Mormon Short

Covering the origins, history, and modern challenges of the church, Mormonism: What Everyone Needs to Know offers listeners a brief, authoritative guide to one of the fastest growing faith groups of the 21st century.

Many people see Mormons as just another branch of the Christian church, and to be admired, perhaps, for their family life, morality, and upright culture. But the theology and spirituality of this cult are very far from an orthodox biblical understanding of true saving faith. And yet Christians are often fearful of engaging in conversations about the Gospel with Mormons, knowing that there are suspicions and complex issues that lie beneath the surface.

Givens examines the Book of Mormon first and foremost in terms of the claims that its narrators make for its historical genesis, its purpose as a sacred text, and its meaning for an audience which shifts over the course of the history it unfolds. The author traces five governing themes in particular - revelation, Christ, Zion, scripture, and covenant - and analyzes the Book's central doctrines and teachings. Givens also provides samples of a cast of characters that number in the hundreds, and analyzes representative passages.

From the moment Sariah and Lehi’s family arrived in the promised land, their prophets warned that the people would face destruction if they failed to trust in Christ. Centuries later, Mormon witnesses the fulfillment of this dark prophecy. He witnesses his own people hewn down in open rebellion against God. Crying out from the depths of his heart, the prophet reflects on what went wrong and how it might have been avoided. Through it all, hope in Christ abides.

Beginning with a handful of members in 1830, the church that Joseph Smith founded has grown into a world-wide organization with over twelve million adherents, playing prominent roles in politics, sports, entertainment, and business. Yet they are an oddity. Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction explains who Mormons are: what they believe and how they live their lives.

What if … You lived in a ward that did nor fear progressive ideals and values? You had a bishop who was committed to gender equality? The bishop's wife empowered the young women of the ward? The young women could full express the priesthood authority they held? The Aaronic Priesthood holders of the ward respected and encouraged the young women using their priesthood authority? You made a difference in your ward and in the Church? What if the time was NOW? In this short fiction, outspoken Mormon feminist Shelby Dee Nye explores the themes of gender, feminism, priesthood, and progressivism....

In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith’s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine.

In the shared setting of fictional Balford, Wyoming, the characters in Darin Cozzens's short stories demonstrate both the follies and the virtues of rural Mormons in the late twentieth century. Hewell Penroy is a forty-two-year-old bachelor who, unbeknownst to his mother, falls in love with Benita, the meter reader he has never met. Flynn Darlington plays matchmaker with the youngest of his four unmarried daughters and an itinerant roofer. For all their married life, Rowe Sloan has struggled to supply his wife Vida with enough water for her household, but his crowning effort ends in tragedy...

A man struggles--literally--with his dead father. A housewife suffers from post-calling depression. The son of a polygamist comes to terms with the damage done by his upbringing. An unwed teen mother faces down her father. In these award-winning stories and a new novella, Todd Robert Petersen takes the reader on expeditions to Utah, Arizona, Brazil, Rwanda, and into the souls of twenty-first century Mormons caught between their humanity, faith, and church.

This compilation of short fiction represents the next chapter in Douglas Thayer's recent literary success. Described by Richard Cracroft as "LDS literary fiction at its finest," Thayer's third collection of stories presents a dozen of his career-best work, including several that have never before appeared in print.

The Story of "Mormonism" by James E. Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is a collection of lectures delivered by Dr. James E. Talmage at the University of Michigan, Cornell University, and elsewhere. The "Story" first appeared in print as a lecture report in the Improvement Era, and was afterward issued as a booklet from the office of the Millennial Star, Liverpool. The present or third American edition has been revised and amplified by the author.

Among all the various figures in 19th century America who left controversial legacies, it is hard to find one as influential as Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormonism, and the Latter-Day Saint movement. Revered as a prophet on the level of Moses by some, reviled as a perpetrator of large-scale fraud by others, what everyone can agree on is that Joseph Smith founded a religious movement that played a crucial role in the settlement of the West, especially in Utah.

Mormonland is the raw confessional memoir of a Mormon boy who grew up in a small western town and pursued the Hollywood dream. He devoted five decades of his life to a church filled with highly questionable doctrine, troubling temple rituals, and never-ending expectations. What outsiders may call racist, sexist, and cult-like practices, insiders call God-given, the true Family Proclamation, and too sacred to share.

Bizarre occultists try to use a legendary monster to enact their revenge and only a hard-drinking gunslinger can stop them! Its Hell on Wheels meets Jaws! Blessed by a holy man, hard-drinking gunslinger Porter Rockwell was promised that if he never cut his hair he would not be harmed by bullet nor blade . . . But what if monsters strike with tooth and claw? Or occult spiritualists send hexes his way? Well this time just might be Port’s last ride . . . Either way it’s gonna be a helluva fight! You don't want to miss this ride thru the old west. Filled with action, suspense and a good ...

The banker and the barista… Amanda Allred’s getting tired of being in the closet for her dull, boring banking job. She’s frustrated with the whole boys’ club atmosphere there and the ‘good ol’ boy’ mentality that goes along with it. Salt Lake is thriving culturally and she wants to be a part of it all; openly and freely in the Utah she’s always loved. But, banking pays the bills and then some. She fears there are just not a lot of opportunities out there professionally for a woman in such a male centric, Mormon culture. Rebecca Musser is finally living the life she once only...

While Christian denominations world-wide have been slipping into apathy, worldliness, and biblical illiteracy, the cult of Mormonism has been able to preach its satanic doctrines throughout the world deceiving countless souls in the process. It's time for true men, women, and even children of God to stand against the heresies being taught by the Mormons and contend for the true Christian faith.

One sneak attack on the very heart of the galaxy turns a space station full of families into ground zero for war. Veteran-turned-lawyer Helaman must make a stand to save his wife and kids, along with everyone else on the station. Invading soldiers want him dead. Local politicians are out to undermine him. Can he hold things off long enough for the fleet to arrive, or will his efforts just get more people killed?

A newlywed Mormon thinks a honeymoon in the Amazon jungle of Brazil where he served his mission is a great idea, since he's been there and speaks the language. But he's completely unprepared to face the creatures of legend that roam the rainforest. This short story first appeared in the 2011 collection Monsters & Mormons, edited by Wm Henry Morris and Theric Jepson.