I've been reading Harold Bloom's infamous text, The American Religion, and even though I find much of his associations ridiculous, I can't help but feel swept up by his rhapsodic power. I am in one hand quite flattered by his description of the Prophet, but I'm also quite appalled. Bloom's Joseph Smith is a mutation of Fawn Brodie's: an overactive (and actively sensual) genius as good at fashioning religion as Shakespeare was at fashioning Man. To Bloom, Joseph Smith's project was nothing short of a complete revision of man's ontological status [120]. Bloom waxes quite eloquent in the final section of his chapter on the book, stating that Joseph Smith eclipses Emerson and even Whitman in his mind. Heck, he's even mysterious enough to be as unaccountable a character as Abraham Lincoln!
But though I'm intrigued by all Bloom's rambling on Joseph Smith, it's his portrait of contemporary Mormons that [capture my attention]. Who are these hard-working religious-desperadoes, these right-wing wonders of the modern era, what are their goals, and why do they pursue them with an ardor that many would find frankly frightening? Bloom's paints an almost apocalyptic picture of a "peculiar people," who are marching steadily onward possible domination of the United States. He predicts with all the certainty of a prophet that "Mormonism will likely become the dominant religious force in America by the year 2020." [2020, for Bloom, is the year of Judgment—the year when Mormonism, the preeminent "American religion" will come of age.] Why 2020? Probably because that's the closest even year Bloom could imagine not being alive to see. A true prophet, forecasting judgments a matter of short years before his name would be immortalized by death! [?]
I am frightened by Bloom's Mormons. Their children do well in school, get high-placing jobs throughout America's economic and political superstructure, and then go on to make more hard-working, high-placed children. If their natural growth wasn't worse enough, their militaristic zeal for missionary work has resulted in an even more impressive conversion rate. In a bizarre twist of rhetoric, Bloom supports many Mormon's own self-myth of 'taking over the world'—one convert at a time.
The problem is that I've never met this faceless mass of Mormons. But I'm enthralled by the strength of Bloom's "religious criticism," even if, like most literary criticism, it's impossible to match with my experience. Richard Bushman referred to this gap in Believing History, where he complains that books like [], might capture the imaginations of non-believers, but they leave believers cold and in the dark.] [dialogic history] [the forceful and fallacious text The American Religion], I'm terrified by Bloom's account because of its abstraction. Mormonism for me has always been either on home-turf, in the collection of people I've grown up with and learned by, or has existed in the comforting realm of Ecclesiastical History. According to my early training, Joseph Smith was as normal as the Mormon next door. Blonde, blue-eyed, genteel, and always happy to play with kids—there was nothing to fear from this history. There was nothing alien in it, just as there was nothing alien in the faces I saw and hands I shook every Sunday at church. Bloom's analysis, brilliant as it undoubtably is, doesn't quite make sense. I'm intellectual satisfied, but the picture is missing something far more fundamental. [It's a like a beautiful painting you can only view from fifty feet aware—perfect and miniature, with every paint-stroke carefully diminished by the curse of space.]
[Faith and History—how and why..]
1. See Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human
2. Probably around…
3. Believing History; Final Essay "Believing History"
Becky Garrison's other books include 
