Spring 2011

The Spring issue is on its way to the printer!  Highlights include poetry by Timothy Liu, a nice fat book review section, Sam Brown’s much-anticipated article on the early Mormon “Chain of Belonging,”  an especially beautiful personal essay by Scott Abbott, and an interview with Massimo Introvigne, a brief excerpt of which follows. Introvigne is a Roman Catholic sociologist of religion. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), a scholarly organisation that studies New Religious Movements (NRMs).
It’s not every day anyone says Mormonism is “sexier” than other religions (or anything else)!
RJH: You said that from the beginning you were interested in Mormonism. Is there anything particularly that intrigues you about Mormonism?
MI: I think it’s more intriguing than, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose story is not very sexy, even if there are many more Jehovah’s Witnesses in Italy than Mormons. But the story’s very plain — they didn’t pick up bloody fights or colonize new states, it’s just a story of a successful preacher who had non-conventional ideas, whose successor became a successful bureaucrat, organizing a world-wide religious organisation. In the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses the most interesting things happen in Europe with the Nazi persecution, but otherwise the story’s very plain. Also the doctrines are less original and offer a less peculiar point of view.
Ronan J. Head (International Editor) : So Mormonism is sexier?
Massimo Introvigne: Of course — polygamy or the Haun’s Mill massacre or the colonisation of Utah. You don’t find this stuff in the history of the JW’s.
RJH: Who else interests you?
MI: Coming from a background in philosophy in addition to law and sociology I was quite interested in Christian Science. Christian Science was exciting from a speculative point of view because I was always interested in how Mary Baker wrote without any professional philosophical background. She basically produced an Americanized version of Hegel. For her followers she was just a genius. She didn’t read or have revelations from God. It’s quite amazing that she produced an impressive if idiosyncratic philosophical system. So speculatively Mary Baker is quite interesting.
Read the full article in the Spring issue, online 3/1