I, Nephi
“As Fluhman shows in marvellous detail, Mormonism was the great scandal of American nineteenth-century religion, somewhat as Scientology is today, though Mormons understandably dislike the comparison. Mainstream Protestants couldn’t dismiss Mormonism, couldn’t embrace it, and couldn’t quite understand it, and yet it thrived. For American Protestantism, Mormonism was the other: you defined yourself against those nuts. Indeed, to this day, Joanna Brooks tells us, Mormons perceive their persecutors to be not atheists or secularists, let alone Jews or Catholics, but Protestant Evangelicals. (“And then it happened. My mother put her hand on my knee as we made the turn. There they were, those words—MORMONS: CHRISTIANITY OR CULT?—on the Trinity marquee. Anger burned between my temples again, and tears stung my eyes. ‘I heard they held up garments’ ”—Mormon sacramental underwear—“ ‘in church last Sunday, too,’ my mother told me, pityingly.”)
