Reid L. Neilson
Reid L. Neilson is Assistant Academic Vice President over religious scholarly publications at Brigham Young University. He previously served as the assistant Church historian and recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the managing director of the Church History Department. Jed Woodworth, R. Mark Melville, and Matthew B. Christensen are to be especially acknowledged for their editorial contributions to this essay. He also thanks the leadership of the Church History Department at Church headquarters, the College of Religious Education at BYU, and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU for allowing him to present drafts of this essay to their scholars for valuable feedback, but he alone is responsible for any errors. Neilson’s documentary history of Elder Orson F. Whitney’s magisterial poem, Elias—an Epic of the Ages: A Critical Edition, is forthcoming from Greg Kofford Books.
BYU Studies Publications
- “The Youth of Zion,” “A Word for the Wayward,” and “A Precious Promise”: Elder Orson F. Whitney’s April 1929 General Conference Sermon on Righteous Parents, Wayward Children, and Priesthood Sealings(2025)
- A Mormon and a Buddhist Debate Plural Marriage: The Letters of Elder Alma O. Taylor and the Reverend Nishijima Kakuryo, 1901
- Alma O. Taylor’s Fact-Finding Mission to China
- Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness
- Pilgrimage to Palmyra: President B. H. Roberts and the Eastern States Mission’s 1923 Commemoration of Cumorah
- Proselyting on the Rock of Gibraltar, 1853–1855: The Letters of Edward Stevenson to the Juvenile Instructor in 1885
- "The Little Head Stones Became Monuments": Death in the Early Samoan Mission and the Creation of the Fagali’i Cemetery
- True and Faithful: Joseph Fielding Smith as Mormon Historian and Theologian