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Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America Jake Johnson

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America By Jake Johnson

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America by Jake Johnson


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Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America Summary

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America by Jake Johnson

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Mormons gravitated toward musicals as a common platform for transmitting political and theological ideas. Johnson sees Mormons using musical theater as a medium for theology of voice--a religious practice that suggests how vicariously voicing another person can bring one closer to godliness. This sounding, Johnson suggests, created new opportunities for living. Voice and the musical theater tradition provided a site for Mormons to negotiate their way into middle-class respectability. At the same time, musical theater became a unique expressive tool of Mormon culture.

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America Reviews

Johnson's work is truly interdisciplinary. . . . on almost every page, the reader is introduced to something surprising and provocative. Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America is a welcome addition to the growing field of American religious performance studies. --BYU Studies Quarterly

Through careful historiography and close attention to sound, Johnson expertly maps the intersections of voice studies, Mormon doctrine, race and religion, and the worlds of American musical theater. Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America convinces us that theology, theatricality, nationality, and vocality are entwined in Mormonism and extend in fascinating ways into American popular culture.--Jeffers Engelhardt, author of Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christians and Secular Enchantment in Estonia
This book adds to our understanding of the broad question that so many Mormon scholars have grappled with: the relationship between the faith and the nation. It extends the study of the faith into the critical arena of popular expression, and it helps us think more thoroughly about the place of Mormonism in modern American life. --Juvenile Instructor
Mormon theatre has been studied before, whether as Victorian vignette or parochial propaganda. But here Jake Johnson illuminates theatricality in religion itself, with Mormonism as his focus. I encountered surprises throughout, the kind that stay with you like corrective lenses.--Michael Hicks, author of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography
Recommended. --Choice
Jake Johnson meaningfully explores many of the big issues and events in Mormonism. . . .Moreover, he does so with a novel approach few blog posts and podcasts do. If you think you can benefit from a fresh look at the history of Mormonism, and I submit most of us would, Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in American is a great opportunity. --Wheat Tares

About Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson is an assistant professor of musicology in the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University.

Additional information

NGR9780252084331
9780252084331
0252084330
Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America by Jake Johnson
New
Paperback
University of Illinois Press
2019-06-30
224
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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