Anyone desiring to understand more about Mormon Christianity could

A practical and deeply biblical investigation of the problem of pain and a hopeful portrait of a God who weeps with us.

"Robert MacFarlane has written that language does not just register experience, it produces it. Our religious language in particular informs and shapes our understanding of God, our sense of self, and the way we make sense of our challenging path back to loving Heavenly Parents. Unfortunately, to an extent we may not realize, our religious vocabulary has been shaped by prior generations whose creeds, in Joseph Smith s words, have filled the world with confusion. "I make all things new," proclaimed the Lord. Regrettably, many are still mired in the past, in ways we have not recognized. In this book, Fiona and Terryl Givens trace the roots of our religious vocabulary, explore how a flawed inheritance compounds the wounds and challenges of a life devoted to discipleship, and suggest ways of reformulating our language in more healthy ways all in the hope that, as B. H. Roberts urged, we may all cooperate in the works of the Spirit to find a truer expression of a gospel restored."--

“It’s not possible to ever know enough about the love of God.” Chris DuPré, acclaimed worship leader, musician, and speaker, shares his story of growing up in small-town, Upstate New York with his unpredictable dad, a WWII vet struggling with PTSD before PTSD was diagnosable. Even amid financial frailty and a broken family, Chris DuPré traces the finger of God that, against all odds, led him through emotional and physical abuse in childhood to a miraculous conversion in adolescence during the Jesus Movement, and, years later, to a pivotal decision in a garden between two options: love or bitterness. Written with candor, humor, and grace, this is a narrative of forgiving those before us and loving those around us that every Christian will instantly recognize. Although names may change, the cosmic story remains the same: we can love because He first loved us—with a wild, cleansing, transformative love.

This insightful book offers a careful, intelligent look at doubt--at some of its common sources, the challenges it presents, and the opportunities it may open up in a person's quest for faith.

In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe. Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States. Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.