Item Detail
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11756
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1
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0
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English
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The Effects of Plural Marriage Upon the Present Membership of the Church
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Brigham Young University
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Master's thesis
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"This dissertation provides information which serves to describe and clarify the general worth of 160 descendant [of polygamist ancestry] returned missionaries, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Much prose has been written concerning the very important subject of plural marriage, a doctrine which was practiced by a minority group of Mormon leaders during the fifty years of its existence within the Church. On the assumptions of professional writers and the conservative introspections of recognized Church authorities, we have come to accept descendant members of the Church as being no different from non-descendant adherents in the Mormon Church. But there are differences which may, by proper analysis, be defined and correctly converted into observable values. For the first time, insofar as the writer has been able to determine, it is possible to point out the constancy, faith, obedience, thought trends, and spirituality of a large number of descendants as compared with two additional groups consisting, also, of returned missionaries, eighty of whom are non-descendants, and a group of 193, composed of both descendants and non-descendants." [Author]