Val D. Rust

VAL D. RUST is a professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a member of the Irvine Fourth Ward of the Irvine, California Stake.

Mormonism and the Radical Religious Movement in Early Colonial New England

Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 1

Mormons believe that forerunners prepared the way for the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. This paper examines a special set of those forerunners, namely, the progenitors of the early converts to the LDS church, whose religious experiences took them through a refiner’s fire so significant and revolutionary that it helped provide their descendants with the disposition to embrace a new, radical faith.