Dallin Harris Oaks is an American religious leader and former jurist and academic who since 2018 has been the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984. Currently, he is the second most senior apostle by years of service and is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Kolob is a star or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Several Latter Day Saint denominations hold the Book of Abraham to have been translated from an Egyptian papyrus scroll by Joseph Smith, the founder of the movement. According to this work, Kolob is the heavenly body nearest to the throne of God. While the Book of Abraham calls Kolob a "star", it also calls planets "stars", and therefore some Latter Day Saint commentators consider Kolob a planet. The body also appears in Latter Day Saint culture, including a reference to Kolob in an LDS hymn.
Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.
Robert L. Millet is a professor of ancient scripture and emeritus Dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. Millet is a Latter-day Saint author and speaker with more than 60 published works on virtually all aspects of Mormonism. Millet was at the forefront of establishing evangelical-Mormon dialogue.
Willard Cleon Skousen was an American conservative author with the John Birch Society and a faith-based conspiracy theorist. A notable anti-communist and supporter of the John Birch Society, Skousen's works involved a wide range of subjects including the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, New World Order conspiracies, and parenting. His most popular works are The Five Thousand Year Leap and The Naked Communist.
Royal Jon Skousen is an American linguist and retired professor of linguistics and English at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he is editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. He is "the leading expert on the textual history of the Book of Mormon" and the founder of the analogical modeling approach to language modeling.
In the Book of Mormon, Zenock is a nonbiblical prophet whose described life predates the events of the book's main plot and whose prophecies and statements are recorded upon the brass plates possessed by the Nephites. In the narrative, Zenock is a descendant of the biblical Joseph, and he is also an ancestor of the Nephites. Narrators of the Book of Mormon and Nephite prophets quote or paraphrase Zenock several times in the course of the text, including Nephi, Alma, son of Alma, Amulek, Nephi, son of Helaman, and Mormon. Zenock's teachings as referenced in the Book of Mormon include prophesying about the Messiah, describing the death of Jesus as part of the Christian atonement, and rebuking people who reject that message. In the Book of Alma, Alma reports that Zenock was stoned to death for preaching that the Messiah would be the "Son of God."
Many members of the Latter Day Saint movement believe that the Book of Mormon is historically accurate. Most, but not all, Mormons hold the book's connection to ancient American history as an article of their faith. This view finds no confirmation outside of Mormonism in the broader scientific community. Mainstream archaeological, historical, and scientific communities do not consider the Book of Mormon an ancient record of actual historical events.
Dean Cornell Jessee is a historian of the early Latter Day Saint movement and leading expert on the writings of Joseph Smith Jr.
Bookcraft was a major publisher of books and products for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Richard Douglas Poll was an American historian, academic, author and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His liberal religiosity influenced his notable metaphor about "Iron Rod" vs. "Liahona" LDS Church members.
Richard Eyring "Rick" Turley Jr. is an American historian and genealogist. He previously served as both an Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as managing director of the church's public affairs department.
The Association for Mormon Letters (AML) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 to "foster scholarly and creative work in Mormon letters and to promote fellowship among scholars and writers of Mormon literature." Other stated purposes have included promoting the "production and study of Mormon literature" and the encouragement of quality writing "by, for, and about Mormons." The broadness of this definition of LDS literature has led the AML to focus on a wide variety of work that has sometimes been neglected in the Mormon community. It publishes criticism on such writing, hosts an annual conference, and offers awards to works of fiction, poetry, essay, criticism, drama, film, and other genres. It published the literary journal Irreantum from 1999 to 2013 and currently publishes an online-only version of the journal, which began in 2018. The AML's blog, Dawning of a Brighter Day, launched in 2009. As of 2012, the association also promotes LDS literature through the use of social media. The AML has been described as an "influential proponent of Mormon literary fiction."
Henry Johnson Eyring is an American academic administrator who served as the 17th president of Brigham Young University–Idaho (BYU–Idaho) from 2017 to 2023. From 2019 to 2023, he also served as an area seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He previously served as both the academic and the advancement vice president at BYU-Idaho, as well as director of the Marriott School of Business (MSB) MBA program at Brigham Young University (BYU).
The Religious Studies Center (RSC) is the research and publishing arm of Religious Education at Brigham Young University (BYU), sponsoring scholarship on the culture, history, scripture, and doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The dean of Religious Education serves as the RSC's director, and an associate dean oversees the two branches of the RSC: research and publications.
Jay Atwell Parry is an American author. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his LDS nonfiction and his books about George Washington.
Glen Nelson is an American poet, librettist, publisher, writer, and a ghostwriter of several New York Times nonfiction bestsellers. He wrote the libretto for The Book of Gold, an opera about Joseph Smith publishing the Book of Mormon. He is the founder of New York City's Mormon Artists Group and co-founder of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. He has written several nonfiction books that focus on Mormon artists.
James Goldberg is an American historian, playwright, poet, and writer. He has Jewish, European, and Punjabi ancestors, and his grandfather, Gurcharan Singh Gill, was the first Sikh to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended Otterbein University briefly before transferring to Brigham Young University (BYU), where he completed his undergraduate work and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. He was an adjunct professor at BYU.
This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 1950s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to queer individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings. However, top LDS leaders only started regularly addressing queer topics in public in the late 1950s. Since 1970, the LDS Church has had at least one official publication or speech from a high-ranking leader referencing LGBT topics every year, and a greater number of LGBT Mormon and former Mormon individuals have received media coverage.
