ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how aspects of identity in contemporary Mormonism may be given additional depth against the cultural background of motifs of wandering and homecoming present in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean mythology and developed within Christian liturgy and elements of contemporary British civic ritualism. The comparative sociological method underlying these discussions comes to focus on the issue of what might be called the ritual generation of time, or of a sense of the significance of time within the dynamic development of the identity both of groups and of their constituent members.
