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Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic
Armand L. Mauss
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Description for Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic
Hardcover. This memoir of a Mormon intellectual examines his navigation between faith and academic life Num Pages: 280 pages, illustrations. BIC Classification: BG; HRCC99. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 23. Weight in Grams: 567.
The life of a Mormon intellectual in the secular academic community is likely to include some contradictions between belief, scholarship, and the changing times. In his memoir, Armand L. Mauss recounts his personal and intellectual struggles—inside and outside the LDS world—from his childhood to his days as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1960s through his many years as a professor.
As an important and influential observer and author in the Mormon intellectual world, Mauss has witnessed how, in attempting to suppress independent and unsponsored scholarship during the final decades of the twentieth century, LDS leaders deliberately marginalised important intellectual support and resources that could have helped, in the twenty-first century, to refurbish the public image of the church. As a sociologist, he notes how the LDS Church, as a large, complex organisation, strives to adjust its policies and practices in order to maintain an optimal balance between unique, appealing claims on the one hand and public acceptance on the other. He also discusses national and academic controversies over the New Religious Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Writing in clear language, Mauss shows how he has navigated the boundaries where his faith and academic life intersect, and reveals why a continuing commitment to the LDS Church must be a product of choice more than of natural or supernatural “proof.”
As an important and influential observer and author in the Mormon intellectual world, Mauss has witnessed how, in attempting to suppress independent and unsponsored scholarship during the final decades of the twentieth century, LDS leaders deliberately marginalised important intellectual support and resources that could have helped, in the twenty-first century, to refurbish the public image of the church. As a sociologist, he notes how the LDS Church, as a large, complex organisation, strives to adjust its policies and practices in order to maintain an optimal balance between unique, appealing claims on the one hand and public acceptance on the other. He also discusses national and academic controversies over the New Religious Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Writing in clear language, Mauss shows how he has navigated the boundaries where his faith and academic life intersect, and reveals why a continuing commitment to the LDS Church must be a product of choice more than of natural or supernatural “proof.”
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2012
Publisher
University of Utah Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
280
Place of Publication
Salt Lake City, United States
ISBN
9781607812043
SKU
V9781607812043
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15
About Armand L. Mauss
Armand L. Mauss is emeritus professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University, USA and has more recently taught Mormon Studies as an adjunct faculty member at Claremont Graduate University, USA.
Reviews for Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic
“Mauss’s contribution to Mormon scholarship and to sociological theory was to argue that over time Mormonism had adjusted the degree of strain with the rest of the world. This ongoing adjustment phenomenon had not been recognized by sociologists before Mauss discovered it in Mormonism. Now it has become a significant corollary to the theory of New Religious Movements. Mauss always stood at the shifting border between the university and the church, ready to step across onto the church side whenever he could make a difference.”—from the foreword by Richard L. Bushman “Armand Mauss will continue to be an important interpreter of Mormon history, and his Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport provides an excellent introduction to the man and his ideas—well worth reading before taking on his two seminal monographs, Angel and the Beehive and All Abraham’s Children.”—Utah Historical Quarterly “As both a Latter-day Saint and a scholar, [Mauss] has used his passport to move between the church and the academy, and in so doing has built bridges between them. He has shown his fellow Saints that they need not be suspicious of rigorous, scholarly inquiry; and he has shown his fellow scholars how Mormonism is an important example of a ‘peculiar people’ who have survived, and thrived, in a religiously pluralistic society. While no one will ever fill Armand Mauss’s shoes, I hope that many others will follow in his path. Both the Saints and scholars will be better off for it.”—Mormon Studies Review