Who was James J. Strang? And why were his claim so appealing to so many of those Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and the 12 after the succession crisis of 1844. Why did his movement experience

so much initial success but then dissipate so quickly.

Some have made strong comparisons between James Strang and Joseph Smith, but how accurate are

these comparisons really?

Today on Church History Matters,

we sit down with Dr. Kyle Bashirs,

a friend and expert researcher on the Strangite branch of the restoration restoration to take a deep dive into the details of the

history and the current state of this movement.

I'm Scott Woodward and my co-host is Casey Griffiths and today Casey and I dive into our 10th episode in this series

dealing with succession in the presidency. Now let's get into it. Hello, Scott. We are so lucky to have a guest with us today who's going to talk a little bit about

Strangite history. This is Kyle Beshear. Say hi Kyle. Hey everyone. We might, let me read your bio and then we're going to pick your brain for a second then we're going to dive in.

Sure. Kyle holds a PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and he is a pastor in Mobile Alabama and has taught courses on religion at the University of Mobile.

He wrote his dissertation on Strangite History and is a member of the John Whitmer Historical Association

and he's published two journal articles on strangite history.

So, Kyle, you're a Baptist minister.

It seems like Latter-day Saint history would be sort of out of bounds for you,

but strangite history is really

specific so tell us a little bit about how a nice guy like you ended up in a

field like this yeah well it's a long story, but to cut it short, I just have always found

restoration history really interesting and straying story even more fascinating.

You talk about Baptist connections.

I mean, we could start with Sidney Rigdon,

...