A Kingdom Transformed: Early Mormonism and the Modern LDS Church

To survive in an often disapproving society, the LDS Church has made adaptive changes in belief, practice, and organization over time. Gordon and Gary Shepherd elucidate these changes through statistical analyses of the rhetoric found in proceedings of the church’s semiannual General Conference. The first edition of A Kingdom Transformed covered the years 1830 to 1979. This new edition revises that work and adds to it by examining the subsequent thirty years of conference talks, revealing what new trends have emerged. Every chapter has been rewritten and updated with theoretical and empirical support from contemporary sources and a new conceptual framework for interpreting findings.

Early twentieth-century LDS leaders mainstreamed church doctrines, but by the mid-twentieth century, church authorities began emphasizing a more conservative theology that coincided with an increasingly conservative political orientation. This new edition adds such current issues as the roles of women in the church and of international growth versus member retention.