Strains of the Enlightenment: Making Belief in American Secularism and African Difference in The Book of Mormon

This article argues that the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, best known for its parody of Mormon religious beliefs, uses what Sara Ahmed terms "affective economies" to paradoxically remake American beliefs in secular rationality. Whereas Richard Schechner posits a strict division between "make-believe" and "make-belief" performances, The Book of Mormon demonstrates how the "make-believe" of Broadway makes beliefs and feelings in its audiences through circulations of affect. This article traces how such affects and beliefs are imbricated with national impressions about religious, racial, and sexual difference, particularly through the musical's Mormon and black African characters. By attending to the musical's impressions of Mormons and Africans, it deconstructs the musical's tacit investments in American secularism and rationality through its circulation of "common sense" ideas about religious and racial others.