438 - Universal History: The American Religion: Making Way for Mormonism
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We look at the enchanted religious world of early America — folk magic, treasure seeking, restorationism, the Melchizedek priesthood — and how these patterns shaped movements like Mormonism. We also reflect on the recurring American impulse to “restore” a lost spiritual authority, and the impulse to, on the other hand, make all things respectably secular.
This is episode 4 of our Universal History series on the American religion. Watch it here on YouTube:
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVX4HUUPrIY_U0msyBRVpwCI_srzn3tjL
Episode 1: https://youtu.be/htXHJ1WRSAg
Episode 2: https://youtu.be/o9rMy6lde0c
Episode 3: https://youtu.be/0_RKBPaQAyk
Episode 4: https://youtu.be/ZopvdgYe-UA
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:01 - Intro music
01:27 - The problem with talking about Mormonism
06:10 - Context for why to talk about this
13:26 - The Bible and magic
20:46 - The distinction in magic
25:55 - Enchanted practices
35:14 - Baptism for the dead
36:20 - Melchizedek priesthood
38:54 - Defining feature of American religion
41:28 - The charismatic narrative
42:43 - Hebrews
44:46 - Esoteric Enoch
45:52 - Secret garments
46:45 - The Whitmer family
51:24 - Joseph Smith
58:56 - Proscribed but practiced
01:02:52 - Many religious experiences
01:04:54 - The attitude to magic and miracles
01:09:24 - Magical beginning, secular end
01:16:40 - Long-lasting
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | the pattern of American religion basically picks up certain old world patterns, |
| 0:06.6 | but patterns which in the old world were kind of on the fringe. |
| 0:11.0 | And then what America does or has done is to take these sort of fringe patterns |
| 0:17.1 | and carry them forward and actually, you know, make them sort of successful in mainstream. |
| 0:23.1 | But in order to become successful in mainstream, one of the things that they have to do is they |
| 0:28.5 | have to, they have to shed some of the more, let's say, the more enchanted aspects of the European |
| 0:35.5 | fringe, which in traditional forms of religion have ways of being |
| 0:40.3 | integrated. But whenever an American religion goes mainstream, it has to secularize in certain |
| 0:45.7 | ways. So basically, that's the whole case that I want to make. The reason that I'm interested |
| 0:50.0 | in Mormonism is I am personally far enough away from it |
| 0:55.0 | that I can, it's an interesting test case, right? |
| 1:00.0 | It's like an interesting kind of control group. This is Jonathan Pajot. |
| 1:14.9 | Welcome to the symbolic world. |
| 1:26.8 | So hello, everyone. We are back here with Universal History, with Deacon Seraphim. |
| 1:32.2 | And this is the day that we are supposed to talk about Mormonism. But just before we started |
| 1:38.2 | recording, DeCatsarfen just started to panic or to say, I don't know, I don't know, like, |
| 1:43.6 | what's going to happen? And so I don't even know what is, what is it going to, what's going to happen? So please you can tell us what's going on. What's going on? So the first thing I want to say is that I'm very afraid today. I'm very, very afraid. And the reason that I'm afraid is I probably had more people reach out to me about the last two episodes |
| 2:03.4 | than has ever happened with anything I've done. When I say reach out to me, I mean like |
| 2:06.7 | hunting down my cell phone number to give me a call or shipping me books in the mail or sending |
| 2:11.9 | me like DMs being like, hey, you don't really understand Mormonism. Let me hook you up with |
| 2:16.2 | somebody who will like really explain Mormonism to you. I was like, anyway, the response was a little overwhelming. And then there were just so many angry people in the comments. I do not normally read the comments, but last video, my goodness, people just got their noses all out of joint. And I think part of it is, you know, I actually, I do not, I'm the sort of person |
| 2:35.0 | I do not mind being disagreed with, but I hate being misunderstood. And so I want to actually |
... |
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