Mormon Stories - LDS (Unofficial - MormonThink.com)

The Decade of the Sixties: The Early Struggles in the RLDS Shift from Sect to Denomination: This is a discussion of how, during the 1960s the RLDS Church made very decisive steps toward shedding its sectarian past. It began the decade clearly rooted in the sectarian world view. But by the end of the decade, many of the church's leaders and a reasonable number of its members had adopted liberal views, down-playing traditional unique Latter Day Saint doctrines.

Today, the RLDS Church (or Community of Christ) has but a fraction of the membership it once enjoyed. What lessons can the LDS Church learn from the Community of Christ. What did they do right, and wrong?

Love him, hate him, or indifferent -- D. Michael Quinn will go down as one of the most important Mormons of the 20th century.

This is his story, in his own words.

For over 40 years, William D. Russell has been a progressive voice among the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (now the Community of Christ). This is his story -- from a 1993 Sunstone Symposium presentation called, "Pillars of my faith".

William D. Russell is a professor of American History and Government, Graceland College. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association; former assistant editor of the Saints Herald; author of Treasure in Earthly Vessels: An Introduction to the New Testament; a founder of the Independence, Missouri, chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality; and former chair of the Decatur County Democratic Party. He has competed in the Boston and Los Angeles marathons and twenty-four others.

In early 1994 the distinguished career of Richard D. Poll, historian, professor, writer, husband and friend, came full circle. His Liahona/Iron-rod dichotomy, borrowed from the Book of Mormon, had entered the lexicon of Mormon thought almost 30 years earlier in his landmark essay "What the Church Means to People Like Me" (Dialogue 2:4, Winter 1967). His "Pillars of My Faith" sermon in Sunstone called for committed LDS worshipers and writers to join a mighty Christian chorus "in which almost all the singers hear the dissonant sounds of the alternate voices as polyphonic enrichment of the message of the gospel music." For people like him, "neither dogmatic fundamentalism nor dogmatic humanism provides convincing answers to life's most basic questions." He defined history as "human strivings to discover divine realities." Like Paul, Richard Poll lived his life as part of the leaven that "leaveneth the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9), offering his Liahona questioning in the spirit of "charity, humility, persistence." In a time when men and women are being called sinners for a word (or many words); when the terms "alternate" and "dissident" are being redefined as sinister; when some seek apostasy, while others have apostasy thrust upon them, Richard Poll's calm, reasoned, compassionate voice rings with a clarity that will live on in our hearts and minds.

In this seminar, I discuss techniques for staying in the LDS church after a major trial of faith.

A discussion of Sunstone.

An interview with Armand Mauss

An interview with John Charles Duffy about "Preach My Gospel"

An interview with Richard Dutcher about his movie States of Grace.

An Introduction, PBS’s “The Mormons”, and an Ensign Articleq