K. Mohrman, Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022).

I haven’t read a book as historiographically disruptive to Mormon Studies as K. Mohrman’s Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism. Covering 1830 to the present, it covers a much longer period than most monographs on Mormonism. In addition to a longer framing, Mohrman employs queer feminist theory, queer of color critique, critical ethnic studies, and other methodological tools to reveal what Mormonism’s “peculiarity” (or lack thereof) tells about what it means to be American. The book’s rich examination of Mormonism’s place in the United States and also for what Mormonism’s being defined as “peculiar” reveals about the biopolitics of American exceptionalism. In short, Mohrman argues that Mormonism is not exceptional, and in fact, shows what it means to be American across time in U.S. history.

The Mormon peculiarity/non-peculiarity discourse is represented by work published on the “Mormon image” over the past two decades. Books like Terryl Givens’ Viper on the Hearth, Chris Talbot’s A Foreign Kingdom, JB Haws’ The Mormon Image in the American Mind, and Spencer Fluhman’s A Peculiar People use Mormonism as a way to reveal how Mormonism’s peculiarities point to more significant questions of family, gender, politics, or ways of defining religion. This trend has been valuable for establishing Mormon Studies within American religious history, but not necessarily in American studies or religious studies (Fluhman’s book being the exception). In Mohrman’s estimation, these studies take Mormon peculiarity “as a fundamental essence rather than a discursive formation,” which limits their usefulness for scholars outside Mormon studies (9).

Mohrman builds upon this scholarship and turns it on its head by examining how discourses around Mormonism’s peculiarity and “hypernormativity” uncover the complicated power matrices that define Americanness, including the functions and definitions of privileged sexualities, races, and imperial ambitions. Indeed, she argues that Mormonism and its practices have been “central to…[and] are indicative of the processes of othering through which ‘Americanness’ has been defined as white, Protestant, capitalist, and heteronormative, thereby entrenching racial nationalism in the service of U.S. empire” (7).

In the first half of the book, Mohrman unpacks the first seventy years of Mormon peculiarity discourses, showing how Mormons and non-Mormons both used ideas about what it meant to be American in relation to political and economic conflicts such as Indigenous removal and industrial capitalism, slavery, and women’s rights. They also highlight how debates over plural marriage highlight political and eugenic dimensions of what constituted Americanness while reinforcing gender binarism and eventually paved the way for Mormons to become ensconced under the protective umbrella of American empire upon public disavowal of the practice.

In the book’s second half, Mohrman shows how Mormonism became “exceptionally normal” (18). The rapid braiding of Mormonism into white American Protestant culture unveils how publicly and repeatedly embracing capitalism and heteronormativity inscribed a previously hated religious group into the protective cloak of American pluralism. The Latter-day Saint public rebranding of their Church’s members as thrifty, hardworking, and individualistic during the Great Depression and the first decades of the Cold War propelled Mormonism to the discursive pinnacle of U.S. nationalism and “the state’s biopolitical agenda”: white supremacy. The last chapters examine Latter-day Saint discourses surrounding family, revealing how the “hypernormativity” of Mormonism represented white American colorblindness, heteronormativity, and patriarchy.

The book closes by showing how Mormonism’s involvement with fights against same-sex marriage in Utah and the reversal of Utah’s antipolygamy statutes revealed how sexual nonnormativity had been accepted by Americans writ large because Mormons in Utah accepted non-heteronormative marriage practices. These cases, Mohrman argues, expose “how the legal concepts of sexual and religious freedom rely on a willful denial of both the nation’s racial history and the continued effects of that legacy” (20).

In addition to methodological and theoretical innovations, Mohrman’s most important addition to Mormon studies is the concept of “hypernormativity.” Mormonism’s shedding of its peculiarity to reveal a more readily accepted “praiseworthy but often praiseworthy religious eccentricity” shows that religion (especially “good” or “right” religion) is about much more than beliefs and rituals. It uncovers discourses of power—particularly ideas about racial assimilation, heteronormativity, and capitalism.

Mohrman’s new reading of Mormon peculiarity and American exceptionalism will be new to many readers accustomed to social histories and cultural studies popularized in the New Mormon History. Her naming such scholarship “one-dimensional (and occasionally two-dimensional” that is “not only flat but incomplete” stings (10). She praises earlier work, too, but downplays how previous work on Mormonism has engaged peculiarity and Americanness. I do think many of the books she engages acknowledge the contradictions in discourses surrounding Mormonism (that it’s both exceptional and normative) without drawing sustained attention to that paradox. She certainly gives the most time to explaining why those critiques matter–she is not building a straw man argument, and the pointed articulation of the field’s weaknesses is valuable for folks doing work on the Americanization thesis.

Mohrman’s evidence and arguments are provocative, engaging, and expand the possibilities for Mormon studies to enter into broader interdisciplinary conversations. Exceptionally Queer cannot—and should not—be ignored. I heartily recommend the book to readers in many fields and methodologies—particularly those who consider themselves at the center of Mormon Studies. Mohrman will be at the heart of debates in scholarship related to Mormonism for years to come.