Praying with One Eye Open: Mormons and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia

by Mary Ella Engel Narrated by Courtney Patterson

Overview

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of twelve men. Most accounts of this event have linked Standing's murder to the virulent nineteenth-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence.



Historian Mary Ella Engel adopts a different approach, arguing that the mob violence against Standing was a local event, best understood at the local level. Her examination of Standing's murder carefully situates it in the disquiet created by missionaries' successes in the North Georgia community. As Georgia converts typically abandoned the state for Mormon colonies in the West, a disquiet situated within a wider narrative of post-Reconstruction Mormon outmigration to colonies in the West. In this rich context, the murder reveals the complex social relationships that linked North Georgians-families, kin, neighbors, and coreligionists-and illuminates how mob violence attempted to resolve the psychological dissonance and gender anxieties created by Mormon missionaries.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

It is difficult to find fault with much of anything in this book. It is extremely well-researched... and compellingly written.--Christopher Cannon Jones "Journal of the American Academy of Religion"

Mary Ella Engel's excellent Praying with One Eye Open will open your eyes to a forgotten episode of religious violence in the Deep South: the summary execution of Mormon missionary Joseph Standing. The murder occurred in 1879 in mountainous Whitfield County, Georgia, against a backdrop of economic woe, but it was mostly about sex, specifically the polygamy practiced by Latter Day Saints. This is a shocking and fascinating tale.--Steve Oney "author of And the Dead Shall Rise"

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Christopher Cannon Jones

It is difficult to find fault with much of anything in this book. It is extremely well-researched... and compellingly written.

author of And the Dead Shall Rise - Steve Oney

Mary Ella Engel’s excellent Praying with One Eye Open will open your eyes to a forgotten episode of religious violence in the Deep South: the summary execution of Mormon missionary Joseph Standing. The murder occurred in 1879 in mountainous Whitfield County, Georgia, against a backdrop of economic woe, but it was mostly about sex, specifically the polygamy practiced by Latter Day Saints. This is a shocking and fascinating tale.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173539694
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	09/30/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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