262 source records across 13 topics, ranked by evidentiary weight. 223 are held as full text in the Mormon Corpus; the others are reached only as quotations inside works that are held, and every one of those is marked. A source used by more than one topic appears once per topic, because what it establishes differs.
Bainbridge court record, 20 March 1826, with the Neely and De Zeng bills
Albert Neely, Philip M. De Zeng
That Joseph Smith was examined as a 'disorderly person and an Impostor' and testified under oath that he used a stone to locate buried treasure for Josiah Stowell.
Testimony of the Three Witnesses and Testimony of the Eight Witnesses, June 1829
Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris, and eight others
The exact wording eleven men put their names to — and, equally, what those statements do not contain: no date, no place, no description of the event, and no surviving signed original.
Book of Mormon copyright, 11 June 1829
Richard R. Lansing, clerk, Northern District of New York
That the title page existed in printed form by 11 June 1829, and that Joseph Smith was entered as claiming the book 'as author' — the statutory wording, and a perennial point of attack.
Martin Harris, mortgage to Egbert B. Grandin, 25 August 1829
Martin Harris
The financial spine of the whole project: 151 acres pledged for $3,000, payable within eighteen months, and sold in April 1831 when the book did not sell.
The Book of Mormon (1830 edition)
Joseph Smith Jr.
The text as it was first published, including the one-paragraph preface on the lost manuscript, the title page, the copyright notice, and the pre-1837 readings such as 'the mother of God' at 1 Nephi 11:18.
History, circa Summer 1832
Joseph Smith Jr. and Frederick G. Williams
The only account of the vision partly in Joseph Smith's own handwriting: one personage, forgiveness of sins, and 'the 16th year of my age.'
Book of Commandments (1833) and Doctrine and Covenants (1835 first edition)
Joseph Smith and others
The church's own foundational scripture in the 1830s says only that a remission of sins was 'manifested unto this first elder' before an angel ministered to him — no theophany, no two personages.
Doctrine and Covenants (1835 first edition)
Joseph Smith and others
The June 1829 revelation promising Cowdery, Whitmer and Harris a view of the plates 'by your faith' — the instruction that precedes and shapes the Three Witnesses' experience.
Journal, 1835–1836
Joseph Smith Jr., scribe Warren Parrish
Two retellings five days apart: two personages plus 'many angels' on 9 November, and 'the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14, years old' on 14 November.
Book of Abraham Manuscripts A, B and C, circa July–circa November 1835
Frederick G. Williams, Warren Parrish, William W. Phelps (scribes)
The earliest English text of Abraham 1:1–2:18, with Egyptian characters copied into the left margins beside paragraph-length English passages.
Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, circa July–circa November 1835
William W. Phelps (principal scribe)
What Smith and his scribes actually believed Egyptian characters meant — Kolob, Jah-oh-eh, Zip Zi and the rest — in a system of 'degrees' that corresponds to nothing in Egyptology.
Article on Marriage, Doctrine and Covenants (1835 first edition), section 101
Oliver Cowdery (attributed)
That the church's own canon declared for monogamy from 1835 until the statement was replaced in 1876.
History, 1834–1836 (Kirtland journal-derived history)
Joseph Smith, Warren Parrish, Frederick G. Williams
Day-by-day Kirtland entries: labor on the Egyptian alphabet on 1 October 1835 when 'the system of astronomy was unfolded,' and the 17 November exhibition of 'the Alphabet of the ancient Egyptian Records' to the visitor Erastus Holmes.
Stephen Burnett to Lyman E. Johnson, 1838
Stephen Burnett
A contemporary report that Martin Harris told a Kirtland congregation he had seen the plates only 'in vision or imagination,' and that the eight witnesses hesitated to sign — the strongest early evidence for the visionary reading.
History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834]
Joseph Smith Jr. and scribes
The manuscript behind the canonized account: the revival frame, the struggle with an unseen power, and 'I saw two personages.'
Letter, Oliver Cowdery to Warren A. Cowdery, 21 January 1838 (Cowdery Letterbook)
Oliver Cowdery
The only contemporary Kirtland accusation naming Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger.
Executive Order of Lilburn W. Boggs, 27 October 1838 (Missouri Executive Order 44), copied in JS Letterbook 2
Lilburn W. Boggs
The exact wording and the stated grounds of the extermination order, and that it was issued to General John B. Clark as a military order.
Oration Delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon on the 4th of July, 1838, at Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri (Far West: Journal Office)
Sidney Rigdon
The 'war of extermination' language, published and circulated with Joseph Smith's endorsement four months before Boggs used the same word.
Elders' Journal of the Church of Latter Day Saints (1837–1838)
Joseph Smith, editor
That the Fourth of July oration was not a rogue speech: the church's own paper, edited by Smith, recommended that members obtain the pamphlet.
Journal, March–September 1838
Joseph Smith
Smith's contemporaneous, favorable reference to 'a company of Danites' — the strongest primary evidence that he knew of and approved the band.
Doctrine and Covenants 119 and 120
Joseph Smith Jr.
The canonical basis of tithing — 'one-tenth of all their interest annually' — and of the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes that authorizes all expenditure.
History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838]
Joseph Smith and clerks
The July 1835 statement that Smith was 'continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arrangeing a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.'
History, circa June 1839–circa 1841 [Draft 2]
Joseph Smith Jr. and scribes
The working draft of the 1838–39 history, carrying the 'join none of them, for they were all wrong' answer and the creeds-are-an-abomination language.
Times and Seasons, vols. 1–6
The church's own serialized 'History of the Persecution' in Missouri, including Joseph Young's Hawn's Mill affidavit and Edward Partridge's account of being tarred in 1833.
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, 1840–1859
Parley P. Pratt and successors
The earliest printed 'mantle' language, in Wilford Woodruff's February 1845 address to the British Saints, and a reprint of the Rigdon trial with the vote counts.
Times and Seasons, volumes 3–5 (1841–1845)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
The public denials printed while the practice was under way, including the 1 October 1842 reprint of the Article on Marriage with signed certificates.
Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c., in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons (Fayette, Mo.: Boon's Lick Democrat)
Missouri General Assembly
The Missouri government's own assembled evidentiary record of the 1838 war — the single document most quoted by every camp in this dispute.
"Church History," 1 March 1842 (the Wentworth letter), Times and Seasons 3:706–10
Joseph Smith Jr.
Smith's own public summary for a newspaper editor: 'about fourteen years of age,' two personages, a commandment to 'go not after them,' and no 'This is My Beloved Son.'
Times and Seasons, Volume 3 (1841–1842)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Joseph Smith, editor)
The Book of Abraham as published: Facsimile 1 and Abraham 1:1–2:18 on 1 March, Facsimile 2 and the remainder on 15 March, Facsimile 3 on 16 May, each facsimile with Joseph Smith's own numbered explanation.
Revelation to Newel K. Whitney, 27 July 1842 (sealing of Sarah Ann Whitney)
Joseph Smith Jr.
The only known revelation giving the words of a plural-marriage ceremony, dictated for a seventeen-year-old bride's father to speak.
Revelation, 12 July 1843 [Doctrine and Covenants 132]
Joseph Smith Jr.
The text of the plural-marriage revelation, including its terms for virgins, its threat to Emma Smith, and its date of recording.
Nauvoo Neighbor (1843–1845)
John Taylor
The city paper's coverage of the Expositor affair, the martyrdom and, on 11 September 1844, the proceedings of Rigdon's trial before a crowd reported at six to seven thousand.
Doctrine and Covenants: section 132 and Official Declaration 1, with the appended excerpts from three addresses by Wilford Woodruff
The canonized text of the plural-marriage revelation, the exact wording of the Manifesto, Lorenzo Snow's sustaining motion of 6 October 1890, and Woodruff's later 'shown me by vision' explanations as the church itself prints them.
Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844 (the single issue)
William Law, Wilson Law, Charles Ivins, Francis M. Higbee, Chauncey L. Higbee, Robert D. Foster, Charles A. Foster
The public exposure of the plural-marriage revelation by dissenters, including affidavits from Austin Cowles and William and Jane Law.
Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844 (the single issue)
William Law, Wilson Law, Charles Ivins, Francis M. Higbee, Chauncey L. Higbee, Robert D. Foster, Charles A. Foster
Exactly what the dissenters charged in print — plural marriage, the plurality of gods, political revelation, and the Nauvoo charter — in their own words, three days before the press was destroyed.
Nauvoo Neighbor (1843–1845)
John Taylor, editor
How the Nauvoo leadership justified the abatement publicly within a week of the act, expressly invoking the destruction of their own press in Jackson County.
Times and Seasons, Volume 5 (1844–1845)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Nauvoo)
The Twelve's own printed record: the 2 September 1844 announcement that a special conference had voted the Twelve should preside, the 15 September and 1 October numbers carrying the trial of Sidney Rigdon in full, and the October 1844 conference sustainings.
Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh, 1844–1846)
Sidney Rigdon
The losing claimant's case in his own words: the scriptural argument from Doctrine and Covenants 90 that Rigdon was commanded to preside, the charge that the Twelve had decided to supplant him before the church ever voted, and branch-by-branch resolutions repudiating the Twelve.
The Ensign (1844–1845)
William E. McLellin and George M. Hinkle
That dissent had its own press within three weeks of the martyrdom, and — through its reprint of Rigdon's April 1845 Pittsburgh conference minutes — the internal structure of Rigdon's rival church, including his own Twelve and Grand Council.
William Clayton Nauvoo journals, 1842–1846
William Clayton
Nothing that can be quoted. Clayton's 12 July 1844 note that Joseph had said Samuel H. Smith should succeed if he and Hyrum were taken is used here only as reported in Dialogue and in Bushman.
Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith—History
Joseph Smith Jr.
The canonical text as Latter-day Saints read it today, canonized in 1880 — the version against which every other account is measured.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 1 — "Celestial Marriage," discourse by Orson Pratt, Great Salt Lake City, 29 August 1852
Orson Pratt
The wording and argument of the first public defense of plural marriage, including Pratt's opening that the subject was 'rather new ground' and his denial that the doctrine existed to gratify carnal lusts.
Speeches Before the Utah Territorial Legislature, 23 January and 5 February 1852
Brigham Young
The moment the restriction was publicly announced, and the reasoning Young gave for it.
Journal of Discourses, vols. 1–26
The Utah-era blood-atonement rhetoric in its published form, and Brigham Young's later public dismissal of the Danite legend.
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols.
Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, George Q. Cannon and others
What Brigham Young and his contemporaries actually preached about race and priesthood, in their own words and at length.
Bill of sale, Lewis C. Bidamon and Emma Bidamon to A. Combs, 26 May 1856
Lewis C. Bidamon, Emma Smith Bidamon, Joseph Smith III
That the mummies and records were 'purchased by the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith at the price of twenty four hundred dollars in the year Eighteen hundred thirty-five,' and how the collection left the family.
Brigham Young to Isaac C. Haight, 10 September 1857
Brigham Young
Exactly what Young told Cedar City to do about the emigrant train, and on what date he told them.
Journal of Discourses, vols. 4–5 (1856–1857)
Brigham Young; Jedediah M. Grant; Heber C. Kimball; George A. Smith
The actual Reformation and blood-atonement rhetoric — Grant at JD 4:49–51, Young at JD 4:53–54 and 4:219–220 — and George A. Smith's own report of his southern tour at JD 5:36.
Report of Jacob Forney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, on the Mountain Meadows massacre
Jacob Forney
Contemporary federal findings on the number killed, the seventeen survivors, and that the children never lived among the Indians.
U.S. Army reports from Mountain Meadows, 1859 (Charles Brewer; Brevet Major James Henry Carleton)
Charles Brewer; James Henry Carleton
The physical evidence at the site in 1859 — where the bodies lay, in what condition — and the origin of the cairn and cross the army raised over them.
Letter, W. W. Phelps to Brigham Young, 12 August 1861, reporting a revelation of 17 July 1831
William W. Phelps
The claimed 1831 origin of plural marriage, tied to a command to marry Lamanite and Nephite women.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 11 — discourse by Brigham Young, 19 August 1866
Brigham Young
The most contested nineteenth-century statement tying plural marriage to exaltation, in the surrounding context that both camps argue over.
Affidavits on celestial marriage collected by Joseph F. Smith, 1869–1870
Joseph Bates Noble, Zina D. H. Young, Sarah Ann Whitney Kimball, Lorenzo Snow and others
Sworn dates, officiators and witnesses for many of the Nauvoo sealings, collected twenty-five years after the fact to answer RLDS denials.
Deposition of Brigham Young, July 1875 (Lee trial)
Brigham Young
Young's own sworn account: that he received a communication from Haight or Lee about the Arkansas company, answered it, cannot produce the original, and gave no direction about the property.
Recollections of child survivors (Rebecca Dunlap Evins, 1897; Nancy Huff Cates; Martha Elizabeth Baker Terry, 1938)
The massacre as the survivors described it: the siege, the white flag, the separation of children, and the treatment they received afterward.
Mormonism Unveiled; or, the Life and Confession of the Late Mormon Bishop, John D. Lee
John D. Lee, ed. William W. Bishop
Lee's own narrative of the killing, of the order to lay it all to the Indians, and of his belief that he was sacrificed.
"Last Testimony of Sister Emma," Saints' Herald, 1 October 1879
Emma Smith Bidamon, interviewed by Joseph Smith III
The closest eyewitness account of the mechanics of dictation, from the person who wrote first and had least to gain.
Last Testimony of Sister Emma, Saints' Herald, 1 October 1879
Joseph Smith III (interviewer); Emma Smith Bidamon
Emma Smith's final recorded denial that her husband ever had another wife, and the RLDS position built on it.
Conference Reports, 1880–1970
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
What leaders said from the pulpit on race and lineage, including Kimball's October 1960 Lamanite address.
An Address to All Believers in Christ
David Whitmer
Whitmer's own description of the seer stone and hat, his 1881 proclamation that he never at any time denied his testimony, and his simultaneous rejection of Joseph Smith's church after 1834.
Edmunds–Tucker Act (24 Stat. 635, 1887) and Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States (136 U.S. 1, 1890)
United States Congress; U.S. Supreme Court
The statutory machinery of disincorporation, escheat of church property above $50,000, and the withdrawal of the vote from all Utah women.
Conference Report, October 1899
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
That leaders publicly framed tithing as a replacement law given after 'a failure in regard to this law of consecration,' at the height of Snow's tithing reformation.
Conference Report, April 1900
Joseph F. Smith
The contemporaneous telling of the Widow Smith potato story, the founding anecdote of tithing-from-poverty in Latter-day Saint preaching.
Official Statement (the "Second Manifesto"), Joseph F. Smith, general conference, 6 April 1904
Joseph F. Smith
The exact prohibitory language, including the threat of excommunication, and its reference back to Woodruff's declaration.
Nephi Johnson to Anthon H. Lund, 1910
Nephi Johnson
A participant's account that Haight told him Lee had proposed gathering the Indians to destroy the train, and that white men did most of the killing.
Conference Report, April 1959
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The last itemized public statement of Church expenditures — 'Expenditures of the Church in 1958' — and therefore the exact boundary of the transparency era.
Conference Report, April 1960
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
That the following April conference reported statistics — temples, missionaries, enrollments — but no itemized expenditures, showing the change was immediate.
The Miracle of Forgiveness, chapter "Crime Against Nature"
Spencer W. Kimball
The foundational mid-century Latter-day Saint text treating homosexuality as sin, sickness and something curable.
"To Young Men Only" (general priesthood session address, later a Church-distributed pamphlet)
Boyd K. Packer
The 1970s teaching on homosexual advances given to every Latter-day Saint male twelve and older, including the sentence 'I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it.'
"Effect of Visual Stimuli in Electric Aversion Therapy" (PhD dissertation, Brigham Young University)
Max Ford McBride
The design and scale of the BYU electric aversion therapy study: seventeen male subjects, fourteen completing, supervised by D. Eugene Thorne.
The Blessing of Church Interviews
Boyd K. Packer
The Church's own instruction on how worthiness interviews are to be conducted, and its explicit prohibition on cross-examining members about specific sexual practices.
Doctrine and Covenants, Official Declaration 2 and its 2013 introductory header
Spencer W. Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner, Marion G. Romney
The canonized text of the 1978 revelation and the Church's own 2013 statement that its records offer no clear insights into the practice's origins.
The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect
Boyd K. Packer
The charge that historians should not 'tell everything,' that 'some things that are true are not very useful,' and that in the Church 'we are not neutral.'
The Seventh East Press (1981–1983)
Dean Huffaker and others
Contemporary student-press reporting on the BYU 'purge of '75,' the counseling-center shock treatments, and how gay students were identified and referred.
The Seventh East Press (1981–1983)
Seventh East Press
What the independent student paper actually printed, and its own contemporaneous account of being banned from campus on 9 February 1983.
Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir
Davis Bitton
An assistant Church historian's contemporaneous account of how the History Division rose and was dismantled, and the origin of the word 'Camelot.'
An Interview with Sterling McMurrin
Blake Ostler and Sterling M. McMurrin
McMurrin's own words on the First Vision, the Book of Mormon and Packer's address — the text whose publication got the Seventh East Press banned.
"The State of the Church" (April 1991 general conference)
Gordon B. Hinckley
The Church's own stated doctrine of reserves: live within its means, and set aside a fixed percentage against a possible 'rainy day.'
Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse
Richard G. Scott
The Church's teaching that abuse victims bear no guilt, alongside its 1992 caution against 'excessive probing' therapy — the passage both camps still argue over.
The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology
Lavina Fielding Anderson
The dated, named record of two decades of ecclesiastical pressure on Latter-day Saint historians and feminists, assembled by a participant and published four months before her own excommunication.
Talk to the All-Church Coordinating Council, 18 May 1993
Boyd K. Packer
That an apostle publicly named 'the so-called scholars or intellectuals' as one of three dangers four months before the councils convened.
"The Family: A Proclamation to the World"
First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
The doctrinal statement on marriage and gender that every later political and disciplinary action is built on.
“This Thing Was Not Done in a Corner”
Gordon B. Hinckley
The first public description by a Church president of the abuse help line, one year after it was set up.
Personal Worthiness to Exercise the Priesthood
Gordon B. Hinckley
That the help line was described from the pulpit as staffed by 'professional counselors, including lawyers and social workers,' advising leaders on 'their obligations.'
Spiritual Paths After September 1993
Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Paul James Toscano, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn and Lavina Fielding Anderson
Five of the six speaking together ten years afterward about what they decided, what it cost and where it took them.
"Tithing—a Commandment Even for the Destitute" (April 2005 general conference)
Lynn G. Robbins
That the Church has taught, from the conference pulpit, that bishops and missionaries should teach tithing to the poorest members without hesitation.
"Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families" (First Presidency letter to California congregations)
First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The exact instruction given to California members — to 'do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time.'
To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse
Richard G. Scott
That bishops were publicly directed to 'the Church handbook and the help line listed there' as the route for coordinating with civil authorities.
Arizona Revised Statutes §12-2233 (clergyman or priest and penitent) and §13-3620 (reporting)
State of Arizona
The exact statutory language on which the Adams litigation turned, including the clergy exception written into the reporting duty.
Protect the Children
Dallin H. Oaks
The most sustained apostolic statement on institutional duty toward children, framed as applying to 'citizens, public officials, and workers in private organizations.'
Church Auditing Department Reports, 2013–2025
Kevin R. Jergensen; Jared B. Larson
Exactly what the Church discloses today: an unqualified opinion that funds were administered per approved budgets, with no revenue, expenditure or asset figures of any kind.
Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1, sections 6.7.3 and 16.13 (November 2015 revisions)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The actual policy language: same-sex marriage as apostasy requiring a disciplinary council, and the bar on blessing and baptizing minor children of such parents.
"Becoming True Millennials" (worldwide devotional for young adults, 10 January 2016)
Russell M. Nelson
That a president of the Quorum of the Twelve publicly characterized the November 2015 policy as revelation received by President Monson and sustained by the apostles.
A Feminist FHE Discussion with Maxine Hanks
Maxine Hanks
Hanks's own account of what Women and Authority contained, who else was disciplined over it, and the terms on which she returned in 2012.
"First Presidency Shares Messages from General Conference Leadership Session" (Newsroom, 4 April 2019)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The exact language of the reversal, including that same-gender marriage 'will not be treated as apostasy for purposes of Church discipline.'
Chosen Path: A Memoir
D. Michael Quinn
Quinn's own dated account, drawn from his journals, of the History Division, the 1993 accusation, the two earlier councils, and what his stake president said about Packer's weekly phone calls.
"Tithing: Opening the Windows of Heaven" (October 2023 general conference)
Neil L. Andersen
The current official framing — tithing as 'principally a matter of our faith' rather than of money — delivered eight months after the SEC settlement.
SEC Press Release 2023-35: SEC Charges The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Its Investment Management Company for Disclosure Failures and Misstated Filings
United States Securities and Exchange Commission
The settled findings: no Forms 13F from 1997 to 2019, thirteen shell LLCs, a portfolio that by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, and penalties of $4 million and $1 million.
In the Matter of Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc., and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Order Instituting Cease-and-Desist Proceedings, Release No. 96951 (21 Feb. 2023)
United States Securities and Exchange Commission
The paragraph-level findings the Widow's Mite analysis is keyed to: the 1998 notice of the filing obligation, the 2014 and 2017 Church Auditing flags, and the 2018 resignations of two shell-LLC business managers.
Huntsman v. Corporation of the President, No. 21-56056 (9th Cir., filed 7 August 2023)
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The panel's split holding — reversing on the City Creek fraud claim, affirming on Beneficial Life — later vacated and superseded by the en banc dismissal.
Jane Doe I, et al. v. The Corporation of the President, Cochise County Superior Court No. CV202000599, Under Advisement Ruling on Summary Judgment
Hon. Timothy B. Dickerson
The trial court's reasoning that the bishops had no knowledge independent of confidential communications and that Arizona's reporting duty was therefore overridden.
Autobiography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, dictated to Elizabeth J. D. Roundy
Jane Manning James
A Black Latter-day Saint woman's account of her own conversion, migration and faith in her own words.
Delusions: An Analysis of the Book of Mormon
Alexander Campbell
The first sustained textual critique — arguing the book answers the religious controversies of Joseph Smith's own decade rather than those of 600 BC.
Mormonism Unvailed
Eber D. Howe
The Hurlbut affidavits on Smith family money-digging, Anthon's own 1834 letter, and the original statement of the Spalding–Rigdon theory.
"Egyptian Mummies—Ancient Records" (Oliver Cowdery to William Frye, 22 December 1835)
Oliver Cowdery
The church's first public account of the acquisition, including the denial that the mummies were Abraham, Abimelech or Joseph, and the disposition of the eleven mummies.
A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints
John Corrill
A participant-dissenter's description, written within months, of the Danite covenant, the Salt Sermon, and why he could neither defect nor object once the community had militarized.
Lee trial record and official correspondence, 1875–1877 (Haslam testimony; Sumner Howard to Attorney General Alphonso Taft; contemporary press reports)
The timing of Haslam's ride as sworn to in court, and the sharply opposed official readings of what the second trial proved about church leadership.
Conference Reports of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1880–1970
The church's own conference-floor record, including the 1906 announcement of the Taylor and Cowley resignations and later restatements of the Manifesto's scope.
First Presidency statements on the Negro question, 17 July 1947, 17 August 1949, 17 August 1951, 15 December 1969
First Presidency
That mid-century leaders framed the restriction as a direct commandment and doctrine, not a policy.
Sunstone, news sections of issues 077, 118, 141, 142, 146, 150–152, 155, 158, 161
Sunstone Education Foundation
Near-contemporaneous reporting on the Proposition 22 and Proposition 8 campaigns, the BYU honor-code clarification, the Soulforce protests, the Oaks–Wickman interview and the 2010 reaction to Packer.
Church Defends Keeping Files on Members
Sunstone
The reporting record of the committee's exposure at the 1992 symposium, its executive secretary, and the reaction of Dialogue's editor and BYU faculty.
Six Intellectuals Disciplined for Apostasy; Three September Six Appeals Denied
Sunstone
Council-by-council detail for September 1993 — dates, presiding officers, what was discussed, what each person was told — and the denial of the appeals.
Sunstone news and retrospectives on the discipline of scholars, issues 100–135
Sunstone
That the disciplinary pattern continued past 1993, and the outcomes of the later cases in the participants' and reporters' own words.
Sunstone (news reporting on Church abuse policy and settlements), issues 64 and 120
Sunstone Education Foundation
The 1982 First Presidency letters on temple-recommend interview questions, and the 2001 Oregon settlement — the first LDS abuse settlement amount ever publicly disclosed.
"Mormon Church has misled members on $100 billion tax-exempt investment fund, whistleblower alleges," Washington Post, 17 December 2019
Jon Swaine, Douglas MacMillan and Michelle Boorstein
The public break of the Nielsen complaint, its receipt date at the IRS (21 November 2019), and the ~$100 billion figure as an allegation.
Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen (and follow-up reporting)
Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen, Associated Press
The account, drawn from sealed court records, of how the help line routed the Bisbee bishops' calls and what they were told.
B. H. Roberts Foundation archive (mormonr) research records on LGBTQ topics
Locates and excerpts the 2011 Cameron accounts, Evergreen's self-description and its 2014 merger into North Star, the 2015 Utah compromise coverage, the 2019 conversion-therapy statements, the 2020 General Handbook transgender section, and the 2020–2022 BYU episodes.
Minutes and Testimonies, 12–29 November 1838 [State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason]
Sworn testimony taken within weeks of the events — including Reed Peck on the Salt Sermon and on Avard's teaching — and the commitment orders naming who was charged with what.
Revised Minutes, 17 June 1844 [synopsis of Nauvoo City Council proceedings, 8 and 10 June 1844]
The council debate itself: who said what about libel, nuisance, Blackstone and the charter before the vote to abate.
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846
William Clayton, clerk
The existence, membership and business of the council Joseph organized in March 1844, and the thinness of Clayton's 1844 minute-taking — the reason the 'last charge' is not recorded in the minutes of 26 March 1844.
Early Mormon Documents, Volume 1
Dan Vogel, ed.
Transcripts of the 1832, 1835, 1838 and 1842 accounts in one place, with editorial notes on the Wentworth letter's apparent debt to Orson Pratt's 1840 pamphlet.
Early Mormon Documents, 5 vols.
Dan Vogel, ed.
The single most useful reservoir of transcribed contemporary documents on the plates, the witnesses, the printing and the neighbours' affidavits.
In the World: The Diaries of Reed Smoot
Reed Smoot, ed. Harvard S. Heath
How the hearings looked to the man on trial and to church leaders corresponding with him, including apostolic discussion of new polygamy cases as late as 1909.
Lucy's Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith's Family Memoir
Lucy Mack Smith; Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed.
The household narrative — Moroni's visits, the hiding of the plates, Martin Harris's return without the manuscript, and the chronology of the Grandin contract.
Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings: A Comprehensive Register of Persons Receiving LDS Temple Ordinances, 1841–1846
Lisle G. Brown
Who was sealed to whom in Nauvoo and in what capacity, including the January 1846 proxy sealings of women to Joseph Smith for eternity and to other men for time.
The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris collections, ed. Richard E. Turley Jr. and Ronald W. Walker (BYU Studies 47:3)
Richard E. Turley Jr.; Ronald W. Walker
What surviving southern Utah settlers told a church historian in 1892, and why the three most-cited sources on the massacre all have to be handled with care.
Sidney Rigdon's Plea to the Saints: Transcription of Thomas Bullock's Shorthand Notes from the August 8, 1844, Morning Meeting
LaJean Purcell Carruth and Robin Scott Jensen
What Rigdon actually said that morning, from Taylor shorthand deciphered only recently: that every man would stand in his own place, that authority 'is in the church,' and that Rigdon asked only to be spokesman for the dead prophet.
General Conference addresses, 1971–present
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How rarely and how recently racism has been named from the pulpit, and how the 1978 revelation is remembered there.
The Joseph Smith III Document and the Keys of the Kingdom
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (General Conference, April 1981)
The Church's public response when the (later forged) 1844 blessing surfaced, including Joseph Smith III's own 1893 court testimony that he was not ordained by his father.
Statement on Symposia (First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, 23 August 1991)
First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
The institutional turn from criticising historiography to cautioning members against attending independent symposia at all.
First Presidency statement on the Strengthening Church Members Committee
First Presidency
The Church's own confirmation that the committee exists, its scriptural justification in D&C 123, its membership, and its claim that it neither imposes nor directs discipline.
Keeping Covenants and Honoring the Priesthood (October 1993 general conference)
James E. Faust
The Church's own teaching, delivered eight days after the last council, that there is no 'loyal opposition' in the gospel and that free expression 'should operate within limits.'
Statement by the Council of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve on Church Discipline, January 1994
First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
The Church's formal position that general authorities teach principles and provide information but 'do not direct the decisions of local disciplinary councils.'
Richard E. Turley Jr., 'The Mountain Meadows Massacre,' Ensign, September 2007
Richard E. Turley Jr.
The Church's own sesquicentennial narrative: local origin of the plan, the anthrax explanation for the dying cattle, the white flag, and Young's letter arriving two days late.
Statement read by Henry B. Eyring at Mountain Meadows, 11 September 2007
Henry B. Eyring, for the First Presidency
The precise wording the institution chose — 'profound regret,' not apology — and the separate expression of regret owed the Paiute people.
General Handbook 38.6.2 and Handbook 1 “Abuse and Cruelty” (2010)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The governing policy language: abuse 'cannot be tolerated in any form,' membership-record annotation, the two-adult rules, and the priority of helping the abused.
"Book of Mormon Translation" (Gospel Topics Essay)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's own current statement that Joseph placed either the interpreters or the seer stone in a hat and read aloud the words that appeared, and that the two instruments were 'apparently interchangeable.'
"First Vision Accounts," Gospel Topics Essays
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's own public acknowledgment of four firsthand accounts and five contemporary secondhand ones, and its position that they 'tell a consistent story.'
Gospel Topics essay, "Race and the Priesthood"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Exactly what the Church now disavows, and exactly what it declines to say.
"Book of Mormon and DNA Studies" (Gospel Topics Essay)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's position that population genetics cannot settle the question, since the founding DNA of Lehi's party is unknown and founder effect and drift can erase small lineages.
"Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," Gospel Topics Essays
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Exactly what the institution now concedes about the fragments, the grammar book and the translation process — and exactly what it leaves open.
Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo (Gospel Topics essay)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The institution's current public account, including its acknowledgement of Helen Mar Kimball's age and of sealings to already-married women.
Gospel Topics essay, "Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's formal position that Smith approved of the Danites but probably was not briefed on all their plans.
Gospel Topics essay, "Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The institution's current statement on how widely plural marriage was lived, on divorce and remarriage, and on women's ages at marriage.
Gospel Topics essay, "The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The church's own acknowledgement that new plural marriages were performed after 1890, that Joseph F. Smith cohabited and fathered children after 1890, and that the Second Manifesto made the first one prohibitory.
'Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints' (Gospel Topics essay)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's current doctrinal-historical framing: a stake president ordered the attack, Young did not order the massacre, and blood-atonement preaching was largely rhetoric.
Saints: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846 (vol. 1), chs. 5–6
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How the institution narrates the Anthon visit and the lost manuscript today — including that it declines to name the hill Cumorah in its own account of the plates.
Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846, chapter 2, "Hear Him"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How the institution narrates the vision today — a composite told as continuous scene, opening with the forgiveness question and then the church question.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How the church narrates plural marriage to its own membership today, in chapters 37, 40, 41 and 43.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vol. 1, chs. 27–31
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
What the institution now tells its own members about the Salt Sermon, the Danites, Avard's testimony and the extermination order.
Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846, chapter 45, 'An Almighty Foundation'
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's current official telling: Brigham's 'the keys of the kingdom are right here with the church,' the grove meeting, Emily Partridge's mantle experience, and the vote.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vol. 2, ch. 18, 'Too Late, Too Late'
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's current narrative telling, including the Haight–Dame exchange, Haslam's arrival, and the scene at the Hamblin ranch with the seventeen children.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, 4 vols.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How the institution narrates this history to its own members today, including Jane James's petitions and the Genesis Group.
First Presidency Statement on Church Finances, 17 December 2019
First Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church's immediate answer: the vast majority of donations are spent at once, a portion is 'methodically safeguarded,' and 'The Church complies with all applicable law.'
"Two Great Commandments" (general conference, October 2019)
Dallin H. Oaks
The Church's own post-reversal framing: love of neighbor and obedience held together, 'a fine line between law and love.'
"The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon" (April 2020 General Conference)
Ulisses Soares
The current devotional telling from the pulpit: Moroni's three visits, the four years of preparation, and Emma waiting at the hill in September 1827.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vols. 2–3
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The church's current narrative telling of the indignation meetings, the raids, Rudger Clawson's sentencing, the Smoot hearings and the Taylor–Cowley resignations.
Church Offers Statement on Help Line and Abuse
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Newsroom)
The Church's immediate answer to the AP: that the help line's nature and purpose were 'seriously mischaracterized' and that it exists to ensure legal reporting requirements are met.
Second Church statement on the Associated Press report (“What did the Associated Press story get wrong?”)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Newsroom)
The Church's own three-part statement of a leader's duty in abuse cases: stop the abuse, get care for victims, and comply with whatever reporting the law requires.
Confession in LDS Doctrine and Practice
BYU Studies
How confession to a bishop is understood doctrinally, what confidentiality the Church claims for it, and how the article's authors described the bishop's position when reporting law conflicts with that confidentiality.
Joseph Smith, Jr., As a Translator
Franklin S. Spalding
The first organized expert test of the facsimiles, and the exact wording of the judgments by Sayce, Petrie, Breasted, Mace, Peters, Mercer, Meyer and von Bissing.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Juanita Brooks
The founding modern account and its verdict: leaders did not order the massacre but created the conditions, and Young was an accessory after the fact.
"The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' in Mormon Thought," Dialogue 1, no. 3
James B. Allen
That the vision was absent from the Book of Commandments, the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, early church periodicals and missionary literature, and that understanding of it 'dawned only gradually' on the membership.
"The Joseph Smith Papyri: A Preliminary Report," Dialogue 3:2 (Summer 1968)
Richard A. Parker
The first published Egyptological reading of the recovered fragments, identifying Facsimile 1's original as an Osiris-mysteries scene with jackal-headed Anubis and the hovering Isis-falcon.
"The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham," Dialogue 3:3 (Autumn 1968)
Klaus Baer
The first complete translation of the surviving Hor Book of Breathings, including the vignettes that bracketed it, and Baer's judgment that Smith took this papyrus to be the Book of Abraham.
"Mormonism's Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview," Dialogue 8, no. 1: 11–68
Lester E. Bush Jr.
The documentary case that the restriction developed after Joseph Smith's death and rests on no known revelation.
Dialogue 12, no. 2 (Summer 1979): Newell G. Bringhurst, "Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks Within Mormonism"; Sterling M. McMurrin, "A Note on the 1963 Civil Rights Statement"
Newell G. Bringhurst; Sterling M. McMurrin
Abel's biography and the retroactive rewriting of it; and, from the man who brokered it, how the 1963 civil rights statement came about.
"The Fading of the Pharaohs' Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban," Dialogue 14, no. 3
Armand L. Mauss
A sociologist's account of external pressure, internal negotiation and the Genesis Group's origins.
Joseph Smith III's 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah
D. Michael Quinn
The fullest account of the designations Joseph made before 1844 — Whitmer 1834, Cowdery 1834, Rigdon, Hyrum, Samuel, Joseph III — written before the blessing document at its centre was shown to be a Mark Hofmann forgery.
"Mormon Mummies 1848–71," Dialogue 16:4 (1983)
Stanley B. Kimball
The route of the collection from Nauvoo through William Smith, Abel Combs, Wyman's St. Louis Museum and the Chicago museums to Wood's Museum and the fire of October 1871.
"Mormonism in Brazil," Dialogue 17:3; "The Mormon Priesthood Revelation and the São Paulo, Brazil Temple," Dialogue 23:1; "Helvécio Martins: First Black General Authority," JMH 36:3
Mark L. Grover
How lineage-tracing worked in practice in a racially mixed country, and the Brazilian context of the 1978 revelation.
Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo, Dialogue 18:3
Richard S. Van Wagoner
The case-by-case account of the sealings to women with living husbands that framed the modern polyandry debate.
"LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 9–105
D. Michael Quinn
The documented count and authorization pattern of post-Manifesto plural marriages, and the sequence of public denials issued alongside them.
"The Prosecutions Begin: Defining Cohabitation in 1885," Dialogue 21, no. 1 (Spring 1988)
Ken Driggs
That mass prosecutions followed the Edmunds Act and the 1885 Angus M. Cannon cohabitation ruling rather than Reynolds itself.
"In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise," Dialogue 24, no. 4 (Winter 1991)
Lola Van Wagenen
That Latter-day Saint women were politically organized before enfranchisement, and the sequence linking the January 1870 mass meetings to the February 1870 suffrage act.
"The Odyssey of a Latter-day Prophet: Wilford Woodruff," Journal of Mormon History 17 (1991)
Thomas G. Alexander
Woodruff's shift from apocalyptic expectation to a decision framed around saving the temples, and the political ground on which the Manifesto rested.
"Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah," Dialogue 24, no. 4 (Winter 1991)
Ken Driggs
How the ambiguity of 1890–1904 produced the fundamentalist movement, and the text of the Utah constitutional ban on plural marriage.
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery
The standard scholarly reconstruction of what Emma knew and when, and the first check to run on any claim about her.
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith
Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery
Emma's own position in the crisis, her correspondence with Strang, the property fight with the Twelve, and William Smith's manoeuvres between Nauvoo and Voree.
"The Windows of Heaven Revisited: The 1899 Tithing Reformation," Journal of Mormon History 20:1
E. Jay Bell
The documented sequence of the 1899 revelation, the Church's actual debt position, and the finding that no contemporary record links the St. George rain to tithing.
The Making of a Mormon Myth: The 1844 Transfiguration of Brigham Young
Richard S. Van Wagoner
The case that no 1844 source records a transfiguration, that the earliest public reference is 1857, and that one diary long used as contemporaneous evidence (George Laub) is a later copy.
A Trajectory of Plurality: An Overview of Joseph Smith's Thirty-three Plural Wives, Dialogue 29:2; and Fanny Alger, Journal of Mormon History 22:1
Todd M. Compton
The conservative list of thirty-three wives that most later scholarship, including Bushman's, works from, and the fullest treatment of Fanny Alger available in the corpus.
The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brother Brigham: A Collective Spiritual Witness
Lynne Watkins Jorgensen
The corpus of roughly 129 mantle testimonies, their wording, and — stated in the article itself — that records do not show Brigham Young publicly acknowledging the manifestation at the time.
The Mantle of Joseph: Creation of a Mormon Miracle
Reid L. Harper
That major historians across camps agree the Twelve did not need a miracle in August 1844, and that as late as 1847 apostles were asking for a revelation Brigham Young could have short-circuited by invoking one.
Lavina Fielding Anderson and the Power of a Church in Exile
Levi S. Peterson
The documentary course of Anderson's case — her exchanges with her stake president, her thirty-seven-page appeal, and her declaration of belief — quoted from papers she made available.
Sunstone, issue 102 — feature on LDS Church finances, tithing history and general authority allowances
Nineteenth-century tithing definitions under Brigham Young and John Taylor, the 1880 Jubilee forgiveness, and Grant-era investment policy.
Temple Admission Standards
Edward L. Kimball
The documented sequence of handbook and recommend-question changes in 1976 and 1978, and the First Presidency's follow-up instruction that bishops not inquire into marital intimacy.
The Council of Fifty and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Matthew S. Moore
That rival leaders each claimed to be carrying out 'Joseph's measures,' and that Wight and Cutler grounded their independence in the Council of Fifty rather than in the Twelve.
"Writing 'Mormonism's Negro Doctrine': An Historical Overview (1973), Context and Reflections," JMH 25, no. 1: 229–271
Lester E. Bush Jr.
What it cost to publish the article, and what leaders did and did not do with the research beforehand.
"The 'Breathing Permit of Hôr' Thirty-four Years Later," Dialogue 33:4 (2000)
Robert K. Ritner
A revised technical edition of the Hor document confirming Baer, and the naming of Facsimile 3's figures as Osiris, Isis, Maat, Anubis and Hor.
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 3 (Fall 2000) — Quinn, "Prelude to the National 'Defense of Marriage' Campaign"; Rees, "In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See"; Olaiz, "Gay & Lesbian Mormons"
D. Michael Quinn, Robert A. Rees, Hugo Olaiz
The 1990s political history, the Packer pamphlet controversy, the Stuart Matis case as it was reported at the time, and Affirmation's own account of itself.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard Lyman Bushman with Jed Woodworth
The standard believing-scholarly synthesis: the Smiths inside treasure-seeking folklore, the difficulty of the Anthon accounts, and the provenance of the surviving transcript through David Whitmer to the RLDS church in 1903.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard Lyman Bushman with Jed Woodworth
The standard believing-scholarly reading — that Smith first understood the vision as a personal conversion and only later saw its place in a restoration — and a frank note that the revival dating remains a matter of debate.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard Lyman Bushman
The standard believing-scholarly account, including its estimate of twenty-eight to thirty-three wives and its dynastic reading of Joseph's motives.
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Richard Lyman Bushman with Jed Woodworth
The standard believing-scholarly reconstruction, including the evidentiary gap at Gallatin and Smith's ambiguous position during the fighting.
"The Reed Smoot Hearings," Journal of Mormon History 33, no. 2 (2007)
Harvard S. Heath
The chronology, committee votes and political management of the four-year investigation, including the June 1906 committee report against Smoot.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy
Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., Glen M. Leonard
The Church-supported scholarly account that fixes primary responsibility on Isaac Haight and John D. Lee, reported here from its reviewers rather than from the book.
"The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr," Dialogue 43:4 (2010)
Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith
A scroll-geometry argument that no more than about 56 centimetres of the interior of the Hor roll is missing — the core empirical challenge to the missing-scroll theory.
Robert H. Briggs, 'The First John D. Lee Trial,' Journal of Mormon History 39:1
Robert H. Briggs
That the 1875 trial functioned as a political trial in the Mormon–Liberal struggle over Utah, which shaped what evidence was and was not put in.
"Race, Violence, and the Mormon War," Journal of Mormon History 40/1
T. Ward Frampton
The Gallatin election-day fight and Hawn's Mill in their Missouri racial and frontier-violence context, with the contemporary accounts collated.
Succession by Seniority: The Development of Procedural Precedents in the LDS Church
Edward Leo Lyman
That the modern automatic seniority rule was not in place in 1844 or 1847, and the substance of Orson Pratt's objections at the December 1847 councils.
"LDS Financial Transparency," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 48:1
Samuel D. Brunson
The periodization of the disclosure era, the point that revenue was never disclosed, and the legal framework for why churches are exempt from filing Form 990.
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 49, no. 2 (Summer 2016) — "The LGBTQ Mormon Crisis: Responding to the Empirical Research on Suicide" and Knoll's supplementary analysis
Michael Barker, Daniel Parkinson, Benjamin Knoll
The most careful statement of the case that Latter-day Saint context is linked to LGBTQ youth suicide risk — including the authors' own admission of what the data cannot show.
The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power
D. Michael Quinn
The continuous financial history — 19th-century salaries and tithing, the 1915–1959 disclosure run, the 1959–62 deficits, the corporate subsidiaries, and foreign regulatory filings reprinted verbatim.
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 50 (2017) — Anderson on canon and extra-canonical sources; Cook, "An Examination of the LDS Position on Homosexuality"; Menlove; Gustav-Wrathall
The handbook language as quoted with section numbers, the mass-resignation count, and a member-side chronicle of the policy's first year.
Dialogue 51, no. 3 (Fall 2018), special issue on race
Joanna Brooks, Matthew L. Harris, Darron T. Smith, Alice Faulkner Burch and others
Patriarchal-blessing lineage practice, the 1908 reversal, and Black Latter-day Saint voices on what the ban's residue still costs.
"Raising the Stakes: How Joseph Smith's First Vision Became All or Nothing," BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2
Steven C. Harper
That the vision's all-or-nothing status is a historical development after the 1880 canonization, and narrates Walters's and Jessee's parallel discoveries in the 1960s.
"First Vision Controversies: Implications for Accounts of Mormon Origins," BYU Studies
Ann Taves
A concession inside a Church-university journal that the 1824–25 revival is attested by three denominations' membership records while the evidence for 1820 is 'sketchy.'
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vols. 54–58 (2021–2025) — Gustav-Wrathall on excommunication; Burns and Lewis on transgender experience; Prop 8 and BYU queer history; reviews of queer Mormon essay collections
How LGBTQ and transgender Latter-day Saints describe the 2020 General Handbook, the aftermath of the policy years, and their own relationship to the Church now.
BYU Studies Quarterly: Dyer et al., "Religion and Sexual Orientation as Predictors of Utah Youth Suicidality"; Goodman and Frost, "Constancy amid Change"; Oaks, "Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination"
Justin Dyer and others; Michael A. Goodman and Daniel Frost; Dallin H. Oaks
The countervailing suicidality findings from an 86,346-youth Utah sample, the institutional reading of Petrey, and an apostle's own account of how the Utah compromise was negotiated.
Contemporary Perspectives on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the September Six (roundtable)
Jana Riess, Benjamin E. Park, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto and others
The scholarly retrospective: the 1989 Handbook's new three-part definition of apostasy, the culture-war context, and the comparison with the Snuffer, Kelly and Dehlin cases.
Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality
Matthew L. Harris
The internal record: quorum debates, the civil rights years, the athletic protests, the Bott affair and the refusal to apologize.
Dialogue 57, no. 3 (Fall 2024), roundtable: Fifty Years since Lester Bush, "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine"
Darius A. Gray, Gregory A. Prince, Yvonne Bush, Newell G. Bringhurst, Robert A. Rees
Darius Gray's own appraisal of the article, and the editors' account of the decision to publish it.
Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
John G. Turner
A non-Mormon academic's framing: the differences are real, the vision's occurrence is a question of faith rather than of historical method, and the core of the story is not implausible.
Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
John G. Turner
The most recent non-confessional biographical narrative of the Kirtland and Nauvoo sealings and the Bennett and Rigdon scandals.
Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
John G. Turner
A recent non-confessional narrative of the Daviess raids, Crooked River and the surrender, using militia correspondence and participant diaries.
Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet
John G. Turner
A compact neutral summary of the crisis: no succession plan outlined, Emma for Marks, Rigdon for himself, most apostles absent, a large majority for the Twelve, and the estate quarrel that followed.
Confronting Men's Violence Against Women and Girls in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Suzanne E. Greco
A peer-reviewed argument that clergy-penitent privilege enables harm, that the help line's client is the institution, and that the absence of Church data is itself structural.
"Turning Type into Pi: The Destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor in Historical Context"
Craig L. Foster
The apologetic case that press destruction was a recurrent feature of 1830s–40s American politics rather than a Mormon anomaly.
FAIR, "Official Declaration Number 1" and "Plural marriage/Polygamy in the 19th Century"
FAIR
The strongest faithful reading, including the argument that the Manifesto's first-person singular wording was deliberate and that leaders were placed in a double bind.
"New Light on the Lorin Woolley Story and Early Fundamentalist Beginnings" and related essays, josephsmithspolygamy.org
Brian C. Hales
The text of the 27 September 1886 document, the 1912 versus 1929 versions of Woolley's account, and the faithful case against the ordination claim.
FAIR, 'Mountain Meadows Massacre/History' and related answer pages
FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org)
The best statement of the faithful case: local causation, the authenticity and timing of Young's letter, and the prosecutorial politics of the trials.
Bishop interviews with youth (FAIR Answers)
FAIR
The defense of one-on-one worthiness interviews, resting largely on therapist and clergy-abuse survivor Jennifer Roach's published argument for their protective value.
"The Danite Band of 1838," BYU Studies 14/4
Leland H. Gentry
The classic faithful reading: a three-stage Danite history in which Avard corrupted a defensive brotherhood without the First Presidency's knowledge.
FAIR Answers wiki: "Homosexuality and the Church of Jesus Christ," "Mormonism and politics/California Proposition 8," "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," "Mormonism and gender issues/Transgenderism"
FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org)
The strongest faithful defense, and — because FAIR reproduces documents in order to answer critics — the verbatim text of the Packer passage, the 2008 First Presidency letter and the campaign finance tallies.
josephsmithspolygamy.org
Brian C. Hales
The fullest faithful-apologetic case, in particular the argument that sealings to legally married women were eternity-only and non-sexual.
"Assessing the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Introduction to the Historiography of their Acquisitions, Translations, and Interpretations"
Kerry Muhlestein
The faithful-Egyptological framing: that belief or disbelief in translation by divine gift is a prior faith commitment, and a menu of three permissible faithful theories of the source.
"The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles" (review of Revelations and Translations, Volume 4)
John Gee
That the fight over the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is now internal: a BYU Egyptologist publicly charging the Church's own documentary edition with substandard content and unacknowledged assumptions.
"A Precious Resource with Some Gaps"
Jeffrey D. Lindsay
Brian Hauglid's own statement repudiating his earlier apologetic work — the clearest documentation that the faithful side has split.
Aftermath of the Martyrdom: Aspirants to the Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith
R. Jean Addams
A claimant-by-claimant survey from a believing standpoint: Rigdon's three overlapping claims, the 7 August confrontation, Strang, William Smith, Cutler, and the 1860 Amboy ordination.
"Feet of Clay: Queer Theory and the Church of Jesus Christ" (review of Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay), Interpreter 43
Gregory L. Smith
The apologetic case that leaders consistently condemned behavior rather than identity, and that Kimball's 'cure' meant behavior, not desire.
Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case (FAIR Answers)
FAIR
The apologetic case as its own advocates assemble it, and the roster of faithful responses published in the two weeks after the AP story.
FAIR Latter-day Saints, Church Finances topical pages (City Creek Center; Church investments and reporting of financial data; Kirtland Safety Society)
FAIR
The best-stated faithful reply: that the KSS failure was not fraud, that only earnings and not principal funded City Creek, and that no SEC allegation claimed hidden investments or illegal shell companies.
FAIR Answers wiki, First Vision topical pages
FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org)
The best-developed faithful replies: that the 9 and 14 November 1835 entries are one event summarized twice, and that nine contemporary reports exist.
Church discipline of scholars; the Strengthening Church Members Committee (FAIR answers pages and blog)
FAIR (fairlatterdaysaints.org)
The best-stated faithful reply: that councils are local, that the reasons are not made public, that apostasy is advocacy rather than inquiry, and that two of the six have returned.
FAIR Answers wiki, "Blacks and the priesthood" cluster (Origin, Nature, Lifting, Repudiated ideas, Social pressure)
FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research)
The strongest faithful case: that no revelation instituted the ban, that the explanations were folklore, and that 1978 was not caused by pressure.
MormonThink, "Polygamy" and "Lying for the Lord"
MormonThink; Ken Clark
The critical case that the Manifesto functioned as a public instrument while the practice continued, assembled largely from Quinn, Hardy and the Smoot Case transcripts.
MormonThink, 'Mountain Meadows Massacre' and 'Peace & Violence — Response to LDS.org'
MormonThink
The critical reading of the aftermath — Forney's and Cumming's timidity, the fate of the plunder, the destroyed and missing documents, and the objection that Cedar City did not wait for the answer it had asked for.
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
Fawn M. Brodie
The first systematic critical list of the wives, and the reading of plural marriage as libertinism given theological cover.
3,913 Changes in the Book of Mormon (with the introductory study)
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
The catalogue of textual changes between the 1830 edition and later ones, including the four Godhead passages in 1 Nephi altered in 1837.
Joseph Smith's Strange Account of the First Vision (and companion Utah Lighthouse titles)
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
The counter-cult case that the story evolved from one personage to two, and the documented change from 'first visitation of angels' in the Millennial Star to 'my first vision' in History of the Church.
Curse of Cain? Racism in the Mormon Church (2004); Mormons and Negroes (1970); The Negro in Mormon Theology (1967)
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
A contemporaneous documentary trail of the 1960s–70s protests, statements and press coverage.
"New Light on Mormon Origins from the Palmyra Revival," Dialogue 4, no. 1 (roundtable)
Wesley P. Walters
The documentary case that no revival of the size Joseph Smith described occurred in Palmyra in 1819–21, and that the Presbytery reported 'no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds.'
The Mormon Kingdom, Volume 1
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Verbatim reproductions of the Danite oath, Avard's testimony and Marsh's affidavit — valuable as a finding aid, adversarial in framing.
Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?
Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner
The counter-cult case and, more usefully, the documentary trail of the 1968 identification of the Small Sensen fragment as the source, largely through Grant Heward's work.
Tracking the White Salamander
Jerald Tanner
The provenance failure and eventual exposure of the 'Joseph Smith III blessing' of 17 January 1844 as a Hofmann forgery — a document that had reshaped scholarly discussion of lineal succession for four years.
Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Reproductions of Woodruff's 1891 master-in-chancery testimony and of Smoot Case exchanges, useful as a finding aid and checkable against the originals.
New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology
Brent Lee Metcalfe, ed.
The dictation-order argument (Metcalfe's 'Priority of Mosiah') and Deanne Matheny's critique of the limited Mesoamerican geography.
The Mormon Purge
Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner
A hostile but document-reproducing compilation issued within weeks of the councils, carrying the Salt Lake Tribune's 2 October 1993 report and the 1982 Arrington release correspondence.
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Grant H. Palmer
The case that the Moroni narrative was standardised after 1830 and that the earlier tellings describe a different kind of visitant.
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Grant H. Palmer
The parallel-column comparison of the accounts and the argument that a forgiveness epiphany was reframed in 1838 as a commission, with the revival moved from 1824–25 to 1820.
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Will Bagley
The strongest critical case that Brigham Young set the massacre in motion through George A. Smith and then organized the cover-up.
Letter to a CES Director ("the CES Letter")
Jeremy Runnells
The form in which the discrepancies reach most ordinary members today: a bulleted list of what the 1832 account does and does not contain.
Letter to a CES Director ("the CES Letter")
Jeremy Runnells
How the Book of Abraham functions in contemporary faith crises — Runnells calls it 'the smoking gun that has completely obliterated my testimony of Joseph Smith.'
LDS Discussions, "The Larger Implications of the LGBT Reversal" and "Thank You, President Nelson"; MormonThink, "History of LDS Politics"
The critical camp's argument that a revelation reversed within forty-one months is evidence about how revelation actually works, plus the critical account of Prop 8 money and the FPPC penalty.
"Book of Abraham Overview: Translation and Source Materials" and the annotated Gospel Topics essay
LDS Discussions
The line-by-line critical reading of the 2014 essay, including the argument that Abraham 1:12–14 ties the text to Facsimile 1 and so defeats both the missing-scroll and catalyst theories.
Charisma under Pressure
Dan Vogel
The current naturalistic reconstruction of the Fanny Alger episode and of Joseph Smith's management of scandal.
Charisma under Pressure
Dan Vogel
The most document-dense critical reconstruction of the Danite organization, the Fourth of July oration and the Richmond hearing, with the underlying testimony quoted at length.
"10 Common Misconceptions About the Settlement Between the SEC and Ensign Peak/LDS Church"
The Widow's Mite Report
The close reading of the SEC order — the 'shell' versus 'clone' word counts, the count of misstated filings, and the timing of the first consolidated 13F — from a disclosure-advocating but data-forward position.
LDS Sexual Abuse Statistics; Posting Policy; Database
FLOODLIT.org
What the FLOODLIT dataset is, what it counts, its stated inclusion criteria and disclaimers, and the aggregate figures it publishes.
Mormon sexual abuse timeline; $59 million, five years; Arizona Supreme Court says churches, not judges, decide what counts as a confession
FLOODLIT.org
FLOODLIT's case-by-case chronology of policy and litigation, its reconstruction of the West Virginia costs from court records, and its reading of the 2025 Arizona ruling.
MormonThink, "Blacks and the Priesthood" and "Race and the Priesthood — Response to LDS.org"; LDS Discussions, "Timeline of the LDS Church Ban on Blacks" and annotated Gospel Topics essay
MormonThink; LDS Discussions
The critical reading: that the 2013 essay omits material the 1947–1969 statements supply, and what that omission implies about prophetic authority.
