In her 1985 book, Mormonism, Jan Shipps describes the movement founded by Joseph Smith as a “new religious tradition.” Since then, some have confused her ideas with Rodney Stark’s claim that Mormonism is a “new world religion” and most recently with Douglas Davies’s claim at the Library of Congress symposium on Joseph Smith that Mormonism is a “global” but not a “world” religion. In this presentation, Shipps will evaluate and clarify Distinctions between these three positions.

Jan Shipps