Seeking the Promised Land Mormons and American Politics

Mormons have long had an outsized presence in American culture and politics, but they remain largely unknown to most Americans. Recent years have seen the political prominence of Mormons taken to a new level - including the presidential candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney, the prominent involvement of Mormons in the campaign for California's Proposition 8 (anti-gay marriage), and the ascendancy of Democrat Harry Reid to the position of Senate Majority Leader. This book provides the most thorough examination ever written of Mormons' place in the American political landscape - what Mormons are like politically and how non-Mormons respond to Mormon candidates. However, this is a book about more than Mormons. As a religious subculture in a pluralistic society, Mormons are a case study of how a religious group balances distinctiveness and assimilation - a question faced by all faiths.

Part I. Mormons as an Ethno-Religious Group: 1. Meet the Mormons; 2. The sacred tabernacle: Mormons as an ethno-religious group; 3. A peculiar people? Mormon religious distinctiveness; Part II. Political Behavior of Mormons: 4. Mormon political views: cohesive, republican, and conservative; 5. A politically peculiar people; 6. Following the leader: Mormons' responsiveness to church leaders; Part III. The Consequences of Distinctiveness: 7. Assessing the saints: how Americans view Mormons; 8. A stained glass ceiling? Mormon candidates and presidential campaigns; 9. How Mormonism affected Mitt, how Mitt has affected Mormonism; 10. Conclusion: seeking the promised land.

David E. Campbell is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and the founding director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. He is the coauthor (with Robert Putnam) of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which received both the 2011 Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Political Science Association and the Wilbur Award from the Religious Communicators Council for the best nonfiction book of 2010. He is also the author of Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape our Civic Life.
John C. Green is director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron. He also serves as a senior research advisor with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. He is the author of The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections and the coauthor of The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics, The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy, and Religion and the Culture Wars.
J. Quin Monson is Associate Professor of Political Science, director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, and a Mollie and Karl Butler Young Scholar in Western Studies, at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Monson's research has appeared in journals such as Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Political Analysis, Political Behavior, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He is the co-editor of several monographs on congressional and presidential elections and contributes regularly to a blog called Utah Data Points.