Mormons were different because they said they were different and because their claims, frequently advanced in the most obnoxious way possible, prompted others to agree and treat them as such. The notion of Mormon difference, that is, was a deliberate invention elaborated over time. It was both cause and result of a conflict in which all parties discovered reasons to stress not what Mormons had in common with other Americans, which was a great deal, but what they did not have in common. One result of the conflict was an ideology that sought to turn the self-advertised differences of the Mormons
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