Contingent Citizens

Contingent Citizens is an excellent addition to the canon of Mormon studies and its transcending beyond the Americanization model sets the contours of future scholarly investigation of Latter-day Saint political history for the next generation.

This new volume, Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions of Latter-day Saints in American Political Culture, is a reminder that the Mormon Moment of the early twenty-first century was only one of many times that Mormons have been in the national spotlight—in both negative and positive ways. [T]he message of Contingent Citizens is that the Latter-day Saint experience should be understood as an illustrative example of a religious group deeply embedded in American society and politics.

[T]his new collection edited by Spencer W. McBride, Brent M. Rogers, and Keith A. Erekson is dazzling in its insights and the depth and cogency of its analysis. I am also struck by the consistency across these essays of imaginative, adroit archival research and highly original analysis, as well as by the thematic harmony across several overlapping political concepts, giving the volume a coherence that is unusual in edited collections of this size. For many reasons, this book is an excellent addition to the general historiography of American religion.

Spencer W. McBride is Historian and Documentary Editor at the Joseph Smith Papers, and is author of Pulpit and Nation. Follow him on X @SpencerWMcBride. Brent M. Rogers is Associate Managing Historian with the Joseph Smith Papers, and the author of Unpopular Sovereignty. Follow him on X @brentrogers2121. Keith A. Erekson is an author, teacher, and public historian who serves as director of the Church History Library. Follow him @KeithAErekson.