during this first quantity of his magisterial learn of the rules of Mormon proposal and perform, Terryl L. Givens bargains a sweeping account of Mormon trust from its founding to the current day. Situating the fairly new circulation within the context of the Christian culture, he unearths that Mormonism keeps to alter and grow.

Givens indicates that regardless of Mormonism's origins in a biblical tradition strongly inspired through nineteenth-century Restorationist suggestion, which recommended a go back to the Christianity of the early Church, the hot stream diverges appreciably from the Christianity of the creeds. Mormonism proposes its personal cosmology and metaphysics, within which human id is rooted in a premortal international as everlasting as God. Mormons view mortal lifestyles as an enlightening ascent instead of a catastrophic fall, and reject conventional Christian suggestions of human depravity and future. renowned fascination with Mormonism's social techniques, similar to polygamy and communalism, and its supernatural and esoteric elements-angels, gold plates, seer stones, a brand new international backyard of Eden, and sacred undergarments-have lengthy overshadowed the truth that it's the so much enduring or even thriving fabricated from the 19th century's non secular upheavals and innovations.

Wrestling the Angel strains the basic contours of Mormon proposal from the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham younger to the modern LDS church, illuminating either the seminal impact of the founding new release of Mormon thinkers and the numerous advancements within the church over virtually 2 hundred years. the main entire account of the improvement of Mormon concept ever written, Wrestling the Angel can be crucial examining for a person trying to comprehend the Mormon faith.