Recent students of Mormonism have tended to discount or dismiss the influence of the Church’s sojourn in New England and western New York on the development of Mormon thought. Within the last decade two scholars have placed major emphasis on what occurred in Kirtland or afterward as determinative in molding the Mormon mind. It is my contention that during its “eastern” phase Mormonism assumed its essential orientation in ideas and institutions. The eastern interval was, in other words, formulative, and any student who loses sight of this fact ignores the continuity which clearly exists in early Mormon thought.
