LDS churches

If you were West, I think you would be interested in visiting the LDS churches. The communion is celebrated every Sunday, the deacons, who are young boys of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, passing the sacrament. Water is used instead of wine. […]

1912: American Missionary Association, Congregational Home Missionary Society, and Making of America Project, The American Missionary, volume 66, page 117 (American Missionary Association)

The general wave of public concern over the plight of the Indians was taken to be a problem in which the L.D.S. churches ought to carry a major burden of responsibility, partly because of their geographic position and more especially because of their religious values.

1954, Robert N. Rapoport, “Changing Navaho Religious Values: A Study of Christian Missions to the Rimrock Navahos”, in The Museum, page 39

In 1952, the Catholic churches, Latter-Day Saints (LDS) churches, and Jewish synagogues reported only adherent data (which included prescribed persons and persons of all ages); in 1981, the Catholic and LDS churches again provided only adherent data.

1989, Robert Wuthnow, The Struggle for America’s Soul: Evangelicals, Liberals, and Secularism, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., →ISBN, page 111, →ISBN

Eventually some were excommunicated, and others withdrew from the church voluntarily, thereupon starting their own separate LDS churches, many of which embraced both polygamy and communal living.

2002, Jeffrey Kaplan, Heléne Lööw, The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization, Rowman AltaMira, →ISBN, page 82, →ISBN

If we were nominating the Sacred Wood to the National Register and said “The Sacred Wood is significant because it was here that God told Joseph Smith where to find the golden tablets that contained God’s revealed word about the Levites, Nephites, and Jesus Christ in the New World,” the Register would do very well to look at our nomination askance, because we’d be asking the U.S. government to validate the doctrine of the LDS churches. If instead we said that “The Sacred Wood is significant because in the traditions of the LDS churches it was here that God told Joseph Smith where to find the tablets containing the Book of Mormon, which led to the creation of the LDS churches, which are of great cultural importance to those who subscribe to their beliefs,” the Register could be much more comfortable about accepting our nomination.

2004, Thomas F. King, Cultural Resource Laws and Practice, Rowman AltaMira, →ISBN, →ISBN