Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition

Still, the Small Voice  is a folklorist's examination of the everyday narratives Mormons recount concerning their personal encounters with the divine. Through close consideration of these narratives as shared with fellow church members and non-members alike, Tom Mould gets to the heart of Mormon religious culture.

Personal experience narratives of encounters with the supernatural are a pervasive aspect of the communal religious experience of Mormons, as individual church members use them to recount their personal revelations, received primarily through the Holy Ghost. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints find guidance and assurance in such inspiration, promptings, and warnings and often narrate them to each other as mutual confirmation of shared belief.

In accordance with current emphases in folklore studies on narrative, performance, and belief, Tom Mould uses ethnographic research as well as deep study in archival records and published accounts to thoroughly analyze these spiritual narratives and their performances and thereby open windows into the interior of Mormon folk culture. Seeking as though an insider to understand and respect the belief systems he studies, Mould considers how people within Mormon communities both frame and explain their experiences with the divine by means of the narratives they share with group members. In doing so he provides a significant new ethnographic interpretation of Mormon culture and belief. He goes further, though, and applies his findings directly to broader folkloristic questions regarding performance, genre, personal experience narrative, belief, and oral versus written traditions—in each case illuminating and expanding discourse on these topics in fresh, insightful ways.