I WANT TO THANK the following people for bringing my book into the world of academe; for holding my hand, stroking my head, wetting my tongue; for letting me know in loving ways that it wasn’t time; and finally for caring enough to get cross, telling me it was time to push.
My Ph.D. supervisor, mentor, colleague, and friend Klaus J. Hansen deserves special mention. His defense of the anti-Evangelical roots of early Mormonism in his book Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago, 1981) brought me to Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, to study American cultural history under his tutelage and then to finish what I had started—a critical analysis of the Book of Mormon, which the highly respected Roman Catholic philosopher of religion Hugo A. Meynell at the University of Calgary had defended as a suitable M.A. thesis topic in Religious Studies, before it was topical to take seriously the religious ideas of ordinary folk. Had the late Canadian historian, erstwhile Mormon, and practicing Unitarian Howard Palmer not interceded on my behalf, things might not have gone so swimmingly.
Unlike the fishing boat in the recent movie A Perfect Storm, which goes down with a full load of swordfish, my own perilous journey to the big water of American Masonry has been fortunate to make it back to port, thanks to Geoffrey Smith of Queen’s University—who pointed me in the direction of Columbia University Press—and Wendy Lochner at Columbia, who promised to make my manuscript her first priority and then was true to her word, as well as to John L. Brooke, Alfred Bush, and an anonymous third reviewer who recommended the manuscript for publication. A special word of thanks to my copy editor Sarah St. Onge for going the extra mile and then some, to Matthew Bucher (a Scottish Rite Mason, 32d Degree) for his generous input, to Arturo de Hoyes at the Scottish Rite temple in Washington, D.C., to Suzanne Ryan and Lisa Hamm, also at Columbia, to my brother Bohne Forsberg, Forsberg Graphics of Aylmer, Quebec, for the cover, and, of course, to Anne McCoy and Ron Harris for watching over the entire process and making sure that everything ran smoothly.
The names of those who have played an academic part of one kind or another appear in the notes. I leave it to the reader to rank them, for I am at a loss. That said, I should like to single out a Calgary kitchen table as largely to blame. Around it a brave but misguided plan was hatched to foment a gender revolution by a local Mormon family of courage and vision. What pray tell will they make of this, or all the Mormon and non-Mormon friends over the years with whom I have sat down around a kitchen table of one kind or another to discuss the “Gospel” and badmouth the church.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, my wife Spring and our two boys Kohl and Kynan, for their long-suffering above all. In honor of Spring (the season on par with the woman), I quote from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe where he says of his wife:
She was, in a few Words, the Stay of all my affairs, the Centre of all my Enterprises, the Engine, that by her Prudence reduc’d me to the happy Compass I was in, from the most extravagant ruinous Project that flutter’d in my Head, as above; and did more … than a Mother’s tears, a Father’s Instructions, a Friend’s Counsel, or all my own reasoning Powers could do.
My only desire is that this book proves worthy of her. Any errors or faults are my responsibility alone.