The Forms and the Power: Mapping Mormon Practice

Authors

Ryan G. Tobler

Keywords

American religion, practice, belief, embodiment, scholarship

Abstract

The waters of scholarship on American religion have been troubled over the past few decades, partly by a radical process of diversification, partly because of tremors within the concept of religion itself. More than ever before, scholars in the field have been forced to reflect critically on just what “religion” is. Is it something transcendent, something above and beyond the here and now? Does religion emanate from an internal condition of belief? Is its institutional and social history a story of creeds, writ large? These were, more or less, the assumptions of generations of church historians and scholars who studied American Christianity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Influenced by the legacy of Protestantism’s tendency toward the transcendent, these scholars focused their attention on the disembodied phenomenon of faith. But what if “religion” is as much a matter of doing as believing? As much about the actions of the body as the exercises and conditions of the soul? A rather belated recognition of this embeddedness of religion, of its immanence in the body and the body’s work, has recently forced Americanists to reassess the scope of their subject. The result is a gradually flourishing study of what most have agreed to call religious “practice.”

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Tobler, Ryan G. (2019) "The Forms and the Power: Mapping Mormon Practice," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 9.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol6/iss1/9