No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America. By Adam Jortner

Abstract

Adam Jortner has written a thoughtful and accessible volume on the early years of Mormonism and its reception by American Gentiles. His book has many merits: it is engagingly written; it contains a strong argument; and it fills a gap in the literature. This readable volume is well suited to undergraduate classes needing a case study of how antebellum freedom of religion was lived and negotiated. Because it artfully combines a sophisticated understanding of theology with an eye to foregrounding problems we face today, the book will prove useful to those concerned with understanding an enduring and problematic fault line in American politics. Jortner’s work is strongest when it describes the religious ferment of the early republic. His second chapter outlines the “sectarian dilemma” caused by the pluralism arriving with disestablishment. The dilemma was that laws requiring licenses to preach were lifted just as American Christians were overtaken by a special interest in the miraculous and the magical. American religion may be perennially focused on the supernatural, but the 1810s and 20s were a time of a great “treasure quest,” whether in the gold coins buried by pirates or the primitive piety of the early church (p. 35).