This study makes a consideration of four related concepts of Deity, each of which is accepted as doctrine by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which claims to have received these doctrines from Joseph Smith. On the other hand, each of these concepts is rejected as doctrine by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which claims that Joseph Smith did not teach them.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Church programs in preparing young Latter-day Saint servicemen to accept and live the gospel of Jesus Christ as determined from the opinions of servicemen and bishops. The teaching programs, counseling, continual Church activity, Church publications, and the preservice and inservice Church orientations were evaluated for their effectiveness in teaching the five objectives: Testimony building; commandment living; continual activity, missionary work, and patriotism. One hundred eighteen servicemen, who had completed basic training and were attending technical training schools, along with seventy-seven bishops provided the information used in this study. The findings indicated that in the opinion of these servicemen and bishops effective training was being provided servicemen in building testimonies, living the commandments, and continuing to be active in the Church. However, missionary work and patriotism were ineffectively taught.

This thesis attempts to treat four problems: What is the gospel, as defined in Latter-day Saint literature? Do ancient and modern sources agree? Has there been an historical development of the definitions? Can any disagreements be rationalized? The results of this research reveal that the gospel is complex in that it is capable of handling all the problems of eternity, yet it is simple in that it is a plan of specific principles which lead man step by step to perfection. The author determined that ancient and modern sources do agree in placing six "first principles" at the beginning of man's gospel knowledge, but they then add many advanced principles of the gospel to aid man in his climb to eternal life. In the broad sense of the term, the gospel does include all truth, but all truth in a systematic structure. There has been an historical development of the definitions, for they gradually became more explicit in including all truths and principles. The differences in definitions are apparently due to the progressive revelation of principles, and to the authors' efforts to teach the principles needed by their audiences.

The purpose of this thesis: 1. To indicate the variants between 160 descendant returned missionaries and two other groups consisting of eighty non-descendant, and 193 mixed returned missionaries and 2. To denote the implications and importance of the most significant variants introduced.

There have been a few studies related to the religion education movement of the Reorganized Church, but little has been done to research the total program of the Department of Religious Education and its development. The purpose of this study was to trace the historical development of the religious education program of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from 1860 to its present organization as the Department of Religious Education; to summarize the church's philosophy of education; and to determine the present status of the Department of Religious Education of the Reorganized Church.

It is felt by some historians that Joseph Smith was a product of his environment; that his teachings were the amplifications of religious doctrines surrounding his life experience in early America.Some writings which have been published show similarities between Joseph's "Mormonism" and contemporary religions.It should be rememebered, however, that if Joseph Smith's call, as restorer, were all that he professed it to be (and he was not alone in that profession), there would, indeed, exist paralleling truths surrounding his "restored" gospel. For, as Joseph tells us, the gospel was preached from the beginning. If that is true, we should then be able to find remnants of its existence throughout the world at practically any time and at any place that we might look. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to explain parallels, throughout the history of the world, to Joseph Smith's doctrines.

In written history, Joseph Smith's colonizing efforts have been overshadowed by the Mormon settlement of the west. No one has really made a study of Joseph Smith as a colonizer. To this founder of the Mormon way of life, religion was more than a code of Sunday ethics. According to President Smith, man was created as an actual child of God and his Heavenly Father was concerned with providing for all his needs. Therefore, the revealed word of God in addition to listing a spiritual code of ethics, also contained provisions for the physical, social, political, economical, educational, safety needs, and quality of life. Joseph Smith attempted to combine all these principles into a new society he said was patterned after the order of heaven. It was called the Kingdom of God because Christ was its head and it contained the principles of life which he taught.

As one peers across the vistas of the past two types of holy men stand out with striking prominence and significance. The advance of religious thought and life has largely been due to the activities and contributions of these two, the priest and the prophet. It has been the purpose of this research to seek to discover the particular functions of each of these, to show their correlation in producing religious advance, and to make certain suggestions as to how the values each has to contribute to the program of the modern Christian church may be more adequately realized.

This paper does not purport to be an examination of Zen or Taoism, but rather a view of certain aspects of Zen and Taoism, but rather a view of certain aspects of Zen and Taoism from the vantage point of contemporary psychology, to see if a metaphysic, a philosophical resting-place, might not be found for the admittedly pragmatic science of clinical psychology. The questions the paper asks, then, and attempts to answer, are (1) can such a formulation be made, and (2) does psychotherapy conducted from this point of view move satisfactorily.

The reason I am writing this dissertation is to introduce another side of Zen, Soto, which is completely unknown in the Western world; and at the same time to bring Dogen's teaching to the attention of Western scholars, since it is famous in Japan as the most profound branch of the philosophy of Zen. Unfortunately, none of Dogen' s teaching has yet been translated into English except Masunaga's private publication given above. Therefore I am taking this opportunity to translate and to add a commentary of my own for the better understanding of Dogen as well as the historical survey of the Soto school. Also I have included the research of Bankei, who was in the line of Rinzai, but his distinguished teaching did not appeal to his contemporaries among the Zen Buddhists; rather he was rebuked by the Rinzai School because of his method of teaching Zen. Later the strict Rinzai School became largely connected with the civil authorities and social leaders, but Bankei's lineage died out because of the opposition. Recently Bankei's Zen and his distinguished teaching. method became very important among Japanese Zen scholars and many of them have done careful research on them. I have translated some of his work and briefly wrote his biography to try to introduce Bankei in the English-speaking world. Incidentally Bankei's teaching was introduced by D. T. Suzuki very briefly; thus my attempt is to supplement it and at the same time to contribute some more of it to Western scholarship.