People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture

With his fourth book on Mormonism, Givens (By the Hand of Mormon; Viper on the Hearth) earns his place as one of the great LDS scholars of his time. Students of religion, history and culture will find this an authoritative analysis of four fascinating and powerful tensions at the core of Mormonism that feed into its cultural life: authority and radical freedom; searching and certainty; the sacred and the banal; and election versus exile. In the first section, Givens fluently translates the often-insular views of the LDS faith into the language of Western philosophy and puts Joseph Smiths teachings into historical perspective alongside Hegel, Marx, Faust and others. The remainder of the book is divided into two time periods: the formative years of a beleaguered and isolated religion from 1830-1890, and the period since 1890 characterized by normalization and global growth. For each, Givens explores Mormonisms wide-ranging cultural contributions in architecture, city planning, music, dance, theatre, film, literature, rational inquiry, and the visual arts. Sprinkled with photos and illustrations, with topics ranging from the art missionaries of Utah who studied in Paris at the turn of the century, to the Mormon dominance in science fiction, this scholarly tome actually lives up to its ambitious subtitle. He convincingly concludes that Joseph Smith has provided Mormonism with sufficient paradoxes to generate vigorous artistic and intellectual expression for another 200 years.