I was the chief person running the page “Heart of Discernment”. A lot of what we did was find good quotes from across the Restoration. I have decided instead of letting those quotes gather dust and be forgotten that I would put them here! I have found these quotes from public archives, public sermons, and books, and I cite where it was found.
I will be organizing the quotes by person, but within each person’s section there will be no particular order to the quotes. Additionally, I will not be putting any titles associated with these people; they are all people that I consider important and noteworthy members of the Restoration, and that suffices.
There are a couple of other groups that have found many quotes that have been added here, and I’d like to recognize them. Thank you Progressive Mormon Teachings and From The Desk for your work on similar projects!
This collection is not a ministry of or authorized by any sect or group within the Restoration. This is just a labor of love for me.
Index
- Joseph Smith Jr
- Peter Judd
- Andrew Bolton
- Art Smith
- Jason W. Briggs
- David Brock
- Carla Long
- Roy A. Cheville
- Clifford A. Cole
- Leonard M. Young
- Wallace B. Smith
- Shandra K. Newcom
- Maurice L. Draper
- Paul M. Edwards
- F. Henry Edwards
- Harry J. Fielding
- Frederick M. Smith
- Zenos H. Gurley, Sr.
- John C. Hamer
- Chris B. Hartshorn,
- Jaxon Washburn
- Jaime Harker
- Lachlan Mackay
- Linda “Lu” Mountenay
- Charles D. Neff
- Everett Graffeo
- Brigham Young
- Susa Young Gates
- Joseph Smith III
- Katie Harmon-McLaughlin
- Leandro Palacios
- Deb Luce
- W. Wallace Smith
- Alan D. Tyree
- Em J. Gray
- Blaire Ostler
- B.H. Roberts
- Daniel O. McClellan
- John Robert Crane
- Rodney Turner
- George Albert Smith
- Duane E. Couey
- Stassi D. Cramm
- Elbert A. Smith
- Elle Mills
- Karin F. Peter
- Stephen M. Veazey
- Bunda Chibwe
- John A. Widtsoe
- Lindsay Hansen Park
- Wilford Woodruff
- Hugh B. Brown
- Joseph F. Smith
- Harold B. Lee
- Sarah Williams
- Havah Pratt
- Adam M. Shaffer
- Rob Lauer
- Istvan Jamrik
- Erastus Snow
- Roman
- Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
- Ebenezer Robinson
- Simon Dyke Sr.
- J. Reuben Clark
- Thomas S. Monson
- James E. Faust
- Samuel W. Richards
- Chieko N. Okazaki
- Sharlee Mullins Glenn
- McArthur Krishna
- Rudger Clawson
- J. Golden Kimball
- Helmuth Hübener
- Cyrus Simper
- Nathan Kitchen
- Larry Tidwell
- David O. McKay
- John Taylor
- W. Grant McMurray
- Matthew Frizzell
- Kelli D. Potter
- Amasa Mason Lyman
- Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
- Lincoln
- Dieter F. Uchtdorf
- Orson F. Whitney
- LDS First Presidency / Church Statements
- Lorenzo Snow
- Richard L. Evans
- Gordon B. Hinckley
- Annalee Skarin
- Shannon McAdam
- Lizza Jacobs
- Nancy Ross
- Charlotte Scholl Shurtz
- Alisha Anderson
- Joel McDonald
- Edward W. Tullidge
- Benjamin F. Johnson
- Ralph R. Harding
- Alma Frances Pellett
- Larkin Swain
- Hannah Crowther
- Jenet Erickson
- Benjamin E. Park
- Hyrum Smith
- Orson Pratt
- Patrick D. Degn
- Melissa Jane Cesaria Erickson
- Jessica Spence Moss
- Krystal Moore
- M. Russell Ballard
- George Q. Cannon
- Lowell L. Bennion
- Neal A. Maxwell
- Ronald E. Poelman
- Parley P. Pratt
- Marriner S. Eccles
- Natasha Helfer
- Russell M. Nelson
- Joseph Fielding Smith
- Heber J. Grant
- Eliza R. Snow
- Joseph B. Wirthlin
- Justin Francom
- George W. Williams Jr.
- Lorenzo Watson
- Andrew Kimball
- Henry Franklin Kane
- Dora Bigelow Kane
- Lenora Barlow
- Ida Smith
- James Talmage
- Leonard J. Arrington
- Alexander B. Morrison
- Martha Hughes Cannon
- Ralph Vary Chamberlin
- Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.
- Henry Eyring
- Gay Mormon Wizard
- Mark E. Peterson
- Theodore M. Burton
- Patrick Kearon
- G. Michael Alder
- Taylor G. Petrey
- Laurie Lee Hall
- Orson Hyde
1. Joseph Smith Jr.
The inquiry is frequently made of me, “Wherein do you differ from others in your religious views?” In reality and essence, we do not differ so far in our religious views – … we could all drink into one principle of love. One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth; let it come from whence it may.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Sermon given on July 9th, 1843
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No; I will left them up, and in their own way too … I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do … for truth will cut its own way.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Sermon given on July 9th, 1843
Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraced it felt himself at liberty to embrace every truth. Consequently, the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft falls at once from his neck and his eyes are opened to see the truth.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Letter to Isaac Galland – March 22nd, 1839
Truth greatly prevails over priestcraft. hence the priests are alarmed and they raise a hue and cry: “Down with these men! Heresy! Heresy! Fanaticism! False prophet! False teachers! Away with these men! Crucify them! Crucify them!”
Joseph Smith Jr.
Letter to Isaac Galland – March 22nd, 1839
The doctrine of the Latter Day Saints, is truth … you may think that it is a broad assertion that it is truth; but … the first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is that we believe that we have a right to embrace all and every item of truth without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Letter to Isaac Galland – March 22nd, 1839
When that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same, we feel ourselves bound by the laws of God, to observe and do strictly … all things whatsoever is manifest unto us. … we have a perfect, and indefeasible right to embrace all such commandments and do them.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Letter to Isaac Galland – March 22nd, 1839
Any manifestation [must have] application to us, being adapted to our situation and circumstances, [such as] age, and generation of life; … God will not command anything, but what is peculiarly adapted in itself to ameliorate the condition of every man under whatever circumstances it may find him. it matters not what kingdom or country he may be in. We believe that it is our privilege to reject all things, whatsoever is clearly manifested to us that they do not have a bearing upon us.
Such as, for instance, it is not binding on us to build an Ark, because God commanded Noah to build one. It would not be applicable to our case; we are not looking for a flood. It is not binding on us to lead the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, because God commanded Moses. The children of Israel are not in bondage to the Egyptians, as they were then; our circumstances are very different.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Letter to Isaac Galland – March 22nd, 1839
Love is one of the leading characteristics of Deity, and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the [Children] of God. A [person] filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing [their] family alone, but ranges through the world, anxious to bless the whole of the human family.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Joseph Smith Jr, Letter to Quorum of the Twelve, December 15th, 1840
Let me be resurrected with the Saints whether I ascend to heaven, descend to hell, or go to any other place. If we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it.
Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are if the society be good?
Joseph Smith Jr.
Sermon preached on July 23rd, 1843
Away with self-righteousness. the best measure or principle to bring the poor to repentance is to administer to their wants
Joseph Smith Jr.
Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes
It is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other’s embrace, and renew their conversation.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Sermon preached on April 16th, 1843
Have the Presbyterians any truth? Yes. Have the Baptists, Methodists, etc., any truth? Yes. Embrace that truth! Get all the good in the world, and you will come out a pure Mormon.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 3, 15 July 1843–29 February 1844; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, page 316; Don Bradley’s reconstruction of this quote
Nothing can reclaim the human mind from its ignorance, bigotry, superstition, etc., but those grand and sublime principles of equal rights and universal freedom to all men.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11th, 1844
I did not like the old man being called up [before the High Council] for erring in doctrine. It looks too much like the Methodists – who have creeds which a man must believe or be kicked out of their church – and not like the Latter Day Saints. I want the liberty of thinking and believing as I please; it feels so good not to be tramelled. It does not prove that a man is not a good man, because he errs in doctrine. The High Council undertook to censure and correct Elder Pelatiah Brown because of his teaching… whether they actually corrected him or not I am a little doubtful, but don’t care.
Joseph Smith Jr.
Discourse on April 8th, 1843 (Synthesized from various accounts)
2. Peter Judd
We often even see our differences from each other … as the source of division rather than opportunity for growth and delight in the wide range of God’s creation.
Peter Judd
“Infinite Worth”, Daily Bread, September 23rd, 2023
In community we live out interdependence with one another and with all forms of God’s creation in mutually affirming ways.
Peter Judd
“Infinite Worth”, Daily Bread, September 23rd, 2023
The concept of authority can be distinguished from that of power.
With regards to priesthood, authority means that when members are ordained the church is granting them the right to perform certain acts (administration of sacraments). By granting authority the church agrees to accept the validity of these acts.
Power, on the other hand, means that God gives the ordained the capability to perform these same acts (administration of sacraments), which they otherwise could not do.
Although Latter Day Saints have emphasized authority in priesthood, an understanding of power, in this regard, has by no means been absent.
Peter Judd
“The sacraments”, Chapter 6: “Ordination”, page 95-96
Another way of illustrating the distinction between authority and power is to talk in terms of external authority and internal authority.
Ordained members, by virtue of being ordained to certain offices, have the external authority.
Internal Authority, on the other hand, is evidenced by the manner in which persons perform these functions.
Matthew 7:29 KJV reads, “For he [Jesus] taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Clearly the scribes had external authority, but Jesus had internal authority. Jesus’ authority was recognized by those who witnessed his ministry. However, Jesus did not have what was accepted by many as external authority in his day.
This suggests the possibility that internal authority may be resident within individuals who do not have external authority.
Peter Judd
“The sacraments”, Chapter 6: “Ordination”, page 96
3. Andrew Bolton
Speaking truth to power on behalf of, and with those wronged, is an extension of our testimony tradition in Community of Christ.
… The first act of justice is to listen to the pain, see the hurt and suffering.
The second act is doing something. This includes speaking respectfully to those who can change things.
Andrew Bolton
Herald Vol. 169-4:24 (July/Aug 2022)
4. Art Smith
Text without context is a pretext
Art Smith
Sermon on June 18th, 2023
The sad reality is that so much of what passes for Christianity today, in many contexts, is a patchwork of passages like [Luke 6:46-49], that eliminate the overarching and foundational vision of God’s justice. So often, what replaces the rock of Christ, in the day to day lives of so called Christians includes a lot of bigotry.
Art Smith
Sermon on June 18th, 2023
Reading the Bible in context means that we recognize that it’s an ancient text. We sometimes have to differentiate between the prophetic voice and some parroting of patriarchy and prejudices of the author’s world.
Art Smith
Sermon on June 18th, 2023
if I’m going to build on the rock then I need to take a good look at myself. Sure, I’m not out protesting Pride [month] events, but has my congregation, my faith community, my leadership team, gotten it together to do the intentional work of learning about the queer community, of truly examining our own prejudices and bigotries? My own prejudices and bigotries?
Art Smith
Sermon on June 18th, 2023
[Jesus] seems to have been more interested in people, and not so much in that old instruction manual. Not even in the old priesthood structure. Mind you, He was fearless when it came to going off script. His priority was people. He called those from the margins into a new leadership. Women, tax collectors, Samaritans, Tanners, people working purple dye, [and] those condemned or ostracized, often by the very priesthood established under Solomon. He invited the edges into the centre. He created scandal and developed a reputation as a radical. … Look for ways to turn the world upside down like Jesus did. Give yourself permission to overturn a few tables in moments of rage for the abuses of the poor and marginalized
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
Friends, beware of following the detailed maps of your parents, grandparents, or kings of old. Be careful about placing your trust in the details of revelations from the past. The world has changed in so many ways. Instead of looking brave, you risk irrelevance. … Trust less in church structure and more in leading
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
Change, be changed; this is courage.
Experiment, start over; this is courage.
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
Invest in relationships, especially with those on the margins.
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
Invest in learning from marginalized people. For me, this past year of watching legislators or people in power, systematically and stubbornly refusing to listen to people who are different, telling their own stories, and instead slandering kids and unconventional people for their sexual orientations, gender identities, or just for being different, without listening, has taught me a thing or two about how much courage it takes to stand before those people, just to tell your story. Tell your story, vulnerably, to someone in the dominant group, this is courage.
Give up on an old assumption, even the assumption that you know what God’s vision and call is. This is the “continuing” part of “Continuing Revelation.” Listen instead to God pleading through a queer person, through a trans kid, through an immigrant or a refugee, through a single mom. Through an incarcerated person, an indigenous person, a sex worker, or through a person who can’t hold a job. … Listen. This is courage.
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
God is speaking the plans. Will we listen?
Will we listen to those on the margins, as they share their stories, and whisper the hints at what God wants to do?
Art Smith
Sermon on October 22nd, 2023
5. Jason W. Briggs
The bare mention of “fighting Saints” generates in our minds incongruities, a chaotic mixture of opposites, distorted images of lambs with claws, and doves with talons and fangs — misery with veins of bliss running through it.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
War is a monster; a desolator, a scourge; the sum of all the calamities that flesh is heir to, all this is conceded in the abstract by Christian men as well as Saints.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
Each party in all wars suppose some god to be on their side. If both parties are Christians, each supposes the same God to be on their side, as if war was the offspring of some of the attributes of God.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
The sinews of war is its power to crush, and these sinews are furnished by the rich, the capitalists take the loans and so enable war to act itself out
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
Patriotism, in short, is on both sides of every question and every struggle, it is the inspiration of all wars … Patriotism as a ruling sentiment flatly contradicts the gospel, for it teaches to love our own, and despise others. Hence, patriotic duties may or may not agree with moral duties.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
The children of this world understand that the religion of Christ forbids war and all violence. While the children of the kingdom are discussing whether or not the “Saints shall fight.”
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
There can be no doubt that Jesus Christ was a non-resistant, and when His teachings become the rule of nations war will have ceased.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
who is a Saint? Is he not one who adopts the precepts and has the Spirit of Christ? Certainly. Then if when the nations are converted they will not “fight” nor go to war, how can the Saints who are now converted do so? That is, can they fight without violating the precepts of the Savior or is it a moral duty to go to war and fight? We decidedly think not.
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
Jesus said: “If my kingdom was of this world then would my servants (the Saints) fight, but now is not from hence.” (John 18:36)
Therefore, they will not fight to defend it nor their king.
Now here is a very pertinent question: If the Saints are not permitted to fight to defend the kingdom of God, to defend their king, their own Shepherd and Savior, are they permitted to fight in defense of other lords and other kingdoms?
Jason W. Briggs
“War and the Relation of Saints Thereto” Herald (Vol. 9-4:53) – February 15th, 1866
6. David Brock
I can no longer view that … RLDS priesthood [as] the only priesthood having authority (or full authority) to administer sacraments leading to salvation
David Brock
“Theology: Authority, Membership, and Baptism”, page 11
All Are Called. All and everyone! I believe in the “priesthood of all believers.” Maybe even the “priesthood of all believers and all unbelievers”! Some days the called minister of God is an atheist or secular humanist. Other days a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist. Sometimes a Unitarian, Mormon, or some brand of fundamentalist. Or on other days a “fallen” Community of Christ member who seemingly got lost in a vast wilderness!
The carefully and wisely constructed structure [of the priesthood] shapes and guides us, but it cannot contain this wild God who loves to color outside God’s own lines.
David Brock
Herald 161-11:5 (November 2014)
7. Carla Long
As a prophetic church, we must seek to uphold and restore the worth of all persons individually and in the community, challenging unjust systems that diminish human worth. …
Those unjust systems … that uphold the right of one over the other and that make people less than the other are not of God.
Carla Long
Sermon “Stand for the Worth of All Persons”, November 26th, 2022
8. Roy A. Cheville
Whenever any authority will not stand up under scrutiny it must be inadequate in itself
Roy A. Cheville
“By What Authority?” page 8
In theory we say our authority comes from God;
in practice we tend to look to some intermediary as the authority. It may be scriptures, or a creed, or an administrative official, or some usage of the church.
If some interpretation or practice continues long enough, we tend to ascribe authority to it and to read into it the voice of God.
Sometimes it is considered heresy or insubordination if someone dares to question whether such-and-such is the voice of God or the intermediate expression of what is considered the voice of God.
Roy A. Cheville
“By What Authority?” Lecture 1
Healthy, functional religion is concerned with what is taking place in the lives of people where they are
Roy A. Cheville
“By What Authority?” Page 9
I call you to expect expanding vision and continuing expression. Remember that Zion is not a finalized achievement but a way of living that is ever in process. Remember that in the work of your God, who is Source for Zionic living, there is no end in creative expression. Start where you are, simply, soundly. Continue step by step.
Roy A. Cheville
“Zionic Revelation” given on August 24, 1969 at Park College,
Published in November 1969 Herald (Vol. 116-11:14)
Any person who has to rely on their priesthood title to make their words be heard and received by the people must be lacking in the genuine authority that gives them the right to be heard and to be respected.
Roy A. Cheville
“By What Authority?” Chapter 4
9. Clifford A. Cole
Too often in the past the minority has simply been frozen out and has silently drifted away. …
It appears to me that we really are faced with the decision of determining what we believe about the church. Should we allow it to become an institution which ministers to only one segment of society?
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
Traditionally Christian denominations have started among the downtrodden and disinherited. As time has progressed their response to the gospel has lifted them socially and economically in society until they have achieved a place of so-called respectability. The membership has become fairly homogeneous, and the denomination has become a class-oriented institution which says its doors are open to all, but which in reality effectively squeezes out any who do not assimilate readily into its class structure. In an astonishingly rapid measure this has happened in [community of Christ].
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
If at any point our attitudes toward others exclude them from our fellowship because of class, cultural, or racial differences, this in itself may be strong evidence that we are not really the church [of Jesus Christ] at all. I pray this will never happen.
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
With the growing willingness to accept responsibility, there must be freedom of autonomy given. The church in each nation needs to hold its property, maintain its juridical person, and determine its program within its own national structure. As far as I am aware no Christian denomination has ever grown to be very significant in any country where this kind of autonomy has been denied.
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
Some will say, “What, then, holds the church together?” To this I must reply that it is held together by its commitment and its allegiance to the world church, not by having its decisions made in the Joint Council or its property held in the name of the World Church. The church must essentially be held together by the following:
A. It’s common respect for and willingness to accept ministry from the world church officers
B. Its common acceptance of and willingness to live by the scriptures, i.e., the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants.
C. Its participation in and willingness to abide by the actions of the World Conference.
D. The ministry of World Church appointees who are assigned by the Joint Council and approved by the World Conference, as well as the jurisdiction to which they are assigned. These act as a uniting force in tying the church together as one body.
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
A further serious matter requiring adjustments in our consideration has to do with our continued delusion that we are in some way carrying the so-called “white man’s burden” for the rest of the world. This gives us a sense of worth and considerable satisfaction to think that we are able to help the poverty-stricken, the ignorant, and those without the benefit of the Christian hope.
In reality, however, this not only harms us because it makes us think more highly of ourselves than we ought, fosters self-righteousness on our part in our attitude toward other nations, and causes us to impose ourselves upon others in a kind of neo-colonialism, but it also takes from the very ones we want to assist the most precious possession which they have-their self-respect and sense of worth.
Clifford A. Cole
“Theological Perspectives of World Mission”, July 1971 Saints Herald (Vol. 118-7:10)
When we talk about authority in terms of its effect on our present life, or the power of the church to influence living conditions today rather than in the life after death, then the issue of our authority as against the authority of others seems less black and white. For example, when we are asked who has authority to heal the sick, assist the poverty-stricken, reduce violence, or eliminate war, we must admit that authority in these spheres resides in varying degrees in many places
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
We have every reason to believe that our forefathers would be greatly disappointed in us if we did not arise to the demands of our time. It is our responsibility to reevaluate the image we have of the church and the message and strategy which should be employed to achieve its mission.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
We are called to be a prophetic church, not merely to answer issues which confronted past generations but rather – undergirded by the same pioneering spirit which gave our forebears the power to triumph – to confront the issues of today triumphantly.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
A self-serving church loses its sense of meaning, while a church that is committed to God’s call to serve will experience the glory of renewal and spiritual power.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
If the church tries to take over or control other [cultures], it will be resented as a foreign (and therefore improper) influence. But if it sends persons out to stand on their own, fully identified with the body of which they are a part, then their contribution arises from within that body rather than being dictated from without. Such a person appropriately carries the burdens of those with whom he is identified and is indigenous rather than alien to the group.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
The World Church needs to find ways of loosening its controls on its national and local jurisdictions and take joy in their accomplishments. If the church is not to be unduly restricted in its growth and in pursuing its mission, there must be more decentralizing of administration, more encouraging freedom of initiative on the part of the local jurisdictions to the body of Christ in their sphere of action. In a very real sense, the World Church should be not so much the director of all the parts as the enabler, inspirer, and strengthener of them. The church should be the fellowship of those who have set their hands in every nation to be the light of Christ in that culture, to help the new world be born. If this is to happen, the World Church must be willing to give freedom of action to its local jurisdictions, even at the risk of their acting unwisely at times. The price of success is always the possibility of failure. When we look at the major problems of today, we must say God needs an enabling people to give courage to the nations, to help point the way, and to open their eyes to a new vision. The church as an organization must submerge its own ambition to receive recognition for its accomplishments and to control the Christian expression of its component parts in order to bring recognition to those it enables to do God’s work.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
We believe that we should take stock of our course from time to time to see clearly how we arrived at our present position and where our direction will carry us.
Clifford A. Cole
The Cause of Zion
As a church we are called to pay the price of being prophetic. Our mission is to sound the prophetic voice in a world that is amazingly dynamic, but torn by strife, often bewildered, prone to selfishness, terribly belligerent, and increasingly disillusioned. The demands laid upon us in order to become prophets to our generation are great. It is appropriate that we take a hard look at what those demands are.
Clifford A. Cole
“The Prophetic Voice, Called to Mission”
January 1976 Saints Herald (Vol. 123-1:14)
If we are to be prophetic we must pay the price to understand the world in which we are cast. We must discern the signs of the times, and with a deep appreciation and love for that world speak to it in its own language and in the spirit of the reconciling love of God.
Clifford A. Cole
“The Prophetic Voice, Called to Mission”
January 1976 Saints Herald (Vol. 123-1:14)
I do not believe… that it is possible for a Divine plan to be given at one time in one place which is the correct model for all times and all cultures.
Clifford A. Cole
“The Prophetic Voice, Called to Mission”
January 1976 Saints Herald (Vol. 123-1:15)
As a church we tend to be conservative. There are values to this, but we must never let conservatism be a cover-up for our yen to hold fast to the past because we do not fully understand the present and are suspicious of change which we do not comprehend.
On the other hand, quite as great an error is made by the progressive who doesn’t pay the price to understand the present or its meanings for the future and therefore mistakes innovation for progress. He makes changes for the sake of freshness without really knowing whether or not the innovations lead to any worthwhile objective.
Neither of these approaches exact from us a prophetic leadership. They are cheap ways of trying to lead without hard and costly preparation.
Clifford A. Cole
“The Prophetic Voice, Called to Mission”
January 1976 Saints Herald (Vol. 123-1:16)
10. Leonard M. Young
A prophetic people do not accept the statement of the traditionalist that, “It is so,” just because it used to be so. People of vision do not allow the understandings of the past to be forgotten, but, also, they refuse to be bound by the past when dealing with the present.
Leonard M. Young
“The Burden of “So”
Saints’ Herald Vol. 140-6 (June 1993) pg. 13-14 (237-238)
Living prophetically means letting go of the need for certainty
Leonard M. Young
“The Burden of “So”
Saints’ Herald Vol. 140-6 (June 1993) pg. 13-14 (237-238)
As individuals feel progressively excluded from the decision-making process, either by choice or by default, an atrophying of personal essence occurs. Every time we ignore our calling as fully capable being, we become less of who we are and more a mirror that only reflects the real decision makers.
Leonard M. Young
“The Burden of “So”
Saints’ Herald Vol. 140-6 (June 1993) pg. 13-14 (237-238)
From the beginning of our faith movement, Latter Day Saints have … been willing to ask if established things are really so.
Leonard M. Young
“The Burden of “So”
Saints’ Herald Vol. 140-6 (June 1993) pg. 13-14 (237-238)
A prophetic people refuse simply to say, “It is so,” just because it is presently so. Such people constructively try to change situations in the world that others simply accept as “the way things are.”
Leonard M. Young
“The Burden of “So”
Saints’ Herald Vol. 140-6 (June 1993) pg. 13-14 (237-238)
11. Wallace B. Smith
There is a rhythm to life – and the repeated and continuing experiences of many generations seem to affirm this observation. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament as recorded in Ecclesiastes reminds us that “For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die…”
Wallace B. Smith
“Life Is Behind Us, Life Is Before”
1987 March Herald (Vol. 134-3:93)
The collective activity of living and reliving life’s experiences… is our story and our song… the process has been going on a long time – generation after generation, long before written history was recorded – and our faith is that it will continue indefinitely into the future.
Wallace B. Smith
“Life Is Behind Us, Life Is Before”
1987 March Herald (Vol. 134-3:93)
The gospel is the assurance that we can stop denying what we actually are, and that we can own our existence in the world as God’s people.
Wallace B. Smith
Presidential Paper #4: The Mission and Future of the Church
12. Shandra K. Newcom
The call of Christ is not easy. In the face of oppression we are called to be radical, to speak out, and to challenge assumptions. …
I pray for the day when our commitment to living as Christians includes confronting our own fears and prejudices. Only then can we begin to open ourselves to all people … and know them as children of God.
Shandra K. Newcom
“Children of God”
October 1994 Saints Herald (Vol. 141-10:427)
We are not created to be clones, identical in every way. The diversity of the body of Christ is a gift we have been given in grace. … We are doing ourselves a great disservice when we do not include all people fully and openly in all our sacraments, specifically marriage and ordination.
Shandra K. Newcom
“Children of God”
October 1994 Saints Herald (Vol. 141-10:427)
13. Maurice L. Draper
Priesthood authority in the Restoration movement has never been regarded as a purely legal matter. It is first of all a matter of insight, response to human need, and actual participation in situations which contribute to the satisfaction of that need. “All are called according to the gifts of God unto them” (Doctrine and Covenants 119: 8B). If one is called to minister in terms of his potential capacity in relation to Divine gifts, he is under obligation to refine those gifts, to sharpen his tools of ministry, and to develop skill in the procedures of ministry. In the final analysis, priesthood authority is expressed in effective ministry.
Maurice L. Draper
“The Restoration of Priesthood” in
“A Guide for Good Priesthood Ministry“, 1971
From the sociology of religion come the concepts of the prophetic and the priestly orientation. The former is concerned with values, purposes, objectives, and goals. Persons with an extreme prophetic orientation are impatient with the status quo, and anxious to “get on with the task.” Priestly persons are strongly committed to existing structures and procedures. They become very upset with a prophetic person’s attempts to change the way things are done.
Maurice L. Draper
The Nature of Revelation
Herald 134-5:187 (May 1987)
The prophet stresses new revelation;
the priest urges obedience to already given revelation.
Maurice L. Draper
The Nature of Revelation
Herald 134-5:187 (May 1987)
Revelation is truth, but it is truth relative to the situation
Maurice L. Draper
The Nature of Revelation
Herald 134-5:187 (May 1987)
14. Paul M. Edwards
What we need now are [people] who will lead us into knowing ourselves by not being afraid of themselves.
Paul M. Edwards
“A Plea for Leadership”
Courage Vol. Pilot (April 1970) pg. 56
Wise men are not wise until they have passed judgment on their most familiar thoughts, until they have questioned the company of ideas with which they have walked from birth. They are not wise until they have sensed the subjectivity of these ideas which they have cherished, but which are not the result of a view of their self-knowledge.
Paul M. Edwards
“A Plea for Leadership”
Courage Vol. Pilot (April 1970) pg. 56
15. F. Henry Edwards
We may accept the authority of the minister officiating in the [sacraments] of the church on the basis of their commission, but if no spiritual gains accrue from obedience to the [sacraments] which they administer, then we lose confidence in both the minister and the [sacraments].
More clearly, perhaps, we tend to accept on the basis of their ordination those who are to direct the affairs of [the church], but after a time we reject… those whose record shows no evidence of power in action.
F. Henry Edwards
Authority and Spiritual Power Chapter 1, The Nature of Spiritual Authority
Section 2, Authority is Demonstrated in Power
Any concept of salvation which envisions people enjoying celestial bliss without regard to the situation of their neighbors is misguided and mischievous.
F. Henry Edwards
Authority and Spiritual Power
Chapter 1, The Nature of Spiritual Authority
Section 4, Spiritual Authority is Manifest in Power Unto Salvation
16. Harry J. Fielding
The functions or purposes that the sacraments play in the gathered life of the church are far more important than the particular forms in which they are expressed.
Harry J. Fielding
“The Church and the Sacraments – Toward a Functional Interpretation”,
Restoration Studies III: 21-31 (1986)
The church has become locked into various forms or models and has seen the maintaining of these as its primary calling rather than seeking to discover the basic functions or ministry it is called to perform.
This has been true of the Saints church also, and recent debate over the efficacy of the sacramental ordinances, particularly centered on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, has grown from the “maintenance background” described above. What is crucial for us to recognize is that the sacraments do not belong to the church. We sometimes talk of the sacraments of the church as though these are somehow the prerogative and possession of the church institution.
Harry J. Fielding
“The Church and the Sacraments – Toward a Functional Interpretation”,
Restoration Studies III: 21-31 (1986)
The church itself has, in my opinion, fallen into the trap of maintaining institutional forms at the expense of functioning effectively in the world.
Harry J. Fielding
“The Church and the Sacraments – Toward a Functional Interpretation”,
Restoration Studies III: 21-31 (1986)
Through an insistence on rebaptism we seek to welcome initiates to our fellowship and yet ironically at the same time we are unconsciously degrading their previous Christian commitment.
Harry J. Fielding
“The Church and the Sacraments – Toward a Functional Interpretation”,
Restoration Studies III: 21-31 (1986)
It is strange that we should have at the center of our heritage a revolt against creeds and inflexible dogma yet take so long to realize that we have at times created our own inflexible dogma and in so doing have entered into the process of apostasy.
Harry J. Fielding
“The Church and the Sacraments – Toward a Functional Interpretation”,
Restoration Studies III: 21-31 (1986)
17. Frederick M. Smith
The beautiful visions seen in the peyote teepee have a softening mystic effect upon the devotees, while the psychic power of suggestion perhaps augmenting the therapeutic value of peyote itself has performed some wonders fascinating to the… mind…
Frederick M. Smith
Higher Powers of Man
Those weak of imagination can strengthen it by opium, hasheesh, coco, or one of the several other narcotics, to bring about artificial fancy ecstasies. These visions are even richer in color and form than the natural ones and constitute the highest form of enjoyment
Frederick M. Smith
Higher Powers of Man, page 102
[Peyote was] Chemically studied by [Doctor Ervin E.] Ewell, of the United States Department of Agriculture, under Doctor [H.W.] Wiley … The psychological effects are … to produce color visions, and even bright elysians.
Doctor Wiley in a letter to me relates an amusing experience he had with Doctor Ewell while the latter was under peyote influence. Doctor Ewell, (though Agnostic) while under its influence argued verbosely that there was a heaven, because he saw it.
Frederick M. Smith
Higher Powers of Man, page 113
“From every man according to his capacity and to every man according to his needs,” has, I think, been accepted as expressing in sloganized form the objective of our social reform based on Christian fraternity. It might be necessary to add that surplus must be placed for the benefit and blessing of the group. …
“From every man according to his capacity and to every man according to his needs,” because it is right, because God wills it, because each is his brother’s keeper to the extent of his capacity, and because in a society so organized and functioning there will be greater happiness, more peace, and class friction will be reduced to a minimum if not eradicated.
And that is the Zionic idea and our goal. Onward to Zion!
Frederick M. Smith
Saints’ Herald Vol. 82 pg. 1091
In Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, and Syndicalism, good is to be found though much of their teachings may be undesirable; hence rather than denouncing Communism, rejecting Socialism, chiding Capitalism, and finding Syndicalism too “powerfully concentrated,” the task of the Christian church is to find and preserve, and vitalize the good in all these doctrines and catch them up in some form of social order in which these good things shall be correlated and coordinated in a social program of reform.
Frederick M. Smith
“The Church and Economics”
Saints Herald 80-16:483, April 19th, 1933
Minimum-wage laws, old-age pensions, government regulation of business, and revival of the medieval guild are all palliative merely, and do not strike at the root of our trouble at all.
What the church must stand for is the institution of Christian principles in industry. … our church has stood for a social order in which the dynamic of industrial and political activation shall be on the basis of brotherly love rather than the aggrandizement of selfish interests.
When men can be found working at wealth production for the mere love of contributing to the common weal, the question of a minimum wage will become merely incidental; old-age pension laws will not be needed, for the care of the dependents will automatically be found from the communized surpluses consecrated by the stewards. The amassing of large individual “fortunes” will stop right at the point where these fortunes cease to be used for common good. All above needs and just wants being consecrated to the group will automatically protect against the evils of large fortunes in the hands of persons not dominated by the desire to serve common ends, and will automatically answer the question of law governing the inheriting of large fortunes.
Frederick M. Smith
“The Church and Economics”
Saints Herald 80-16:483, April 19th, 1933
When laborers and capitalists begin working with the goal being the common good rather than aggrandizement of selfish interests, their common interests, because of having a common goal, form a basis on which they freely cooperate, and adjustment of differences becomes easy.
Frederick M. Smith
“The Church and Economics”
Saints Herald 80-16:483, April 19th, 1933
“From every man according to his capacity; to every man according to his needs.”
This is one of the most significant, fundamental, and yet comprehensive definitions for the doctrine of stewardships I have ever read. I do wish that every member of the church… might take it to heart seriously and appreciate its wonderful significance. …
This presents an ideal of society. It presents the ideal towards which we are striving. It crystallizes the goal, the objective of this church. … we have an ideal which, if realized, would lift every man above need or distress. If this ideal were realized, then it would mean that every person in the group would be lifted above the level of need or poverty. That is the ideal.
Frederick M. Smith
Zion and Stewardship
Saints Herald 75-10:276, March 7th, 1928
If thou, oh God, art desirous of revealing thy will to us, or to me, be it far from me to say how.
If it be that thou desirest to write across the arch of thy heaven those words that thou shalt see fit to transmit to thy people, then give me the wisdom to read.
If thou dost choose to manifest thy power in the thunderous tones that thou art capable of giving, so that they will ring through all the arch of heaven, let my ears be open.
If, in the still, small voice that comes from within, thou shalt choose to reveal thy will to me, then let thy Spirit attune my spiritual ear to the reception of thy word.
If thou dost choose to utilize those powers with which thou hast by nature endowed me, quickened by thine own processes of development, to transmit through them the message that thou hast to give to thy people, then my pen shall be ready.
If thou dost choose to bathe my soul in thy spirit until my spiritual vision shall behold what thou dost desire thy people to accomplish, even then shall I endeavor as thy instrument to transmit the message to thy people.
Frederick M. Smith
Zion’s Ensign (Vol. 29-45:5)
18. Zenos H. Gurley, Sr.
When the commandment to organize first came we thought it impossible for us to obey, not having authority to ordain apostles, etc.; but we learned what every Latter-Day Saint must learn: that a command from God is authority to do all that He requires, be it more or less.
Zenos H. Gurley, Sr.
“History of the New Organization of the Church”
March 1860, The True Later Day Saints’ Herald (Vol. 1-3:58)
19. John C. Hamer
It is incumbent upon us as a prophetic people to discern God’s actual vision for the church, and like John the Baptist and Jesus to speak truth to individuals in places of authority, when their human frailties prevent them from seeing beyond their own blinders.
John C. Hamer
Sermon
How do we perceive authority that truly comes from God? When we see someone inside or outside of our own priesthood and community leading by example, acting as a servant of God’s people, of God’s mission, and of God’s saving purposes then we are seeing a person who is exercising true authority from God. As we seek to become a people of the temple, may we live out the Enduring Principles of the gospel together, restoring them to new relevance in the times and contexts we find ourselves. May we pursue the mission initiatives, Christ’s mission, in this world, as we hope to make it ever more Zion-like.
John C. Hamer
Sermon
20. Chris B. Hartshorn
The World Conference of delegates and ex-officii will be allowed to debate issues, but many of these may, if recent practices are followed, be called up for conference action late, be referred to the Joint Council, or a part of it, for disposition; and thus common consent will be aborted. The end result of these procedures may be disillusionment of the membership and disunity in the church.
Chris B. Hartshorn
“The Church as I See it: Now and in the Future”
Courage Vol. Pilot (April 1970) pg. 16
21. Jaxon Washburn
There’s no doubt that Jesus’s teachings have the potential to be divisive insofar as they call us to radical forms of love, empathy, consecrated discipleship, and boundless charity.
Yet he is not the Prince of the Sword, but the Prince of Peace.
The modern world longs for ritual, myth, and reenchantment.
Jaxon Washburn
Facebook post on May 8th, 2025
I actually don’t mind the “cafeteria” metaphor when it comes to religion. I find it can pretty aptly describe the different “diets” or worldviews that different folks adhere to, personal preference for certain “cuisines” or traditions/religious families over others, some foods being more “unhealthy” or harmful than others, special “allergies” some have in specifically excluding particular religions/having prior trauma from them, instances of “fusion” meals/religious syncretism, or the “build your own” buffet-style approach.
Within religious studies, an alternative term for this can be the “religious marketplace.” It is vast and varied and has virtually limitless possible forms.
I think a major difference between folks on this is whether they are self-aware/acknowledge their active participation in this space or if they view their own approach to religious practice as a special exception.
Jaxon Washburn
Facebook post on September 1st, 2025
It remains my personal belief that there just aren’t any compelling theological, moral, or social reasons for why women should be inherently barred from priesthood ordination, priesthood office, or direct ecclesiastical leadership/spiritual oversight of men.
I do not believe in the spiritual, theological, or ecclesiastical priority or superiority of certain kinds of gendered bodies over others.
This is not to say that gender is inconsequential to our spiritual growth or is somehow of little importance, but that I don’t believe gender should determine ecclesiastical, social, political, or ritual hierarchy.
If all that we can point to in defending inherently inequitable systems [social, ecclesiastical, and ceremonial patriarchy] are nebulous citations of Divine Command, it’s completely appropriate to start making our own commands of the Divine in petitioning for greater equity.
Historically, [Mormon] women have prophesied and received revelation. They’ve witnessed angels and administered blessings by the laying on of hands. They have offered the Lord’s Supper as military chaplains. They act as priestesses in the temple. All of these are already performed through God’s power, which is priesthood power.
Ordination + comparably equal ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social standings and opportunities as men are all fully theologically possible within a Restored Gospel framework.
The destiny of the Daughters of our Heavenly Parents is that of unmatched transcendent power, glory, and perfect unity with God while inheriting all of God’s same qualities, attributes, and creative abilities. I want the ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social experience of [Mormon] women to better reflect that.
Jaxon Washburn
Facebook post, March 24th, 2026
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should not possess any unique, exclusive, or enduring claim over the terms Mormon, Mormons, or Mormonism. … Many are the paths, faces, currents, and voices of Mormonism. That plurality should be celebrated and mutually promoted rather than subjected to particular legal restrictions.
In my opinion, keeping the term open and subject to non-exclusive use crosses into matters of freedom of speech, assembly, religion, creative expression, etc.
Jaxon Washburn
Facebook post, March 26th, 2026
I fully believe that our scriptural and prophetic heritage can be used as strong catalysts in bringing additional validation, justice, and empathy to trans persons while recognizing their fundamental dignity and worth. I lament the ways in which Mormonism has often added to their lived burdens. Those harms and attitudes do not reflect the ideals and values of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ which I personally espouse and identify with.
Jaxon Washburn
Facebook post, April 1st, 2026
22. Jaime Harker
The Priesthood, I contend, is preventing Community of Christ’s evolution as a ‘prophetic people,’ because it depends upon hierarchy, obedience, and submission to authority – all qualities that suppress the prophetic in the larger community of believers. A reimagination of priesthood in Community of Christ is long overdue.
Jaime Harker
“Beyond Priesthood: Reimagining the Priestly and the Prophetic (Draft)”
For a decade, leadership in Independence has insisted that they couldn’t possibly institute a church-wide policy that states, clearly and unequivocally, its commitment to full queer inclusion. The reason they have given was to do so would be an act of cultural imperialism, imposing “Western” values onto other nations.
But they had no problem making a universal statement about monogamy.
In both cases, their implicit bias against queer people has become painfully clear.
Jaime Harker
I find it really interesting that for a decade, Independence wrung its hands and insisted it couldn’t possibly have a church-wide policy about full queer inclusion, because cultural imperialism, but they have no problem making a universal policy about monogamy. They are homophobic but don’t want to say so publicly, but they are proud of their anti-polyamorous bigotry.
Jaime Harker
23. Lachlan Mackay
“… We believe the revelatory process is conceptual (the thoughts are inspired, but the word choice is not) rather than plenary (each word is inspired and without error).
… The humanity of the prophetic figure conveying revelation cannot be separated from the process.”
Lachlan Mackay
Restorations: Scholars in dialogue from Community of Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, page 137
24. Linda “Lu” Mountenay
We would be complicit if we remained silent
Linda “Lu” Mountenay
Herald Vol. 161-5:29 (May 2014)
25. Charles D. Neff
The insistence on centralized authority, with all its ramifications in terms of quorum exclusiveness, has meant that the leading councils of the church have spent much of their strength on the struggles of procedure. … My personal concern in this regard is that I have only one life to give. I do not like the thought of spending all my time and strength in this struggle over position, procedures, relationships, rights, and prerogatives. Maybe a new look at the church is in order.
Charles D. Neff
“The Problem of Becoming a World Church”
October 1974 Saints Herald (Vol.121-10
The insistence on centralized authority, with all its ramifications in terms of quorum exclusiveness, has meant that the leading councils of the church have spent much of their strength on the struggles of procedure. …
My personal concern in this regard is that I have only one life to give. I do not like the thought of spending all my time and strength in this struggle over position, procedures, relationships, rights, and prerogatives. Maybe a new look at the church is in order.
Charles D. Neff
“The Problem of Becoming a World Church”
October 1974 Saints Herald (Vol.121-10
Because we are who we are, and because our background is as it is, we have a tendency to reduce to a single concept or view all the societies of the world.
That view tends to be American, middle class, urban, white.
Charles D. Neff
“The Problem of Becoming a World Church”
October 1974 Saints Herald (Vol.121-10
Highly authoritarian, centralized, ecclesiastic, theological, and administrative structures cannot provide adequate leadership for the variety of world situations in which we find ourselves.
Charles D. Neff
“The Problem of Becoming a World Church”
October 1974 Saints Herald (Vol.121-10
Ministry is function rather than status
Charles D. Neff
“The Problem of Becoming a World Church”
October 1974 Saints Herald (Vol.121-10
26. Everett Graffeo
We will be as persistent as weeds and as beautiful as orchids
Everett Graffeo
Order of Evangelist’s 1998 World Conference Report
27. Brigham Young
Money is not real capital. It bears the title only. True capital is labor, and is confined to the laboring classes.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 1, pg 254
[“Mormonism”] embraces every fact there is in the heavens and in the heaven of heavens—every fact there is upon the surface of the earth, in the bowels of the earth, and in the starry heavens; in fine, it embraces all truth there is in all the eternities of the Gods. …
“Mormonism” embraces all truth that is revealed and that is unrevealed,
whether religious, political, scientific, or philosophical.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9, discourse 27
The course pursued by men of business in the world has a tendency to make a few rich, and to sink the masses of the people in poverty and degradation… No matter what comes they are for gain—for gathering around them riches.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 10, pg 348
It has been supposed that wealth gives power. In a depraved state of society, in a certain sense it does, if opening a wide field for unrighteous monopolies, by which the poor are robbed and oppressed and the wealthy are more enriched, is power. In a depraved state of society money can buy positions and titles, can cover up a multitude of incapabilities, can open wide the gates of fashionable society to the lowest and most depraved of human beings; it divides society into castes without any reference to goodness, virtue or truth. It is made to pander to the most brutal passions of the human soul; it is made to subvert every wholesome law of God and man, and to trample down every sacred bond that should tie society together in a national, municipal, domestic, and every other relationship.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, 11, pg 3
“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation,
for time and eternity. No matter who has it.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 11, April 8th, 1867
One of the great evils with which our own nation is menaced at the present time is the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals. The very liberties for which our fathers contended so steadfastly and courageously, and which they bequeathed to us as a priceless legacy, are endangered by the monstrous power which this accumulation of wealth gives to a few individuals and a few powerful corporations.
Brigham Young
Joint statement from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 1875
The experience of mankind has shown that the people of communities and nations among whom wealth is the most equally distributed, enjoy the largest degree of liberty, are the least exposed to tyranny and oppression and suffer the least from luxurious habits which beget vice.
Brigham Young
Joint statement from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 1875
The earth is here, and the fullness thereof is here… one man was not made to trample his fellow man under his feet, and enjoy all his heart desires, while the thousands suffer. We will take a moral view, a political view, and we see the inequality that exists in the human family.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 19, pg 46
Who [are the working poor] laboring for? For those who, many of them, are living in luxury. And, to serve the classes that are living on them, the poor, laboring men and women are toiling, working their lives out to earn that which will keep a little life within them. Is this equality? No! What is going to be done?… we are to revolutionize the world.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 19, pg 46
The Latter-day Saints, in their conduct and acts with regard to financial matters, are like the rest of the world. The course pursued by men of business in the world has a tendency to make a few rich, and to sink the masses of the people in poverty and degradation. Too many of the Elders of Israel take this course. No matter what comes they are for gain—for gathering around them riches
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 11, Discourse 50
As much as the people will pay, so much will the merchants take a hundred, or a thousand percent, if they can get it, and then thank God for their success. They put me in mind of some men I have seen who, when they had a chance to buy a widow’s cow for ten cents on the dollar of her real value in cash, would make the purchase, and then thank the Lord that he had so blessed them. Such men belong to the class of Christians referred to on one occasion by Charles Gunn; and, if you will excuse me, I will tell you what he said about them. He said that “hell was full of such Christians.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 17, Discourse 48
The God that I serve is progressing eternally, and so are His children: they will increase to all eternity
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 11 Pg. 286
Suppose that in this community there are ten beggars who beg from door to door for something to eat, and that nine of them are impostors who beg to escape work, and with an evil heart practice imposition upon the generous and sympathetic, and that only one of the ten who visit your doors is worthy of your bounty; which is best, to give food to the ten, to make sure of helping the truly needy one, or to repulse the ten because you do not know which is the worthy one? You will all say, Administer charitable gifts to the ten, rather than turn away the only truly worthy and truly needy person among them. If you do this, it will make no difference in your blessings, whether you administer to worthy or unworthy persons, inasmuch as you give alms with a single eye to assist the truly needy.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 8 Discourse 3
When a man has power over his neighbor, over his fellow being, and puts him in torment, which is like the flames of everlasting fire, so that he never dares to speak his mind, or walk across the street, or attend to any branch of business without a continual fear of his oppressor, and of the rod hanging over him for punishment, it is worse than to kill and eat him. That is as the torment of hell
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 8 Discourse 26
“I put into you intelligence,” saith the Lord, “that you may know how to govern and control yourselves, and make yourselves comfortable and happy on the earth; and give unto you certain privileges to act upon as independently in your sphere as I do in the government of heaven.”
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 8 Discourse 26
No matter whether we are Jew or Gentile… no matter whether we believe in the Koran as firmly as we now believe in the Bible; no matter whether we have been educated by the Jews, the Gentiles, or the [Khoekhoe]; whether we serve the true and the living God, or a lifeless image, if we are honest before the God we serve.
Brother George Q. Cannon brought me a god from the Sandwich Islands, made out of a piece of wood. If all the people bow down to such a god as that, it is in accordance with their laws and ordinances, and their manner of dealing among themselves; the Lord permits them to do as they please with regard to that matter, and this illustration will apply to all the nations upon the face of the earth. … if they act according to the best of their knowledge, there is a chance for their salvation, as much as there is for the salvation of any other person.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 8 Discourse 26
I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation… Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses Vol. 9 Discourse 27
The whole Government is gone; it is as weak as water.
I heard Joseph Smith say, nearly thirty years ago,
“They shall have mobbing to their heart’s content, if they do not redress [their] wrongs…”
Mobs will not decrease, but will increase until the whole Government becomes a mob, and eventually it will be State against State, city against city, neighborhood against neighborhood, Methodists against Methodists, and so on.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9:5
Whenever the iron hand of oppression and persecution has fallen upon this people,
our opposers have broken their own laws, set at defiance, and trampled under foot
every principle of equal rights, justice, and liberty found written in
that rich legacy of our fathers, The Constitution of the United States.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 2:171
I could say something encouraging to parents, if they would heed. Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 11:215
The devil does not care how much religion there is on the earth… It is popular nowadays to be religious, it has become the seasoning to a great deal of rascality, hypocrisy and crime.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 11:251
Perhaps it may make some of you stumble, were I to ask you a question—Does a man’s being a Prophet in this Church prove that he shall be the President of it? I answer, no! A man may be a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and it may have nothing to do with his being the President of the Church.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 1:113
If we could have got men to control the affairs of the nation who had sufficient foresight and forethought to know the results of their own actions, it would have been better for the nation than it is at present.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 13:149
Of one thing I am sure: God never institutes war; God is not the author of confusion or of war; they are the results of the acts of the children of men. Confusion and war necessarily come as the results of the foolish acts and policy of men; but they do not come because God desires they should come.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 13:149
You have heard me say – and you have heard others say – there is no effect administered here or any where else but by its opposite. It is an eternal principle. Now, can the people understand that? … You could not obtain eternal life unless you did actually know and understand by your experience the good from the evil, the light from the darkness, understand their very holiness and also vice, wickedness, and corruption.
We also understand … why God permitted Mother Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. We should not have been here today if she had not; we could never have possessed wisdom and intelligence if she had not done it. It was all in the economy of heaven, and we need not talk about it; it is all right. We should never blame Mother Eve, not the least. I am thankful to God that I know good from evil, the bitter from the sweet, the things of God from the things not of God.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 13:145
The principles of eternity and eternal exaltation are of no use to us, unless they are brought down to our capacities so that we practice them in our lives.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 4:28
The oldest and most experienced persons in this Church are satisfied that they have by no means learned all that is to be learned concerning things that pertain to this world. To even thoroughly learn all the different branches of mechanism is more than one man can do in this mortal life. The object of this existence is to learn, which we can only do a little at a time.
Brigham Young
January 26, 1862, Journal of Discourses 9:167
We are the children of that Being who lives in the heavens, who is filled with all intelligence, and possesses all power. We cannot be prepared to dwell with [God] unless we instruct our minds and sanctify ourselves in all things. I am happy to see our children engaged in the study and practice of music. Let them be educated in every useful branch of learning, for we, as a people, have in the future to excel the nations of the earth in religion, science, and philosophy.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 12:122
We are in the school and keep learning, and we do not expect to cease learning while we live on earth; and when we pass through the veil, we expect still to continue to learn and increase our fund of information. That may appear a strange idea to some; but it is for the plain and simple reason that we are not capacitated to receive all knowledge at once. We must therefore receive a little here and a little there.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 6:286
I am not going to drive a man or a woman to heaven. A great many think that they will be able to flog people into heaven, but this can never be done, for the intelligence in us is as independent as the Gods. People are not to be driven and you can put into a gnat’s eye all the souls of the children of men that are driven into heaven by preaching hell-fire.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9:124
Learn wisdom, that when you behold your brethren in the depths of poverty, but striving to do right, they are as beloved as they would be if they were dressed in purple and fine linen. Take that intelligent course, and learn to instruct people until they increase in knowledge and understanding, until their traditions pass away, and they will become of one heart and mind in the principles of godliness.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9:124
We have assembled here to have music and dancing. The world has a very strange idea concerning these things: they suppose it is a very wicked thing for a Christian to dance or hear music. Many preachers of the day have said that fiddling and music came from hell. But I say that there is no fiddling or music in hell! There is not a fiddler in hell or music of any kind.
Music belongs in heaven to cheer God, angel, and [humanity]. If we could hear the music there is in heaven, it would overwhelm mortal [people]. The Lord gave us that organ that makes music so delightful to humanity (and) … dancing is for the benefit of the holy ones.
Brigham Young
Wilford Woodruff Journal, January 2, 1854
Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnanimity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to shun it.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9:243
[I] supposed there has not yet been a perfect revelation given, because we cannot understand it, yet we receive a little here and a little there. [We] should not be stumbled if the prophet should translate the Bible forty thousand times over and yet it should be different in some places every time, because when God [speaks], [God] always speaks according to the capacity of the people.
Brigham Young
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846; Volume 1, 10 March 1844–1 March 1845, p. 171
There [will] be men saved in the Celestial Kingdom of God with one wife, with many wives, and with no wife at all.
Brigham Young
Wilford Woodruff Journal, February 12, 1870
If [the Bible] be translated incorrectly, and there is a scholar on the earth who professes to be a Christian, and he can translate it any better than King James’s translators did it, he is under obligation to do so, or the curse is upon him. If I understood Greek and Hebrew as some may profess to do, and I knew the Bible was not correctly translated, I should feel myself bound by the law of justice to the inhabitants of the earth to translate that which is incorrect and give it just as it was spoken anciently. Is that proper? Yes, I would be under obligation to do it.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 14:226-227
When people are in poverty and in their low estate, when they are pinched with hunger and destitute of the clothing necessary to make them comfortable, how deeply they can feel for their friends! But place those very ones where they can have all they need to eat, of food that relishes and suits their appetite, and clothing enough to keep them warm and comfortable, and many of them will sit down and fold their hands, and if you speak to them about the wants of their poor brethren in foreign lands, and mention their own situation in former days, their reply will be:
“Oh, I had forgotten all about that! Yes, I believe, now you mention it, that I have seen the time when I had not sufficient food to satisfy the demands of hunger, nor clothing to make me comfortable and respectable. But, dear me, I had forgotten all that, that was in the past, and I have plenty now, and, what is that you are saying?”
“‘Why, your brethren and sisters in foreign lands are suffering.”
“What! Did you say that some of our brethren and sisters are suffering? I have enough to eat, and all the clothing I need to make me comfortable, and a pretty good cabin that I built myself, and I am in debt to no one and quite happy and comfortable; and I wish you would not trouble me about other people.”
This is the story and these are the feelings of some of the Latter-day Saints that have been gathered from the depths of poverty. I do not wish to chide them for their well doing, and neither do I nor my brethren require of them things that are unreasonable; but we are under obligations to our families, connections and friends, and then to the whole human family. We are not independent of them; we are not here isolated and alone, differently formed and composed of different material from the rest of the human race. We belong to and are part of this family, consequently we are under obligations one to another, and the [Mormons] in these mountains are under obligations to their brethren and sisters scattered in the nations who, through indigent circumstances, are unable to gather to themselves the comforts of life. No matter what may be the cause of their poverty
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 13:301
There are persons in this community who, if they could have their own will gratified and be possessed of plenty of means, would not do another day’s work in their lives, unless they were urged to it. Such persons are told that they should devote their lifetime they now have to usefulness; but they have sufficient, they say, and have no need to be useful in performing any kind of labor. This is a mistake. Though I possessed millions of money and property, that does not excuse me from performing the labor that it is my calling to perform, so far as I have strength and ability, any more than the poorest man in the com munity is excused. The more we are blessed with means, the more we are blessed with responsibility; the more we are blessed with wisdom and ability, the more we are placed under the necessity of using that wisdom and ability in the spread of righteousness, the subjugation of sin and misery, and the amelioration of the condition of mankind. The man that has only one talent and the man that has five talents have responsibility accordingly. If we have a world of means, we have a world of responsibility.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 9:172
It is our duty and calling to gather up every item of truth in the world. Whether the infidels have it, or the universalists, the Church of Rome, the Methodists, the Church of England, the Quakers, the Shakers, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, those who have dissented from the closed-communion Baptists and from the old Wesleyan Methodists – every one of them have more or less truth.
It is the business of the elders of [Mormonism]… to gather up all the truths in the world pertaining to life, salvation, to the gospel we preach, to mechanisms of every kind, to the sciences, to the philosophy in every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, and bring it to Zion. The people upon this earth have a great many errors, and they have also a great many truths.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 7:283
(also reconstructed from original transcription)
With regard to your attending Protestant Episcopal service, I have no objections whatever, on the contrary, I would like to have you attend, and see what they can teach you about God and Godliness more than you have already been taught. When the Methodist big tent was here I advised old and young to attend their meetings, for that very reason.
Brigham Young
Brigham Young to Willard Young, July 25th, 1871
All of [the different religions] act according to their faith and traditions, and each one of them says, “If you are not as I am, you are not right.” This is just as natural as it is to breathe vital air. I wish this trait in the Saints to be done away. I want the Elders of Israel to learn to take people as they are.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol 9, pg 121-125
A large share of the ingenuity of the world is taxed to invent weapons of war. What a set of fools! I wonder if they think that they will never die, unless they kill one another. Is there any danger of their living here forever? Not a bit of it. Let the people alone, and they will die of themselves, without killing them.
Much of the skill, ingenuity, and ability of the Christian nations are now devoted to manufacturing instruments of death. May we be saved from the effects of them!
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 8, pg 319-326
We are never going to destroy the enemies of God by the evil passions that are in us—never, no never. When those who profess to be Saints contend against the enemies of God through passion or selfwill, it is then man against man, evil against evil, the powers of darkness against the powers of darkness. But when men who are sanctified, purified, do anything, they will do it with a coolness as if conversing at their firesides with each other
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 8, pg 319-326
Are we prepared to receive the blessings, and let the fighting alone? I do not believe much in fighting, and my faith is to escape such a calamity as to war and fight with either friends or enemies.
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses 8, pg 319-326
Our merchants have hearts that are too elastic, entirely too elastic; they are so elastic that they do not ask what they can afford to sell an article for, but they ask what they can get the people to pay; and as much as the people will pay, so much will the merchants take—a hundred, or a thousand percent, if they can get it, and then thank God for their success. They put me in mind of some men I have seen who, when they had a chance to buy a widow’s cow for ten cents on the dollar of her real value in cash, would make the purchase, and then thank the Lord that he had so blessed them. Such men belong to the class of Christians referred to on one occasion by Charles Gunn; and, if you will excuse me, I will tell you what he said about them. He said that “hell was full of such Christians.”
Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, Vol. 17, Discourse 48
28. Susa Young Gates
The divine Mother, side by side with the divine Father, [has] the equal sharing of equal rights, privileges and responsibilities.
Susa Young Gates
“The Vision Beautiful” in Improvement Era Volume 23, page 542 (April 1920)
29. Joseph Smith III
… My understanding of revelation as we have it, is that every man stands before God upon his individual responsibility …
The inspiration of the gospel of the Son of God, and the inspiration of his Spirit quickens, revivifies, and puts a man nearer to the influences of life, nearer to his Maker and the Savior than any other period or periods of his existence. And every man standing before God and receiving of this inspiration, whether it is in the stand or wherever it may come, or what occasion, his increased vitality and vigor for life spiritually is before God…
Joseph Smith III
Sermon preached on April 18th, 1906
30. Katie Harmon-McLaughlin
Part of the work of discernment is growing in awareness of what motivates our actions.
Are we driven by our fears or are we drawn by the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit breathed upon us by the presence of the Living Christ?
Katie Harmon-McLaughlin
Herald Vol. 168-2:35 (Mar/Apr 2021)
What young people, and many others, are seeking from the church today is a faith that can build resilience and courage. A faith that empowers us to stay present to the suffering of the world. An edge-of-the-world’s-ending kind of faith. A stopping-on-the-roadside-to-tend-the-wounded kind of faith.
Katie Harmon-McLaughlin
Herald Vol. 170-1 (Jan/Feb 2023)
31. Leandro Palacios
In this story (Luke 5:37-39) Jesus is enjoying himself with those who good Christians like us often tend to judge as immoral, indecent, and obscene. In this scene, Jesus is with them, behaving like them, while we, my fellow good Christians, we are not the disciples, we are the Pharisees. … When we are unwilling to allow scripture to speak to us in the present moment, when we confine the voice of Jesus to a time and place faraway from our day to day lives, and when we think we already know the lesson and we have nothing to learn from the Word, then, we Christians become the Pharisees.
Leandro Palacios
Sermon on June 11th, 2023
You must be thinking: “But our church is very inclusive. We welcome queer folks. We have a woman pastor. We do ministry to the poor in our neighborhood.” That’s wonderful. Then allow me to ask you:
How do you feel about unmarried couples living together? Jesus is with them.
How do you feel about priests who have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner? Jesus is with them.
How do you feel about people who live in consensual and loving non-monogamous families? Jesus is with them.
How do you feel about the people who will march in Pride parades across the continent this month, especially those who won’t be wearing much? Jesus is with them. …
And how do you feel about yourself in all the ways you know you fail to meet the expectations of what a righteous person should be? Jesus is with you.
Leandro Palacios
Sermon on June 11th, 2023
32. Deb Luce
The unique thing is that the majority of the work that got done and the majority of the decisions that were made were made by people who just didn’t have the title. They were leaders in the congregation, but they didn’t perceive themselves as priesthood.
Deb Luce
Gospel Tangents podcast
33. W. Wallace Smith
Let us think of the temple as a place where those who are called to share in the ministry of Jesus meet with each other and God to ask hard questions about the demands of redemptive ministry. … Unless the Temple of Zion serves this function, it is better for us not to build it.
W. Wallace Smith
“The Temple: A Symbol of Contemporary Application of Divine Intelligence to Human Needs”
Herald Vol. 115 Pg. 363 (June 1st, 1968)
34. Alan D. Tyree
The nature of revelation is such that no one person may claim exclusive rights to revelatory gifts. The church experiences, through individuals here and there, much of the same directing gifts that become the content of revelatory documents presented by the prophet.
Alan D. Tyree
“Principle of Divine Revelation” Herald 139:183 (May 1992)
35. Em J. Gray
On a pew sat a sunflower. They cradled withered petals in two of their leaves. They looked down at them, exuding bereavement.
“But you’re so beautiful,” I said. “New petals have replaced those.”
The resplendent sunflower looked up at me with a keen eye, questioning: Don’t you understand?, and returned to the objects in their leaves.
How often is the church the sunflower, tenderly cherishing dead petals, while ignoring the living ones that actually comprise itself?
36. Blaire Ostler
Today, I proudly identify as a queer Mormon.
I’m a born-and-raised Mormon… I still hold to my Mormon beliefs, testimony, doctrine, theology, culture, and heritage. I come from nine generations of Mormon pioneers. I often joke that, if there is a Mormon gene, I have it.
I also often joke that, if there is a queer gene, I have it too.
I sometimes get negative reactions from people… for not relinquishing one or the other of these identities. They sometimes insist that a person couldn’t possibly be both queer and Mormon, especially given the [LDS] Church’s history of painful attempts to delegitimize the queer community. It is easy to understand why some would be skeptical about the possibility of someone being queer and Mormon.
Even so, I maintain that I am a queer Mormon.
Blaire Ostler
Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction, page 2
The purpose of the sealing isn’t to legitimize sexual behavior; the purpose of sealing is to legitimize the eternal and everlasting bonds that people share with one another, be they homosexual or otherwise.
Blaire Ostler
Queer Polygamy
If I am a God with godly powers and I want my child to have those godly powers too, I’m not going to just hand them to my child without helping them qualify for those powers. It would be dangerous to both my child and to those around her. As parents, we do this already with our children.
For example, I can drive a car and that comes with considerable responsibility, freedom, and privileges. My daughter needs to qualify before she can have those privileges too. She will need to go to driver’s education classes, attain a learner’s permit, practice with a responsible adult, and demonstrate she is ready for the responsibility of having a driver’s license. Not only that, I’m not going to just give her a car, as that comes with considerable financial responsibilities. Who is going to pay for the car, gas, insurance, and upkeep? Has she demonstrated she is going to use her new powers responsibly and safely? If I were to hand my six-year-old daughter the keys to the car I would be doing her and every other person on the road a sore disservice. She needs to grow and qualify for her new responsibilities and privileges before she is given the keys to the car.
I think our Heavenly Parents look at us similarly. We are not simply meant to be like God, but to become gods ourselves. Imagine that. We have Heavenly Parents who love us so much that They want us to have all the same privileges and responsibilities They have. However, They also have some requirements for us. We need to qualify before we are handed the keys to our eternal destiny to be exalted beings like our Heavenly Parents. That’s what we are doing right now. We are demonstrating that we are ready for godhood.
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
If I were a God I would NOT ask, did you put your right arm in the correct position at the temple? Did you repeat the exact rote phrases at the veil? Did you tie your sash correctly? No. Instead I would ask, how did your religious tradition and rituals help you care for your fellow siblings? How did your rituals inspire you to create tangible eternal families? Did you use your temples to strengthen familial bonds and seal them up in the eternities, or did you weaponize your temple as a way to divide families? If your temples didn’t keep mixed-faith families together, what were your temples really about?
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
If I were a God I would NOT ask, did you masturbate or have sex before marriage? No. Instead I would ask, how did your sexual activity affect your partner(s)? Were you thinking about what’s best for them, or only what you wanted for yourself? Have you ever physically, emotionally, or socially manipulated a person into having sex against their will? Did you use sex as a weapon to hurt others? When you did have sex, did you have sex responsibly? Did you care for your partner and consider their needs? Have you ever sexually harassed, assaulted, or coerced another? Have you ever hurt a child sexually? If you did make such a grave error as hurting a child, how did you repent and seek to be worthy of godhood? Those who misuse the powers of sex are not worthy of my powers.
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
If I were a God I would NOT ask, were you queer, straight, bi, cisgender, monogamous, polygamous, divorced, single, or transgender? No. Instead I would ask, how did you love those around you? Were your family relationships built on love and inclusion? How did you care for your partner(s) and/or spouse(s)? Did you take responsibility for any children you may have had, and did you love them with care, kindness, and devotion? How did you treat your family? Did you ever hit, hurt, or belittle them? Did you apologize for your mistakes and seek to do better?
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
If I were God I would NOT ask, were you obedient to a religious authoritarian or tyrant? No. Instead I would ask, I gave you agency, how did you use it? I asked you to love one another. Did you do it? Did you think critically about your decisions and how they may or may not coincide with my law to love? Did you relinquish your responsibility to think for yourself? How were you a prophet? How did you use my priesthood power? How did you bless the lives of others? I didn’t ask if you were ordained by a patriarch, I asked how did you act in my name? Did you use priesthood power to exclude or put yourself above others? Or did you share my priesthood power and encourage others to do godly things in my name? Compliance to tyrannical authority was never my law. I gave you agency, how did you use it?
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
We are gods in embryo—the seeds of divinity are within us. If we are to become exalted, we must start acting like it. We must practice, practice, practice. Line upon line, precept on precept. Eventually, we may find ourselves qualifying for the godlike powers our Heavenly Parents have promised us. I have no doubt that godly exaltation and power is something we must work to qualify for. However, we need to strongly consider, what kind of gods do we want to be and how do we make that happen?
Blaire Ostler
“Qualifying for Exaltation”, Exponent II on January 8th, 2020
At the end of the day, Mormonism means family. We all agree to take care of each other, and if we do that, then we did our job.
Blaire Ostler
Story on Lift + Love
The thing I learned from Mormonism and how I was raised is that life was about creating eternal families. At the end of the day, when the church is in conflict with my eternal family, I err on the side of family
Blaire Ostler
Story on Lift + Love
When we cut people off for insignificant differences like race, gender, or orientation, we’re undermining ourselves.
Blaire Ostler
Story on Lift + Love
God isn’t he, or she, God is they—God is all of us in one big eternal family… When we honor our families, we’re honoring God and the greater heavenly family we’re all a part of. Sometimes we think of God as a monster who wants to punish and harm us… I think we limit God’s compassion through our own imagination. I believe in a God that is more compassionate, loving, and benevolent than we could possibly imagine.
Blaire Ostler
Story on Lift + Love
37. B.H. Roberts
One great evil that threatens our land and which promises to overthrow the institutions of our country more than any other danger, is that of corporate power, and unless a limit be placed upon the lines of business in which these corporations may engage, there is no end to the evil that may result from the building up of these mighty corporations.
I am of the opinion that corporations should be restricted to one general line of business. I do not believe that corporations should be organized… [in a way] that [they] would have power to engage in any number of occupations that might deem proper to engage in, because it could be possible under silence… for a great corporation to be formed that would lay its hands upon all the resources of the [land], stifle all competition, and reduce the people to the condition of being drawers of water and hewers of wood. …
There [should] be no consolidation or combination of corporations of any kind whatever to prevent competition, to control or influence productions of prices thereof, or in any manner interfere with the public good and general welfare.
These [actions] will be absolutely necessary to protect our people and their industries from… corporate powers.
Let us hope that… the people [will be put] in a position to construct a new economic policy, for a new age, to take the place of the capitalistic system and its spirit, wherein shall exist more equality and more justice than in the age now passing; a policy wherein there will be a more consistent division of the profits of the conjoint products of capital and labor than heretofore; where the wealth produced by that conjoint effort shall not forever flow into the possession of the “one,” while the “ninety and nine” have but empty hands!
B. H. Roberts
The Politics of B. H. Roberts, by D. Craig Mikkelsen, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Volume 9, Issue 2
In no department is the frank and honest confession “I don’t know,” more imperative than in Theology; and when it is given as an actual confession of having reached the limits of our knowledge, it is worthy of all praise. But if it becomes tainted with the spirit of “I don’t care,” then I have no respect for it.
B.H. Roberts
The Seventy’s Course in Theology, pg 814/954
Mental laziness is the vice of [humanity], especially with reference to Divine things. [People] seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part.
B.H. Roberts
The Seventy’s Course in Theology, pg 814/954
I maintain that “simple faith” – which is so often ignorant and simpering acquiescence, and not faith at all – but simple faith taken at its highest value, which is faith without understanding of the thing believed, is not equal to intelligent faith…
The people of “simple faith,” who never question, are so much easier led and so much more pleasant every way – they give their teachers so little trouble. People who question because they want to know, and who ask adult questions that call for adult answers, disturb the ease of the priests. The people who question are usually the people who think – barring chronic questioners and cranks, of course – and thinkers are troublesome, unless the instructors who lead them are thinkers also; and thought eternal, restless thought, that keeps out upon the frontiers of discovery, is as much a weariness to the slothful, as it is a joy to the alert and active and noble minded.
Therefore one must not be surprised if now and again he finds those among religious teachers who give encouragement to mental laziness under the pretense of “reverence;” praise “simple faith” because they themselves, forsooth, would avoid the stress of thought and investigation that would be necessary in order to hold their place as leaders of a thinking people.
B.H. Roberts
The Seventy’s Course in Theology, pg 814/954
It is idle today to ask [people] to be satisfied with the old sectarian notions of [humanity’s] future life, where at best [they are] to be but one of a minstrelsy twanging harps and singing to the glory of an incorporeal, bodiless, passionless, immaterial incomprehensible God. Such a conception of existence no longer satisfies the longings of the intelligent or spiritual-minded [person]. Growth, enlargement, expansion for [their] whole nature, as [they] recognizes that nature in its intellectual, moral, spiritual and social demands, are what [their] soul calls for.
B.H. Roberts
The Mormon Doctrine of Deity: the Roberts-Van Der Donckt Discussion, 35-36.
What is to be our general standing before the enlightened opinion of mankind? Is silence to be our answer? Again will occur to thoughtful minds the difficulties attendant upon silence. In the last analysis of things silence would be acknowledgement of defeat. Silence in an age of free inquiry is impossible.
B.H. Roberts
Letter to Heber J. Grant, December 29th, 1921
38. Daniel O. McClellan
From an academic point of view… I let the tension stand and I say “There is likely tension because I don’t have enough information.”
And that’s not to say that everything is going to fit together perfectly how I thought before – I’m going to have to adapt my perspective – but if there’s something that doesn’t fit, it means there’s something for me to learn out there. There’s data out there that I need to find so that I can understand whether it does fit or whether it fits somewhere else entirely.
That is not something that every last committed believer is willing or able to do, but that’s how I approach things from my academic perspective
Daniel O. McClellan
In Her Image Podcast, episode 39, 00:50:00-00:51:00
One interesting thing about the scriptures is there’s this principle from the field of social memory which holds that every community that has authoritative texts, every generation has to renegotiate it’s understanding of those texts, and their renegotiating between the sacred past – what their parents believed, what their grandparents believed, what they believed anciently – and they’re taking that and they need to look at these beliefs through whatever lenses – their own experiences in their own circumstances, in their own needs – give them and they need to figure out “How can I make this meaningful to me? How is this going to inform my experiences?” and that is going to require new perspectives and new understandings.
Even within the official, historical narrative of the church there are things that get left behind, there are things that get decentered, there are other things that get centered.
No one is immune from having to renegotiate between the past, and the present. It is messy, but nobody is free from it.
And if we think that we already have the exact same conceptual framework and understanding of the universe that we’re going to have 50 years from now, all that means is that we are being too dogmatic to grow and to be stretched, because you cannot possibly grow as a Christian – as a person – without changing the way you look at the world.
Daniel O. McClellan
In Her Image Podcast, episode 39, 00:50:00-00:51:00
I think the Latter Day Saint discourse is more a bottom-up discourse than it is a top-down. That is not to discount that [top-down] authority at all; it’s just to say that we are not all just plugged into programs and doing what we’re told. We can go out and find stuff for ourselves as well.
Daniel O. McClellan
In Her Image Podcast, episode 39, 00:50:00-00:51:00
39. John Robert Crane
I go by one simple rule. If a belief or practice takes me closer to God, I embrace it. If not, I abandon it.
John Robert Crane
The Mormon Community (Reform) comment, January 6th, 2025
Obedience is not the first law of heaven. Free agency is. Obedience without agency is slavery.
John Robert Crane
The Mormon Community (Reform) comment, March 10th, 2025
Keys are not monopolistic power; keys are knowledge. Joseph Smith taught that a man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge. …
People who really have keys will share those keys with you.
People who use keys to keep you out of the kingdom of heaven don’t have keys.
They have locks.
John Robert Crane
“Reclaiming our relationship with Christ: God Gives Unconditionally to All”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Always live true to the highest you know, not the highest that somebody else tells you.
Never give in to the temptation to claim to believe something that you don’t believe,
or live lesser than the best you know.
John Robert Crane
“Reclaiming our relationship with Christ: God Gives Unconditionally to All”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Practice forgiveness; especially forgiving yourself.
John Robert Crane
“Reclaiming our relationship with Christ: God Gives Unconditionally to All”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
I didn’t really know at this time how God felt about [leaving my heterosexual marriage, accepting excommunication from the LDS church, and living openly as a gay man], but I was prepared to stand before Him and not shrink from His presence, but instead say:
“This is my choice. I know it’s right for me. If you don’t like it, then send me away, and I will take whatever punishment you see fit to give me.”
Now remember, this was before I ever sought the mind and will of God of this matter. But I had made a choice, and I made that startling realization that for the first time in my life, I made a choice on my own behalf, and not to please somebody else.
I later realized that God never left me, and I felt like I could confidently walk into His would welcome me. I did not think myself an enemy to God. In fact, I always saw God as my Friend, and He still was. I just needed a space to step back and rethink our relationship, and make sure it was built on rock, not sand. He gave me that space.
John Robert Crane
“Reclaiming our relationship with Christ: God Gives Unconditionally to All”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
What’s it like to receive a revelation? First you sense something like a point of tension building and building in your spirit. It’s like a dam ready to burst.
Then, you instantly receive a huge block of understanding, all in an instant. You feel like a piece of knowledge or intelligence is about to flood over you. Joseph Smith aptly described it as pure intelligence flowing through you. Another teacher described it as “the flashing forth of intuition.”
You want to write it all down. You want to write while in the Spirit as Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon did while receiving the Vision of the Three Degrees of Glory. During that time, you struggle to get your multi-dimensional holographic image down in
a one-dimensional stream of words. You struggle to find the right word, or sometimes the correct words just come to you. But some things simply can’t be written. Either you feel it is not appropriate to write, or you have no frame of reference with which to relate it to others. (This is why it takes revelation of your own to understand revelation coming through others.)
While in the Spirit like this, you feel like you could ask God any question and get an answer. You feel like God knows what you are going to ask even ever before you ask it.
Unfortunately, the vision eventually closes, though you wish it would last forever. I use the word “feel”, which is a word normally associated with emotion.
But, this it not emotion; it is intuition.
John Robert Crane
“My Coming Out Story: Reclaiming My Life”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
We are all entitled to revelation and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost concerning our callings and stewardship
John Robert Crane
“My Coming Out Story: Reclaiming My Life”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
In all the revelations given to our group (which became the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ), God begins them by conveying his great love for us. This is something we all need to hear, and especially the gay community. Yeah, He really does love all of us a lot, and that is probably the scariest thing about God and the hardest thing to handle. His love.
Stop thinking you don’t deserve it, because if you think that, all you do is cut yourself off from Him. It’s not God cutting you off from him; it’s because you are cutting yourself off from God.
John Robert Crane
“My Coming Out Story: Reclaiming My Life”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
We’re all special in our own way, but nobody is any more special than anybody else.
I talk a lot about dreams and revelations, but does that make me special? No.
I figure God will talk to anybody who has faith, sets aside [their] fears and prejudices, and really listens.
John Robert Crane
“My Coming Out Story: Reclaiming My Life”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
The thing about revelation is you only get to see the path a few steps ahead of you.
If you aren’t ready for the full picture, you don’t see the full picture.
John Robert Crane
“My Coming Out Story: Reclaiming My Life”
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
If, throughout our lives, we only see God through one fixed prism, we are halted in our progress toward eternal life. Our growth is stymied. Our progress is blocked, until we remove the block. The theological term for this is “damnation”.
John Robert Crane
Reform Mormon FB post, June 9th, 2025
I consider God to be of both genders
John Robert Crane
Reform Mormon FB post, June 9th, 2025
I reckon that I have as much right to formulate my own personal model [of God] as much as any theologian, church father, prophet, apostle, or ordinary church member.
John Robert Crane
Reform Mormon FB post, June 9th, 2025
I didn’t want anything to do with the Trinity, until I heard somebody explain that “Mormons actually believe in the trinity, but don’t realize it.” I had to check it out. It became clear to me that the current Mormon model, and the Trinity model could be reconciled if you understand two things. (1) “Substance”, as John Hamer explained, meant the same thing as “Purpose”, to the early Christian scholars. (2) An understanding of what “God” actually means. If you consider “God” as a nature and not a person, the logical inconsistencies of the Trinity fall away, and the mystery is no more.
It all becomes so simple when you consider God as a collective nature, (gathering, family, community) of all those who possess the divine nature as a body of individuals, unified in love and purpose. You can say that there is only one God (one body of those who are divine). You can also say the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, but they are separate persons who share the same mind and purpose. (Trinity) You can also say that anybody who obtains all the character, attributes, and perfections that God (individually or correctively) possess is also God. (Mormonism)…
What sets the godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) apart from all the other Gods is they each have specific covenantal roles in the Everlasting Covenant: the plan to lift all mortals to be where God is and with thee, enjoy immortality and eternal life.
John Robert Crane
Reform Mormon FB post, June 9th, 2025
When an assertion is made, what do most people want to do? Normally they don’t care whether the statement is true or not. They don’t care whether the statement describes the real world or not. They are more concerned with WHO said it. To a Mormon audience I could make a statement. The statement could be out of God’s very mouth, but nobody would sit up and take notice unless I told them it was a direct quote from Joseph Smith or a paraphrase of a passage out of the Book of Mormon. To an audience of Catholics, I would quote a passage out of the Bible or a statement of the Pope. Buddhists would respond to the words of Buddha. People in business would respond to the words of Peter Drucker or the Wall Street Journal.
How sad that we are not willing to test a statement on its own merits! How much wisdom and knowledge we stand to miss out on simply because we care more about the messenger than the message. It’s too bad, for example, that the LDS people won’t listen to the words of the RLDS prophet simply because he is the RLDS prophet and not the LDS prophet. It makes me wonder how much truth they actually glean from the LDS prophet. …
For me personally, I love to expose myself to many sources of information. I read the scriptures and writings of every Restoration church, fundamental Protestantism, all branches of Catholicism, eastern religions, New Age philosophers, etc. …
In all my studies I have discovered … most groups talk about pretty much the same things. They just use a different vocabulary. Once you learn the various vocabularies, you can relate one system to another and see the underlying harmonies.
John Crane
The Angel of the Desert, Vol. 1 No. 2, pg 1-2, February 1988
The Book of Mormon defines priestcraft as being a condition in which men set themselves up as a light in place of [God], and in which they seek not the welfare of Zion.
Churchcraft is priestcraft organized on a global scale. An organization sets itself up as the sole source of light and truth and teaches that an individual must go through the organization in order to reach God and obtain salvation. Having accomplished this, the church then sets up artificial standards of conformity with the penalty of exclusion for those who refuse to comply. …
[Do] not let ANY church or organization stand between [you] and [God] or let [your] membership in any church substitute for a personal relationship with the Living God.
John Crane
The Angel of the Desert, Vol. 1 No. 1, pg 5-6, January 1988
Here is my conception of the divine: We are all co-equal and co-eternal beings. We occasionally incarnate in mortality to assist others in mortality and to gain experience. Other advanced beings have remained behind to assist us from a higher level. They are our “parents’ because of covenants they made together, and covenants we made with them before we came here. They didn’t create or form us. We have always existed. Part of that covenant was to follow their guidance in order to find our way back.
John Crane
Comment in The Mormon Community (Reform) FB group, February 6th, 2026
The Lord doesn’t hold grudges or play mind games.
John Crane
“The Gift of the Holy Ghost”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
No mortal man can claim to possess the power of God, while denying that power to others. God lends it to us to use as stewards, but it remains God’s power, channeled through us.
John Crane
“The Gift of the Holy Ghost”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
[Revelation] is both a doctrine that we must understand and a skill that we need to learn.
John Crane
“The Gift of the Holy Ghost”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
Both faith and works are necessary, but if you are unable to perform the works, intent alone is sufficient. Having faith, with pure intent, but without the means to carry out works, is without condemnation.
John Crane
“The Gift of the Holy Ghost”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
40. Rodney Turner
it is most unlikely that men and women had their [gender] arbitrarily imposed upon them. For while scripture states that God “made” [humanity] male and female insofar as this world is concerned, it does not explain the basis upon which any given spirit is tabernacled in a male or female body. But regardless of when or how males and females came into being, the principle of agency must have played a part in anything God did; coercion is alien to His nature. Then too, the arbitrary assignment of [gender] would have rendered him particularly vulnerable to criticism at the last judgment.
Thus, just as it is very likely that one’s [gender] reflects one’s own innate predisposition or personal choice, so must the roles of the [genders] play stem from their own inherent proclivities. What men and women are should determine how they will act – not vice versa.
Rodney Turner
Woman and the Priesthood (1972), pages 16-17
Today, much in the fashion of Huxley’s Brave New World, men speak of controlling the genetic factors in the unborn so as to produce various human types which will meet society’s pre-determined requirements. This is diabolical. [Humanity] is more than a composite of protein molecules; [we are] not meant to be manipulated, even by God – much less anyone else. … Being far more humble than some of Satan’s unwitting allies, the Lord has never presumed to impose His will on others; He has always respected [humanity’s] independent co-eternality. God’s laws are framed to serve [humanity] as [we are] and as [we will ourselves] to be. Law is the servant, not the master, of [humanity]. Men and women are not programmed with artificial characteristics to serve the veiled purposes of some cosmic scientist. The [genders] are genuinely distinctive from one another; only in denying their true natures do they become false and artificial.
Rodney Turner
Woman and the Priesthood (1972), page 17
41. George Albert Smith
I would be a friend to the friendless and find joy in ministering to the needs of the poor.
I would visit the sick and the afflicted and inspire in them a desire for faith to be healed.
I would teach the truth to the understanding and blessing of all [humanity].
I would seek out the erring and try to win [them] back to a righteous and a happy life.
I would not seek a force people to live up to my ideals but rather love them into doing the thing that is right.
I would live with the masses and help solve their problems that their earth life may be happy.
I would avoid the publicity of high positions and discourage the flattery of thoughtless friends.
I would not knowingly hurt the feelings of any, not even one who may have wronged me, but would seek to do [them] good and make [them] my friend.
I would overcome the tendency to selfishness and jealousy and rejoice in the success of all the children of my Heavenly [Parents].
I would not be an enemy to any living soul.
Knowing that the Redeemer of [humanity] has offered to the world the only plan that will fully develop us and make us really happy here and hereafter I feel it not only a duty but a blessed privilege to disseminate this truth.
George Albert Smith
Conference Report April 1951 pages 167-168
42. Duane E. Couey
[Evangelists] minister out of a broad sense of religious values, which transcend doctrinal issues and reflect an understanding of the universals of Christianity. These concerns also rise above the usual vested interest of church organization and bureaucratic concerns.
Duane E. Couey
September 1989 Saints Herald (Vol. 136-9:367-368)
The Restoration, traditionally, has placed much emphasis on structure and organization. This is probably why we enjoy talking about it as much as we do. However, this was not the purpose for which the office [of evangelist] was called into being. The church needs a category of high priests who stand outside of the regulating [and] directing functions of the church – people who are free for the functions of evangelism, revivalism, and spiritual parental counseling.
Duane E. Couey
September 1989 Saints Herald (Vol. 136-9:367-368)
43. Stassi D. Cramm
We have to be willing to allow God’s Spirit to stimulate our prophetic imagination, and to have this sense of an alternative possibility, And then we have to have the energy and the perseverance… that’s needed to be able to work with the Spirit in creating pathways that lead into that future
Stassi D. Cramm
Project Zion #654
44. Elbert A. Smith
The Lord speaks to the people in many ways. He is not confined to tongues and prophecies as avenues of communication. He speaks through the inspired sermon, the fervent testimony, and the spiritual hymn or anthem, and in many other ways. The manifestations of the Spirit are “given to every man,” and as one has said, are “almost as diverse as individual natures are”; and it would be difficult to say which methods of communication are most important. …
Let them be read with the Spirit and the understanding. And let the reader remember that all such communications, wherever published, rest on their own merits, not having been passed upon by the church, and should be read by individuals and weighed in the balance of common sense and scriptural comparison, all of them waiting the final test of time as to their fulfillment.
Elbert A. Smith
Herald Vol. 59-39: 922-925
45. Elle Mills
I can think of nothing more sacred than the priesthood. … I believe that we all participate in this holy institution of God. It is not passed by someone laying their hands upon you; it is passed by the Spirit of God breathing life into you, breathing revelation and breathing Their Holy Light. God will call who God will call, and let no institution bar a person from God’s call. For God called the lowliest person out of Nazareth and took him and made him the Messiah.
Elle Mills
Heart of Discernment Communion Service
46. Karin F. Peter
In Community of Christ we understand scripture to be contextual, not literal.
Karin F. Peter
Plenary Session of the Inland West Mission Center Conference, September 30th, 2023
There’s a divide between people who do have a yearning for spirituality, but find “Bible people” to be hypocrites.
Karin F. Peter
Plenary Session of the Inland West Mission Center Conference, September 30th, 2023
If you’re not studying current church identity and history, you’re telling the wrong story.
Karin F. Peter
Plenary Session of the Inland West Mission Center Conference, September 30th, 2023
We have to look at our own attitudes towards reconciliation. Although it can be tedious and painful and humbling, it’s also necessary.
Karin F. Peter
Plenary Session of the Inland West Mission Center Conference, September 30th, 2023
I’m less interested in structure and orthodoxy and I’m more interested in authentic relationship building.
Karin F. Peter
Plenary Session of the Inland West Mission Center Conference, September 30th, 2023
47. Stephen M. Veazey
The world is changing. Old forms are crumbling. New possibilities are emerging. We live between “What was” and “What will be”. We need faith, curiosity, openness, and boldness. God is challenging assumptions, shaking up structures, disrupting routines, and making connections.
Stephen M. Veazey
“Boldly Venture”: 12 June 2022 online worship experience
There’s a difference between authority and being authoritative.
Authority comes from serving Jesus Christ.
Being authoritative is trying to dominate and control others
Priesthood get that mixed up sometimes.
Stephen M. Veazey
Theological Foundations for Ministry and Priesthood
The world is living in nightmare of pain and despair. God is calling for a massive exodus of people from poverty and related suffering.
Who will be the prophets standing before crafty politicians and predatory hoarders of wealth saying with conviction, “You had better let God’s people go!”
Can you see [Mormonism] as that voice in the world?
Stephen M. Veazey
2016 World Conference – Closing Message by Steve Veazey
We [need to] constantly check ourselves for “blind spots” in terms of types of people we tend to dismiss as not having genuine gifts of ministry. … We [need to] especially advocate for those disciples who represent the “minority” and the “least of these” in the dominant congregational or church culture.
Stephen M. Veazey
Herald 162-3:6-8 (March 2015)
48. Bunda Chibwe
My salvation, our salvation, the world’s salvation are necessarily and essentially communal.
We cannot be human alone.
Bunda Chibwe
God’s Dream: Compassionate Relationships, August 21st, 2013
49. John A. Widtsoe
If the great law of progression be accepted, God must have been engaged from the beginning, and must now be engaged in progressive development, and infinite as God is, He must have been less powerful in the past than He is today.
John A. Widtsoe
A Rational Theology as Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Pg. 23
The equality of [humanity] on earth must be the equal opportunity to progress. From the point in the eternal journey that each [person] now occupies, [they] must be allowed to move onward, unhindered by other persons, and must be allowed to exert [their] inborn powers to the full, for [their] help on the journey. None must stand in another’s way. … Instead of hindering each other, [people] must give each other all possible needed help, then we offer our fellows an equal opportunity to advance, and all are helped. With equality of opportunity, all may advance so far that, in time, the differences between [people] will not be apparent.
John A. Widtsoe
A Rational Theology as Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Pg. 130-131
Since the community is composed of individuals, each with independent wills and agencies, nothing must be done, as a community, to prevent the full unfolding of the individual, for the more progressive the individuals, the more progressive is the community. While the community is under responsibility to each individual, having accepted a place and life in the community, [it] must not do anything that will restrain other individuals of the community.
John A. Widtsoe
A Rational Theology as Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Pg. 150
Progress is active and increasing. That which is static does not come within the province of advancement. They who are satisfied with the past, or who hesitate to toil for added knowledge, or who are unwilling to give life to their possessions by constant use, are not in a state of progress. Effort is required to lay by the errors of the past, to invade the kingdom of increasing truth, and to set every new gain into action. Such persons alone are progressing.
John A. Widtsoe
Evidences and Reconciliations
50. Lindsay Hansen Park
[Trivial, arbitrary garment rules are an] encapsulation of the bankrupt theology my generation inherited from old men in downtown Salt Lake City.
Dudes whose best crack at God was a laborious amount of effort expressed in sermons, pamphlets and endless activities and performances of the dangers of women’s shoulder.
All because they clearly lacked the skills, the will and creativity to come up with theology that actually propelled us towards being better people, instead of turning our shame internally at ourselves.
Lindsay Hansen Park
Post on Facebook
51. Wilford Woodruff
If there was a point where [humanity] in [our] progression could not proceed any further, the very idea would throw a gloom over every intelligent and reflecting mind.
God Himself is increasing and progressing in knowledge, power, and dominion, and will do so, worlds without end. It is just so with us.
We are in a probation, which is a school of experience.
Wilford Woodruff
Journal of Discourses Vol. 6, pg 120
The Constitution once broken by the rulers of the land,
there will be no stopping place until the nation is broken in pieces,
and no power beneath the heavens can save this nation from the consequence thereof
Wilford Woodruff
The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star No. 16, Vol. 41
We will never while in the flesh, with this veil over us, fully comprehend that which lies before us in the world to come.
Wilford Woodruff
Deseret Weekly, February 3, 1894, 194.
When I was a boy and went to school, the schoolmaster used to come with a bundle of sticks about eight feet long, and one of the first things we expected was to get a whipping. For anything that was not pleasing to him we would get a terrible thrashing. What whipping I got then did not do me any good. I have always felt that ill-treatment either of children or animals is all wrong. Kindness, gentleness and mercy are better every way. I would like this principle instilled into the minds of our young men, that they may carry it out in all their acts in life. Tyranny is not good, whether it be exercised by kings, by presidents, or by the servants of God. Kind words are far better than harsh words. If, when we have difficulties one with another, we would be kind and affable to each other, we would save ourselves a great deal of trouble.
Wilford Woodruff
Deseret Weekly, June 22, 1889, 823.
If our religion does not lead us to love our God and our fellow-man and to deal justly and uprightly with all men, then our profession of it is vain.
Wilford Woodruff
“An Epistle to the Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Millennial Star, November 14, 1887, 729–30
52. Hugh B. Brown
It is a moral evil for any person or group of persons to deny any human being the right to gainful employment, to full educational opportunity, and to every privilege of citizenship, just as it is a moral evil to deny him the right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. We call upon all men, everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God’s children. Anything less than this defeats our high ideal of the brotherhood of man.
Hugh B. Brown
General Conference, October 6th, 1963
We must preserve freedom of the mind in the church and resist all efforts to suppress it. The church is not so much concerned with whether the thoughts of its members are orthodox or heterodox as it is that they shall have thoughts.
Hugh B. Brown
“Hugh B. Brown A Final Testimony” by Hugh B. Brown,
“An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown”,
by Hugh B. Brown and edited by Edwin B. Firmage
I admire men and women who have developed the questing spirit,
who are unafraid of new ideas as stepping stones to progress.
You will of course respect the opinions of others
but be unafraid to dissent – if you are informed.
Now I have mentioned freedom to express your thoughts,
but I caution you that your thoughts and expressions must meet competition
in the market place of thought, and in that competition truth will emerge triumphant…
The ancients said, ‘From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
from the laziness that is content with half-truth,
from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth –
O God of truth deliver us
Hugh B. Brown
“Hugh B. Brown A Final Testimony” by Hugh B. Brown,
“An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown”,
by Hugh B. Brown and edited by Edwin B. Firmage
The honest investigator must be prepared to follow wherever the search of truth may lead. Truth is often found in the most unexpected places. One must, with fearless and open mind insist that facts are far more important than any cherished, mistaken beliefs, no matter how unpleasant the facts or how delightful the beliefs.
Hugh B. Brown
General Conference, October 1962
What you hear all too often is that the communists are scoring on all points in this Cold War, that Africa and Asia are as good as down the drain, that the United Nations is a failure, that foreign aid is wasted since nobody likes it anyway, and that Castro shaking his fists on a Havana balcony is just about the greatest threat that our country has faced since Pearl Harbor. Now, those are statements being recklessly made by others. We challenge them.
A lot of this nonsense gets disseminated by the professional self-styled anti-communist who make a comfortable living scoring people all over the country and who have a financial stake in making the communist look stronger than we. …
Beware of extremists. Beware of self-styled patriots who take it upon themselves to attack all who disagree with them and label them as communists.
Hugh B. Brown
BYU Address, October 25th, 1963
Dissatisfaction with what is around us is not a bad thing if it prompts us to seek betterment, but the best sort of dissatisfaction in the long run is self dissatisfaction which leads us to improve ourselves.
Hugh B. Brown
“An Eternal Quest: Freedom of the Mind”, May 13th, 1969
There is no final goal. Life must continue to expand, to unfold, and to grow, if it is to continue to be a good life.
Hugh B. Brown
“An Eternal Quest: Freedom of the Mind”, May 13th, 1969
Preserve… the freedom of your mind in education and in religion, and be unafraid to express your thoughts and to insist upon your right to examine every proposition.
Hugh B. Brown
“An Eternal Quest: Freedom of the Mind”, May 13th, 1969
We have been blessed with much knowledge by revelation from God which, in some part, the world lacks. But there is an incomprehensibly greater part of truth which we must yet discover. Our revealed truth should leave us stricken with the knowledge of how little we really know. It should never lead to an emotional arrogance based upon a false assumption that we somehow have all the answers—that we in fact have a corner on truth. For we do not.
Whether you are in the field of economics or political science, history or the behavioral sciences—continue your search for truth. And maintain humility sufficient to be able to revise your hypotheses as new truth comes to you by means of the spirit or the mind.
Hugh B. Brown
“An Eternal Quest: Freedom of the Mind”, May 13th, 1969
[Salvation] is not merely a matter of conformity to rituals, climbing sacred stairs, bathing in sacred pools, or making pilgrimages to ancient shrines. The depth and height and quality of life depends upon awareness, and awareness is a process of being saved from ignorance. Man cannot be saved in ignorance.
Hugh B. Brown
“An Eternal Quest: Freedom of the Mind”, May 13th, 1969
53. Joseph F. Smith
I see no harm in the wise and intelligent study of socialistic principles… nor in belonging to a club or society having that as its only purpose.
Joseph F. Smith
Mormonism in Transition: Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1890-1930, by Thomas G. Alexander, page 184
One thing is certain, the doctrine of peace by armed force, held to so long and tenaciously by czars, kings, and emperors is a failure, and should without question forever be abandoned. It has been wrong from the beginning. That we get what we prepare for is literally true in this case. For years it has been held that peace only comes by preparation for war… peace only comes by preparing for peace, through training the people in righteousness and justice, and selecting rulers who respect the righteous will of the people
Joseph F. Smith
“The Great War”, Improvement Era, Volume 17, Number 10, page 1074
I never could see why a man should be imbued with a bloodthirsty desire to kill, and destroy animal life. I have known men – and they still exist among us – who enjoy what is, to them, the “sport” of hunting birds and slaying them by the hundreds… I do not believe any man should kill animals or birds unless he needs them for food… I think it is wicked for men to thirst in their souls to kill almost everything which possesses animal life. It is wrong, and I have been surprised at prominent men whom I have seen whose very souls seemed to be athirst for the shedding of animal blood. They go off hunting deer, antelope, elk, anything they can find, and what for? “Just for the fun of it!” Not that they are hungry and need the flesh of their prey, but just because they love to shoot and to destroy life.
Joseph F. Smith
The Juvenile Instructor Vol. 48 No. 5, pg 308-309 (May 1913)
54. Harold B. Lee
What is the position of the Church with respect to war? War is an ugly thing, a vicious thing. It makes men do things they would not normally do. It breaks up families, causes immorality, cheating, and much hatred. It is not the glorious John Wayne-type thing you see in movies.
Harold B. Lee
“From the Valley of Despair to the Mountain Peaks of Hope”, New Era, August. 1971
Rarely, if ever, is there a truly great soul except [they have] been tried and tested through tears, and adversity.
Harold B. Lee
“Life Under Control”, Brigham Young Commencement Address, June 4th, 1951
55. Sarah Williams
The older I get, the more love I feel for literally everyone around me.
And the more love I feel, the angrier I become at those who wield cruelty and misuse power.
Sarah Williams
personal facebook post, March 13th, 2025
I spent years – almost two decades – investigating other spiritualities looking to fill a hole that had been left by my church being lost to me. I studied druidry, Celtic spirituality, Daoism, Buddhism, and some really out there ones like Jediism, but there was always something missing. I couldn’t find what I was really seeking. The entire time I continued to study Mormonism and its schisms and dissidents… and on back through primitive Christianity, through Canaanite religion, Sumerian religion, and along that path I started to find my Heavenly Mother as Asherah. …
I began to feel like I’d been trained as a priest in my father’s house just so that I could find my Heavenly Mother, and that maybe my calling lay there. I felt I hadn’t been welcome in my father’s house, but that my Mother was welcoming me with arms wide, and I could feel Her love when I would pray to Her.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
I… was ordained in the house of my father, but found [myself] unwelcome there, and when I left the church I felt as if I had lost access to my priesthood; that by stepping into my true self I had surrendered something sacred.
However, it was hard to feel it as a loss, because I felt such liberation, and I came to understand that my priesthood was not something that was ever theirs to take or to give; it had always just been mine.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
We’re taught that priesthood is “power and authority to act in God’s name”, but that authority is only as real as the power behind it, and true power doesn’t come from institutional permission but it comes from our Heavenly Parents and our Divine nature as their children; as “gods in becoming” …
So, if you believe and accept that we are children of God with potential to become like our Heavenly Parents, then priesthood is not an external grant of power but rather an intrinsic part of our Divine nature.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Even the adversary himself retains power. Doctrine and Covenants 76: 25-27 speaks of Lucifer who held authority in Heaven before his rebellion, and we learn – and those who have been through Temple ordinances know – that Satan retains his priesthood.
So, if even Lucifer, who had engaged in open rebellion against God, can retain his priesthood, then clearly it’s not something that can be taken away.
So, if that’s the case, then people who are practicing in righteousness even beyond the bounds of the church, there’s no way that they could lose access to their priesthood.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Priesthood is not about hierarchy at all, but about Divine connection.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Priesthood is not something that we must wait to be given; it is already within us, just as Divinity is already within us
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
When we limit our priesthood to institutional authority we limit our understanding of who we truly are.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Priesthood is not just about governance or ordinance; it is about Divine light, the power to comfort, to bless, to heal, and to lead. It is the authority to love and to have compassion. It’s the authority of bringing forth light.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Zion is not built through institutional control, but rather through unity, love, and righteousness. If we are to live our lives as our Heavenly Parents would seem to wish for us, we must recognize that our priesthood is not about exclusion, but about bringing forth the power of Heaven in our actions.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
I once believed that my priesthood was something fragile; something that could be taken away from me if I stepped outside of the institution that had ordained me. When I came out as transgender I feared that I had lost it, but then something happened…
I realized that clearly my priesthood was intact, that it was mine, that that connection was still there, that it never belonged to a church, that it was a gift from my Heavenly Parents. It was my birthright.
If that’s true for me, then it’s true for you.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
To those who have been told they are unworthy, who have felt cast out, who have wondered whether they are now beyond the reach of Divine power, I say this:
You are not beyond it, for it was never beyond you! Your priesthood was never something they could take! It was never something they could deny! Your right to have it is always within you, a part of your Divine nature as a child of Gods. Awaken to it, and it is yours.
Those who would deny you this, what they fear the most is not that you might be lost but that you might awaken to your own immediate connection to the Divine that needs no intermediaries; just love.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Those who claimed that I was an abomination, that my Father had no place for me when I was living my truth, they did not speak on behalf of God but rather on behalf of their own entrenched patriarchy and power. They have no authority to tell me that I am not what I am, nor that I have no place in my Parents’ house.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
There is a place for you in the House of God, not just in the walls of the church but in the vast eternal expanse of Divine love.
You do not need permission to be powerful! You do not need approval to be worthy! You already are!
May we walk forward with the knowledge that we are Divine, that we are called, and that nothing can separate us from the power of Heaven that already resides within us.
Sarah Williams
“Priesthood as Your Divine Birthright”, First Reform Mormon General Conference,
April 6th, 2025
Doubt is sacred.
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
Careful, deliberate skepticism has given me more genuine spiritual guidance than blind belief ever could. Because when I believe uncritically, I can be led anywhere — including somewhere harmful.
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
Faith is tempered and made more resilient by honest doubt.
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
I read Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision carefully. He describes a darkness pressing in on him, an inability to speak, a desperate inner struggle before the light comes. That account, to my ear, sounds like a man in the grip of something overwhelming — a psychological crisis, a visionary episode, perhaps something chemically assisted. There may indeed be real historical evidence suggesting that entheogens may have played a role in the revelatory world that Joseph and those around him inhabited. That diminishes it for me not a whit, because whatever its origins, the message of that vision calls us toward something beautiful: seek your own revelation. Trust your conscience. The divine speaks to individuals. That is a radical, living idea, and I am grateful for it.
But I can hold that gratitude and still be honest, because Joseph Smith was also a man. A complicated, flawed, sometimes harmful man. And Brigham Young likewise was a man, and every prophet who has ever stood before us and declared “thus saith the Lord” — was a human being, with desires and fears and blind spots, mixed in with whatever genuine light they carried. The milk asks us to receive their words as though God spoke them directly. The meat asks us to do what we do with our own inner revelations: audit them. Ask always — does this call me to be better, or does it call me to be worse? Does this lead toward the light, or does it serve someone’s fear, or pride, or hunger for power?
When a prophetic voice calls you toward greater love, toward justice, toward the dignity of every person — receive it. This is the Divine speaking through a human vessel.
When it calls you toward harm, toward exclusion, toward the diminishment of any of God’s children — set it down. Not in anger, but with the same gentle skepticism I’ve learned to apply to my own inner voices. Because that part is not the divine, not sacred; it is base and wicked
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
We are a people who love narrative. We love the idea that we are part of a larger story — that our faith was founded in fire and light and angels and plates of gold. And I think that is not a weakness. I think that is something deeply human and even sacred.
Mythology and truth are not truly opposed. When viewed critically, Mythology is one of the most powerful containers truth has ever been poured into. These stories — the grove, the stone in the hat, the restoration — are scaffolding. They give us something to climb. They hold up the better self we are still in the process of becoming.
But scaffolding is not the building.
We can use these frameworks to build higher than we are — only if we are willing to look at them clearly. Only if we are willing to say: this part of the story calls us toward beauty, and this part was a man’s fear speaking, and I will take what is luminous and set down what is shadow.
As I like to joke with my friends, we made it up and it’s true
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
I used to think doubt was the enemy of faith. I now believe it is faith’s most robust companion.
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
The willingness to say “I love this tradition and I will not accept all of it uncritically” is the most honestly prophetic thing I can imagine
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
Do not put your faith in books or prophets, they are only giving you the myth to awaken you to what is already true and beautiful and divine within you. Put your faith instead in truth, compassion, reason, love, and put your faith also in doubt, for these are the ways the Holy Spirit speaks to us in truth
Sarah Williams
“On the Sacredness of Doubt”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
56. Havah Pratt
“The saddest thing there is – even sadder than death – is for a person to be stopped in their ability to progress and move forward into greater freedom and light.”
Havah Pratt
A Synthesis of The Keys of Enoch With Mormon Doctrine
57. Adam M. Shaffer
Each of us is complex—none of us are all good, or all evil. And the politics we endorse come in a wide spectrum of benefits and harms
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Love others radically, unconditionally, knowing full well that they mean you harm. Seek to help and bless those who have been fed lies about us, and pray desperately that what they do to us can be forgiven and they can be healed, so that when we are found broken by the evils of this world their hearts will soften towards us enough to help us on their way. This can be the means of healing this world when the current storms of life – with all their potential for despair – have passed us by.
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Remember that… storms in the past have taken little more than a decade to subside, when our grandparents were left with a broken world in need of healing… our forebears rebuilt the cities and lands that the imperialists and the fascists had controlled and used for their awful work of destruction. We can and must survive our current conflicts, with our love of God and man intact, to build our world anew.
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Don’t let our struggle against injustice, whether against a tyrannical church, political party, or an unjust state – with its kangaroo courts and illegitimate use of force – turn you against everyone who made this awful crisis possible.
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Jesus calls us all to reform ourselves, whether our blind spots are induced by large harmful popular movements, or by the fears we use as an excuse which we gained in our youth from earlier generations.
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
All of us really, no matter how politically, socially and morally enlightened we are, only seem to see the deficiencies in others, rather than their too-often hidden nobility. We are ready to write people off, and reject them, when we see them as our enemies. And we may be right to fear them! They often endorse policies that dehumanize us, or our loved ones, and they may attack us with the awful apparatus of an unjust state. We don’t owe them an explanation of who we are, and we must stand against policies that destroy, but what did Jesus say we should do with our enemies themselves?
Adam M. Shaffer
“The Deplorables”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
58. Rob Lauer
Human beings exist in the image of God, and God loves them unconditionally in the same way that all good parents love their children.
Like all good parents, God wants His children to have this same love for one another; to help one another through hard times, protect one another from danger, and forgive one another when disagreements and conflicts occur.
When we hurt one another’s feelings or wrong one another — intentionally or unintentionally — we should remember that we are still a family and do all we can to be reconciled.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
We are always free, at any moment, to change our course; to see and feel differently about things, to form new values, to renew our minds, and have a change of heart.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
What kept the young man [in Mark 10] from eternal life was that he valued his possessions more than other human beings.
In no way does this story and any other Biblical story teach that the fault lies in human nature itself — in our Humanity. Instead, the fault lies in our inhumanity toward one another.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
I walked away from Christianity because its demonization of human nature and Humanity is not supported by the Bible.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
[Traditional Christian churches] teach commandments that “have a form of godliness,” but they deny that we humans, in and of ourselves, have the power to be godly.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Can anything overcome its nature? How can anything stop being what it is and still exist? To require human beings to overcome human nature is not only requiring them to do the impossible, it is profoundly perverted and sadistic. It is as perverse and cruel as punishing a fish because it can’t live out of water and fly like a bird, or punishing a bird because it flies, must breathe air, and cannot survive underwater.
The so-called “ideals” that too many religions and spiritual disciplines seek to impose on us are not ideals at all. For something to be a human ideal, it must be suited to human nature; the ideal must be humanly achievable.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
No wonder so many people of integrity have turned from religion – from deep-thinking, highly-rational intellectuals to average men and women who are simply doing the best they can from day to day while trying to make sense of their lives.
Rather than giving people tools to deal with life’s complexities, too many religions offer just enough comfort to get believers it through the week, and just enough guilt to bring them back next weekend.
And looking at history, everyone can see that religion, faith, and concepts of God have too often been deployed to manipulate, terrorize, subject, and control people.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Many in Mormonism’s founding generation seemed to intuitively understand a great truth: our beliefs about God – our sense of what is Holy, Sacred, and Divine – establishes the framework and context in which we understand ourselves, the nature of the cosmos, and our place in it.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
For the first Mormons, the story of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolized a foundational step in human progress. If it was a fall, then it was a fall upward.
The story symbolized our species becoming fully human; it symbolized the igniting of human consciousness, self-awareness, abstract thinking, and imagination. It symbolized the point at which humans realized that they were mortal and subject to death; when they began judging matters in terms of right and wrong and acting in accordance with those judgments. By eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve grew up. They became capable of acting rationally and not merely being acted upon, and they realized that they could be held morally responsible for their choices.
In becoming what we now recognize as fully functional human beings, they became—as the Genesis story confirms—like Gods, knowing good from evil. Initially organized in the image of God, they could now think and reason and act like Gods.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
Human beings are neither inherently good nor inherently evil;
human beings are inherently free.
I once heard a former Catholic priest say something that struck me as oh-so-true:
“You don’t need a devil to explain the existence of evil in the world;
all you need are billions of people, each of them with free will.”
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
“Prototype” was the word I had been searching for to describe my understanding of humanity’s relationship to the Divine. If we humans are made in the image of the Divine,
then God must be the prototype for human potential.
We humans are what God once was;
God is what we humans have within ourselves to become.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
The Human and the Divine share a common nature. Humanity and Deity are currently at separate points on the same spectrum.
Divine love, Divine justice, Divine mercy, Divine righteousness are by nature the same as Human love, Human justice, Human mercy, Human righteousness, but with a greater, more mature capacity.
Salvation is not about going somewhere when we die. It is about growing, progressing, and becoming to a greater degree like God. Salvation isn’t a destination; it’s the process of being fully human in all the ways the Spirit calls and entices us to be.
Rob Lauer
“Reclaiming Our Humanity”, First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5th, 2025
God doesn’t demand or even desire human worship. God desires human love and emulation.
Rob Lauer
Comment on The Mormon Community (Reform) on February 5th, 2026
(Note: said to be an early Reform Mormon concept)
59. Istvan Jamrik
I’m so thankful that I went from a McConkieite to a McClellanite
Istvan Jamrik
Reform Mormon Discord, April 18th, 2025
I did think of religion, especially theistic religion, as a universally harmful phenomenon. Eventually, exploring the ideas of people like John Hamer, a pastor of Community of Christ, or Dan McClellan, a religious scholar and a member of the mainstream Brighamite LDS Church, changed my views about this fundamentally.
As difficult as it was to deconstruct my previous literalistic, black-and-white religious views, it was perhaps even harder to deconstruct the idea that equates religion in general with those literalistic, all-or-nothing type worldviews. Thus, I came to see religion, or at least a belief in the supernatural and the quest to find a higher meaning in life, as something that is most likely an inherent characteristic of human beings, one of many such characteristics.
Seeing religion in this light made me realize that letting these innate human needs go completely unexplored may, in some cases, be almost as unhealthy as letting them run completely amok, regardless of consequences. My old atheism – almost like an abstinent, prohibitionist view, thinking that belief in a god or gods is poisonous at any concentration – evolved into an atheism that accepts that as much as religion had caused endless destruction and pain in the world, maybe the solution is trying to practice it together in a safer way, as opposed to the impossible task of extinguishing it.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
I do not believe [Joseph Smith Jr.] literally communed with gods and angels. I do believe that he, as a young boy, felt suffocated by the religious environment around him when he was growing up, and he needed an outlet for that. He was tired of hearing “you can’t believe it this way; you can’t do it that way”! He needed to do religion on his own terms.
Now, while deconstructing my previous beliefs, I also came to realize that after becoming the leading figure of this community, Joseph abused his power in many ways that are absolutely inexcusable.
Still, I find that I can relate to the person young Joseph was, and as someone who rejects dogmatism entirely, I believe that exploring religion on our own terms, like he and his fellow early Mormons did, can be a healthy exercise as long as it is done responsibly.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Could the Restoration itself be restored, as in, trying to trace back to the good ideas Mormonism started off with, and then go from there?
In my view, there were many good things in the early parts of Mormonism. There was a very communitarian aspect of it, the theory of which I believe to be worth exploring, regardless of how it was eventually abandoned by most Mormon denominations.
There was a diversity of voices trying to innovate and bring fresh ideas to the table – of course, with Joseph focusing on the hierarchical nature of the church and putting himself in the centre, many of these opposing voices were silenced, but what could have been if they were not?
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Although I do not believe in a literal progression of humans into gods or divine beings… I do believe in a kind of eternal progression that concerns every human being to ever live to leave their mark on the continuum of humanity’s existence, from ancient times to a hopeful far future. I believe there can be a benefit in trying to synthesize these ideas with each other in our mission to redefine what divinity even means to us.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
I do not believe that coming from a non-theistic point of view is impossible to reconcile with concepts of the divine.
On the contrary, I believe that humanity has already explored in great depth and breadth the theistic ideas of the divine, and in my opinion, it is high time to start offering alternative perspectives on this.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
I think non-theists as members of open religious movements can help balance out some of the harmful magical thinking that often plagues new movements and encourage healthy discussion and disagreement.
In my opinion, demystifying the divine can actually help with understanding it even more, because removing the magical elements tends to help explain it more on the basis of the human condition and human behaviour.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Being non-theist or Atheist does not mean “a person dedicated to fight against anything and everything religious”.
[However,] Atheists have been on the forefront of fighting against the harmful aspects of religion, and I believe that a type of uncompromising view that sets the alleviation of human suffering before any divine goals does have a place in an open religious movement that seeks similar goals.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Regardless of our type of individual belief systems, we are all parts of communities and systems that experience common outcomes, therefore if there are people with different belief systems who are seeking the same or similar outcomes, it is actually quite valuable for these people to support each other as part of the same community, and to define what sacredness or divinity could mean to them together.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
I interpret the story of the death of Jesus… from a non-theist point of view. To me, nothing could be a more beautiful interpretation of the Jesus message than the one that says:
Do not look for me to save the world single-handedly! I was crucified, I died, and I left my holy spirit to guide you. Now you have to look within yourselves to find me, meaning that now, you have to take on the mantle of saving the world, by listening to your inherent human morality, forming safe communities, and going forth with love and compassion.
Istvan Jamrik
“Non-theism in Restoring the Restoration”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
I think the myths are cool, but ultimately, I don’t think any pre-existence or afterlife is knowable in this life. I do think that after a while, chasing it can become a complete waste of energy that takes focus away from this life and the people in it. I’m not saying not to explore these myths or come up with new ones, but ultimately, I don’t see much point in trying to convince others of our preferred version of it. However, I do see a lot of value in sharing these myths with one another, because it is always possible that the ones personally meaningful to us may prove helpful to someone else in exploring their own understanding of the divine. …
I do think having these myths can be helpful and meaningful and good, but I see spirituality as whatever the opposite of “one size fits all” is. If the myth you learned from your own upbringing helps you, awesome. If the myth you heard from someone else helps you, great. If none work and you want to make your own, cool. But if it interferes with your happiness or the happiness of others, I think it’s best to abandon it.
Istvan Jamrik
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, December 5th, 2025
I don’t believe in one perfect exalted self that’s the same for everyone. This really bothered me within Brighamitism, because in the end, it felt like the point was to completely destroy any unique parts of myself and become exactly like the Godhead (in mind, will, and action), which, to me, sounds like that version of exaltation is just an assimilation into a collective where all our uniqueness and diversity is just destroyed. And that’s not an exaltation I like
Istvan Jamrik
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, December 5th, 2025
There are few things more useless than a prophet “revealing” that either the status quo is good, or what’s even worse, we need to regress.
Imagine if Jesus’ message was:
“Guys, things are fine as is, keep going.
And your neighbor that you hate? Yeah, they suck, keep hating them.
Ok, cheers!”
Istvan Jamrik
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, January 21st, 2026
When a priest or religious leader makes a claim that they themselves do not believe to be true, but they hope that it will result in me preemptively accepting things that they do believe to be true, on what basis do they claim to be the arbiters of what is truth and what isn’t? Where is the proof that this teacher or leader isn’t simply wrong or self-serving? Moreover, who authorized these people to be gatekeepers of these supposed truths?
… I cannot abide self-appointed arbiters of final and universal religious or spiritual truths as I cannot force myself to believe something that I do not believe simply because someone claiming authority tells me to do so.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
To profess or declare a belief is not the same as actually believing it. Religious groups centered around authority are excellent at standardizing the declared beliefs – the testimonies, if you will – of their followers, but they are much less successful at eliminating the diversity of their followers actual beliefs, even if they can make openly discussing or declaring them incur a social cost.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
How childish it was of me to let others think for me, to blindly follow authority and reject all other sources of truth. Oh, how childish it was of me to think that my beliefs alone amounted to some kind of absolute truth and everyone else on the planet was just simply lost and foolish. And indeed, how childish it was of me to condemn the lives of people I didn’t understand just because I considered my own religious dogmas to be universally applicable.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
What I concluded after this personal examination of my own beliefs was that the “milk”, for me, represented a simplistic view of the world in which there are knowable absolute truths, organizations that have a monopoly over what is true and what isn’t, and doctrines that come purely from some divine authority that cannot be questioned. The “meat” for me symbolizes the understanding that my experiences are not universal. My understanding is neither inherently better or worse than other points of view, and religion above all is a profoundly human experience. The milk is what I’m being fed by others. The meat is what I choose on my own.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
And let me tell you, trying to coexist with others within a religious or spiritual community where everyone has different beliefs is hard. Accepting total obedience and total conformity is what some would expect from a child. It’s easy! “Just say the right things or sit down and shut up.” Navigating a space where everyone is free to share their earnestly held beliefs is much harder, but it can also be so much more fruitful. Challenge, discussion, debate, contemplation. Those are the things that make us actually examine our beliefs and open up new perspectives and give us a chance to rethink our previous beliefs, synthesize, evolve, and progress.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
A favorite Mormon expression of mine is “eternal progression”, which I believe requires the ability to explore and engage with the beliefs and ideas of others and in some cases part with some of our previously deeply held convictions when our perspective changes or widens.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
In my personal journey, going from milk to meat meant leaving behind the preoccupation with whether scriptures contain historical truth or interpreting them as literal and univocal or belonging to any church organization that holds a hierarchical view of priesthood or revelation.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
I choose to align myself with people who share goals with me rather than share all of the myths behind it with rigid uniformity.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a fellow Reformed Mormon, Sister Sarah Williams, about the conceptualization of the Divine being a mere set dressing to the play that ultimately our being is. Let’s say if person one believes in Jehovah, person two believes in no God, and person three believes in an arcane polytheistic pantheon, but the beliefs of all three result in striving for peace, equality, and economic justice, then the differences in belief do not matter. The same way if person one believes in Jehovah and as a result wants peace, equality and justice while person two believes in Jehovah and as a result preaches hate, intolerance and hellfire for those with other beliefs, then the similarities in the myths they subscribe to do not matter at all. They are just two similar set dressings for two very different plays.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
If we are unwilling to sometimes re-evaluate convictions we once believed with our whole being, we are hindering our eternal progression. Going from meat to milk or putting away childish things is not a one-time action, but a constant openness to be faithful and skeptical in the same time, while making sure we do not become so preoccupied with the myths we subscribe to that it interferes with our or other people’s happiness and we fail to focus on doing good.
Istvan Jamrik
“Putting Away Childish Things”, Third Reform Mormon General Conference, April 4th, 2026
60. Erastus Snow
There can be no God except [they are]
composed of the [masculine and feminine] united,
and there is not in all the eternities that exist, nor ever will be,
a God in any other way.
Erastus Snow
Journal of Discourses Volume 19, discourse 40, pages 266-279
Politicians have sought to sustain themselves in violent, revolutionary and unconstitutional measures by foisting into the Supreme Court partisans who are already imbued with extreme political notions and ideas, whose carrying them with them on the bench has resulted in many decisions which after ages will greatly deplore and point out as the stepping stones to the destruction of our free institutions.
Erastus Snow
Journal of Discourses 23:83-92
We do not intend to be worried; we have already passed through many very trying places, and we still expect to find an outlet. I am reminded often of our experience when traveling through some of the narrow gorges in our mountains; it often appears that our road has come to an end against a mountain, but when we get close up to it, we find a turn, and we keep traveling; and this is sometimes often repeated in a day’s travel, until, at last, our road opens out and a broad, beautiful valley is in sight, which never fails to bring feelings of relief to the weary traveler, especially if he is not familiar with the road.
Erastus Snow
Journal of Discourses 23:83-92
61. Roman
Music is not just an art or a form of entertainment; it is a divine gift from our Heavenly Parents, a means of worship, and a source of spiritual enlightenment.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Music can be an act of prayer; one that transcends words and speaks directly to the Divine within us. Whether we are gathered in fellowship, singing in our homes, or reflecting in solitude, music has the power to lift our spirits and deepen our connection with the sacred. It is not limited to hymns or traditional religious music; any song that moves our hearts toward goodness, compassion, and wisdom can be an offering of worship.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Reform Mormonism celebrates the diversity of spiritual expression, and music is one of the most powerful ways to experience that unity in diversity.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
When we listen to songs that speak of love, justice, and the beauty of creation, we are reminded of our responsibility to act with kindness and integrity.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Reform Mormonism teaches… that personal revelation is ongoing, and music often becomes a medium through which we receive inspiration and insight. … music creates space for revelation in its many forms – whether we call it the Spirit, personal intuition, or simply the profound emotional resonance that leads us to greater understanding.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
Reform Mormonism encourages us to embrace joy, learning, and individual spiritual practice, and music can be an essential part of that. Whether through hymns, classical compositions, folk ballads, or modern songs that inspire us, music can be a way to nurture our souls.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
My dear friends in the Restoration, music is a profound and sacred gift. It strengthens our faith, unites us as a people, teaches truth, and opens our hearts to divine inspiration. Let us embrace its power not just in worship, but in every aspect of our lives. Let us sing with joy, listen with intention, and allow music to deepen our journey of faith and understanding.
Roman
“The Importance of Music in Reform Mormonism”,
First Reform Mormon General Conference, April 6th, 2025
62. Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
Mormonism resembles an “Eastern” more than a “Western” religion.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
Another religious tradition which Mormonism has significant overlap, in terms of describing the cosmos and the world, is Buddhism. … The most striking premise of the later Mahayana [Buddhist] tradition,… is the teaching that every sentient being has the Buddha-nature and therefore every sentient being has the potential to become a Buddha. In other words, everyone can be a bodhisattva, a person who aspires to be come a Buddha. Thus, all practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism are bodhisattvas, just as all members of the Church are “saints.
When Latter-day Saints discuss the “divine potential” of each person, they mean that every person can literally become a god or goddess and create worlds for spirit children. Similarly, Mahayana Buddhists believe that every person has the potential to become a Buddha, to create worlds, to populate them, and to teach sentient beings.
Of course, along with this doctrine of many Buddhas come very polytheistic implications: The Buddhist cosmos is full of innumerable Buddha-worlds, all created and presided over by innumerable Buddhas. This reminds us of our own belief in worlds without number and the gods who create and maintain them.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
It is somewhat more difficult for a Mormon woman to conceive of what it will be like to be a goddess in the next life when the only examples of deity that can be studied during one’s earthly life are male.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
On key issues such as polytheism, corporeality, [and] cosmology, … Mormonism can be more in agreement with Eastern religions than with mainline Christian denominations.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
Pointing out Mormonism’s doctrinal and cultural parallels to Eastern philosophies is particularly fruitful in secular intellectual settings like the newsroom or the university, where Christianity is often associated negatively with religious conservativism and where non-Western thought has a certain cachet. In these settings, people who are wont to dismiss Mormonism as simply a more virulent strain of the plague of the religious right may be surprised and genuinely interested to learn the similarities between Mormon and Buddhist cosmologies. These similarities in turn highlight some of Mormonism’s most powerful and distinctive teachings.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
Instead of fretting about how to get ourselves invited to the mainstream Christians’ party, and wondering why Christians are so particular about the doctrine of the Trinity when we “basically believe the same thing,” we could proudly identify Mormonism as a polytheistic Christian religion.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
“Mormonism: An Eastern Religion?”, Sunstone, 2009
63. Ebenezer Robinson
The last chapter of Mark’s gospel … says:
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
We were taught by that people that all these precious gifts and blessings can be enjoyed by the believers in this age of the world, as in former ages, we believed these things with all our heart, and after more than fifty years experience we can certify to the truth of the same.
It is by virtue of teaching this gospel, with the signs and blessings following, which gives the elders of all the factions of the Church their success.
These signs and blessings have followed, and been enjoyed by the honest hearted, pure-minded members of the Brighamite, or Utah church, of whom we verily believe there are thousands. Several very remarkable, well authenticated cases of healing are on record in their public journals, where the parties have followed the instruction given [in James 5:14-15], where he says: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and Lord shall raise him up.”
We can testify, in truth, that these gifts and blessings were enjoyed by members of the church in Elder Rigdon’s organization; and he used to take it as a sure sign that his organization was correct, and approved of God. We did not view it in that light, but believed, as Peter expressed it in the case of Cornelius, “He that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him;” and that these things are individual matters, for Jesus says: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. … And these signs shall follow them that believe.” This was, and is our faith.
We are credibly informed that these signs and blessings were enjoyed by members of Elder J. J. Strang’s organization, and we believe the testimony. We also believe the same is true of the members of [William] Bickerton’s, Granville Hederick’s, Lyman Wright’s, and other organizations. …
We trust the members of our church will not be so vain as to think we are the only people in all the earth who are entitled to the consideration and blessings of the Lord.
Ebenezer Robinson (Whitmerite)
The Return, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1889
64. Simon Dyke Sr.
I find there is much valuable time wasted trying to convince Herald readers that Joseph [III] is the legal successor of his father. In the name of common sense, does our soul’s salvation depend on that fact being established? Would it not be as well to study the Law of God, as given in the Bible and Book of Mormon, and strive to come nearer to Christ through obedience to his law, instead of spending time in very foolish questioning as to who is the legal successor of Joseph Smith, jr.?
Of one thing I am sure, the present Joseph has done much valuable work in preaching the Gospel.
Simon Dyke Sr. (Whitmerite)
The Return, Vol. 3, No. 1
65. J. Reuben Clark
If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation.
If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.
J. Reuben Clark
Memo to himself, 1917
As the crowning savagery of [World War 2], we Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than we were, and perhaps most of them no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that: it was a world tragedy.
… And the worst of this atomic bomb tragedy is not that only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women, and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large a general approval of this fiendish butchery. … Thus we in America are now deliberately searching out and developing the most savage, murderous means of exterminating peoples that Satan can plant in our minds. We do it not only shamelessly, but with a boast. God will not forgive us for this.
If we are to avoid extermination, if the world is not to be wiped out, we must find some way to curb the fiendish ingenuity of men who have apparently no fear of God, man, or the devil, and who are willing to plot and plan an invent instrumentalities that will wipe out all the flesh of the earth. And, as one American citizen of one hundred thirty millions, as one in one billion population of the world, I protest with all the energy I possess against this fiendish activity, and as an American citizen, I call upon out government and its agencies to see that these unholy experimentations are stopped, and that somehow we get into the minds of our war-minded general staff and its satellites, and into the general staffs of all the world, a proper respect for human life.
J. Reuben Clark
General Conference Talk, October 5th, 1946
66. Thomas S. Monson
Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God’s approval. Courage becomes a living and an attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully, but as the determination to live decently. A moral coward is one who is afraid to do what he thinks is right because others will disapprove or laugh. Remember that all men have their fears, but those who face their fears with dignity have courage as well.
Thomas S. Monson
“Courage Counts,” Ensign, Nov. 1986, 41.
The past is behind; learn from it!
The future is ahead; prepare for it!
The present is here; live in it!
Thomas S. Monson
“Go For It!” Ensign, May 1989, 43
This should be our purpose: to … become more spiritually refined as we make our way through sunshine and sorrow. Were it not for challenges to overcome and problems to solve, we would remain much as we are, with little or no progress toward our goal of eternal life.
Thomas S. Monson
“I Will Not Fail Thee, nor Forsake Thee”, General Conference 2013.
There is no going back, but only forward. Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future.
Thomas S. Monson
“Finding Joy in the Journey”, October 2008
May we resolve from this day forward to fill our hearts with love. May we go the extra mile to include in our lives any who are lonely or downhearted or who are suffering in any way.
Thomas S. Monson
“May We So Live”, Ensign, August 2008
I would encourage members of the Church wherever they may be to show kindness and respect for all people everywhere. The world in which we live is filled with diversity. We can and should demonstrate respect toward those whose beliefs differ from ours.
Thomas S. Monson
“Looking Back and Moving Forward”, General Conference, April 2008
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
Thomas S. Monson
“Finding Joy in the Journey”, General Conference, October 2008
Let us relish life as we live it, find joy in the journey, and share our love with friends and family. One day each of us will run out of tomorrows.
Thomas S. Monson
“Finding Joy in the Journey”, General Conference, October 2008
We need to pray, and then we need to act. Both are important.
Thomas S. Monson
“They Pray and They Go”, General Conference, April 2002
God gives to us the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. [God] leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that we might know the joys and glories of creation.
Thomas S. Monson
“Your Future Awaits”, BYU College of Engineering and Technology Convocation, April 25th, 2003
May we ever choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.
Thomas S. Monson
“Choices”, General Conference, April 2016
67. James E. Faust
As a means of coming to truth, people in the Church are encouraged by their leaders to think and find out for themselves. They are encouraged to ponder, to search, to evaluate, and thereby to come to such knowledge of the truth as their own consciences, assisted by the Spirit of God, lead them to discover.
James E. Faust
“The Truth Shall Make You Free,” Ensign, September 1998
68. Samuel W. Richards
None are required to tamely and blindly submit to a man because he has a portion of the priesthood. We have heard men who hold the priesthood remark that they would do anything they were told to do by those who preside over them (even) if they knew it was wrong; but such obedience as this is worse than folly to us; it is slavery in the extreme; and the man who would thus willingly degrade himself, should not claim a rank among intelligent beings, until he turns from his folly. A man of God would despise the idea of seeing another become his slave, who had an equal right with himself to the favor of God; he would rather see him stand by his side, a sworn enemy to wrong, so long as there was place found for it among men.
Others, in the extreme exercise of their almighty authority, have taught that such obedience was necessary, and that no matter what the saints were told to do by their presidents, they should do it without any questions. When the Elders of Israel will so far indulge in these extreme notions of obedience as to teach them to the people, it is generally because they have it in their hearts to do wrong themselves, and wish to pave the way to accomplish that wrong; or else because they have done wrong, and wish to use the cloak of their authority to cover it.
Samuel W. Richards
Millennial Star, Vol. 14, Num. 38, pp. 593-595
69. Chieko N. Okazaki
Be spiritually independent enough that your relationship with the Savior doesn’t depend on your circumstances or on what other people say and do. Have the spiritual independence to be a Mormon–the best Mormon you can–in your own way. Not the bishop’s way. Not the Relief Society president’s way. Your way.
Chieko N. Okazaki
Lighten Up!
70. Sharlee Mullins Glenn
One must practice to become a god.
Sharlee Mullins Glenn
Brighter and Brighter until the perfect day, pg 4
71. McArthur Krishna
[Heavenly Mother] is a Goddess in might and dignity.
And to consider Her otherwise, I think, is disrespectful to Her.
McArthur Krishna
quoted in Jana Riess, “Mormon Heavenly Mother Featured in Deseret Book Best-seller”
Religion News Service, September 13, 2016.
72. Rudger Clawson
Not only from the mouths of babes and sucklings has the cry gone forth for a Mother in Heaven. Men, strong and brave, have yearned to adore her. The heart of the man craves this faith and has from time immemorial demanded the deification of woman.
It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers to include our earthly mothers in our affections.
In fact, the love of one is a complement of our love for the other. We honor woman when we acknowledge the Godhood in her eternal Prototype.
Rudger Clawson
“Our Mother in Heaven”, The Latter-day Saints’ Millenial Star, September 29, 1910, 619–620
73. J. Golden Kimball
There is nothing in the world that the wicked dislike so much as truth
J. Golden Kimball
“J. Golden Kimball: The story of a unique personality” by Claude Richards, pg 81
This world was not made just to hold people imbued with selfishness and unhappiness, with no ambition beyond eating, drinking, and begetting. We ought to plan ahead, have some purpose – that is truly living. Life mean opportunity. Life means development. Life well spent means knowledge, growth, simplicity, of life, and complexity of thought.
J. Golden Kimball
“J. Golden Kimball: The story of a unique personality” by Claude Richards, pg 83
I want to say to every bishop, to every president of a stake, to every man who holds authority in this Church: The most dangerous thing that menaces us is to get prejudiced. How I hate it! No man that lives in the flesh can be prejudiced and be just.
J. Golden Kimball
“J. Golden Kimball: The story of a unique personality” by Claude Richards, pg 93
One time President Francis M. Lyman was complaining to me that I upset the authorities too much.
I answered him, “Well, you see, Brother Lyman, you talk to send them to sleep and I have to talk to wake them up.”
J. Golden Kimball
“J. Golden Kimball: The story of a unique personality” by Claude Richards, pg 97-98
Any man who tries to do the right thing and continues to try, is not a failure in the sight of God.
J. Golden Kimball
Conference Report, April 1907
I do not know just where I am going, but I know mighty well I am on my way.
J. Golden Kimball
Conference Report, April 1911
Is this secular education which we receive in our public schools an essential part of our education? Most assuredly. If we have any rational idea of God we must conceive that he is a great scholar, a scientist, an inventor, a discoverer, with full knowledge of the forces of the universe, a chemist, a mathematician. He who framed the universe is surely educated along all these lines.
J. Golden Kimball
Conference Report, October 1931
Almost everything now a days is standardized, staked out, fenced in, blue printed and so perfectly all planned and laid out that the Lord couldn’t get in a word edge-ways.
J. Golden Kimball
Kimball’s personal notebooks, collected by Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin
Remember to smile and to practice what you preach. It is better to live up to and preach a few things than to cram your mind with great volumes of goodness and make none of them work. Why not pick out a few good things and try them out?
J. Golden Kimball
Kimball’s personal notebooks, collected by Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin
Your mind is your thought factory. We must be broad minded, kind, loving and forgiving and do our own thinking. Narrow minds make narrow views and such men spread about them pin headed ideas and are obstructions to … progress
J. Golden Kimball
Kimball’s personal notebooks, collected by Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin
Kind words never die. There are no little things. Do a kind act, speak a kind word, give cheer and courage to others and reach out a helping hand to the down and outer and you are sure headed in the right direction.
J. Golden Kimball
Kimball’s personal notebooks, collected by Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin
74. Helmuth Hübener
(Helmuth Hübener was the youngest person of the German resistance to Nazism to be sentenced to death , and he was executed at age 17 by beheading.)
Do not let them take away your free will, the most valuable thing you possess.
Do not let your leaders – self-aggrandizing miniature kings – oppress and tyrannize you!
Helmuth Hübener
“Hitler Youth” flyer
75. Cyrus Simper
“[The 1886 revelation] wasn’t just a document [the LDS church] buried; it was a vision of heaven that no longer fit the story. And for those of us whose families, identities, or relationships don’t fit the story either, that gap tells us everything. Doctrine is not eternal. It is edited. Sacredness lies not in what God reveals, but what the institution decides to remember.”
Cyrus Simper
“Why the 1886 Revelation Still Haunts Mormonism”, June 17th, 2025
76. Nathan Kitchen
“What kind of community are we if we don’t have one another? No matter where we are on the social, spiritual, or political spectrum, as a queer people we need each other.
We cannot turn over community building to others, not even to our allies.
We must cast the vision of what life can be like for queer people. We must engage with the system to win our rights.
We must build and maintain communities of safety, love, and hope so that we might recharge and invigorate one another in our work to move this world towards equity and justice.
We cannot do this alone or in silos of identity. Division causes chaos.
We are a beautiful, messy community of queerness. Now is the time to lean in.”
Nathan Kitchen
“It is time to lean in”, June 18th, 2025 (day of United States v. Skrmetti decision)
77. Larry Tidwell (RCJC Presiding Patriarch)
“We don’t believe that the responsibility of the church [is] to tell people what they should do in their private personal lives, what tithing they should pay, [or] what the Law of Chastity means to them. … Its not the duty of the church to tell them.
Basically, [we] give them guidelines and principles and then let them decide how the principle applies to their lives.”
We believe the Lord can and does form other churches as there’s a need.
I would like to find a way to appeal to … people and give them a place where they could come and express themselves religiously without thinking they had to give up their beliefs or their [sexual] orientation
78. David O. McKay
Meditation is the language of the soul.
It is defined as a form of private devotion or spiritual exercise, consisting in deep, continued reflection on some religious theme.
Meditation is a form of prayer, and one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.
David O. McKay
Pathways to Happiness, page 226
War is basically selfish. Its roots feed in the soil of envy, hatred, desire for domination. Its fruit, therefore, is always bitter. They who cultivate and propagate it spread death and destruction, and are enemies of the human race.
War originates in the hearts of men who seek to despoil, to conquer, or to destroy other individuals or groups of individuals. Self exaltation is a motivating factor; force, the means of attainment. War is rebellious action against moral order.
[World War 2] had its beginning in militarism, a false philosophy which believes that “war is a biological necessity for the purification and progress of nations.” It proclaims that Might determines Right, and that only the strongest nations should survive and rule. It says, “the grandeur of history lies in the perpetual conflict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the suppression of their rivalry.”
War impels you to hate your enemies.
The Prince of Peace says, Love your enemies.
War says, Curse them that curse you.
The Prince of Peace says, Pray for them that curse you.
War says, Injure and kill them that hate you.
The Risen Lord says, do good to them that hate you.
Thus we see that war is incompatible with Christ’s teachings. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of peace. War is its antithesis, and produces hate. It is vain to attempt to reconcile war with true Christianity.
David O. McKay
“The Church and the Present War”, May 1942 Improvement Era, pg 276
79. John Taylor
The people of [the United States] are evidently bent upon their own destruction,
and they are full of enmity, hatred, war, and bloodshed.
To all human appearance, it would seem that
they will not stop short of the entire destruction of this great nation.
John Taylor
Journal of Discourses 9:234
There is not a country in the world where
there is more religious intolerance
than in this boasted republic.
John Taylor
Journal of Discourses 7:124
Although I was going to say I am not a Universalist, but I am, and I am also a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic, and a Methodist, in short, I believe in every true principle that is imbibed by any person or sect, and reject the false. If there is any truth in heaven, earth, or hell, I want to embrace it, I care not what shape it comes in to me, who brings it, or who believes in it, whether it is popular or unpopular. Truth, eternal truth, I wish to float in and enjoy.
John Taylor
Journal of Discourses 1:147-159
80. W. Grant McMurray
We are called to be a prophetic people, filled with the Spirit, rejoicing in the love we have discovered within our community of faith, but pointing to those injustices around our world that prevent even one single human being fulfilling their God-given personhood.
W. Grant McMurray
“A Prophetic People” at World Conference, April 21st, 1996
81. Matthew Frizzell
Empires in decline turn to magical thinking, serially invent new enemies, escalate violence,
and bankrupt themselves on fantasies of the past.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on July 4th, 2025
America’s temple of freedom is a den of thieves. For many in our communities, it always has been.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on July 1st, 2025
I would be celebrating today if liberals, government, and immigrants were actually the problem…and funneling money out of social goods into the military, corporate welfare, and tax breaks were the solution.
But it’s all made up: an expensive PR campaign of disinformation, entertainment, and blame-games paid for by benefactors of the bill. The politicians are paid-off vassals.
I wish it were a conspiracy. But it’s just unregulated self-interest the way America designed it.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on July 1st, 2025
Robbing human rights to pay off the wealthy warlords of private property and economic freedom is evil.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on July 1st, 2025
A great nation will enfranchise the poor, immigrants, and those seeking asylum.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on July 1st, 2025
Nothing great about escalating violence.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 23rd, 2025
Only the most reckless unethical people ignore the consequences of possibly being wrong. Unregulated free markets have created an addicted system.
Those who ignore the signs of climate change put us all at risk and treat the most vulnerable as expendable. Its consequences will fall on the righteous and unrighteous all the same.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 21st, 2025
I’m labeled a radical because I think everyone has a right to healthcare and education. I’m called a woke libtard because I know I have privilege others don’t, simply by my assigned race, gender, and birthright. I’m dismissed as brainwashed because I read books and news across the media spectrum. Mostly, I feel vulnerable because I am convinced any meaning or substance to freedom, rights, or salvation in this world begins with those with the least. Those are my ethics and politics, even when I fail to live them. I don’t believe in purity. I believe Jesus died in the struggle.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 13th, 2025
Replacing reason, research, and critical thinking with “faith” is not faith. It’s burying a talent.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 11th, 2025
Jesus was one of the occupied, not one of the occupiers.
His death was the result the empire keeping “law & order” when the crowd chose the bandit.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 10th, 2025
Empire Christianity not only professes God is on the side of empire.
It teaches the people of the empire are God’s preferred people.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 6th, 2025
We can create just and loving communities that nurture life instead of politics that suck it out of us.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on June 5th, 2025
Pretty sure God loves citizens and non-citizens the same infinite amount.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on May 30th, 2025
Partisanship is totalitarian in the US due to corporate capitalism, for-profit media, special interests, and dark money.
We need fair-share taxation and good governing for the common good instead.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on May 28th, 2025
The high priests of capitalism have placed human lives on Medicaid and food assistance on the alter of sacrifice to the gods of property and profits.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on May 23rd, 2025
In democratic capitalism, the government’s role is regulation, governing markets, maintaining rights and competition by busting monopolies.
In tyrannical capitalism, the role of government is to ensure domination of property, rights of capital to rule, & protect the rich.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on April 25th, 2025
Don’t ever forget that authoritarianism and pleasure at the appearance of power flow from weakness, helplessness, and fear.
Weak men love power because their experience with it is limited. Equality and vulnerability are difficult because they require self-awareness, strength of character, inner resources, intelligence and compassion. Equality and vulnerability require and are the way of community. This is why isolated and lonely men want for power. It is easier than relationship.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on April 19th, 2025
I don’t have words for the horror I feel about the US government, it’s apparent abuses of freedom and human rights, and the sense of threat that I’m next because I oppose this abuse of power and idolatrous nationalism. I think America died for me September 12, 2001. We have become what we hate.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on April 17th, 2025
The power of people will always be greater than the people in power.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on April 13th, 2025
Jesus’ story offers a vulnerable life-risking alternative for life and peace together. It’s directly counter to the self-righteous, scapegoating (them-blaming), wealth hoarding propaganda of corporate capitalism and its religious veneer, Christian Nationalism. Few may chose it, but Jesus’ way is true liberation, an exodus from empire and its culture of disorder and death
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on April 6th, 2025
We live in an immoral country where the idea of universal healthcare, education, and social security are “extreme” and “impractical,” while wealth buys elections and coopts the outrage of its victims.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on March 21st, 2025
Empires define greatness by the idols of wealth, displays of power and obedience, self-glorification by targeting others “less-than”, and the lie that this is peace.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on March 16th, 2025
To me, real freedom means laws and policies ensure those with disabilities, children in low-income families, single parent moms and dads, historically excluded classes, and wage-earning families have the same legal protections and equitable economic opportunities as wealthy able-bodied Americans.
This is based on my understanding of the Gospel.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on March 11th, 2025
Without democracy, capitalism is the rights and freedom of capital over the people.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on March 9th, 2025
Historically, totalitarianism can advance after rule of law and rule of party become difficult to distinguish.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on February 18th, 2025
The biggest government taxes citizens to consolidate power, pays law enforcement and military to force peace by violence and control rather than democracy and social contract, and moves beyond your bedroom to living in your head through anxiety, fear, and intimidation.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on February 17th, 2025
The wealthy and corporate interests have weaponized news and government against vulnerable people: working class, poor, immigrants, black Americans, LGBTIQA+ community, children (defunding schools, anti-gun control), and the disabled. It’s naked. It’s not conspiracy. There is no one mastermind or villain. It’s simple interests.
Democracy shares our common wealth and protections. Those who don’t need democracy will fight its ideology and institutions. They need only the law to protect their property and financial interests.
If you hate government, there is good reason. Corporate interests have been flooding US government with soft money and politicians for decades. These politicians in both parties have served the interests of their funders with few exceptions. Their compromises have weakened protections, made all dependent on debt, and funneled wealth to the top with relatively stagnant wages. None of this data is secret.
Democratic government, however, is our best defense against unfreedom – an “everyone against everyone and for yourself” society – where factions and ruler vs ruled intensifies. Dismantling government will leave the masses without a way to govern, without laws that protect, and at the mercy of corporate interests without recourse.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on February 9th, 2025
Taking democracy for granted is how it dies. Democracy doesn’t start as a system of legal protections, institutions, and shared governance. It started with everyday people participating and taking action to build coalitions for change.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on February 8th, 2025
For those seeking to consolidate power, the chaos is a form of terrorism against the citizenry. It’s designed to desensitize you of your own outrage and become more docile while power is exercised overtly and covertly. You can’t resist if you’re exhausted or confused.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on January 29th, 2025
[Donald Trump’s] lust for power will result in loss of human lives. We live in a late modern world in which human lives are dependent on integrated social systems of government, private business, agencies and services. Our food, energy services, healthcare, and livelihoods rely on money, subsidies, information and transportation systems. The chaotic orders ending funding, access, and jobs will harm the most vulnerable. This is the greatness narcissists and demagogues celebrate.
Matthew Frizzell
FB post on January 28th, 2025
82. Kelli D. Potter
Those that occupy marginalized standpoints have the capacity to perceive things about society that are hidden from those that do not share their standpoint… marginalized standpoints possess a kind of epistemic privilege with respect to seeing the reality of society.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
Nothing can be more personal than one’s sense of self. If there’s anything for which one should be able to receive personal revelation, it would be one’s self. And one’s gender identity is certainly a component of one’s self.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
Mormons are not forced by their theology to reject gays and trans folk. Instead, they are forcing their theology to reject gays and trans folk.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
If you pull at the trans string in Mormon theology, it’s heteronormativity and it’s sexism actually unravel.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
Reflection on [the existence of transgender Mormons] raises the possibility of an alternative Mormon theology of gender that recognizes it to be dynamic and indeterminate.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
The Mormon trans community is in a unique position to stand as insiders and outsiders that can articulate an alternative theological view of gender that is LGBTQ+ inclusive.
Kelli D. Potter
A Transfeminist Critique of Mormon Theologies of Gender
83. Amasa Mason Lyman
We have no matter to interest us but the truth, no labor in which to be engaged but in the acquirement of a knowledge of its principles and their application; and as the fountain of truth, from its boundless extent, is exhaustless, of course we have not acquired a knowledge of it all as yet. There remains an infinitude of knowledge yet to acquire; and if we could compare the little we know with what remains in the future to be learned, its comparative littleness, in point of extent and magnitude, would appear. …
To continue and extend this good work is the labor that should engage us continually, calling into exercise all of our ever-increasing powers for the development of human happiness.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
There is no great difficulty in understanding that the knowledge of the truth, as unfolding to our opening minds to some extent the purposes of God in our being, is the first and most valuable blessing connected with our existence as intellectual human beings here upon the earth; for only by this knowledge so revealed can our actions be correctly and consistently regulated, and all other blessings will follow as a natural consequence of the presence of this knowledge in the soul.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
We have not come here… to worship religion, or bow down to it with the soul’s reverence and adoration…
Our worship on the present occasion should be an honest, earnest desire to know the truth of which we are ignorant, with a fixed determination to give that truth an application to ourselves. Then our worship would be acceptable to God, the object of our worship, and our offering would be pleasing in [God’s] sight.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
No senseless worship (and by senseless I mean that which is ignorantly offered, unguided by a knowledge of the truth, no worship that is blindly and ignorantly presented) is acceptable before [God]; but that which is radiant in the light of truth, and that comes from a soul made free by the knowledge of God, is the only acceptable worship that can be rendered to [God].
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
That we may be enabled to become devoted to God, loving the truth because we comprehend its value and feel its emancipating influence upon the mind, awakening within us aspirations for glory and endless life, and feeling the chains that have held us in the bondage of ignorance bursting asunder, and emerging into that world of glowing light and fadeless glory to which our heavenly aspirations direct us, – to establish this upward and glorious tendency in the feelings of the soul, is the object for which religion has been revealed to us, that through the truth we acquire we may be prepared for this glory as children of God.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
“Well now,” says one, “if I could only know that it is right! What are the evidences in support of its being so. Do the Scriptures tell us it is right?”
Suppose they do not tell us anything about it at all. Could we know, comprehend, or understand anything about it? Would we be capable of having developed within us a principle of truth, supposing that the record contained in the Bible had never reached us? I know we would be the same thinking beings we are now. Our minds would not be closed up, and our powers of thought and reflection rendered incapable of action, but we would think of everything we saw, everything that presented itself to our minds furnishing material for thought and reflection.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
What are the Scriptures? They are simply a record of a small portion of what God is said to have done with and for the inhabitants of the earth during a small portion of the time that the earth has been the home of humanity.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
“But was it decreed, then, that Jesus should die to save men who were thus pure and holy?” No. It did not form any part of the purpose of God that he should die. …
The Gospel is nowhere said to have been constituted of the death of Jesus. Where shall we find in the record of his teachings anything that would sustain such an idea? Nowhere. We see him as he was revealed among humanity, and read the truths he taught, so far as they have been transmitted to us through an imperfect medium; and we can see that his life was devoted to the truth, if the light of heaven has given to us any degree of understanding. …
“Was it a part of his preaching to people that he came to pour out his life’s blood – that in its crimson tide the guilt of a sin-stricken world might be washed away?” Did he speak of his death as the object to which their thoughts and attentions should be turned? Why, he told them to cease from sinning and turn unto righteousness – to put evil and corruption from them and live in purity and holiness before God.
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
Shall we, with all these reasons before our minds, arrive at any other conclusion than that man was constituted to become possessed of knowledge, and the Gospel constituted of what would lead him to the acquirement of that knowledge?
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
It is you and I who do wrong, and from that wrong we want to be saved. How can we be saved from it but by ceasing to do the wrong?
Amasa Mason Lyman
“Nature of the Mission of Jesus”, The Millennial Star, No. 14, Vol. 24.
When I was a child I thought as a child, I believed the Gospel as a child, I speculated about it as a child, and I talked about it as a child would; but since I became a man I have learned different things; I have learned that there is a vast difference between receiving and endorsing a belief in the existence of a fact, and the full and perfect comprehension of it.
Amasa Mason Lyman
Journal of Discourses 3:141
84. Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
It [is] our duty to strive for the liberties and advancement of our fellows
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
There was, however, but one course for men of truth, and that was to face the whole. And thus we have struggled through, regardless of consequences, and expect to do so until we see truth and liberty triumphant.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
Man-worship of every degree must pass away, and men learn to look with greater reverence to principles than to those who present them.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
It may be asked by what right we presume to interfere in matters appertaining to the Presiding Priesthood of the Church. We reply: by the simple right that every man has to utter a truth, – the same right that the boy Samuel had to deliver his simple message to the Lord’s servant, the Great Presiding High Priest of Israel. And finally, by the right which the Heavens reserve to themselves, to speak whenever and by whomsoever they please.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
It requires but little more exertion of such arbitrary power to rend asunder the ties which bind us, and scatter us to the four winds. Nothing can save us but the raising of a platform combining liberty of thought and action with all the ancient beauties of our faith – one upon which we can unite. In this way alone can we preserve our existence as a people, – and for this the Heavens have provided.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
The great truth will be emphatically proclaimed, that no priesthood or standing in the church, or ordinances of any kind, in and of themselves, elevate the possessor, or obtain for him any distinction in the sight of God. All outward forms import as they are in their place, will be considered only as means for our advancement in purity, goodness, and intelligence. Apart from which object it will be understood that they have no power or value. The whole purpose of the gospel being the elevation of man’s nature, all its organizations or requirements will be held, therefore, to be but means to that end.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
The Church was not instituted as a machine for raising money, and that all wealth which the Church cannot obtain without oppressing its people it will be better without.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
God has no special object in requiring Tithing, only so far as it tends to the promulgation of truth, the relief of the poor, or the promotion of public improvements. … Tithing should be a tenth of the interest (or GAIN) obtained by labor or means, or both, annually, and not a tenth of one’s entire labor, or, the results of labor, as at present understood and enforced. Thus throwing the weight of Tithing mainly on the rich, and lightening the burdens of the poor.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
The Priesthood will present itself before the world simply as an institution for teaching and propagating truth. It will throw aside all pretensions to dictatorial power, and leave men’s professions, their employment, and the entire control of their talents and means to themselves. It will seek to promote the individuality of every man to the utmost. Instead of trying to force the conceptions of one man’s brain, or those of twenty, into the million, it will recognize the God, the light and truth that is in the souls of all men, and seek only to develop it and guide it to its true end.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
The Church will enlarge her creed so that she can become the nursing mother of millions instead of the controller of a few. So long as men obey the initiatory ordinances of the Gospel and live pure lives, the Church will find a place for them within her borders, whether they can accept one additional principle of truth or a thousand. Like Nature, which rejects nothing from her domain, but, from the rudest to the grandest organism, controls all with the same hand, so will the Church embrace all intelligences within her operations, accepting them as they are, and leading them up to God.
The unity which the Church will aim for, will be the unity of oneness in all great principles of truth. It will seek to harmonize the sentiments of mankind, leaving all free to follow the bent of their organization, and to work out their own individuality, instead of aiming to direct their action in the petty details of life. This is the unity and harmony manifested in the Universe, in which all elements are united in obeying great general laws, while each manifests its peculiar qualities in its own way. This, therefore, is God’s unity…
All religions will be recognized as having been wisely developed in the providences of God to meet the various conditions of the different races and classes of mankind. … All creeds … will be respected in Zion as fulfilling a great and a useful mission in God’s hand.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
The policy of the [Godbeite] Movement will be to make Zion, that place, of all others on the face of the earth, where mere differences of creed has the least power to separate man from his fellow man. Zion’s policy will be to abolish all distinctions which build up hatred and division in the hearts of men, and to draw all men so near to her that she can reach their affections and do them good. … All wholesale measures for separation and non-association between classes and creeds are artificial, and require, as we well know, the watchman and the inquisitor to keep them going – and then they fail. There is no true safeguard from corruption but that of higher education and intelligence.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
If … any form of belief, now or hereafter, presents a truth, we shall, at all times, admit it. We are ashamed of no truth, and will battle for the bright points of all creeds as much as for our own.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
To the intelligent mind, God is seen in all that is natural, simple, and heavenly in its character.
Elias Lacy Thomas Harrison and William Samuel Godbe
The Godbeite Manifesto, The Utah Magazine, November 27th, 1869
85. Lincoln
We’re growing, that means we’re inspired!
We’re shrinking, that means the tares are being sifted out!
We’re small, that means we’re the remnant!
We’re large, that means we’re the stone that’s filling the earth!
Lincoln
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, October 8th, 2025
There are no Nazis in the celestial kingdom
Lincoln
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, November 8th, 2025
It’s definitely not gonna be those who are prostituting their priesthood
in service of demagogical evangelicals who hate religious minorities such as them
[that will fulfill the White Horse Prophecy]
Lincoln
Comment on the Reform Mormon Discord, January 8th, 2026
86. Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“Peace is, as we all know, not just absence of war. Peace means that people can live with dignity, that conflicts can be solved without violence, that we listen to one another and care for one another. This is true for all levels — this is for the family, for individual lives, for politicians, for communities, for all phases of life. … We can find a way of respecting and accepting each other as we are and help each other, even disregarding our differences.”
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Remembrance service at Fort Douglas Cemetery on November 16th, 2025
87. Orson F. Whitney
The Lord needs… [people] on the outside of His church, to help it along. … God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of His great and marvelous work. The [Mormons] cannot do it all. it is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.
Orson F. Whitney
Conference Report – April 1928, pg 59
[Mormonism] embraces all truth, whether known or unknown. It incorporates all intelligence, both past and prospective. No righteous principle will ever be revealed, no truth can possibly be discovered, either in time or in eternity, that does not in some manner, directly or indirectly, pertain to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Orson F. Whitney
Elder’s Journal, October 15th, 1906
88. LDS First Presidency / Church Statements
It is a moral evil for any person or group of persons to deny any human being the right to gainful employment, to full educational opportunity and to every privilege of citizenship, just as it is a moral evil to deny him the right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience.
LDS First Presidency
October 6th, 1963
The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and Others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations
and to being a higher level of understanding to individuals. …
Consistent with these truths, we believe that God has given and will give to all people sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation,
either in this life or in the life to come.
LDS First Presidency
Statement on February 15th, 1978
It has been called to our attention that there are some among the various pro-white and white supremacy communities who assert that the Church is neutral toward or in support of their views. Nothing could be further from the truth. … White supremacist attitudes are morally wrong and sinful, and we condemn them. Church members who promote or pursue a “white culture” or white supremacy agenda are not in harmony with the teachings of the Church.
LDS Church Statement
August 15th, 2017
89. Lorenzo Snow
One day, to while away the slowly passing hours, I took my gun with the intention of indulging in a little amusement in hunting turkeys, with which that section of the country abounded. From boyhood I had been particularly, and I may say strangely attached to a gun. Hunting, in the forests of Ohio, was a pastime that to me possessed the most fascinating attractions. It never occurred to my mind that it was wrong—that indulging in “what was sport to me was death to them;” that in shooting turkeys, squirrels, etc., I was taking life that I could not give; therefore I indulged in the murderous sport without the least compunction of conscience. But at this time a change came over me. While moving slowly forward in pursuit of something to kill, my mind was arrested with the reflection on the nature of my pursuit—that of amusing myself by giving pain and death to harmless, innocent creatures that perhaps had as much right to life and enjoyment as myself. I realized that such indulgence was without any justification, and “feeling condemned, I laid my gun on my shoulder, returned home, and from that time to this have felt no inclination for that murderous amusement. In fact, years had elapsed since the days of boyhood sport, and in the interval I had neither time nor opportunity for reckless indulgence.
Lorenzo Snow
Biography and family record of Lorenzo Snow, Chapter V
90. Richard L. Evans
The Lord has had many peoples and has dealt with them under many conditions at many times in many places, even unto the present, and his similar dealings with others as with ancient Israel we accept as scripture.
Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1956 (Conference Report, p. 100)
We believe in and accept all truth, and believe in the search for truth, through the inspiration of Almighty God and through the searching and seeking of earnest and honest men.
Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1956 (Conference Report, p. 100)
Truth is not always convenient. … [it does] not bend [itself] to our convenience. Truth does not adapt itself to what we wish it were. We had better adapt our lives to what it is.
Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1956 (Conference Report, p. 101)
Our Father in heaven is not an umpire who is trying to count us out. He is not a competitor who is trying to outsmart us. He is not a prosecutor who is trying to convict us. He is a Loving Father who wants our happiness and eternal progress and everlasting opportunity and glorious accomplishment, and who will help us all He can
Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1956 (Conference Report, p. 101)
91. Gordon B. Hinckley
No man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.
Gordon B. Hinckley
April 2006 General Conference
The great English essayist Thomas Carlyle once ironically shared the observation, “God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous mannikins here below” (quoted in Sartor Resartus [1836], 182). I think our Father in Heaven must have wept as He has looked down upon His children through the centuries as they have squandered their divine birthright in ruthlessly destroying one another.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“War and Peace”, General Conference April 2003
War, of course, is not new. The weapons change. The ability to kill and destroy is constantly refined. But there has been conflict throughout the ages over essentially the same issues.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“War and Peace”, General Conference April 2003
In the course of history, tyrants have arisen from time to time who have oppressed their own people and threatened the world. Such is adjudged to be the case presently, and consequently great and terrifying forces with sophisticated and fearsome armaments have been engaged in battle.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“War and Peace”, General Conference April 2003
Let it be understood that we have no quarrel with the Muslim people or with those of any other faith. We recognize and teach that all the people of the earth are of the family of God. And as He is our Father, so are we brothers and sisters with family obligations one to another.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“War and Peace”, General Conference April 2003
Now, there is much that we can and must do in these perilous times. We can give our opinions on the merits of the situation as we see it, but never let us become a party to words or works of evil concerning our brothers and sisters in various nations on one side or the other. Political differences never justify hatred or ill will. I hope that the Lord’s people may be at peace one with another during times of trouble, regardless of what loyalties they may have to different governments or parties.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“War and Peace”, General Conference April 2003
May the Lord bless us to work unitedly to remove from our hearts and drive from our society all elements of hatred, bigotry, racism, and other divisive words and actions. The snide remark, the racial slur, hateful epithets, malicious gossip, and mean and vicious rumor-mongering should have no place among us.
Gordon B. Hinckley
National Conference of Christians and Jews Interfaith Services, November 20, 1994
We must never forget that we live in a world of great diversity. The people of the earth are all our Father’s children and are of many and varied religious persuasions. We must cultivate tolerance and appreciation and respect one another.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“The Work Moves Forward” General Conference, April 3rd, 1999
It is imperative that you not neglect your families. Nothing you have is more precious. … When all is said and done, it is this family relationship which we will take with us into the life beyond
Gordon B. Hinckley
Satellite Broadcast, Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, June 21st, 2003
There are some of other faiths who do not regard us as Christians. That is not important. How we regard ourselves is what is important. We acknowledge without hesitation that there are differences between us. … I hope we do not argue over this matter. There is no reason to debate it.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“We Bear Witness of Him” General Conference, April 4th, 1998
We must not become disagreeable as we talk of doctrinal differences. There is no place for acrimony. … We can respect other religions, and must do so. We must recognize the great good they accomplish. We must teach our children to be tolerant and friendly toward those not of our faith. We can and do work with those of other religions…
We can and do work with those of other religions in various undertakings in the everlasting fight against social evils which threaten the treasured values which are so important to all of us. These people are not of our faith, but they are our friends, neighbors, and co-workers in a variety of causes. We are pleased to lend our strength to their efforts.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“We Bear Witness of Him” General Conference, April 4th, 1998
Let us as [Mormons] reach out to others not of our faith. Let us never act in a spirit of arrogance or with a holier-than-thou attitude. Rather, may we show love and respect and helpfulness toward them.
We are greatly misunderstood, and I fear that much of it is of our own making.
We can be more tolerant, more neighborly, more friendly, more of an example than we have been in the past. Let us teach our children to treat others with friendship, respect, love, and admiration. That will yield a far better result than will an attitude of egotism.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“A Time of New Beginnings,” Ensign, May 2000, 87
There is a sad tendency in our world today for persons to cut one another down. Did you ever realize that it does not take very much in the way of brainpower to make remarks that may wound another? Try the opposite of that. Try handing out compliments.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Strengthening Each Other,” Ensign, Feb. 1985, 3
Marriage, in its truest sense, is a partnership of equals, with neither exercising dominion over the other, but, rather, with each encouraging and assisting the other in whatever responsibilities and aspirations [they] might have.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“I Believe”, Ensign, August 1992, 6.
I am confident that when we stand before the bar of God, there will be little mention of how much wealth we accumulated in life or of any honors which we may have achieved. But there will be searching questions concerning our domestic relations.
And I am convinced that only those who have walked through life with love and respect and appreciation for their companions and children will receive from our eternal judge the words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: … enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25:21).
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Personal Worthiness to Exercise the Priesthood,” Ensign, May 2002, 53–54
Let us be good [spouses and [parents]. Any [one] who is a tyrant in [their] own home is unworthy of the priesthood. [They] cannot be a fit instrument in the hands of the Lord when [they do] not show respect and kindness and love toward the companion of [their] choice.
Likewise, any [one] who is a bad example for [their] children, who cannot control [their] temper, or who is involved in dishonest or immoral practices will find the power of [their] priesthood nullified.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Reaching Down to Lift Another,” Ensign, November 2001, 52
The [spouse] you choose will be your equal. … [they are] not your servant, your chattel, nor anything of the kind. How tragic and utterly disgusting a phenomenon is [spousal] abuse. Any [one] in this Church who abuses [their spouse], who demeans [them], who insults [them], who exercises unrighteous dominion over [them] is unworthy to hold the priesthood. Though [they] may have been ordained, the heavens will withdraw, the Spirit of the Lord will be grieved, and it will be amen to the authority of the priesthood of that [person].
… If there be any … who are guilty of such behavior, I call upon you to repent. Get on your knees and ask the Lord to forgive you. Pray to Him for the power to control your tongue and your heavy hand. Ask for the forgiveness of your wife and your children.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Personal Worthiness to Exercise the Priesthood,” Ensign, May 2002, 53–54
In all of living have much of fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Stand True and Faithful,” Ensign, May 1996, 94
I listen to the commentators on television and radio… They seem unable to deal with balanced truth, notwithstanding their loud protests to the contrary. They feed us a steady diet of character assassination, faultfinding, and evil speaking of one another that caricatures the facts and distorts the truth.
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Way to Be!: 9 Rules For Living the Good Life”, page 82
92. Annalee Skarin
You have created your own heaven and your own hell, both for eternity and right here on this earth. Your very now is as much a part of eternity as your vague future can possibly be. You are living in eternity.
Analee Skarin
“The Temple of God”, chapter 1
Where is the child you used to be? That little child that was you? It did exist, but where is it now? It has gone, and will never live again — and the “YOU” that exists today will soon pass on, and there will be an older person walking in your shoes, bearing your name.
Are all things then passing and transitory? Are all these substantial, practical things we deal in and depend on only dreams of a night vision? Is there nothing vital or lasting in life?
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 1
Life was meant to be eternal progress, not drab, deadly, dull, unprogressive existence.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 3
The price of truth is always the very greatest price required of those who bring it, for since the very beginning of creation man has been trying to force God into an orthodox straight-jacket. … Groups and creeds always have a tendency to become orthodox or static in their thinking, and this condition seals them into an unpliable condition that becomes fixed, and unprogressive.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 4
Only the present is ours, to glorify, to bless, to send on into the tomorrows, crowned with the touch of our hands upon it.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 7
Damnation can only come to the one who thinks he possesses all the light and knowledge God has to offer and seals his mind against more truth. For that individual progress is stopped and he is damned; and it is the same whether it is spelled “damned” or “dammed.” A dam across a river builds a restraining wall to hold back the tide, the free flow of the waters. Damnation is the same thing — a wall has been constructed by believing too little and sealing the way to more truth and more knowledge. Man’s true heritage is to “know all truth.”
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 9
No information has ever been revealed to [humanity] without the intense searching of someone who had a mind that could not be silenced. Each truth has been given through the mind of [someone] who was willing to spend days in seeking, years in reaching and months in knocking.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 10
Truth and understanding can never penetrate a sealed mind.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 12
The sneer of the righteous can truly be more wicked than the transgressions of the sinner.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 14
Every individual working in any business or industry has the right to share in the profits of the establishment he helps to make successful by his labors.
Annalee Skarin
“Ye Are Gods”, chapter 14
93. Shannon McAdam
In a world where imperial powers and oppressive systems try to keep us closed off and fearful of other people, we can stand against those powers by opening up and connecting with others.
Shannon McAdam
Daily Bread, December 12th, 2025
94. Lizza Jacobs
LIVE. You’re alive and one day you won’t be and none of us knows when that day will come.
It’s a tragedy to hide from joy
Lizza Jacobs
“Mormons, Nudity and Sexuality” in Exponent II, August 28th, 2019
If you have a lover, I highly recommend worshiping the chalice of their soul with your own flesh and pondering on the transcendent bliss of shared pleasure.
Lizza Jacobs
“Mormons, Nudity and Sexuality” in Exponent II, August 28th, 2019
95. Nancy Ross
This is a blessing to remind you with strength and gentleness that your body is a temple, whole and beautiful worthy and unique. You need no special documentation to inhabit it or possess it, because it is entirely yours, sanctified by a God who knows your pronouns, whose gender is reflected in you, who loves the people you love. This God sees your temple body as sacred and holy. Misunderstanding men may claim that a misunderstanding God has a different arrangement, strange rules. But God never left your temple and is with you, affirming you, All along the way. Amen.
Nancy Ross
“A blessing for all of the queer folks” in Exponent II, September 18th, 2022
96. Charlotte Scholl Shurtz
The heavenly family is queer. Sure, our heavenly parents are in a heterosexual relationship, but the heavenly family is bigger than just our heavenly parents. It includes parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even close friends.
One of our Heavenly Father’s parents is nonbinary. Heavenly Father calls them Zaza, a gender-neutral term of endearment for a parent.
Our Heavenly Mother and her brother are both straight, but their older sister (and our Heavenly Mother’s best friend) is a lesbian goddess celestially partnered with her transgender wife. They preside as gods over a world they created together.
Heavenly Father has an asexual uncle. He was never interested in marriage, but he is sealed to several close friends with whom he collaborates on creation and constantly teases. He always knows how to make you laugh if you’re feeling down.
And Heavenly Mother’s grandfather is gay. Together he and his husband have created some of the most intriguing and beautiful animals known to the extended heavenly family.
One of Heavenly Mother’s cousins is polyamorous and has three spouses. She presides over a world in partnership with her wife and two husbands, all gods together. They like being able to split up responsibilities among four people instead of two.
Of course, these are only a few members of the heavenly family. Our heavenly family is so large it would take me more than a day and a night to tell you about each member. But most importantly, no matter the differences in whom they love and choose to lead a celestial life with, all members of the heavenly family—queer or not—are welcomed and celebrated at heavenly family reunions.
Charlotte Scholl Shurtz
“A Queer Heavenly Family: Expanding Godhood Beyond a Heterosexual, Cisgender Couple” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 2022
97. Alisha Anderson
With time and through my experience I’ve come to believe this that the journey to my true self and a more true God are the same path. Meaning that knowledge of my true self and a more true God coalesce together and that a relationship with true self and a more true God grow together. And taking this journey of growth towards self and God has hinged on this difference for me, walking not with fear but with faith.
Alisha Anderson
The Gather Conference, 2025
The thought came in [a] moment, “Plant mustard seeds”, so I planted mustard seeds – this seed Jesus spoke of in the context of faith. And as they grew, I observed, and this is one of the many things I learned: Seeds are to be listened to, not instructed.
When you plant a seed, you enter into an agreement of sorts. If you want the seed to grow and thrive as a plant, you must listen to what it needs. Your work is to feed it and then watch to see if leaves stay healthy and vibrant or if they start to dry and wither, and you adjust by listening to the plant. You do not tell it as its leaves wilt, “That was enough water; you should be fine”, you don’t put it in partial shade when what it needs is full sunlight and then say, “Other plants thrive here; why can’t you?” No. If you desire a seed to grow into its distinct plant, you must listen to what causes it to thrive and what causes it to fade. It will show you. It will tell you.
For seeds are astounding. This small dense point contains all the information needed for every future leaf, stem, or flower. It was created by light, an apparent plant that grew within it all it needs to know to become what it’s intended to be – it’s all there in this small seed. All the direction and capacity to slowly add cell to cell, leaf to leaf, and grow into its full plant, it’s all there in the seed.
Meaning, your work is to feed it according to what grows it, and it will become the plant it’s intended to be. And because of this, when you plant a seed, you do not instruct it. You listen to it.
And as I thought about seeds, I thought about souls. A soul made in the image of God. A soul embedded with all the information needed to become who they are meant to be. And how perhaps what a soul also needs is to be fed and then listened to and as to what causes them to fade or what causes them to grow.
Alisha Anderson
The Gather Conference, 2025
I believe in an expansive God – one who desires us to find the path that leads us and our loved ones to a truer self and a truer God. I have learned that you will recognize your path by its narrowness, for it was made for one. And you will know it also by its expansiveness, for it was made by an expansive God.
Alisha Anderson
The Gather Conference, 2025
98. Joel McDonald
The diversity that Affirmation welcomes and affirms means that we may be exposed to experiences that counter our own beliefs.
As current or former members of the Church, where so much focus is placed on building testimonies of what is “true” and where black-and-white thinking is encouraged, I think we can find it challenging to navigate gray areas.
I don’t want to be accused of calling good evil or evil good, but I think we can, based on our lived experiences in relation to the Church, recognize that there are definitely areas where the truth may be muddied and that there are gray areas we have to navigate.
In those unknowns, we each have made decisions based on what we feel is best for our mental, spiritual, and physical well-being. And we have not all come to the same conclusions. And that’s okay. But what this means is that while we share so much in common, we may have fiercely different beliefs.
Like when things go off-script on stage, engaging in diverse thoughts, ideas, and beliefs can cause discomfort. How we respond to that discomfort will make all the difference. We can either choose to reject what is shared with us and defend our beliefs, effectively stopping the conversation, or we can accept what is shared, affirm the person sharing, and consider how what was shared can aid us in our own journey.
Joel McDonald
2024 Affirmation International Conference
99. Edward W. Tullidge
Men are too apt to lock again the heavens which the angels have opened, and convert priesthood into priestcraft. It is woman who is the chief architect of a spiritual church.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 20
New revelation is the signature of Mormonism.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 175
In the temples, both of the heavens and the earth, woman is found. … Man is nowhere where woman is not. Mormonism has restored woman to her pinnacle [among the gods]. Presently woman herself shall sing of her divine origin. A high priestess of the faith shall interpret the themes of herself and of her Father-and-Mother God!
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 177
The spirit of Mormonism is universal salvation.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 178
A grand [familial] line, then, down from the ” eternities ; ” generations of worlds and generations of Gods ; all one universal family.
The Gods are the fathers and the mothers, and the brothers and the sisters, of the saints.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 181
Joseph endowed the church with the genesis of a grand theology, and Brigham has reared the colossal fabric of a new civilization ; but woman herself must sing of her celestial origin, and her relationship to the majesty of creation.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 187
Henceforth shall the mother half of creation be worshipped with that of the God-Father; and in that worship woman, by the very association of ideas, shall be exalted in the coming civilization.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 189
And shall it not be said then that the subject rises from the God-Father to the God-Mother? Surely it is a rising in the sense of the culmination of the divine idea. The God-Father is not robbed of his everlasting glory by this maternal completion of himself. It is an expansion both of deity and humanity.
They twain are one God!
The supreme Unitarian conception is here; the God-Father and the God-Mother! The grand unity of God is in them–in the divine Fatherhood and the divine Motherhood–the very beginning and consummation of creation. Not in the God-Father and the God-Son can the unity of the heavens and the earths be worked out; neither with any logic of facts nor of idealities. In them the Masonic trinities; in the everlasting Fathers and the everlasting Mothers the unities of creations.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 193
In the gentleness of woman… civilization dawned.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 538
If woman’s spiritual nature prevail not in the church, then is the church dead. If her faith expires, then is there left but a wretched form of godliness.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 541
This is the woman’s age. The universal voice of society proclaims the fact. Woman must, therefore, lay the corner-stone of the new civilization. Her arm will be most potent in rearing the glorious structure of the future. Man cannot prevent it, for in it is a divine intending.
Edward W. Tullidge
The Women of Mormondom, pg 551
100. Benjamin F. Johnson
Our mission to the earth was to organize a nuclei of Heaven, to take with us, to the increase of which there would be no end.
Benjamin F. Johnson
My Life’s Review, pg 126
101. Ralph R. Harding
It is much easier to be a faithful Latter-day Saint and a liberal Democrat than it is to be a faithful church member of the John Birch Society…
Compassion and tolerance are attributes that are found in faithful church members and liberal Democrats, but seldom in John Birchers and other extreme right-wingers.
Ralph R. Harding
Salt Lake Tribune, February 26th, 1974, pg 24
102. Alma Frances Pellett
Joy was meant for everyone as much as possible in this life, not merely stored away for the afterlife.
Alma Frances Pellett
#ReconstructingFaith about Sexuality and Gender, March 18nd, 2022
103. Larkin Swain
This whole mortal experience is this veil of illusion of separation… and [work for the dead], this covenantal binding is kind of like a bridge to this truer reality of unity and oneness, and that truly we are all connected and there is no separation. As I build that bridge, I am able to see more clearly truth, and take part in that reality, and live it.
Larkin Swain
“The Truths That Save Us: A conversation with Hannah Crowther”, December 9th, 2025
104. Hannah Crowther
Are we actually connecting people together, or does our ordinance work [for the dead] reveal that we are all already connected, and we just haven’t lived into the fullness of that idea yet? We think we are separate people living our separate lives, but when we see deeper and when we understand better, we recognize that’s just not true.
Hannah Crowther
“The Truths That Save Us: A conversation with Hannah Crowther”, December 9th, 2025
105. Jenet Erickson
What is Heaven? It says in [LDS] Doctrine and Covenants 76,”They see as they are seen and know as they are known, having received a fullness of His love and grace.” So we are able to be in full intimacy with one another – that is heaven. Fully known, knowing; fully seen, seeing; fully loved, loving.
Jenet Erickson
“A God Who Cuts Through All: A Conversation with Jenet Erickson”, December 22nd, 2025
106. Benjamin E. Park
Mormonism’s Republican identity is mostly a creation of recent vintage. Like most religious traditions, there are both conservative and progressive elements within Mormonism’s faith and history, cultural products that can be molded according to the will of historical actors. Proponents of the Mormon Right emphasize personal responsibility, traditional social values and economic independence. But charting the progressive components of the Mormon Church’s founding decades not only reveals a road not taken, but also tools to construct roads not yet realized. Indeed, an emphasis on shared economic responsibility and strong federal protections for minority groups were dominant Mormon political concerns during the life of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church.
Benjamin E. Park
“Why Utah Felt the Bern: Mormonism’s Forgotten Progressive Past”, March 25th, 2016
107. Hyrum Smith
The knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not prevalent in the world,
although it is written in the Holy Book.
Hyrum Smith
General Conference Talk, April 9th, 1844
You are to vote for good [people], and if you do not do this it is a sin: to vote for wicked [people], it would be sin. Choose the good and refuse the evil.
Hyrum Smith
General Conference Talk, April 9th, 1844
Damn the rod of tyranny; curse it. Let every man use his liberties according to the Constitution. Don’t fear man or devil; electioneer with all people, male and female, and exhort them to do the thing that is right.
Hyrum Smith
General Conference Talk, April 9th, 1844
We want a President of the U. S., not a party President, but a President of the whole people; for a party President disfranchises the opposite party. Have a President who will maintain every man in his rights. … I despise the principle that divides the nation into party and faction. I want it to grow up like a green bay tree. Damn the system of splitting up the nation into opposite belligerent parties.
Hyrum Smith
General Conference Talk, April 9th, 1844
108. Orson Pratt
In this life all Saints have not an equal degree of knowledge and wisdom to manage property, yet such may be equally faithful to all the commands of God. Now, is it right for these faithful ones to suffer for the good things of this life, because circumstances, or the want of experience has prevented them from accumulating property? No. They are just as much entitled to the good things which the Lord has made, and which He owns, as those whom circumstances have favored. And for one part of the Saints to retain these blessings from another part equally faithful, is sin, and not according to the celestial law which requires them to be one.
Orson Pratt
“The Equality and Oneness of the Saints, The Seer July 1854 (pg 293)
An inequality in riches lays a foundation for pride, and many other evils.
Orson Pratt
“The Equality and Oneness of the Saints, The Seer July 1854 (pg 293)
An inequality in property is the root and foundation of innumerable evils; it tends to division, and to keep asunder the social feelings that should exist among the people of God. It is the great barrier erected by the devil to prevent that unity and oneness which the Gospel requires; it is a principle originated in hell; it is the root of all evil.
Orson Pratt
“The Equality and Oneness of the Saints, The Seer July 1854 (pg 293)
Riches are not a curse, but they are a great blessing; it is inequality in riches that is a great curse. God has made all the riches of the earth, and the riches of all worlds. He made the gold, and the silver, and the precious metals; He formed the flocks and herds, and all useful animals; He has made the earth exceedingly rich; and He has given man dominion over all these things; the more His people enjoy of these things the better He is pleased; it is impossible for his people to become too rich; if the whole world, with all the treasures thereof, were in the hands of the Saints, the Lord would still be delighted for them to have more.
But these blessings have become a great curse to man, because they have been unequally possessed. We again repeat the word of the Lord to his church: “IT IS NOT GIVEN THAT ONE MAN SHOULD POSSESS THAT WHICH IS ABOVE ANOTHER; WHEREFORE THE WORLD LIETH IN SIN.” Unequal possession of that which God has made for the benefit of all His children, is sin. All nations, kindreds, and people, are in sin because of this inequality, The Saints are still in sin so far as they approve of this unequal possession; and we shall remain in sin until we make exertions to put this inequality away from us. We must be one, not only one in heavenly riches, but one in earthly riches.
Orson Pratt
“The Equality and Oneness of the Saints, The Seer July 1854 (pg 293-294)
The object of riches is to alleviate the sufferings of mankind, and place them in a prosperous, happy condition. And when this can be accomplished upon just and equitable principles; when all can be made equally happy and comfortable, then the end is attained for which riches are given.
Riches are not given to gratify the pride and ambition of man; they are not given to exalt one man in extravagance and grandeur above another; they are not given to make kings and princes of some, and beggars and slaves of others; they are not given to encourage man in idleness and in vain and unprofitable pursuits;
but they are given to ameliorate his condition; to satisfy the wants of his physical nature; to beautify and adorn his habitations, his gardens, his vineyards, his inheritances; to supply him abundantly with wholesome food, with comfortable raiment, and with all the luxuries that can be righteously desired to please the eye, the taste, or the smell; to furnish him with useful or entertaining books, or with musical instruments to delight the ear or gladden the heart with melodious sounds…
For all these, and many other great and good purposes, riches are given, not to be enjoyed by some, to the exclusion of others equally worthy; for this is sin, but to equally enjoyed by the whole family of God, that they may be one. Otherwise, there will ever be envying, fault finding, dissatisfaction, price, extravagance, oppression, murmuring, complaining, continual divisions, unjust speculations, defrauding, and every other evil work, all arising from separate interests, and inequalities in temporal things.
Orson Pratt
“The Equality and Oneness of the Saints, The Seer July 1854 (pg 296)
Wherever you find a fullness of [goodness, intelligence, justice, knowledge, light, love, mercy, truth, wisdom,] and such like qualities, there you find God in all [God’s] glory, power, and majesty, therefore, if you worship these adorable perfections you worship God.
Orson Pratt
“The Pre-Existence of Man”, The Seer, #22
109. Patrick D. Degn
The “covenant path” is not a checklist tacked to the wall of a heavenly bureaucracy. It is the genesis of a new heart — a new way of relating to God and neighbor. It is the process by which we, who often sit in the darkness of our own accusing stories and self-justifying habits, are invited into a truthful way of being.
Patrick D. Degn
“The Creation Story You’re Meant to Live: From Chaos to Covenant”, January 27th, 2026
110. Melissa Jane Cesaria Erickson
There’s this idea that there’s a stranglehold of one group on the kingdom of God – that they’re they only ones that are the Kingdom of God.
I think we need to look at the Kingdom of God as being much more broad, and much more democratic, and much more. Its a nation that crosses all boundaries, is what the Kingdom of God is. …
So if you look at it more broadly, we are branches on the Restoration tree in the Vineyard.
Melissa Jane Cesaria Erickson
Scriptural Canon & Sealing Authority Outside Institutional Mormonism, January 27th, 2026
111. Jessica Spence Moss
I am afraid of the hell that we, as humans, create because we are disconnected from each other; because we refuse to see the divine in each soul; because we believe some lives are worth more than others; because we think we are more deserving of love, peace, comfort, and safety than someone else. This is what creates hell
Jessica Spence Moss
“The Pretti Good People I Hope to Meet in Heaven”, February 3rd, 2026
112. Krystal Moore
I do not long for efficiency.
I long to eat fruit under a tree and amuse myself… and so do you.
Krystal Moore
FB post, February 7th, 2026
113. M. Russell Ballard
It is important to remember that I am a General Authority, but that does not make me an authority in general!
My calling and life experiences allow me to respond to certain types of questions. There are other types of questions that require an expert in a specific subject matter. This is exactly what I do when I need an answer to such questions: I seek help from others, including those with degrees and expertise in such fields.
M. Russell Ballard
“Questions and Answers”, November 14th, 2017
We need to embrace God’s children compassionately and eliminate any prejudice, including racism, sexism, and nationalism.
M. Russell Ballard
“The Trek Continues!”, October 2017
114. George Q. Cannon
The teachings of [Mormonism] in relation to the sacredness of human life are very plain and strong. We are taught that it is a dreadful wrong, a crime of fearful magnitude, for man to slay his fellowman, unless it be in self-defense. Children should be impressed with these ideas, that under no provocation should they resort to violence against their fellow creatures.
How shocking it is to read of young men going armed with pistols, and upon apparently slight provocation drawing their weapons and firing at each other! We read of a case of this kind recently in one of our settlements. It fills one with horror to think that human beings are so filled with deadly hatred as to be guilty of such acts. It is far better for one to be in the place of Abel – an innocent man murdered – than to be in the place of his murderer, the cruel Cain.
The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase in our day. This is partly due to the increase in our day. This is partly due to the increase of firearms and to their cheapness, also to the fashion which prevails in many quarters of carrying deadly weapons. The frequency with which shooting is done also has its effect to break down the feeling of sacredness which should surround human life.
George Q. Cannon
“Do Not Kill”, Juvenile Instructor Vol. 26 No. 24 (July 15th, 1891), pg 442-444
It is not only the shedding of human blood which children should be taught to avoid; they should be impressed with the value of animal life. No animal should be killed except to supply food for the sustenance of human beings.
Some boys and young men take great delight in going on hunting trips. They are not hungry, they do not stand in need of food of this character to sustain life; but they hunt for sport – merely for the pleasure of killing something. They foster a taste for destruction. If while they have a gun in hand a bird should come within range of their shot, however innocent or beautiful the bird might be, and without it being the least use to them for food or anything else, they instantly try to kill it. So with any innocent and harmless animal that they may see. No fowl or animal is safe if within range of their shot. It must be killed if they can succeed in hitting it.
Now, this is very wrong, and children should be taught to repress that inclination where they have it. The practice of killing everything that can be shot at, and hunting for the mere pleasure of killing, leads to a waste of life, and causes a feeling of indifference to the sufferings of animals to become implanted in the breasts of those who are guilty of this practice. Such persons are more likely to use their weapons against their fellow creatures if they had not become somewhat indifferent to the shedding of blood.
God has given man the birds of the air, the animals that move upon the earth, and the fish that swim in the waters, for his use; not to be wasted, not to be killed for sport, not to be exterminated from the face of the earth, as many kinds of animals and birds have been through man’s hunting propensities; but to be a blessing to man; to furnish him with that which he may need from time-to-time for food and other purposes and assist him in various ways.
And God will hold man accountable for the right use of his opportunities. These birds and animals and fish cannot speak, but they can suffer, and our God, who created them, knows their sufferings, and will hold him who causes them to suffer unnecessarily to answer for it. It is a sin against their creator. These dumb creatures appeal to the sympathy of every right-feeling person. They are to a certain extent helpless, and in many instances defenseless.
Man should therefore treat them with all possible kindness. Children should be taught that it is a duty to protect and care for the creatures that are in their charge; to see that they are fed and watered and housed, so that they will not suffer. They should bit be overworked. They should not be beaten improperly or abused; but should be treated with kindness. A child that is cruel to an animal exhibits a bad disposition. He will be apt to grow up to be an unfeeling, cruel man. Therefore children should be taught to be merciful to the brute creation.
George Q. Cannon
“Do Not Kill”, Juvenile Instructor Vol. 26 No. 24 (July 15th, 1891), pg 442-444
There is more to be feared today in our midst from the growth of wealth in a few hands, in a single class, than there is from all the legislation that can be enacted against us by the Congress of the United States, more to be dreaded by us as a people. That condition is upon us, the growth of wealth in the hands of a few individuals, threatening us with greater danger today, than anything that can be done by outsiders; more than the Commissioners can do, more than the registrars can do, more than the judges of election can do, or all that can be done by the Congress of the United States. I know that this is true.
God does not design to have a people of this kind. He does not design that there shall be classes among us, one class lifted up above another, one class separated from the rest of the people, with diverse interests; interests that are not strictly in accord with those of the masses of the people. Because when this is the case, there is a lack of union. Men are more disposed to compromise principle who have great moneyed interests at stake. In fact, it is a characteristic of human nature that, as a class, this class is a compromising class; their temptation is to yield principle, to yield ground; and it cannot be helped from the very nature of things, because of their circumstances. I can see it in myself; I do not preach something to you that I do not preach to myself. I have to guard against it, and my brethren have to do so. It does not belong to any one man or class of men, it belongs to human nature this feeling of which I speak.
God designs in the organization of his kingdom on the earth to prevent this. If it is not prevented, then the Zion of God is not established. Is anyone injured by its prevention? No. The time must come when the talent of men of business shall be used for the benefit of this whole people, just as the talent of President Taylor, just as the talent of President Joseph F. Smith and that of President Wilford Woodruff, and that of the Twelve Apostles, and that of the leading Elders of this Church; as their talent is used for the benefit of Zion, so must the talent of men who are gifted with business capacity be used in like manner—not for individual benefit alone, not for individual aggrandizement alone, but for the benefit of the whole people, to uplift the masses, to rescue them from their poverty. That is one of the objects in establishing Zion, and anything short of that, as I have said, is not Zion, it is not the Zion that the Prophets have foreseen, it is not that which God has promised.
George Q. Cannon
Journal of Discourses vol. 23, pg 271-282
I have felt for some time that we are bending our necks too much to our enemies. My feeling has been that we should not tamely submit to the tyranny practiced upon us. Our people are apparently terrorized by a few men, not exceeding a dozen, who are running this raid to suit themselves. We are like a lot of sheep in a corral, and our enemies like butchers. They make the selection of their victim and rush in and drag him out, while the rest of the flock huddle up in a corner.
I have felt that if a few of them were well trounced it would have a salutary effect. To go beyond this, that is, to go so far as to take life I would be utterly opposed. President Taylor learned my feelings and was considerably exercised about them. He thought it would not do to permit any violence of this kind.
George Q. Cannon
Journal Entry, April 6th, 1885
115. Lowell L. Bennion
People who accept the truth simply on the authority of others are prone to shift full responsibility to such authority for their own thought and behavior.
In civil affairs some prefer to follow a dictator blindly rather than to assume the responsibilities of citizenship imposed by a democracy. In the classroom some students prefer to parrot back the words of professor or textbook rather than to do their own original and creative thinking. In religion some people prefer to follow blindly their leaders, who they believe will guarantee their salvation.
Blind, submissive followers in any field, be it government, science, or religion, lack the ability to discriminate between truth and error, good and evil, and between the weightier and lesser matters of the law. They hardly have a soul to call their own.
This kind of discipleship is not befitting a [Mormon]. He believes in giving loyalty and respect to political and religious authority; but at the same time, as a child of God endowed with free agency and the Holy Ghost, he senses his responsibility to be a thoughtful and whole-souled disciple of Jesus Christ. He will follow those who have earned the right to be his leaders. And he will follow them with understanding and conviction, not with blindness or indifference.
Lowell L. Bennion
“Religion and the Pursuit of Truth”, pg 27
116. Neal A. Maxwell
The Book of Mormon suggests that there are certain almost cyclic patterns involving poverty, humility, prosperity, pride, and then hedonism and disorder. I am sure these are not rigid cycles, but they occur with sufficient frequency that one must make note of them. … Social stratification, for instance, in Nephite times was so bad that the poor could not afford an education for their children. This condition was a factor in the breaking up of the Church. There are too many scriptures condemning members in all dispensations for ignoring the poor to require repetition here.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy” in New Era, July 1972
Public opinion is often uneven and episodic in its influence. Thomas Jefferson assumed the American people would be informed and attentive. So often we are uninformed and/or inattentive. The music democracy makes is analogous to a piano keyboard—you and I respond only when our particular key is struck; we resonate and contribute only when the issues affect us. Some keys seem persistently silent, and, thus, what we hear is a cacophony or the “chopsticks” of a few recurring keys, not Chopin—for only occasionally do we experience a chord that cuts across the keyboard and brings us together in human harmony.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
We may not know if political apathy increases as a democracy ages, but bureaucracy clearly does, and insofar as bureaucracy disenchants individuals, it reinforces apathy, and apathy often reaches plague proportions at the very time the people need to make decisions of immense consequences.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
It remains to be seen, also, whether our American democracy can tame the technology brought about by the genius of our people. Technology contributes immeasurably to the challenges growing out of complexity and compartmentalization. Technology may even be counter-democratic in its impact on our democracy. It may be technology, inadvertently, that calls for the new forms of authoritarianism in order to deal with complex, tough decisions concerning the management of technology about which the common man not only does not have adequate data, but, worse still, about which he is exceedingly ambivalent.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
A democracy has neither much of a memory nor significant anticipatory skills. It is difficult for people to feel pain prospectively and to avoid that pain later by acting preventively.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
I am impressed that the Nephite society became too litigious for its own good. The tendency to dispute reflected the loss of the lubricant trust that is always needed to get resolution of differences in a free society. Of course, some of the significant gains in American society have come about because of litigation, and our courts must checkrein the other two branches of government, but perhaps our litigiousness has reached a level that adds to our contentiousness and our polarity.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
It is impressive to note that the loss of civilization [amongst the Nephites] was tied to the growing immorality, not to a decline in Nephite art; and the growing anarchy was the outcropping of a decline in their capacity to love, not a decay in their architecture. The author who chronicled this decaying society commented on perversion and violence, not just the failure of the political systems to perform. The inner deficiencies of men impact on the quality of our institutions.
Like it or not, therefore, one of the messages of the scriptures is that defective personalities project themselves into the affairs of state, and their defects are mirrored in the politics of their time; and society, in subtle and direct ways, can pay a terrible price! … to argue that the personal pressures that sin can bring into the life of a ruler do not have a consequence in his management of the affairs of his people is to argue that nothing in a leader’s experience (or that is on his mind) has any bearing on what he does. If a leader who is fatigued physically can make bad decisions, a leader who is fatigued spiritually can make them also, and a damaged ego can lead to bad policy.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
It takes decades to prepare a nation for democracy, as was the case in America, but we could lose it or damage it in a matter of years, if not weeks, depending upon whom we select to lead us—at all levels.
Neal A. Maxwell
“The Lonely Sentinels of Democracy”, New Era, July 1972
117. Ronald E. Poelman
Sometimes traditions, customs, social practices and personal preferences of individual Church members may, through repeated or common usage be misconstrued as Church procedures or policies. Occasionally, such traditions, customs and practices may even be regarded by some as eternal gospel principles. Under such circumstances those who do not conform to these cultural standards may mistakenly be regarded as unorthodox or even unworthy. In fact, the eternal principles of the gospel and the divinely inspired Church do accommodate a broad spectrum of individual uniqueness and cultural diversity.
Ronald E. Poelman
“The Gospel and the Church (unaltered version)”, General Conference, October 1984
It is important… to know the difference between eternal gospel principles which are unchanging, universally applicable and cultural norms which may vary with time and circumstance.
Ronald E. Poelman
“The Gospel and the Church (unaltered version)”, General Conference, October 1984
118. Parley P. Pratt
“Mormonism,” instead of being confined to a few dogmas or general truths, opens the floodgates of all truth and knowledge, and teaches mankind to retain all the truth they can already comprehend, and comprehend as much more as they can all the time.
Parley P. Pratt
Journal of Discourses 1:307
If I were to live for millions of years to come, and then millions of millions more, I expect there would always be some being ready to reveal something new, and somebody would write it. The art of writing will never cease. We may not have pens and ink, but we may have something better. Suffice it to say, that the arts and sciences will not come to an end, yet man may have been traditionated to believe that one small book contains all that God ever said or did. Such persons are to be pitied, and not to be reasoned with.
Parley P. Pratt
Journal of Discourses 1:308
119. Marriner S. Eccles
Without going into any detail or figures, it is recognized by everyone that our most urgent and acute problem today is to immediately provide adequate relief to the millions of our people who are destitute and unemployed in every corner of our Nation. It is national disgrace that such suffering should be permitted in this, the wealthiest country in the world. The present condition is not the fault of the unemployed, but that of our business, financial, and political leadership. It is incomprehensible that the people of this country should very much longer stupidly continue to suffer the wastes, the bread lines, the suicides, and the despair, and be forced to die, steal, or accept a miserable pittance in the form of charity which they resent, and properly resent. We shall either adopt a plan which will meet this situation under capitalism, or a plan will be adopted for us which will operate without capitalism.
Marriner S. Eccles
“Hearings Before the Committee on Finance,” United States Senate’s 72nd Congress, Second Session, Feb. 1933, pg 713
Wealth is not distributed and ability to pay [taxes] is not distributed according to population.
Marriner S. Eccles
“Hearings Before the Committee on Finance,” United States Senate’s 72nd Congress, Second Session, Feb. 1933, pg 715
It is true we are suffering the consequences of the war, but there is no reason why we should be suffering from the consequences of the war if it had not been for the international or the interallied debt that resulted from it.
We are suffering from a debt structure. We are not suffering from the waste, because after all, we know to-day that we have the power and the facilities to produce certainly all that the people of this country need and want.
Marriner S. Eccles
“Hearings Before the Committee on Finance,” United States Senate’s 72nd Congress, Second Session, Feb. 1933, pg 719
We now see, after nearly four years of depression, that private capital will not go into public works or self-liquidating projects except through government and that if we leave our “rugged individual” to follow his own interest under these conditions he does precisely the wrong thing. Each corporation for its own protection discharges men, reduces pay rolls, curtails its orders for raw materials, postpones construction of new plants and pays off bank loans, adding to the surplus of unusable funds. Every single thing it does to reduce the flow of money makes the situation worse for business as a whole.
The production of wealth and the consumer’s ability to buy starts with the pay roll and the individual producers of raw material, the agriculturalist.
Today we are losing close to two billions per month of national income due to unemployment, resulting in the inability of OUT people to purchase the goods necessary to sustain our production. Is there any program of economy and budget balancing on the part of our Government as important as to stop this great loss and all the attendant human suffering, devastation, and destruction? I believe that an essential part of the program to end the cycle of deflation is by the Government supplying the credit for self-liquidating projects and loans to the State for public works.
Marriner S. Eccles
“Hearings Before the Committee on Finance,” United States Senate’s 72nd Congress, Second Session, Feb. 1933, pg 721
As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth – not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced – to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had in 1929-1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations into new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.
Marriner S. Eccles
Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections, pg 76
120. Natasha Helfer
No human being becomes safer when they’re viewed as a threat.
Right now, trans people, trans minors, and immigrants are being treated as problems to solve instead of people to protect – and their lives are being reduced to talking points.
Care, itself, is a form of resistance.
121. Russell M. Nelson
Any war is a horrifying violation of everything the Lord Jesus Christ stands for and teaches.
Russell M. Nelson
“The Power of Spiritual Momentum”, General Conference April 2022
122. Joseph Fielding Smith
The flesh of living creatures should be indulged in sparingly although there was no sin in the shedding of their blood when required for food. There is no inference in the scriptures that it is the privilege of men to slay birds or beasts or to catch fish wantonly. The Lord gave life to every creature, both the birds in the heavens, beasts on the earth, and fishes in the streams or seas. … It was intended that all creatures should be happy in their several elements. Therefore to take the life of these creatures wantonly is a sin before the Lord.
It is easy to destroy life, but who can restore it when it is taken? … Man should be more the friend and never an enemy to any living creature. The Lord placed them here.
Joseph Fielding Smith
Answers to Gospel Questions: The Classic Collection in One Volume, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., 5 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1957–1966), 4:43–44.
I believe it is our solemn duty to love one another, to believe in each other, to have faith in each other, that it is our duty to overlook the faults and the failings of each other, and not to magnify them in our own eyes nor before the eyes of the world.
Joseph Fielding Smith
Conference Report, April 1915, 119
We see every day of our lives, the greatest of miracles. The flying of the airplane, the voice on the radio, the picture on the screen and television. There are thousands of miracles performed today, wonders that would astound our grandfathers could they suddenly see them. These miracles are as great as turning water into wine, raising the dead or anything else.
A miracle is not, as many believe, the setting aside or overruling natural laws. Every miracle performed in Biblical days or now, is done on natural principles and in obedience to natural law. The healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, giving eyesight to the blind, whatever it may be that is done by the power of God, is in accordance with natural law. Because we do not understand how it is done, does not argue for the impossibility of it.
Joseph Fielding Smith
Man, His Origin, And Destiny
123. Heber J. Grant
We earnestly implore all members of the Church to love their brethren and sisters, and all peoples whoever and wherever they are; to banish hate from their lives, to fill their hearts with charity, patience, long-suffering, and forgiveness.
Heber J. Grant
Message from the First Presidency, in Conference Report, October 1939, 8
The Divine law on the taking of human life was proclaimed at Sinai and in the Garden. This law, we declare, is equally binding upon men and upon nations. It embraces war.
We further declare that God is grieved by war and that he will hold subject to the eternal punishments of his will those who wage it unrighteously.
Heber J. Grant
Message from the First Presidency, in Conference Report, October 1939, 8
Assuredly there is more blessing [that] comes to us from giving than in accumulating; there is no question of this in my mind.
Heber J. Grant
Conference Report, October 1907, 23
It has been said … that we are not doing all we can. I do not believe that any [one] lives up to [their] ideals, but if we are striving, if we are working, if we are trying, to the best of our ability, to improve day by day, then we are in the line of our duty.
If we are seeking to remedy our own defects, if we are so living that we can ask God for light, for knowledge, for intelligence, and above all for His Spirit, that we may overcome our weaknesses, then, I can tell you, we are in the straight and narrow path that leads to life eternal; then we need have no fear.
Heber J. Grant
Conference Report, April 1909, 111
124. Eliza R. Snow
If you associate together, your minds are improved, you are gaining intelligence, and you are retrenching from ignorance. The Spirit of God will impart instruction to your minds, and you will impart it to each other.
Eliza R. Snow
Discourse, August 14th, 1873
We are never to come to a stand point. We are to be progressing, and growing better. If we have done well today, we must do still better tomorrow. We believe in eternal progression. It will not do to say that we have so much to do that we cannot do any more, because the works and duties for women in Zion are constantly increasing.
Eliza R. Snow
Discourse, August 14th, 1873
They said “what is the use of the girls meeting together, and praying, and talking?” And I would ask what is the use of our brethren meeting together? If the young girls and the boys do not need the Spirit of the Gospel, there does not any person need it.
Eliza R. Snow
Discourse, August 14th, 1873
125. Joseph B. Wirthlin
Kindness is the essence of a celestial life. Kindness is how a Christlike person treats others. Kindness should permeate all of our words and actions at work, at school, at church, and especially in our homes.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
“The Virtue of Kindness”, General Conference, April 2005
126. Justin Francom
Leaders kind of abuse power when they’re the ‘One Man”, so we don’t need to make up a story about how our guy is the “One Man”. Let’s just forego all of that and just be honest here. Let’s just work together as families, working to a common goal in the gospel
Justin Francom
Gospel Tangents Interview, #1133
We see the church today – “The Church”, the Restoration, the LDS Church – as a very monolithic organization, because, well, it is in our day. But was that ever really the long-term gameplan? I kind of wonder, because studying the ancient church – Christ’s church…
I went on a bend and got super interested in the Orthodox church, [and] it is so interesting. … I looked into that, and I really liked it. Their argument is that the Catholic church has it wrong. The Catholic church’s claims of a monolithic structure are inherently false. The Orthodox, they all claim the same authority that the Catholic church has, but they’re saying it was never intended for the Pope to be the “One Man”; there were supposed to be multiple men leading the various churches in various organization in various places, and they’re supposed to all come together and work together, but they all have their own authority, and the Catholics kind of went off the rails (according to the Eastern Orthodox). [The Catholics] were saying “No, no, ours is the one man and everybody else is wrong!”
Well, I think there’s some truth to some of that idea. You look at Paul and the different Bishops, the church in Ephesian [and] Galatia, and all this. What was this organization really supposed to look like? Is it supposed to be a singular monolithic structure? Clearly you have the apostles at the head of the organization. But in those days, whoever those bishops were that Paul is always writing to, those guys have a serious responsibility. They can’t go and check with Peter and Paul every time they need to make a decision. They’re operating by the Spirit according to the authority of the priesthood they recieved. To me, that makes a lot of sense, and I think that even from a broad philosophical perspective that there can be multiple churches, and they can all be Christ’s church.
Justin Francom
Gospel Tangents Interview, #1133
“That’s not in the handbook! That’s not in the handbook! You shouldn’t do it that way! Because otherwise it becomes a tradition and people think you HAVE to do it that way, and that’s how apostasy happens!”
That was at least my thinking as a missionary. I don’t think that way anymore. Actually, I don’t think it matters. I think the ordinance is as valid whether you have a tea kettle or a pitcher [of water] or nothing. I thiink the ordinance is as valid whether you’re using wine or you’re using water. I think the ordinance is valid whether whole wheat, gluten free, wonderbread, or rice crackers.
Its okay to have different worship culture within Christ’s church to meet the needs of the culture and the people that the church is administering to. … if it works – if it accomplishes the goal of bringing Christ to your remembrance as you prepare to participate in that ordinance – I think its okay.”
Justin Francom
Gospel Tangents Interview, #1133
If you look at the variety of creation, God loves diversity! Look at how many different plants there are, and then pick just one species and look at how many sub-species [there are] and how they continue to create different things. Human form, appearance, everything – testifies of God’s love of diversity.
I think religion needs to be able to work within that, and be able to hold all of that diversity.
Justin Francom
Gospel Tangents Interview, #1134
127. George W. Williams Jr.
The capitalists who own all the machinery of government are using every means under their control to hold [and] check the rise of the workers who are beginning to show their strength and are carrying on an immense campaign of education. But despite their efforts, the cause [of] Socialism – or the working class movement – is gaining ground rapidly.
George W. Williams Jr.
Letter to the Future, 1908
I am a member in good standing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and among a few workers in that organization who comprehend the class struggle and are fighting and working for the education of our people along these lines. But so effectually has the great money kings done their work of deception among the people that even the Church of Christ is permeated with its pernicious doctrines. The idea being that those who have the ability to corner the worlds wealth and appropriate it to themselves are entitled to it even though it means the enslavement of the masses and the destruction of humanity. Thus you will see the battle before us.
George W. Williams Jr.
Letter to the Future, 1908
128. Lorenzo Watson
Capitalism is so entrenched today that the governing class – the idle few who have acquired private possession of almost all the resources of nature [and] all the means by which life is sustained – that the time and opportunity of leisure vacation and study of the deep and profound [truths] of religion is almost denied to the toiling masses.
Yet, we witness abiding faith and believe that the influence of this and other similar institutions will have the effect of educating the young so that the will grasp the wrongs of the Capitalist system, the injustice of the competitive [results], and within the next decade usher in the much-coveted change: the cooperative commonwealth; and that those in the future are enjoying the fruits of our labors; and that, instead of the land been covered with palatial homes of the rich in most-pleasant-places, surrounded with all the comfort that wealth can buy with [cowering] slaves to attend their every wish on the one hand, and hovels and shacks on the other, where hunger, poverty, and wanting no [end], and crime of every name and nature is rampant, on the sight and the office of which is to those whose natures are attuned to the principles of justice, truth and, love.
You who read this are living in a land where no need of armies, navies, and police forces exist; where love is governing force; where all are working for the good of all; and that an injury to one is the concern of all, trusting that this is the time looked so eagerly for by all the past, seems any profits is the prayer of the writer.
Lorenzo Watson
Letter to the Future, 1908
129. Andrew Kimball
Now let us take a peep into the future:… we are going to cease waring with each other… men’s lives will be pure… then they will love their neighbor as themselves. Men will seek the welfare of others, the vast wealth of the world will be so handled that there will be no poor, no vastly rich, all will seek the happiness of others for therein lies the secret of true happiness.
Andrew Kimball
Letter to the Future, 1908
130. Henry Franklin Kane
What of the future of the great American republic, our Country? It is today a republic only in name, ruled by an oligarchy of wealth as cruel and vicious as ever wasted the wealth of the producers in the past. Mammon is firmly entrenched, apparently in the legislative, executive and judicial departments of the nation, and the great mass of the people, blindly aware of the fact that “there is something wrong” continue to use their power of the franchise, their voting power, in the interest of the privileged classes. …
What of the future? Shall plutocracy rule this nation, or shall an united working class redeem our beloved country and be the first in all the world to erect the banner of a true democracy? Shall we have a race of slaves owned by a few satraps who hold in their grasp the immense resources of this country, and a consequent fall and return to desolation of this people for having violated God’s natural laws, or shall we have the Co-Operative Commonwealth and a land with plenty and a happy people who shall rule themselves in accordance with the correct principles laid down for our guidance by a just God thousands of years ago and never violated by a nation without that nation being forced to pay the penalty?
Socialism points out the way. Already a light is breaking on the dark night of despair and suffering, and the seeds of an intelligent, discontent sown among the working class are becoming nourished in a fertile soil from whence shall spring the fair blossoms of economic and social progress and liberty. God speed the day. Let the work of education proceed. God grant that this favored country shall lead the world in this great struggle of a people for perfect liberty. May those who perchance, centuries in the future, may read this, be in the possession of a system of government which is sane, humane and in accordance with God’s mandates.
Henry Franklin Kane
Letter to the Future, 1908
131. Dora Bigelow Kane
Words cannot express the suffering I have witnessed as a result of the capitalist system. Men, women, and children are suffering and dying with hunger all over the world as a result of over production, and I dread to think of the fate of the many thousands of women who have to choose between death by starvation or prostitution. How can a civilization be so indifferent to the suffering of women and children and its weak and helpless ones under a system that produces so much wealth?
But we see the dawn of a brighter day. I am a socialist and agitator and hope to live to see the day when capitalism is overcome.
Dora Bigelow Kane
Letter to the Future, 1908
132. Lenora Barlow
We feel healing, and freedom in telling the truth. We are not afraid to stand up against evil.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, November 1st, 2025
I believe a parent taking responsibility for their own actions sets a positive example for their children, demonstrating accountability and integrity. [This sets] them up for a successful future.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, November 12th, 2025
We are all on our own journey. We are all writing our own story. Most people are doing the best they can. I believe if we can support and love each other along the way, wherever we are on our journey, we won’t have regrets later in life.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, November 12th, 2025
If we continue to share our stories, hopefully it reaches the ears of those who need it most. If YOU don’t need it, scroll on. This isn’t for you.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 9th, 2025
Family and friends, along with freedom are among the greatest of gifts, unmatched by any material possession.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 24th, 2025
A man of God gathers people, helps people, encourages people. A man who seeks to represent Jesus doesn’t destroy families, control people, or abuse them.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 26th, 2025
Supporting and encouraging one another instead of pointing fingers is far more helpful and productive
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 31st, 2025
Freedom to choose one’s beliefs is one of the greatest gifts and should not be infringed on by others
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 31st, 2025
My goal is to bring hope to those who are struggling as they try to find a new path; clarity for those needing it, transparency for those who were lied to, and information for those who haven’t had access to it.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 31st, 2025
Threats only work for so long. Eventually those threatened will want to run, and possibly never come back.
Love is long lasting, and keeps children, friends, spouses, and people coming back.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, December 28th, 2025
Treating people right, REGARDLESS of what you are told to do or what’s popular with friends or family, can be challenging, but it’s so worth it.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, February 15th, 2026
It is far better to be looked down on for helping others who are in need, sick, or disabled than to live with regret.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, February 15th, 2026
I believe when everyone is silenced, every kind of abuse can continue and grow.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, February 26th, 2026
Empathy among the people diminished because the ability to understand one another diminished.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, February 26th, 2026
I no longer rely on another [person’s] opinion to determine whether someone is “saved” or not.
Lenora Barlow
Facebook post, March 17th, 2026
133. Ida Smith
It is important for a woman to learn in this life her eternal role so that when she is sealed she will be prepared and ready—with all her heart—to function in and glorify that role. That means being ready and prepared to function as a full partner in a celestial team—without having to look up because of any feeling of inferiority, or look down because of any feeling of superiority, but look across into the eyes of an equally prepared, equally magnificent eternal mate.
Ida Smith
“The Lord as a Role Model for Men and Women”, Ensign, August 1980
The world has divided up personality traits that should be characteristic of both men and women, and has labeled some of them “masculine” and some of them “feminine.”…
Since men are charged to become Christlike, a heavy burden is placed on a man when he realizes that many of the traits that will make him Christlike have been labeled by the world as feminine—and that by taking upon himself those characteristics he runs the risk of having his masculinity seriously questioned by his peers.
Ida Smith
“The Lord as a Role Model for Men and Women”, Ensign, August 1980
Nowhere… does the Lord say that tenderness, kindness, charity, faithfulness, patience, gentleness, and compassion are strictly female traits and should be utilized by women only. And nowhere does he say that courage, strength, determination, and leadership should be the exclusive prerogative of men. Any notion that God desired that women be passive should have been dispelled when the Prophet [Joseph Smith Jr.] told women [in the Relief Society] that they were responsible for their own salvation.
Ida Smith
“The Lord as a Role Model for Men and Women”, Ensign, August 1980
If we are true to our natures as the Lord has outlined them for us, our basic masculinity and femininity will not come into question. We should all have both strength and sensitivity, courage and compassion, tenacity and tenderness. And as we best incorporate all those traits within our beings, we will be true to the male or female in us, which has been part of us since the beginning.
Ida Smith
“The Lord as a Role Model for Men and Women”, Ensign, August 1980
If men are to be obedient and sacrificial, like the Savior, how can a man achieve his highest potential with only “macho” traits? And if the woman is to reach her highest potential in her creative and nurturing role, how can she achieve it by being helpless and dependent?
Ida Smith
“The Lord as a Role Model for Men and Women”, Ensign, August 1980
134. James E. Talmage
In course of my studies I have naturally been brought face to face with the alleged atheistic tendency of scientific thought and conflict usually said to exist between Science and Religion. … I have been unable to see the point of conflict myself. My belief in a loving God perfectly accords with my reverence for science, and I can see no reason why the evolution of animal bodies cannot be true – and indeed the facts of observation make it difficult to deny – and still the soul of man is of divine origin.
James E. Talmage
Journal entry for March 16th, 1884
If I had none other idea of a deity than that which those men have, viz., that of an unknown being, who acts as [John Stuart] Mill says “contrary to the highest human morality” – I too would hail Atheism with delight. I could never believe in such a god as theirs.
James E. Talmage
Journal entry for March 16th, 1884
Faith is not blind submission, passive obedience with no effort at thought or reason. Faith, if worthy of its name, rests upon truth; and truth is the foundation of science.
James E. Talmage
“The Methods and Motives of Science”, Improvement Era, February 1900, pg 256
Irrational zeal is not to be commended
James E. Talmage
“The Methods and Motives of Science”, Improvement Era, February 1900, pg 257
The scientific spirit is divine
James E. Talmage
“The Methods and Motives of Science”, Improvement Era, February 1900, pg 259
135. Leonard J. Arrington
The primary question is the extent to which one’s emotional attachment to certain “final truths” informs his intellectual activity; whether his soul-ties prevent his thought on key issues from being freely detachable from his own cultural traditions
Leonard J. Arrington
“The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints”, Dialogue Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1
Intensely patriotic in the broadest sense, and often ethical purists, [dissidents] sometimes find their society failing to come up to its expressed ideals, and thus become disenchanted. Their “apostasy” in such instances is merely an inverted manifestation of their loyalty to the ideals. … we must grant, with Daniel Bell, that, “One can be a critic of one’s country [or church] without being an enemy of its promise.” Since there is substantial agreement that the history of societies which lack social criticism is “in the main a record of stagnation and decline,” the nurturing of independent intellectuals is society’s way of assuring its future.
Leonard J. Arrington
“The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints”, Dialogue Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1
136. Alexander B. Morrison
Environmental damage… in every country poses a major challenge to the future of the world as we know it. … our current way of life is simply environmentally unsustainable. The immensely complex and still not fully understood systems that sustain life on earth are being destroyed by human activities.
Alexander B. Morrison
Visions of Zion, pg 77-78
There is widespread agreement that in our mindless rush toward material prosperity we have unbalanced powerful biological forces that we do not fully understand, that portions of the environment are now extremely unstable and susceptible to rapid and potentially catastrophic change, and that we have not been paying sufficient attention to the very serious problems created by our technology.
Alexander B. Morrison
“Our Deteriorating Environment”, Ensign, August 1971
Many of our environmental problems arise from the fact that our society has become obsessed with materialism. Paul spoke an eternal truth when he said that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” [1 Tim. 6:10] We must come to realize that there are higher motives for human existence than technological advancement and the acquisition of material gain. This is not to dispute the great and continuing importance of science and technology to our society.
Not only is science an intellectual exercise of the highest order, and thus worthy of support for its own sake, but from a practical point of view, its application has literally transformed the world. Yet a never-ending search for more material prosperity cannot be the major factor in our lives. The society that looks no further than its gross national product is doomed to ultimate decay and destruction.
Alexander B. Morrison
“Our Deteriorating Environment”, Ensign, August 1971
The reason we are in trouble ecologically is because of our inability to see ourselves as a part of nature. We have not seen ourselves for what we are: part of the web of life and part of the biological community; a portion of an incredibly complex ecological system; and intimately a part of the total environment.
Alexander B. Morrison
“Our Deteriorating Environment”, Ensign, August 1971
Too often we fail to see ourselves as part of a human continuum. We think only of our own generation as though it exists alone, with no obligations to the future and without any heritage from the past.
Alexander B. Morrison
“Our Deteriorating Environment”, Ensign, August 1971
137. Martha Hughes Cannon
Even if we have to be poor, let us not waste our talents in the cauldron of modern nothingness—but strive to become women of intellect and endeavor to do some little good while we live in this protracted gleam called life.
Martha Hughes Cannon
Letter to Barbara Replogle on May 1st, 1885
I am willing and not afraid to tread the paths of my destiny, whether they be rugged or whether they be smooth. I have no regrets.
Martha Hughes Cannon
PBS
138. Ralph Vary Chamberlin
If people would cease making the senseless “confusion between legend and lying” and recognize that legends are poetry and that they must be treated and interpreted as such, they would no longer hesitate to acknowledge that the Bible contains them. To perceive their presence is not to take a step toward skepticism, but rather is to take a step toward perceiving the beauty and under standing the significance of the narrative. It is a matter of get ting correct knowledge. To one who reads with feeling and some thing of an aesthetic sense, to eliminate the poetry existing in the form of these legends would be to take away much that gives the loftiness and perennial interest to the Old Testament.
How, then, shall we interpret these legends when they are recognized? In the first place, not as history. But, on the other hand, it must be kept in mind that they come from a time when man did not—were not intellectually able to—distinguish between poetry and reality; and, hence, it would be an error scarcely less great to regard them as allegorical and symbolic and as never intended to represent reality. The legends are not the product of any one man, or of any one generation, although the artistic form of some of them suggest the final touch of the professional; but rather, in being passed on from generation to generation, they come to be largely the product of the [group] as a whole, clearly reflecting the intellect, the ideals, and the hopes of the times from which they have been transmitted. Point and meaning the legends always have, for this is an invariable condition to their persistence; but this point and meaning can be arrived at only through a recognition of the nature of legends and of the conditions under which they arise.
Ralph Vary Chamberlin
Some Early Hebrew Legends With Special Reference to Babel, 1910
139. Joseph Fielding Smith Jr.
Even the most devout and sincere believers in the Bible realize that it is, like most any other book, filled with metaphor, simile, allegory, and parable, which no intelligent person could be compelled to accept in a literal sense…
The Lord has not taken from those who believe in his word the power of reason. He expects every man who takes his “yoke” upon him to have common sense enough to accept a figure of speech in its proper setting. and to understand that the holy scriptures are replete with allegorical stories, faith-building parables, and artistic speech. …
Where is there a writing intended to be taken in all its parts literally? Such a writing would be insipid and hence lack natural appeal. To expect a believer in the Bible to strike an attitude of this kind and believe all that is written to be a literal rendition is a stupid thought. No person with the natural use of his faculties looks upon the Bible in such a light.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.
“Was the Hero’s Death So Sad?”, Deseret News, October 31st, 1936
We need to appreciate and love people for themselves.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.
Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., chapter 20
140. Henry Eyring
It is important that all [people] of good will use their energies, their talents and their learning in their chosen fields, mutually assisting one another toward the building of a better world – that world which [people] of faith of all ages have envisioned and toward which they have labored.
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 49
I am now going to venture to say that science has rendered a service to religion. The scientific spirit is a spirit of inquiry, a spirit of reaching out for truth. In the final analysis, this spirit is likewise of the essence of religion. The Savior said: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The scientist has in effect reaffirmed this great fundamental laid down by the Master, and in doing so has given a new impetus to religion.
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 52
It is interesting to recall that, in ages past, religious [people] felt that their faith hinged on the notion that the earth was flat. However, when it was found to be round, they discovered that their basic religious ideas had survived without perceptible damage. In fact, the great underlying principles of faith were brought into bolder relief when the clutter of false notions was removed from about them.
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 56
To be understood, the Lord must reveal Himself in a language His Children can understand. Of necessity, many things not necessary for their immediate progress are omitted, to be revealed later, and to be discovered by [humanity’s] own enterprise. There are some people who throw away the scriptures and restrict themselves to science and related fields. Others use the scriptures to the exclusion of other truth. Both are wrong. [Mormons] should seek after truth by all avenues with earnest humility. There is, of course, no conflict in the gospel since it embraces all truth.
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 59
The Gospel embraces all truth. … If the Church espouses the cause of ignorance it will alienate more people than if it advises men to seek after the truth even at some risk.
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 60
The gospel is the way God looks at things – the truth. I am sure our understanding of the gospel is always provisional and incomplete
Henry Eyring
“Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring”, pg 66
141. Gay Mormon Wizard
I’ve been at the devil’s sacrament so long that I forgot he wasn’t god
Gay Mormon Wizard
Tumblr Post, December 14th, 2024
142. Mark E. Peterson
Its not enough merely to be against something. What we’re for is far more important.
This point can’t be emphasized too strongly, especially in view of the advent of individuals and groups that are arousing the public by stressing what we’re fighting against but neglecting what we’re fighting for.
Mark E. Peterson
“What Americanism Must Mean”, Deseret News, October 28th, 1961
Some groups and persons have attacked certain Americans not by taking issue with their ideas but by casting doubt on their loyalty, by implying that anyone who questions a particular concept or course of action must be unpatriotic. This constitutes a serious impairment of the right to dissent. Without any legal authority, they have set themselves up as judges of who is “un-American”. …
Three dangerous evils can stem from such attacks:
First, they can seriously weaken American traditions and ideals, destroying the very thing they purport to protect.
Second, they can weaken America by sowing mutual distrust, destroying confidence, and disunifying the nation.
Third, by blaming our problems on certain scapegoats, they can keep us from [fully] recognizing the real problems – internal as well as external – we face in this dangerous world, and from tackling them intelligently and constructively.
These are risks America cannot afford to take.
Mark E. Peterson
“What Americanism Must Mean”, Deseret News, October 28th, 1961
143. Theodore M. Burton
It is impossible to pick up a newspaper or listen to a news broadcast without learning of some new quarrel among nations, some new argument among politicians, some new expression of prejudice against a race or a people, or some new outburst against a person or an idea. When I read or hear of these continuing disputes, I am aware of their negative nature. People nowadays seem to be continually against something or somebody. We appear to live in a negative era. What could have brought all this about?
The answer appears to me to be that each person today wants to “do [their] own thing,” to demonstrate [their] complete independence of everything and everyone. We forget that we are not, and cannot be, totally independent of one another either in thought or action. We are part of a total community. We are all members of one family
Theodore M. Burton
“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”, General Conference, October 1974
144. Patrick Kearon
The Savior knows how it feels to be a refugee – He was one. As a young child, Jesus and His family fled to Egypt to escape the murderous swords of Herod. And at various points in His ministry, Jesus found Himself threatened and His life in danger, ultimately submitting to the designs of evil men who had plotted His death. Perhaps, then, it is all the more remarkable to us that He repeatedly taught us to love one another, to love as He loves, to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Patrick Kearon
“Refuge from the Storm”, General Conference, April 2016
145. G. Michael Alder
At the beginning of this century mankind did not have the power to radically alter the global environment. Today we have that power, and as a result, serious, mostly unintended changes are taking place in the air, water, and land around us. These changes outstrip our present ability to cope with them, largely because the world’s financial, social, and political systems are out of step with natural processes.
At one time, there may have been reason to be skeptical about the idea that we are damaging the earth on a global scale. But no longer. The evidence is mounting that we are doing ourselves and our mortal home serious damage. … A continued increase in carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, produced by our vast consumption of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels, appears to be responsible for a general increase in temperature worldwide. That increase threatens possible major changes in climate around the world, potentially causing drought in some areas and greater rainfall in others.
G. Michael Alder
“Earth – A Gift of Gladness”, Ensign, July 1991
[Environmental] restoration is possible, though in the case of the damage we are doing to our global environment, including the destruction of living species, restitution is very difficult if not impossible. After all, how do you restore a species once it is gone? Some measures must be truly global in scope, involving governments worldwide.
G. Michael Alder
“Earth – A Gift of Gladness”, Ensign, July 1991
Can Heavenly Father be any less pleased with this willful destruction of nature than when we break the Word of Wisdom? Certainly, if we are to become like him, we must begin to master the skills necessary to preserve and encourage the processes of life. It seems to me that part of our responsibility as caretakers for the earth is to learn about those processes and take advantage of opportunities to protect our world’s resources. Ecology and the natural sciences should be areas of interest for us all.
G. Michael Alder
“Earth – A Gift of Gladness”, Ensign, July 1991
146. Taylor G. Petrey
In this new era of political, ethical and informational polarization, it is becoming harder for liberals to share a faith with fellow believers who do not seem to share their basic values. …
More and more those who find themselves leaving the faith lack confidence in their religion’s basic goodness for themselves, for others and the world.
Taylor G. Petrey
“Commentary: The LDS Church needs to keep its liberals in the fold — for their sake and the faith’s” Salt Lake Tribune, April 1st, 2026
Making religion more politically conservative doesn’t necessarily make religious people more conservative. It also makes less-conservative people less religious.
Taylor G. Petrey
“Commentary: The LDS Church needs to keep its liberals in the fold — for their sake and the faith’s” Salt Lake Tribune, April 1st, 2026
147. Laurie Lee Hall
Just as Church leaders in the past have changed course upon realizing that specific Church policies were insupportable, I hope that today’s Church leaders will embark on a similar course by listening to transgender members and scientific evidence to understand the reality of gender identity. The best of Mormon teachings promotes strong, loving, and inclusive communities, a compassionate understanding of one another, and reaching out to the most marginalized members of society. These are teachings to be proud of. I look forward to the day when leaders will follow the best of their tradition by lifting the current, egregious restrictions against transgender members and by more compassionately ministering to and including transgender children of God.
Laurie Lee Hall
Eternal Identity Misunderstood: A Transgender Woman’s Journey Through Faith, Revelation, and LDS Policy, April 3rd, 2026
148. Orson Hyde
If a man acquire a great deal of earthly things, he acquires a great deal of this curse. For they that will be rich are made to pass through many sorrows, and they have to harden their hearts and their faces, and oppress the poor to acquire it; and when they have acquired it, what have they got? It is to them something like a red hot ball in the hands of a child, it burns; they have acquired it, and have got a great curse along with it. It is hard for such to enter into the Kingdom of God. The gate is narrow, and the curse is wide, so if they wish to go in at that gate, they must be stripped, and become destitute of the love of this world’s goods.