Did sidney rigdon return to the church
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Sidney Rigdon
On October 29, 1830, two visitors came to the home of Sidney and Phebe Rigdon. Sidney Rigdon was a Christian minister, and one of the visitors, Parley P. Pratt, was a former member of his congregation who had returned to share the Book of Mormon and news of the Restoration with his mentor. The other was Oliver Cowdery, who had served as scribe for most of the book’s translation. Although the Rigdons lived in a home provided by their congregation and would lose that home if they converted to a new faith, they prayerfully considered the missionaries’ message and were baptized on November 8. For the next 14 years, Sidney Rigdon had significant influence in the Church.
Early Ministry
Long before Pratt and Cowdery came to his door as missionaries, Sidney Rigdon had longed for a restoration of New Testament Christianity. He was born in 1793 just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and trained as a tanner, but his passion for learning and preaching the word of God took him into the Christian ministry. By the time he married Phebe Brooks in 1820, he had already begun
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Sidney Rigdon
Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess
Richard S. Van Wagoner
In the late 1820s a fiery young minister in western Ohio converted nearly one thousand proselytes to the Reformed Baptist Movement. As these schismatics organized themselves into the new Disciples of Christ church, the Reverend Sidney Rigdon was already aligning himself with another, more radical movement, the Latter-day Saints, where he quickly became the LDS prophet’s principal advisor and spokesman. He served Joseph Smith loyally for the next fourteen years, even through a brief spat over the prophet’s romantic interest in his teenage daughter.
Next to Smith, Rigdon was the most influential early Mormon. He imported Reformed Baptist teachings into Latter-day Saint theology, wrote the canonized Lectures on Faith, championed communalism and isolationism, and delivered many of the most significant early sermons, including the famous Salt Sermon and the Kirtland Temple dedicatory address.
Following Smith’s death, Rigdon parted company with Brigham Young to lead his ow
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Sidney Rigdon (1793–1876)
Born on February 17, 1793, on a farm near St. Clair Township, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Sidney Rigdon was the fourth child of William and Nancy Rigdon. He became famous as a Mormon leader and was a central figure in the Mormon conflict in Missouri in the 1830s. As a boy he manifested a strong interest in religion, studied the Bible, developed excellent oratorical skills, and in 1817 entered the ministry as a Baptist preacher. Although enormously successful as a preacher who could attract and hold large congregations, his career as a Baptist pastor was controversial, largely because of his lifelong quest for what he called the Gospel in its fullness.
Working in the Mohoning Baptist Association of east-central Ohio, Rigdon came into contact with the work of Alexander Campbell, and in 1821 he affiliated with his efforts. Campbell’s Disciples of Christ organization was part of a larger “restoration” concept then present in American Christianity, as several religious reformers sought to restore the Gospel to its “ancient purity.” Rigdon remained
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