Introduction to Church History Topics
Saints invites readers to experience the unfolding Restoration along with the early Latter-day Saints, narrating our best understanding of events without discussing future developments before their time or commenting on sources. To complement this character-driven narrative approach, each volume of Saints is accompanied by numerous Church History Topics articles, which provide further context, analysis, and reference information.
Topics discuss sources, key events, unfamiliar practices, people, places, and issues referenced in Saints. For example, readers will find a discussion of Lucy Mack Smith’s 1845 memoir and family history, an important source for dialogue in the early chapters of Saints, in the Lucy Mack Smith topic. Readers of Saints who encounter early members speaking in unknown tongues can learn more about how Latter-day Saints’ understanding and practice of the spiritual gift of tongues changed over time in the Gift of Tongues topic. Topics that relate to countries offer additional reference material and expanded stories about the growth of the Church in those places. In many cases, the topics include photos and videos.
Church History Topics are referenced throughout the endnotes of the Saints volumes. In digital editions of the books, these topics are a click or a tap away. Those who read the print edition can look up topics here or in the Church History section of the Gospel Library app.
Taken together, these topics comprise a helpful, alphabetically arranged resource Church members can use to find answers to many questions about Church history. They have been researched, written, and reviewed by historians of the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and great care was taken to make them accurate, transparent, and concise. For those looking for even more information on a topic, the articles reference additional resources.