Over the last couple of months I read through Benjamin Park’s new book, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism (Liveright Publishing, a division of W. W. Norton, 2024). This is the second excellent one-volume history of the LDS Church in the last decade, following Matt Bowman’s The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (Random House, 2012). What follows is less of a review than a quick discussion of a few highlights of the new book.
You might ask, why another one-volume history of the Church? Apart from the idea that different writers or historians might bring different insights or experience to the material, there is the simple fact that a history written in 2024 is going to be different and highlight different events than an earlier history, even one written just twelve years ago, when Matt Bowman’s book was published. Think of the events of the last twelve years that cry out for some linkage to earlier historical events or precursors in LDS history: Mitt Romney’s candidacy for the US presidency, the continuing struggle of LDS leaders to define a workable and fair policy for gay marriage and gay Latter-day Saints, the continuing struggle of LDS leaders to figure out the place of women in the Church, the succession of President Nelson, another burst of temple building that puzzles many observers, the banishment of the term “Mormon” from official LDS discourse, and the big reveal of the Church’s $100 billion plus investment portfolio along with SEC sanctions for misrepresentations in SEC filings made by the Church. I just spun these out as I write. You can probably think of others. All of these, by being relevant to the Church and readers in 2024, move if not force a historian to cover events and episodes in LDS history that explain or foreshadow these later significant events and initiatives. And of course some of these events would receive little or no discussion in an official history published by the Church. We value the independent voice and viewpoint that individual scholars bring to LDS history.
Here are a few observations about Ben Parks’ new history. First, it gives excellent coverage of 20th and 21st century events. The book seems to gain momentum in each of the twelve chapters. The first two chapters cover events up to 1846, which is familiar territory for most readers and won’t offer many surprises. The narrative really starts to pick up in chapter 5, as the Church assimilates with statehood in 1896 and elected LDS officials taking their seats in Congress. An official LDS history covering post-1900 events usually segments the material by the LDS President who served. So Chapter 8 starts out, “During the Presidency of Heber J. Grant, …” with little or no reference to events outside the Church. Park covers Progressivism, the reform movement, evolution and the modernism controversy, Christian fundamentalism, and other developments in US and religious history that influenced LDS decisions and events.
Second, Park gives significant attention to LDS leaders who were key players but did not ascend to the Presidency. J. Reuben Clark is at the top of the list, and his conservative politics and fundamentalist religious thinking moved the Church onto a permanent conservative and fundamentalist trajectory from which it has not yet recovered. Others who play such a role include B. H. Roberts and Bruce R. McConkie. We should look at the recent and current Big 15 and ask a similar question. Elder Packer stands out as one who had a strong impact toward the conservative side, with Elders Holland and Bednar following his lead. I think Elder Uchtdorf is an influence toward the progressive side of LDS thinking. At any given time, there are only one or two influential apostles other than the President — the rest of them just go with the flow. Reading Park’s coverage of earlier periods makes this fairly clear. When there is a weak of infirm President, the influence of the strong apostles is magnified.
Third, Park brings in a lot of events and movements from general US history and US religious history that bear on LDS events and initiatives. I mentioned this earlier but it deserves more discussion. No recent development cries out for historical explanation more than the Trumpification of the LDS membership since 2016. Reading Park’s coverage of J. Reuben Clark and Ezra Taft Benson provides some background. But it still doesn’t add up. Mormons are (or at least were) inclined to take a candidate’s moral behavior and perspective into account when voting. Most Mormons were proud that Mitt Romney, a moderate conservative, gained the Republican nomination and ran for President. Yet almost in the blink of an eye, most LDS deleted the moral character requirement from their thinking in lining up behind Donald Trump, and rejected Romney’s moderate conservative approach to embrace the extreme conservatism of the MAGA movement. That Evangelicals underwent the same political conversion at the same time is instructive. Park’s coverage of the Trump events in the last chapter is an exercise in contemporary history, always a risky task, but it helps the reader begin to understand the development. It’s the biggest puzzle of the LDS Church in 2024. I suspect that fifty years from now, LDS historians looking back will find the Trumpification of the LDS membership a big puzzle as well and devote many pages to trying to explain it.
Those are some of the things I liked about American Zion. If you have read the book, please weigh in with your own reactions, and what you liked or didn’t like about the book. If you haven’t read it, go buy a copy. And you might throw in a question or two you would have for the author, Benjamin Park. You never know when a list of questions for the author might come in handy.
Wheat & Tares 
What a great book! Park’s writing is interesting and never gets bogged down. I loved the parts about Brigham Young’s racism and the sad history of polygamy. Park doesn’t pull any punches about things the Church would probably not talk about, yet he does it all with objectivity, no sense of attack or meanness, and strong footnoting. Park is really skilled at pulling out a few events to highlight broader trends and events. This book belongs right up there with Rough Stone Rolling, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, The Massacre and Mountain Meadows, etc.
Ben Park is extremely smart, but I confess I haven’t read this. I really enjoyed the David O. McKay book. Not so much Rough Stone Rolling (but I did get through it!) Your summary intrigues me, so maybe I’ll give it a go. I am incredibly interested in how the church got highjacked into this MAGA nonsense, but also completely worn down by it to the point that I just don’t know that I have it in me.
I love the book in general. Park obviously went into the project with the objective of highlighting the achievements of women and minorities in the Church’s history. And we all know those achievements have been overlooked (and continue to be overlooked) by the COJCOLDS itself. So I’m glad he has done this. But at times it seems as if he is cutting and pasting these parts of the story into some of the chapters – almost as if he is making sure each chapter gets its share.
As members or former members of the Church, we know the context. But a non-member who isn’t very familiar with the context of our history might read this book and go away thinking women and minorities really mattered and matter to the Brethren. In my opinion they do not and so Park is giving them (women and minorities) much more space than the Church itself ever did.
I don’t blame Park for doing it. I’m glad someone did. But in the real world women were (are?) seen as objects and property and minorities were seen as 2nd Class citizens. It’s not that Park doesn’t mention this. It’s that women are so prominent in the book that I thought I was reading about another Church at times. Just my opinion.
I liked the book. It is a good general treatment but there was almost nothing that I was not at least marginally familiar with. I suppose that is a more the result of 40 years of my own fairly deep reading of history. I did feel that there were a few times where he drew conclusions that included some creative license. But, that is true in all history. I recently attempted my own personal history and it is striking when comparing memory to some contemporary writing that I did years ago how in the passage of years memory changes events.
I highly recommend the book. The Church’s effort with the Saints series is also extraordinary. In my opinion it is very open and gives a lot of detail and the footnotes are amazing. For example Saints gives a much deeper context to black members in the early years until the 20th century. It covers the 3rd Convention and the problems in Latin America. So, Ben does a great job, as does Saints. Both are valuable resources.
The book is on my shelf. I haven’t had the time to read it yet. I do like Park’s work (his TikTok channel is great).
One of his Op-Eds, which appeared in the Washington Post linking the Trumpification of LDS members to the way the church enabled conservative voices in the 20th century like Ezra Taft Benson who politicized the church to the far right, earned him a cancellation from the Maxwell Institute. Park, who had spent a summer in Provo on a Maxwell grant, produced some great writings which were featured on the Maxwell Institute’s website. After his adroit Washington Post column, BYU quickly moved to cancel him from the Maxwell website, removing all references to him and his work. Our thin skinned church, it seems, leads the way when it comes to cancel culture.
If you are interested, the column is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/24/even-lds-leaders-are-struggling-get-mormons-vaccinated-against-covid/
Thank you so much for this generous overview, as well as for everyone’s comments. It’s the highest compliment to pay an author to then riff on the broader legacies and meanings of the book, and I love seeing this kind of discussion.