Latter-day Saint Perspectives

  Jennifer Ann Mackley is a realist. “I have children, and they don’t ask me questions,” she admits, “They go to Google.” And when they read things out of context on the internet, they can seem really weird. Take the story of Wilford Woodruff’s experience in the St. George temple. That was a moment in church history that a lot of people are familiar with, but out of context, it’s an odd story. People write about it all the time, because the founding fathers are Mormon now. That’s how they look at it, which is not what we believe. We believe that everybody needs the opportunity to choose, and Wilford Woodruff had come to the point where he said, “I have been so focused on my own family that I didn’t even think about expanding this.” It was a revelation because he learned that it’s okay for us to help each other, and we don’t just have to focus on our own biological connections. Putting these things into context, to Mackley, is vital to understanding church history and the truly remarkable revelations that o