Item Detail
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26073
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0
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0
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English
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Church Programs in Transition
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Joseph F. Smith : Reflections on the Man and His Times
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Provo, UT
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Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Deseret Book
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418-433
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The basic priesthood and auxiliary organizations of the Church had their origins in the nineteenth century. Priesthood quorums as well as the basic local units—stakes and wards—were established by the Prophet Joseph Smith. However, most auxiliary organizations—the Relief Society, the Sunday School, the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA), the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association (YLMIA), and the Primary—were added or reemphasized during the era of Brigham Young. Although the Sunday School and Relief Society traced their beginnings back to Joseph Smith’s era, each of these organizations received expanded emphasis and became a regular part of local units Churchwide under the leadership of Brigham Young. A lesser known auxiliary, the Religion Class, had its beginning in 1890, when a Utah law prohibited religious instruction in public schools and the Church provided gospel classes for elementary-school children one afternoon each week. Many programs sponsored by all these organizations, now familiar to Latter-day Saints, experienced such significant development during the era of President Joseph F. Smith that a person who had been active in the Church prior to 1890 would scarcely be able to recognize its programs a quarter century later. Historian Thomas G. Alexander has referred to this period in Church history as an era of “transition.” These changes not only affected the work of the priesthood and the auxiliaries but had an impact on the Saints’ basic meeting pattern as well. [From the text]