Armand L. Mauss

Sociological Perspectives on Mormon Sexuality: A Postscript

Mormonism and the Negro: Faith, Folklore and Civil Rights

Dialogue 2.4 (Winter 1967): 19–40
In this historical analysis, Mauss argues that starting in the 1850s, the church started to deny priesthood and temple blessings to anyone who had even a trace of African ancestry.

Moderation in All Things: Political and Social Outlooks of Modern Urban Mormons

Perhaps the most difficult kind of analysis that scholars may presume to make is that of presenting attitudes of people toward various ideas. Any poll can be affected by weakness in the sampling technique, by…

Saints, Cities, and Secularism: Religious Attitudes and Behavior of Modern Urban Mormons

This poignant observation by Dale L. Morgan was written even before World War II, and the erstwhile Utah sons and daughters spoken of are themselves now grandparents. Moreover, it is doubtful that anyone any longer has any hopes of closing the “wounds” through which they departed. Indeed, the “wounds” have long since come to be regarded instead as gateways to worldly opportunity. With worldly opportunity has come worldly achievement, which has in turn brought worldly respectability; and respectability is always a problem for a “peculiar people.” 

Shall the Youth of Zion Falter? Mormon Youth and Sex: A Two-City Comparison

This brief note summarizes findings from two surveys taken among Mormons during 1967-1969, one in Salt Lake City and one in “Coastal City,” northern California.[1] Among the questions asked was the following:  Most of us…

The Fading of the Pharaoh’s Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban Against Blacks

Dialogue 14.3 (Fall 1981): 11–45
Mauss situates the 1978 revelation on the priesthood in modern American historical context. Everything changed for the Church during the Civil Rights Movement when people both inside and outside the Church were harshly critcizing the priesthood ban. When the world was changing, it looked like the Church was still adherring to the past.

The Unfettered Faithful: An Analysis of the Dialogue Subscribers Survey

During the spring of 1984, the editors of DIALOGUE sent a short questionnaire to all of its then-2,300 subscribers plus 600 who had let their subscriptions lapse in the previous year. At that point, the journal had been edited in Salt Lake City for exactly two years.

Culture, Charisma, and Change: Reflections on Mormon Temple Worship

Dialogue 20.4 (Winter 1987): 33–76
Mauss encourages an openess about the temple to help better prepare future endowment holders and to create a better understanding among members and nonmembers.

Assimilation and Ambivalence: The Mormon Reaction to Americanization

In the center of Salt Lake City, two important traditional Mormon symbols confront each other across Main Street: the angel on the temple spire and the beehive atop the now-closed Hotel Utah.[1] While the beehive…

The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation and Identity: Trends and Developments Since Midcentury

Welfare as Warfare | Garth L. Mangum and Bruce D. Blumell, The Mormons’ War on Poverty: A History of LDS Welfare, 1830-1990

Although this book has an overly dramatic title, it is a magnificent and sensitive history of the efforts by church members and leaders to respond meaningfully to economic need, not only in LDS communities but…

Mormonism in the Twenty-first Century: Marketing for Miracles

In recent years social scientists have found it theoretically useful to understand church growth or decline in the context of a “religious economy.”[1] In this conceptualization each society has a “religion industry” in the same…

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Who would have dared to predict in 1830 that a tiny, radical circle of religious seekers around the Joseph and Lucy Smith family would be a church of 10 million only a few generations later…

On “Defense of Marriage” A Reply to Quinn

D. Michael Quinn, a scholar for whom I have immense respect, has written what he calls a “prelude” to the national campaign in “defense of marriage” with reference particularly to the efforts of the LDS…

Mormonism’s Worldwide Aspirations and its Changing Conceptions of Race and Lineage

Mormon history contains its fair share of ironies and unintended consequences. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began with a mission to restore the ancient church, but not for everyone at the same time. In its earliest days, the church was preoccupied with its mission to seek out the descendants of Abraham through Jacob or Israel; these Israelites, in turn, would prepare the world for the millennial reign of the Messiah.

Maturing and Enduring: Dialogue and Its Readers after Forty Years

Just about twenty years ago, the editors of Dialogue commissioned a general survey of subscribers. The results were published in its spring 1987 issue under the title, “The Unfettered Faithful,” intended to evoke an image of religiously committed readers who felt free to explore the issues and frontiers of Mormon thought beyond the conventional treatments in official Church literature. The purpose of this article is partly to replicate and compare more recent survey results with the earlier ones.

Sonnet to Japanese Spring

Spring has come to old Nippon! 
Standing on a hill I see 
Verdant valleys neatly sown, 
Stepped and terraced, and a bee 

Seeking a “Second Harvest”: Controlling the Costs of LDS Membership in Europe

Rethinking Retrenchment: Course Corrections in the Ongoing Quest for Respectability