Evangelical criticism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dates back to the earliest days of the Church. Nathaniel Wiewora uses the diverse animus expressed by evangelicals to illuminate how they used an imaginary Church as a proxy to disagree, attack, compromise, and settle differences among themselves. As Wiewora shows, the evangelical practice to contrast itself with the emerging faith not only encompassed but also went beyond religious matters. If Joseph Smith was accused of muddling religious truth, he and his followers also faced accusations of immoral economic practices and a sinful regard for wealth that reflected worries within the evangelical world. Attacks on Latter-day Saints’ emotional religious displays, the Book of Mormon’s authenticity, and the dangerous ideas represented by Nauvoo paralleled similar conflicts. Wiewora traces how the failure to blunt the Church’s success led evangelicals to change their own methods and pursue the religious education infrastructure that came to define parts of the movement.

Nathaniel Wiewora is an associate professor of history at Harding University.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. “The Greatest Fraud of Our Time in the Field of Religion”: The Overlapping Quality of Early Anti-Mormonism and Antebellum Evangelicalism
2. “Restoration of Body and Mind”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of the Stone-Campbell Movement
3. “Peddling the Holy Scriptures”: Anti-Mormonism and the Debate Over the Evangelical Relationship to the Market
4. “God Has Been Pleased to Give a Revelation to Mankind”: Anti-Mormonism and the Evangelical Interpretation of the Bible
5. “Mormonism, Whether Found . . . in Kentucky, or at Nauvoo”: Revivalism and the Rise of Mormonism
6. “Apprehension for the Future”: Evangelical Institution-Building as the Response to Mormonism
Epilogue

Notes

Index