Klaus J. Hansen

KLAUS J. HANSEN is a member of the history department of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he has taught the history of American thought and culture since 1968. Most recently, he is the author of works on the liberal tradition in America published in the journal of American History, and on de Tocqueville, in the Canadian Journal of History. He is at work on a revised edition of Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (1967; rev. ed., Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, forthcoming), in which he applies current theoretical literature on nationalism to the idea of the Mormon kingdom. His Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) appeared in the Chicago HISTORY OF AMERICAN RELIGION series edited by Martin Marty.

Articles

The World and the Prophet | Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi

Discussing religion in America, de Tocqueville once remarked that “religions ought . . . to confine themselves within their own precincts; for in seeking to extend their power beyond religious matters, they incur a risk…

The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward a Reinterpretation of Mormon History

Polygamy, contrary to popular opinion, probably seduced few men into the seraglio that was Mormonism in the mind of a prurient, Victorian America. Yet it lured several generations of historians — not to speak of…

Are We Still Mormons? | James B. Allen and Richard O. Cowan, Mormonism in the Twentieth Century

“Are we still Mormons?” Surely most readers will feel that this question cannot be anything but rhetorical, at worst a cheap journalistic trick to at tract an audience, or at best a pretext to affirm…

Reflections on The Lion of the Lord | Stanley P. Hirshon, The Lion of the Lord: A Biography of Brigham Young

Not many years after Voltaire delivered himself of his much maligned observation that history is a pack of tricks we play on the dead, historians began to attempt to prove him wrong by telling us…

James J. Strang and the Amateur Historian | Doyle C. Fitzpatrick, The King Strang Story: A Vindication of JAmes J. Strang, the Beaver Island King

In the field of Mormon history, perhaps more so than in other areas of historical inquiry, some excellent contributions have been made by “amateurs,” as the holders of the Ph.D. are inclined to call those…

Mormon Sexuality and American Culture

In a recent essay on the Mormons, David Brion Davis observed that “their history, in relation to American history, is much like Hamlet’s play-within-the play.”[1] Although analogies have their limitations, this one may prove useful…