Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism Among the Latter-Day Saints

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8135-9218-3
Verlag: Rutgers University Press

Buch, Englisch, 254 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 386 g

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons), often heralded as the fastest growing religion in American history, is facing a crisis of apostasy. Rather than strengthening their faith, the study of church history and scriptures by many members pushes them away from Mormonism and into a growing community of secular ex-Mormons. In Disenchanted Lives, E. Marshall Brooks provides an intimate, in-depth ethnography of religious disenchantment among ex-Mormons in Utah. Showing that former church members were once deeply embedded in their religious life, Brooks argues that disenchantment unfolds as a struggle to overcome the spiritual, social, and ideological devotion ex-Mormons had to the religious community and not out of a lack of dedication as prominently portrayed in religious and scholarly writing on apostasy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brooks, E. Marshall

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Leben & Brauch, Soziale Aspekte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface
- Introduction: The “Crisis of Apostasy” in Modern Mormonism
- 1 Ambivalent Pasts: Sacred History and the Crisis of Memory
- 2 “Digging too Deep”: The Paradox of Faith
- 3 “The Other Side of Happiness”: Disenchantment, Loss, and World-Collapse
- 4 “I Lost My Body to the Church”: Sexual and Spiritual (dis)Embodiment  
- 5 “Living in the Shadow of the Church”: Apostasy, Stigma, and Projective Fantasy  
- 6 “I’m Apostate, Yes I am”: The Politics and Performance of Secular Identity  
- 7 Religious (dis)Identification: Acquiescence and Anger on the Edge of Mormonism
- Conclusions: “Pastoral Apologetics” and the Future of Mormonism
- References
- About the Author

Über Autor(innen)

E. Marshall Brooks is an instructor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health and lectures in the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.