Item Detail
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30514
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2
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0
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English
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Reflections on the Restoration
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Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
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Fall 1985
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18
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3
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Farmington, Utah
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Dialogue Foundation
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160-67
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"In many well-established religions, ethically and spiritually sensitive members have felt burdened by the weight of their religious institutions. They sensed that the purpose and spirit of the pristine faith had been weakened and impaired by the excessive or irrelevant accumulation of doctrine, ritual, and authority. Nearly every reform movement in Christianity has been a search for the simplicity and authenticity of the Christian faith of the New Testament times. John Huss and Martin Luther attacked practices of the Catholic Church. John Wesley and George Fox, founders of Methodism and the Society of Friends, sought to recover the true spirit of Christianity within the Church of England. When their reform efforts failed, they established new religious movements. These new religions developed into institutionalized religions of their own. The Quakers are an exception. They have retained the simplicity of their original faith better than any group I know. In spite of (or because of) their success, they have remained a very small group.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represents another effort to restore the pristine gospel and Church of Christ as it existed in apostolic times. It is by no means the only Christian movement of the nineteenth century which sought to do this. But in several ways, the concept of restoration in the LDS faith is distinctive." [Author]