“Things in Heaven and Earth,” Thomas Alexander’s exhaustive biography of Mormonism’s fourth prophet, Wilford Woodruff, provides justice to the early LDS leader, who tends to take a back seat to more colorful contemporaries, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Woodruff, however, was a transitional figure in Mormon history, one who created bridges that allowed the Utah church to defy chasms that separated it from the rest of the world. In fact, Woodruff made decisions that Smith and Young would have opposed, but were necessary for the young church to grow and prosper.
The massive business and ecclesiastical empire that is Mormonism today owes its 110-plus years of prominence to Woodruff, who made the tough calls needed to eventually turn Mormonism into a religion that garnered, even demanded, respect from what Woodruff and his peers once called “gentiles,” or non-Mormons.
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