Description

What if Brigham Young never crossed the plains? What if Emma Smith led the Church instead? What if the gold plates were never retrieved? In the emerging field of quantum history, new models drawn from quantum physics suggest that every pivotal moment spawns multiple timelines, each shaped by the outcomes of the choices not taken. This session explores the radical implications of quantum superposition and multiverse theory for Mormon history: What if, in another dimension, a single decision derailed or transformed the Restoration entirely?

Join us as we blend speculative theology, counterfactual history, and quantum theory to imagine alternate Mormonisms. Worlds where polygamy was rejected, women held the priesthood, or the Church dissolved entirely after a single prophetic misstep. We’ll ask: If future science confirms multiverse reality, how might this transform our concept of divine providence, prophetic fallibility, and the fixity of history itself? And most hauntingly, are we in the timeline where the Restoration survived, or the one where it already fell apart?

Speakers will each confront the same challenge: identify one historical moment—a choice, revelation, or error that could have collapsed the Restoration. Was it a decision made in Nauvoo? A missed alliance with Emma? A violent act justified as revelation? What was the quantum hinge-point that, if nudged differently, would have killed the movement? And what does it mean, theologically and emotionally, to imagine that somewhere out there . . . it did?