I will be posting various letters and so on from the First Presidency over the next few weeks.

The first letter [ 1971 Jos Anderson for 1st P on Sex ] replies to a question concerning “a certain deviated sex practice,” and dates from the early 1970s.

This theme will be the concern of future leaders’ letters, as well, although their “position,” as it were, will dramatically shift.

Here is an excerpt from Vol2.BookA. It comes in the middle of a history of the missionary system, and its development of a “voice” of Mormonism (“the ism”) which the elder can deliver, ask people to convert to, and is challenged by preachers of other isms. The missionary system stabilized a reading of the BoM that stitched together various Restorationist prooftext, and essentially rendered that book a speaker of Restorationism

Excerpt_BoMCHVol2A

Here is an excerpt from Vol2.BookB. It comes in the midst of a discussion about the “Kingdom of God” then being constructed in Nauvoo, and explains my reasons for doubting the traditional narrative concerning “endowments” and the “mantle” being passed to Brigham Young:

Excerpt_BOMChVol2B