The Most Important Mormons of the 20th Century

The Folks over at By Common Consent attempt to whittle down the ten most important Mormons of the 20th Century. Of course this list is confined to LDS Mormon, so influential folks in other Mormon communities like paradigm changing RLDS President W. Wallace Smith, and popularizer of Polygamist Fundamentalism Joseph White Musser are left out. However the list complied I would have to agree with. If forced to I’d list James E. Talamage as the most influential Mormon of the 1st half of the Twentieth Century and Harold B. Lee as the most important of the second. Both where systemizes who codified church doctrinal (Talamage) and organizational (Lee) structures. The most important Mormon of the 20th Century overall was probably Church President David O. McKay, who put a face on Mormonism that broke firmly from the “19th Century Weirdness" and saw Church membership increase two fold during his roughly 19 years as President. I'd put Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie in second place for most influential Mormons of the 1st and 2nd half of the 20th Century respectively. But hey those are my opinions, I encourage you to take a look at the list.