“Perhaps what [LDS apologist] Stanley Kimball calls ‘an exciting, readable adventure story’ can come much more alive for us if we read it as a writing of Joseph Smith, from which we can grow spiritually… the objective of the Christian faith is not assent to propositions but Christian discipleship. If that be the case, then the Book of Mormon is important for us not in giving up events to affirm as historically accurate but rather in helping us become better disciples of the One for whom the book claims to be a second witness.”

William D. Russell/RLDS member and president of the Mormon History Association, Sunstone – “A Further Inquiry into the Historicity of the Book of Mormon” (Salt Lake City, UT: Sunstone Foundation, September/October 1982 – Volume 7, no. 5), 26.