Christian Denominations and Sects Commons^™

"Murder And Mystery Mormon Style": Violence As Mediation In American Popular Culture, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Terryl Givens's discussion of popular representations of Mormonism ("'Murder and Mystery Mormon Style': Violence and Mediation in American Popular Culture ) is a case in point, emphasizing the violence inherent in the acts of sociocultural and fictional mediation that have tried to contain the heretical challenge of Mormon theocracy. Mormonism has a complex cultural identity, as a religious group clearly outside the American mainstream and yet historically and ethnically American to the core. Nineteenth-century fictional representations of Mormonism tended to demonize the religion while at the same time deploring the violence of anti-Mormon bigotry; such representations mediated social violence …

Religion On The Run, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

"At one time English religion had emphasized the static or the recurrent aspects of worship. Then for a century or more, England was conscious of acting a sacred history as opposed to reenacting it". Sommerville's observation should shock no one familiar with his "century or more," roughly 1530 to 1660, although the declared opposition between "acting" and "reenacting" is likely to strike those who still read Bale, Foxe, Dering, or Dell as rather forced. Yet, so many of the contrasts in Secularization are terribly suggestive, announcing that religion "was changing from devotion to deliberation".

What may surprise some historians, however, …

Much In Prayer: The Inward Researches Of Elizabethan Protestants, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Examines some Elizabethan Protestants' reasons for praying and the controversy over forms of prayer during the period. Calvinists' rejection of prescribing times for prayer; Premium on feeling of misery in prayer; Godly sorrow; Suppression of rational judgment; Debate on fixed and impromptu prayers; Prayer as art.

Social History, Psychohistory, And The Prehistory Of Swiss Anabaptism, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The article discusses a variety of issues concerning social history, psychohistory and the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism. It explores the contextualist approach to the history and practice of Anabaptism. It traces the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism and the normative vision of Anabaptist origins. The article also examines the theology of martyrdom according to Conrad Grebel, father of Anabaptist.