The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is the largest Latter Day Saint denomination. Founded by Joseph Smith during the Second Great Awakening, the church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, as of 2023, it has over 17.2 million members of which over 6.8 million live in the U.S. The church also reports over 99,000 volunteer missionaries and 350 temples.
Mormonism is the theology and religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although since 2018 there has been a push from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to distance itself from this label. One historian, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, wrote in 1982 that, depending on the context, the term Mormonism could refer to "a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these."
In Mormonism, the restoration refers to a return of the authentic priesthood power, spiritual gifts, ordinances, living prophets and revelation of the primitive Church of Christ after a long period of apostasy. While in some contexts the term may also refer to the early history of Mormonism, in other contexts the term is used in a way to include the time that has elapsed from the church's earliest beginnings until the present day. Especially in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "the restoration" is often used also as a term to encompass the corpus of religious messages from its general leaders down to the present.
Ezra Taft Benson was an American farmer, government official, and religious leader who served as the 15th United States Secretary of Agriculture during both presidential terms of Dwight D. Eisenhower and as the 13th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1985 until his death in 1994.
The Latter Day Saint movement is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s.
Robert David Putnam is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Richard John Mouw is an American theologian and philosopher. He held the position of President at Fuller Theological Seminary for 20 years (1993–2013), and continues to hold the post of Professor of Faith and Public Life.
Anti-Mormonism includes people and literature that are critical, or opposed to, the adherents, institutions, or beliefs of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement as a whole. It may include physical attacks, discrimination, persecution, hostility, or prejudice against Mormons and the Latter Day Saint movement, particularly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Danny Lynn Jorgensen is an American professor at the Department of Religious Studies of the University of South Florida, for which he also served as chair from 1999 to 2006.
Philip Layton Barlow is a Harvard-trained scholar who specializes in American religious history, religious geography, and Mormonism. In 2019, Barlow was appointed associate director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Barlow was the first full-time professor of Mormon studies at a secular university as the inaugural Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University (USU), from 2007 to 2018.
John Clifford Green is an American academic who has written numerous books on the relationship between religion and politics.
Terryl Lynn Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the James A. Bostwick Chair in English.
The public image of Mitt Romney refers to how Americans view Mitt Romney. Following his 2008 presidential campaign, Romney's personal and political appearance increased. Romney's values and affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are significant factors in his public image and "Faith in America" speech.
Mormonism and Nicene Christianity have a complex theological, historical, and sociological relationship. Mormons express their doctrines using biblical terminology. They have similar views about the nature of Jesus Christ's atonement, bodily resurrection, and Second Coming as mainstream Christians. Nevertheless, most Mormons do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity as codified in the Nicene Creed of 325 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Although Mormons consider the Protestant Bible to be holy scripture, they do not believe in biblical inerrancy. They have also adopted additional scriptures that they believe to have been divinely revealed to Joseph Smith, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormons practice baptism and celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but they also participate in other religious rituals. Mormons self-identify as Christians.
Gilbert Woodrow Scharffs was a Latter-day Saint religious educator and author.
Matthew J. Grow is an American historian specializing in Mormon history. Grow authored a biography of Thomas L. Kane, Liberty to the Downtrodden (2009), and co-authored a biography of Parley P. Pratt (2011), with Terryl Givens. He formerly directed the Center for Communal Studies housed at the University of Southern Indiana. As of 2012, Grow was the director of publications for the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was among scholars preparing for publication of the Joseph Smith Papers.
Patrick Q. Mason is an American historian specializing in the study of the Latter-day Saint movement. Since 2019, he has held the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.
J. Quin Monson is an American political scientist and associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He is also a senior scholar at the university's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.
Benjamin E. Park is an American historian concentrating on early American political, religious, and intellectual history, history of gender, religious studies, slavery, anti-slavery, and Atlantic history. Park is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University.
This is a bibliography of works on the Latter Day Saint movement.
