Conference Updates

[...]Phoenix is a setting in which we can confront the relations among religion, race, and national identity with the perspectives of social science. [...]our discussions will not be confined to conventional religious organizations or paradigms. Mormonism is one of the most interesting religions to study in this regard for, since its birth in 1830, it has undergone changes that led its major institution, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to move from the status of sectin the sense of a group separating itself from a major tradition to follow a radical prophetto that of denomination, and then to reach the crowning status of Church, at least in its native land. [...]since in the process of denominationalization, of institutionalization, a heretofore sectarian group can no longer appeal to those who chose it (or would choose it) for its original fire, it falls prey to inner schisms.