Review: Scott C. Esplin. Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Authors

James S. Bielo

Keywords

religious landscape, tourism, Scott Esplin, Mormonism, City of Joseph

Abstract

One way to imagine and encounter the US landscape is as a religious landscape—that is, a landscape densely imprinted with religious histories and identities. If you were so inclined, you could travel from one religiously memorialized place to another, seemingly without end: historic sites of worship; commemorations of events, persons, and movements; religiously themed museums, theme parks, gardens, shrines, and reenactments; extant and nonextant intentional communities; entire municipalities where local life is closely coupled with particular traditions; and so on. As an “American Original,” Mormonism provides a truly fascinating itinerary of destinations; places integral to the formation, diversification, and expansion of this Christian variant.1 By zooming into particular locales, drawing out their changes over time and position within broader theo-political networks, our comparative understanding of both Mormonism and religious tourism is advanced. With Return to the City of Joseph, Scott Esplin provides just such a nuanced portrait.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Bielo, James S. (2020) "Review: Scott C. Esplin. Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 7: No. 1, Article 15.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol7/iss1/15