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"FacebookPinterest\n\nAn American Religion: I, Nephi, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker\n\nAmerica, one might fairly say, had two foundings: the first under the Enlightenment guidance of its rich intellectual founders, and a second with the popular, evangelical Second Great Awakening, which flamed a quarter century afterward. Ever since, the two have, like the Lamanites and the Nephites, been at war for the soul of the country, with the politics not always easily predictable; it was really the Awakening side that led to abolitionism. (Smith ran for President on an advanced abolitionist platform, in 1844.) Over time, the spiritual descendants of the Awakening have sought to annex Enlightenment doctrines, chiefly through the claim that the Founders were not skeptical Enlightenment deists but passionate Evangelical fundamentalists, while the Enlightenment-minded have tried to annex the Awakening's passionate energy to their causes, as in the civil-rights movement, where black churches became the emotional engine of what was, on its face, a legal argument about public facilities. Mormonism is a child of this fracture. In one way, it is a product of the Enlightenment love of secret histories and societies and rococo cosmologies\u2014a \"Magic Flute\" for America, sung with a massed choir. (Many of its rituals and symbols seem to have a source in Freemasonry; Smith was an inducted Mason.) But it is also an instance of popular religious turbulence, not at all esoteric in its appeal but fully open to the world and evangelical in spirit.\n\nThe Tea Party Wave is Receding....Or Is It?: The Tea Party Is Alive and Well, Michael Warren, The Weekly Standard\n\nNow the focus is on changing Congress's upper house. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a beneficiary of the 2010 Tea Party wave, says the movement within the Senate is \"stronger than ever.\" While Senate Republican leadership works to take the majority by winning key races in swing states, the Tea Party is concentrating on red state primaries, like that in Texas, to add to its ranks and push the caucus further to the right.\n\nThe movement has learned a lot since 2010. That year, the Tea Party backed plenty of successful Senate candidates, including Toomey, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson. But there were also some duds in states where Republicans would have otherwise been competitive. In Nevada and Colorado, weakened incumbents Harry Reid and Michael Bennet slid by with even weaker challengers in Sharron Angle and Ken Buck. These Tea Party-supported candidates may have been ideologically pure, but they weren't ready for prime time. Their defeats helped Democrats keep control of the Senate.\n\nAs Toomey puts it, \"the Tea Party has gone through a maturation process.\" Its current crop of candidates look more like those who succeeded in 2010 than those who failed.\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\nWhy \"Gun Control\" Isn't Working: Because Guns Are Fun, And Control is Not\n\nThe Making of a Hate Band\n\nRace Issues Still Matter, Part 23,457 in a Continuing Series\n\nHunger Reads: A Sikhism Primer, and a Deep Dive on Stuart Stevens\n\nFollow us @GQPolitics on Twitter for more updates on the campaign trail"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/hunger-reads-mormonism-and-its-meaning-and-the-tea-partys-latest-victory>