The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology

ISBN-13: 9780190844431 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 200 str.

Jonathan Stapley

Opis

A church's liturgy is its ritualized system of worship, the services and patterns in which believers regularly participate. While the term often refers to a specific formal ritual like the Roman Catholic Mass, events surrounding major life events--birth, coming of age, marriage, death--are often celebrated through church liturgies. By documenting and analyzing Mormon liturgical history, Jonathan Stapley is able to explore the nuances of Mormon belief and practice. More important, he can demonstrate that the Mormon ordering of heaven and earth is not a mere philosophical or theological exercise. Liturgy informs and reinforces believers' behavior, he shows, and we find a complete religious world, incorporating women, men and children, all participating in the construction of the Mormon universe. This volume casts analytically difficult and historically incongruous concepts such as priesthood, authority, and gender in new and coherent ways. Stapley uses previously untapped documentary and archival sources to elucidate new narratives in each chapter, tracing concepts from the beginning of the Latter-day Saint movement to the present. The Power of Godliness is the first work to establish histories for these unique liturgies and to provide interpretive frameworks for them.

Recenzje

This imaginative and impeccably documented inquiry into the Mormon ordering of cosmos and community probes the connection between liturgical and ecclesiastical structures and casts new light on both. Drawing upon his prodigious research in personal narratives and institutional sources that span decades of Mormon history, Stapley demonstrates how successive changes in Mormon rituals have affected the beliefs and experiences of ordinary women and men. The book's detailed and even-handed treatment of such complicated and contested issues as shifting conceptualizations of priesthood and women's longtime participation in healing rituals makes it a fascinating read, a valuable reference, and a helpful bridge between the Mormonism of the present and its all too distant past.

O autorze

Jonathan Stapley is an award-winning historian and scientist. An active participant in the field of Mormon Studies, he is also the Chief Technology Officer for a bio-renewables company.