Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
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Mormon Studies Review

Keywords

authorial voice, musical theater, Latter-day Saints, listening practices

Abstract

Jake Johnson opens his book Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America from the relatively vulnerable subject position of his relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Johnson explains, he was a former member of both the LDS Church and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now the Community of Christ), but no longer subscribes to either faith. This personal detail about his background may be startling, but it immediately lends a unique authorial voice and point of view to his book, which, in turn, discusses the centrality of voice and theatricality in the LDS Church. Indeed, Johnson’s larger argument is that the Latter-day Saint faith is exceptional in mobilizing what he calls a “theology of voice,” where vocal and listening practices permeate not only Latter-day Saint praxis but also its doctrine and cosmology. With this theory as a framework, he writes a rich and much-needed history of the relationship between, and ideological entwinement of, the Latter-day Saint faith and American musical theater.

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