Mason earned a BA in history from Brigham Young University in 1999, an MA in history from the University of Notre Dame in 2003 and a second MA there in International Peace Studies, also in 2003. In 2005 he was awarded a PhD in history, also from the University of Notre Dame.[2]
As a graduate student, he took a summer seminary at Brigham Young University in Latter-day Saint history run by Richard L. Bushman.[5]
In January 2012, Mason published an opinion piece in The Washington Post regarding diversity within Latter Day Saints thought.[15] He was featured on New England Cable News in May 2012 regarding the "Mormon movement" in Arkansas,[16] and has been quoted in both the New York Times[17] and the Los Angeles Times[18] on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Mason is also the author of The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South which received positive reviews in the Journal of American History[19] and the Journal of Southern Religion.[20] He has authored a number of articles and book chapters on Mormonism and American religion history.[21]
In 2016, Mason advocated for what he described as a more embracing LDS church.[22] Mason participated in a short-lived joint blog in a current-issues/events debate format, at the non-partisan religion website Patheos.com, with psychologist John P. Dehlin, who has often been critical of the LDS Church.[23]
“Honor, the Unwritten Law, and Extralegal Violence: Contextualizing Parley Pratt’s Murder,” in Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism, ed. Gregory Armstrong, Matthew J. Grow, and Dennis Siler (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2011), 245-273.
“God and the People: Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,” Journal of Church and State 53:3 (Summer 2011): 349-375.
“Opposition to Polygamy in the Postbellum South,” Journal of Southern History 76:3 (August 2010): 541-578.
“What’s So Bad about Polygamy? Teaching American Religious History in the Muslim Middle East,” Journal of American History 96:4 (March 2010): 1112-1118.
“Shrine of the Black Madonna,” “Lynching,” and “Henry McNeal Turner,” in The Encyclopedia of African American History, eds. Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC- CLIO, 2010): 257-258, 871-874, 1060-1062.
“Christian Zionism and Its Religious Influence in American Politics,” with Khadiga Omar, US-Arab Issues no. 1 (Spring 2009), Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research, American University in Cairo.
“The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76:2 (Spring 2008): 108-131.
“‘In Our Image, After Our Likeness’: The Meaning of a Black Deity in the African American Protest Tradition, 1880-1970,” in “We Will Independent Be”: African-American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the United States, eds. Angel David Nieves and Leslie M. Alexander (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2008), 463-487.
“Anti-Jewish Violence in the New South,” Southern Jewish History 8 (2005): 77-119.
“The Possibilities of Mormon Peacebuilding,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 37:1 (Spring 2004): 12-45 – winner of Dialogue’s Best Article in Its Category Prize (2005).
“Traditions of Violence: Early Mormon and Anti-Mormon Conflict in Its American Setting,” in Richard L. Bushman, ed., Archive of Restoration Culture Summer Fellows’ Papers, 2000-2002 (Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2005), 163-185.