This book contains fifteen essays, each first presented as the annual Tanner lecture at the conference of the Mormon History Association by leading historians and religious studies scholars, approaching Mormon history from a wide variety of angles, from gender to globalization. Renowned in their own fields but relatively new to the study of Mormon history at the time of their lecture, the scholars bring their own expertise to understanding Mormonism's past and present. Examining Mormon history from an outsider's perspective, they ask intriguing questions, share fresh insights and perspectives, analyze familiar sources in unexpected ways, and place Mormonism in broader scholarly debates. Several essays place Mormonism within the currents of American religious history - for example, by placing Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints in conversation with Emerson, Nat Turner, fellow millenarians, and freethinkers. Other essays explore the creation of Mormon identities, demonstrating how Mormons created a unique sense of themselves as a distinct people. Historians of the American West examine Mormon connections with American imperialism, the Civil War, and the cultural landscape. Finally, essayists study recent Latter-day Saint growth around the world in recent decades, including in Africa, within the context of the study of global religions.

Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane first met on the plains of western Iowa in 1846 The Mormon prophet and the Philadelphia reformer would go on to exchange more than one hundred letters over the next three decades. This annotated collection of their correspondence reveals a great deal about these two remarkable men, while also providing crucial insight into nineteenth-century Mormonism and the historical moment in which the movement developed. Until his death in 1877, Young guided the religious, economic, and political life of the Mormon community, whose settlements spread throughout the West and provoked a profound political, legal, and even military confrontation with the American nation. Young relied on Kane, 21 years his junior, as his most trusted outside adviser, making Kane the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Church. In return, no one influenced the direction of Kane's life more than Young. The surviving letters offer crucial insights into Young's personal life and views as well as his actions as a political and religious leader. The correspondence reveals the strategies of the Latter-day Saints in relating to American culture and government during these crucial years when the "Mormon Question" was a major political, cultural, and legal issue. The letters also shed important light on the largely forgotten "Utah War" of 1857-58, triggered when President James Buchanan dispatched a military expedition to ensure federal supremacy in Utah and replace Young with a non-Mormon governor. The Prophet and the Reformer offers a complete reproduction of the exchange between Young and Kane, and provides an introduction to each letter that contextualizes and analyzes it.

Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883), a crusader for antislavery, women's rights, and the downtrodden, rose to prominence in his day as the most ardent and persuasive defender of Mormons' religious liberty. Though not a Mormon, Kane sought to defend the much-reviled group from the "Holy War" waged against them by evangelical America. His courageous personal intervention averted a potentially catastrophic bloody conflict between federal troops and Mormon settlers in the now nearly forgotten Utah War of 1857-58. Drawing on extensive, newly available archives, this book is the first to tell the full story of Kane's extraordinary life. The book illuminates his powerful Philadelphia family, his personal life and eccentricities, his reform achievements, his place in Mormon history, and his career as a Civil War general. Further, the book revises previous understandings of nineteenth-century reform, showing how Kane and likeminded others fused Democratic Party ideology, anti-evangelicalism, and romanticism.

Parley P. Pratt joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 and was murdered in 1857 by the estranged husband of his twelfth plural wife. An original member of the Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Pratt played a key leadership role for the Mormons. His writings, including poetry, apologetics, and an autobiography, helped define Mormon theology and identity, and his hymns remain popular today.

Arguably Mormonism's most influential early leader after Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Pratt is also one of its least understood. This collection of essays uses Pratt's life and writings as a means for gaining insight on early Latter-day Saint history, including the Church's initial internationalization, vibrant print culture, development of a unique theology, family dynamics, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

This fascinating compilation sets Pratt and Mormonism in the context of American religion and culture. The contributors examine Pratt's political and religious struggles on behalf of Mormonism. His murder is also situated within competing narratives of religious martyrdom and sexual deviance, Victorian domestic ideals and domestic abuse.

Because Pratt was killed in Arkansas, the massacre of Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows in Utah has long been viewed as vengeance for his death. This well-crafted collection shows that view to be oversimplified. The narratives that emerge here will appeal to anyone seeking to understand the nuances of early Mormon history in the context of one of its most important and controversial figures.