
The Politics of American Religious Identity
The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
Kathleen Flake(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 31. March 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-8078-5501-0 (ISBN)
Description
Between 1901 and 1907, a broad coalition of Protestant churches sought to expel newly elected Reed Smoot from the Senate, arguing that as an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smoot was a lawbreaker and therefore unfit to be a lawmaker. The resulting Senate investigative hearing featured testimony on every peculiarity of Mormonism, especially its polygamous family structure. T he Smoot hearing ultimately mediated a compromise between Progressive Era Protestantism and Mormonism and resolved the nation's long-standing ""Mormon Problem."" On a broader scale, Kathleen Flake shows how this landmark hearing provided the occasion for the country - through its elected representatives, the daily press, citizen petitions, and social reform activism - to reconsider the scope of religious free exercise in the new century. Flake contends that the Smoot hearing was the forge in which the Latter-day Saints, the Protestants, and the Senate hammered out a model for church-state relations, shaping for a new generation of non-Protestant and non-Christian Americans what it meant to be free and religious. In addition, she discusses the Latter-day. Saints' use of narrative and collective memory to retain their religious identity even as they changed to meet the nation's demands.
Reviews / Votes
"This dazzling book makes a significant contribution to Mormon studies, as well as to American religious and political history, by explaining for the first time the reconciliation of the Mormon Church and the broader political culture in the early twentieth century." - Sarah Barringer Gordon, author of The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America"More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
442 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8078-5501-0 (9780807855010)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Kathleen Flake
The Politics of American Religious Identity
The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
E-Book
12/2005
The University of North Carolina Press
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Kathleen Flake practiced law for fifteen years and is now assistant professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.