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The Second Great Awakening occurred only in America. It lasted only 20 years, from about 1820-1840. It was reaction to the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, which swept Europe and Revolutionary America, the age of individualism, skepticism, scientific inquiry, the age of Descartes, Bacon, Kant, Locke, Voltaire, and Newton. It was reaction too to the religions of educated New England. Its most enduring creation was the Mormon religion founded by a functionally illiterate man, Joseph Smith, in Western New York. It was the little fish eating the big fish.
Even for this un-reasoning, feverish, fearful, faith-based time two wives were too many, golden tablets revealed to a man who could barely read by an angel who also bore a pair of eyeglasses, even in this time, even with the standards by which its competitors were criticized, Mormonism was a preposterous religion to Americans and Smith's followers were hounded further and further west. Mormonism was disruptive.
On this record, why, in God's name would Mormonism have any appeal to anyone?
Mormonism was innovative. Baptism of the dead was a novel, game-changing recruitment technology. And Mormonism was aggressive. It was aggressive in its proselytizing, compelling missionary work even today.
The followers of Joseph Smith who settled by the Great Salt Lake settled beyond the functional arms of those who would harass and exterminate them and there they were permitted to settle, largely, in peace. There too they built a civilization.
Mormonism was adaptive. A religion, sort of like a business, must grow, it must grow in order to survive. Baptism of the dead did not increase the "bottom line" of live followers, the original settlers were to die, they became famously fecund for which the "persecuted" worldwide are famous but c'mon Boss! We're not Adam and Eve here on the shores of the Great Salk Lake, you're talking too long-term there, Boss. No, they needed a per-annum growth rate larger than all the conception and birth could provide, they had to convert as all (I think. Judaism?) religions do, and must do.
The captivating tale of poor Joe Smith and his many wives, of the Angel with the eyeglasses and the golden tablets written in "Reformed Egyptian," that captivating tale did not produce many captives. Nor did Joe's end at the hands of an enraged Missouri mob who broke into the jailhouse where hisself was captive, turn him into crucified, sympathetic martyr. That didn't increase the flockage either.
The Mormons adapted. Here they were, privileged to practice their preposterous religion in a new nation famously founded upon tolerance of the preposterous, permitted to found a civilization to the preposterous, needing to make new converts to survive and burdened with two wives. What to do?
Well, the Mormons had only massacred 120 men, women and elder children at Mountain Meadows in 1857, that wasn't so bad and one man was tried, convicted and executed for it, the Civil War came and the nation was busy with that and when the Mormons banned polygamy Utah was admitted as a state in 1890. They adapted by banning polygamy.
Americans don't do details.
Spent some time on this 'cause I think it does inform, coming back to our topic now, "the mind of
America." Americans really don't do the details much, not as much as some other homos, I suspect. Famously, we don't know much about history, geography; we are the most religious people on earth but don't know much about the details of religion--Are Mormon's Christian? Who are the Latter-day Saints?--Americans DON'T CARE. "History is bunk," consequently (or vice versa. Hard to say what caused what here.) Americans are more tolerant than most folks on history and religion, are not over-endowed with intelligence and are proud of it! and, I think this is true but I have just made it up, I think Americans are a more "sights and sounds" people maybe than some others. By that I mean, I think passing the "eyeball test" is more important to Americans than what the "details" are in the books. Americans like Hollywood special effects--I know they like Hollywood special effects more than some other folks, we like our boob tube (7 hours a day), we like porn, we like a good show!. America has had four Great Awakenings. Religion puts on a good show. We like to learn by seeing if possible, we like to get our knowledge of the world by seeing and listening, more than by reading, we like to make our judgments on people--and ideas--by seeing and listening and Mormons, Clayton Christensen and disruptive innovation put on a good show! Christensen is a pleasant man, handsome, and I hear his power-point presentations are killers, Mormons generally are a beautiful people, white, the whole package just passes the American eye-ball test, aces that frigging test, actually. No, never read the book.
So yeah, I agree with Jill Lepore and can "see" why disruptive innovation maybe has not gotten the critical scrutiny it should have. When you do the details as she did, the theory, like the religion, looks fishy.
The shock and awe of disruptive innovation captivated a whole lot of American businessmen. I don't think (But maybe I'm wrong!) it has had as great an influence on non-American businessmen who maybe read the fine print. Mormonism, it seems to me, was a disruptive religious innovation in the U.S. Whether that is true or not, how has Mormonism done in America since it did away with polygamy? The details according to Wikipedia is that Mormonism is the 25th largest religious denomination in America. 25th. The preposterous minnow has not eaten the big fish.
