ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the resonance between a particular type of experience within the individual’s contemporary life and accounts of experience located both in the founding phases and in subsequent periods of Church development. The importance of the supernatural dimension and of the Church’s general acknowledgement and validation of it is directly linked to the assertion of its own validity as the one true Church. The ways in which the power of this Church, perceived in terms of the continuing presence of the Spirit, is made available to its members takes numerous forms. The supernatural presence in modern Mormonism takes a variety of forms, all displaying a deeply significant emotional sense associated with some religious ritual or event and characterized by order and firm control. Both the value-laden history and the nature of Mormon Church bureaucracy set the great man theory of history firmly behind the Mormon culture of salvation.
