Benjamin Park on a fresh take of 200 years of Mormon history | Episode 321

Mormon Land

Scholar Benjamin Park’s new book, “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” tells the sweeping saga of the rise, rifts and resilience of the nation’s most successful homegrown religion. “The Mormon story,” he writes, “is the American story.” Under the guidance of founder Joseph Smith, this new movement was cradled in upstate New York and nurtured in the heartland. But mounting persecutions and prosecutions left leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints feeling so abandoned by the country that gave the faith birth that they abandoned the country itself. Out West, Brigham Young and his band of beleaguered believers built a remote religious empire. In the decades that followed, though, successive generations of Latter-day Saints slowly but surely returned to the arms of the American fold, eventually becoming among the nation’s most passionate, even partisan, patriots. But like the country it once battled and now embraces, this global faith of 17 million members finds itself caught up in polarizing culture wars. Former frictions — between church and state, faith and intellect, obedience and dissent, patriarchy and feminism — regularly resurface even as new conflicts emerge. On this week’s show, Park talks about some key players and moments in Latter-day Saint history, along with the tensions that persist to this day.