The question as to whether or not Mormonism is a cult is a contentious one, but despite your definitions, one thing is for certain, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a high demand faith and as such the exercise of agency and decision making is a charged issue.

Wherever you are in relation to the LDS Church, it is useful to understand the science of belief and how we can indeed cultivate healthy cognitive responses to life's most vexing questions, so that (as Luna argues), 'we can relieve ourselves of: 

 "feelings of depression, guilt, shame, exhaustion, phobias, magical thinking, passive-aggressive behaviour, and hidden familial abuse.'"
 

Liberation theologian James Cone has said:

“It is ironic that America, with its history of injustice to the poor, especially the black man and the Indian, prides itself on being a Christian nation.”

So, what sense does a profoundly faithful black Christian woman make of America still mired in its many racial sins?   What can be said about a nation who remains at odds with itself in its resistance to the spiritual healing that it so desperately needs?

In this very personal conversation,  The Rev. Dr Fatimah Salleh mourns with me the brokenness that is her nation and her church.

Is the USA a democracy, a nascent theocracy, or a mobocracy?  Perhaps it's all of those things and all at the same time.  

The Nauvoo experience gives us a strong sense of the unsettled ideological, economic and religious arguments that remain unresolved in the United States.  Powder Keg is what the United States feels like in 2020, and after reading Kingdom of Nauvo that covers a short period of American religious history between 1839-1846, this book brings some of these centuries-old quandaries about America into perspective.

Faith and violence are twinned in this remarkable telling of a doomed social and theocratic experiment to find a religious utopia under the leadership of the Joseph Smith.  

Plodding and boring this story is not.  
 

In this much-needed volume, that follows the evolution of LDS Church thought about race,  from its earliest beginnings to its contemporary constructions, Professor Brooks seeks to account for a religious tradition that has never made a definitive departure, nor offered an explanation or an apology for why being racist is not a matter for Mormon censure while advocating for the increased authority of women or the safety of children is?

In Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence Brooks offers a vital racial critique of the faith of her ancestors and her birth.