Mormonism or the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter–day Saints

Mormonism and the Bahá'í FaithWilliam P. Collins Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a new religious tradition that emerged from American Protestant Christianity in the early nineteenth century through the teachings of the Mormon "prophet" Joseph Smith .During a period of religious revival in western New York state in the 1820s, Smith claimed to have received visitations from an angel who showed him buried golden plates bearing the record of inhabitants of the American continent, descended from Jews who migrated to the new world about 600 B.C.These Joseph Smith proceeded to "translate" and then publish in 1830 as The Book of Mormon.In his youth, Smith experienced spiritual visions in which he was told by Jesus Christ not to join any of the then competing sects as these had all arisen from a Christianity that had apostatized from the "true Gospel."With the release of The Book of Mormon, those who recognized it as a divine book felt the need to have a church that would embody the doctrines of a new and authentic Christianity.In April, 1830, Joseph Smith and a few associates founded the Church of Jesus Christ, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.The Latter-day Saint or Mormon movement now encompasses two major denominations (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with over 7 million members and, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with some half-million members) and scores of small groups that descend from the visionary ideals of Joseph Smith.Smith received, during the fourteen years of his leadership of the Mormon Church, many "revelations" on doctrine and organization.These became part of a second volume of scripture entitled The Doctrine and Covenants.He also "translated" an Egyptian papyrus, which he claimed to be the memoirs of Abraham and Moses.(The original papyri were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and presented to the Mormon Church in 1967; the papyri are, according to Egyptologists, ordinary funeral papyri with no reference to Abraham.)These together with a selection of other statements from a third standard work of Mormon holy texts known as The Pearl of Great Price.Mormons consider the Bible their fourth standard sacred text.Smith was an innovator in religious doctrine, as evidenced in the Mormon views of God as a physical being, limited in time and space; of God as an exalted man, and of men as gods in embryo; of matter as having eternal uncreated existence; and in special ceremonies for the salvation of the dead and the solemnization of plural marriage (no longer officially practiced) and celestial marriage.Mormonism played an important role in the development of the American frontier in New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and the intermountain West throughout the nineteenth century.Smith was assassinated in an Illinois jail by an anti-Mormon mob in June, 1844.The main branch of Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, has developed under the guidance of Brigham Young and succeeding church presidents into an international movement with increasingly large membership in Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America. Historical Contacts between Bahá'ís and MormonsOn a personal level there have been important exchanges.Ali-Kuli Khan, Persian chargé d'affaires in Washington and a Bahá'í, attended the International Dry-Land Congress in 1912.John A. Widtsoe (1872-1952), president of the Utah State Agricultural College and later a member of the Mormon Church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles, also attended.The two established a friendship that led to enrollment of Iranian students in Utah schools and the offer of agricultural assistance to Iran.In September, 1912, 'Abdu'l-Bahá spent two days in Salt Lake City during his missionary tour of North America.He attended a session of the National Irrigation Congress in the Mormon Tabernacle, at which he was offered a seat on the speakers' platform.Mahmúd Zarqání records in his diary that while speaking to the press, 'Abdu'l-Bahá contrasted the National Irrigation Congress with the "congress" created by Bahá'u'lláh in Persia, stating that whereas the former was under the aegis of a particular church, the latter was under the tent of the unity of humankind and international peace.Xorol Robinson Oliver, daughter of Alice Walter Smith and Oliver LeGrand Robinson, came from a wellknown Mormon family.Her aunt Alice Robinson Richards was Salt Lake City temple matron and her uncle George Franklin Richards, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.Oliver's given name is not known for certain.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.