“The Crowning Savagery of War”: A Mormon Condemnation of the Atom Bomb
Many beliefs and practices of early Mormonism such as polygamy, theo-democracy, the Order of Enoch, and the hope for Zion were profoundly counter-cultural and critical of aspects of the American order. However, the painful reconciliation with monogamy and mammon that followed on the heels of Utah statehood and the Second Manifesto dramatically transformed the Mormon ethos. From former Church President Ezra Taft Benson’s vociferous denunciations of socialism, to the Church’s o