the MDAP from the perspective of the recipient, analysing what effect the influx of large amounts of equipment had for the shape and development of the Norwegian Armed Forces. This article discusses the motives for US military assistance to Norway, and analyses this activity as an expression of US Cold War objectives concerning Norway and NATO’s northern flank. The article also explores how these objectives influenced policy making relevant to military assistance, and gives particular attention to the role of US representatives in Oslo. These actors played an important role in highlighting the political and strategic benefits of extensive aid to Norway.     

Poster power: rural electrification,visualization, and legibility in the United States

This article examines graphic visualization and visuality in Lester Beall’s 1937 series of posters for the United States Rural Electrification Administration. The posters are commonly thought of as raising public awareness of the benefits of electricity in the rural America, but what was meant by public and awareness in 1937 in terms of rural reform in the United States has remained unclear until now. This article posits that to understand how these posters were seen in 1937 requires an acknowledgment of how Beall’s posters graphically visualized the complexities of rural electrification, and how graphic visualization was contiguous with bureaucratic communication and the visual sensitivity of a public.     

Religion and the US Presidency: Politics,the Media,and Religious Identity

Abstract

The relationship between religion and the presidency impacts both the viability of candidates and the manner in which decisions are made in the voting booth. Today we are living in culture where religion is front and center in politics. This article examines the role of religion in political discourse with special attention to the 2012 presidential election. It focuses on the manner in which religion and politics have become inextricably interwoven in the past sixty years. It begins by establishing the role of religion in the broader political arena. The article then turns to the manner in which religious identity and participation influence voting patterns, and how religious affiliation shapes the office of the presidency. The conclusion offers some reflections on the future of religion in presidential politics, an issue that will continue to be a significant factor in how and why voters support and marginalize particular candidates.     

Church and Empire: Free-Church Ecclesiology in a Global Era

Abstract

Jesus was cruelly executed as the alleged "king of the Jews" because of his efforts for grassroots religious renewal and resistance to Roman rule in Palestine through local religious-political elites. By the fourth century CE, however, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman imperium. An ambiguous account of both resisting and supporting imperialism has shaped all church history. Today the United States of America is widely recognized as the central power in a new global empire.     

September 11: A Christian Fundamentalist Interpretation

Abstract

This article analyses sermons preached by Free Presbyterian ministers in the United States following the World Trade Centre tragedy and the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It explores how these religious fundamentalists made sense of the event theologically. While terrorists carried out the attack, ultimately God was believed to have been responsible. It was considered God's way of punishing the American nation for its sin. Ministers' use of the Old Testament and God's covenantal relationship with ancient Israel is both the theological and historical backdrop to their explanation of September 11. Concentration on the Old Testament and fundamentalists' exegetical approach means that politics and religion are tightly intertwined. Emphasis on the militaristic portions of the Old Testament also helps justify the war in Iraq. Although Free Presbyterian doctrine is based on institutional separatism and believers' withdrawal from "the world" the sermons connect parishioners to their wider society through a shared sense of patriotic loyalty and national loss.