Mormon Studies Review
Keywords
Jonathan Stapley, Mormonism, liturgy, archival research, ritual
Abstract
Jonathan Stapley’s new book is only 129 pages of text, but it feels much longer. This is not, happily, because the prose slogs. Rather it is one of those books that makes every word count. There is no fluff here, only finely sanded insight after insight, with all redundancy polished away. Stapley’s strengths are twofold. First, his archival work is unparalleled. For every assertion he has an anecdote. He meticulously marks fine nuances in opinion among his subjects, and those subjects are as frequently obscure figures like Steven Markham, John Steele, or Margaret Anderton as they are more familiar Mormons like Joseph F. Smith or Zina D. H. Young. His attention to such figures is essential to his second strength: the deep pattern of his argument. The process of producing the Mormon liturgy in all its parts and rituals, he argues, was and often remains the collision between the planned and the inadvertent.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Bowman, Matthew
(2019)
"Review: Jonathan A. Stapley. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.,"
Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 6:
No.
1, Article 21.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol6/iss1/21