Sectarian Characteristics of the Latter-Day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons as they are commonly known by the public, is a religious movement founded in 1830. Ever since their establishment, they have been on the track of institutionalization and accommodation of the norms of the secular society. However, in many important aspects they fail to fit in the conventional institutionalization-based sect-denominationchurch analysis of religious movements by Troeltsch, Weber, Niebuhr and their followers. Balancing between fundamentalism and dissolution in the mainstream of secular social values, the Latter-day Saints have maintained many of their sectarian features. This study ventures to examine the most prominent of these sectarian properties, with a dual purpose. The centrality of these forms of religiousness suggests that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will never be institutionalized enough to qualify to be a church- as far as the institutionalist approach holds- but remain a giant sect with certain church-like characteristics. Another indication of the study is that new approaches, other than the institutionalist, are needed for the better understanding of the various forms of Christian religiousness.