John Turner

I teach religious studies at George Mason University. My writing revolves around the place of religion in American history, a subject rarely free from controversy and often full of color. My first book, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, won Christianity Today’s 2009 prize for best History / Biography. For those unfamiliar, Campus Crusade (which recently shortened its name to “Cru”) is one of the nation’s largest nondenominational evangelical agencies and is often the leading evangelical presence at public universities.

My scholarly journey from post-1945 evangelicalism to mid-nineteenth-century Mormonism was both challenging and exhilarating. I had considered writing a study of the Latter-day Saints and conservative politics since 1945, but as I began examining the history of Mormonism, I found myself pulled toward the earlier time period. The result is Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, published in September 2012 by Harvard University Press. My portrait of Young emphasizes his early religious experiences (such as speaking in tongues), the transformative effect of Joseph Smith’s murder on Young’s personality and approach to leadership, Young’s outsized family, and his thirty-year battle with the U.S. government for control of the Utah Territory. My years with the Latter-day Saints have, in a roundabout way, returned me to my roots. I grew up outside of Rochester, New York (not terribly far from where Brigham Young worked as a craftsmen) and occasionally heard about Joseph Smith and Palmyra. Until I went to graduate school at Notre Dame, however, I don’t think I had met a single Mormon. Since then, I’ve seen the Hill Cumorah Pageant, visited Joseph Smith’s Farm and the Sacred Grove, and dragged my family to Mormon history sites from Utah to Vermont (complete Mormon Trail vacation yet to be funded and planned).

My shorter essays on Mormonism past and present have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.