Item Detail
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18733
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0
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0
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English
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Joseph Smith and the Making of a Global Religion
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The Worlds of Joseph Smith : A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress
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Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University Press
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293-305
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For the first century of the Church's existence, foreign converts were encouraged to gather to the Great Basin; it was through the leadership policies of Presidents McKay, Kimball, and Hinckley that the Church has obtained its current global presence. However, by defining the term "religious tradition" and by showing that Mormonism is a new religious tradition with distinct mythological, doctrinal, ritual, social/institutional, ethical, and experiential components, Shipps concludes that Joseph Smith did indeed contribute to the establishment of a global religion by formulating each of the six fundamental aspects which denote a religious tradition. Right now, the Church exists somewhere "between a global religion and a great world religion" and Shipps is uncertain whether it will ever become a world religion.