Reed C. Durham

Reed Connell Durham, Jr. (born 1930) is a historian of the Latter Day Saint movement and former director of the Institute of Religion in Salt Lake City, Utah for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Durham is remembered for a controversial speech given in 1974 about Freemasonry and the Latter Day Saint movement.

Durham was born in Long Beach, California. He was one of the four children of Reed C. Durham, Sr. and Violet E. Cottrell. His father was a professor at Utah State University in Logan, Utah and served as bishop in the LDS Church three times. As a young man, Reed Jr. served as an LDS missionary for two years.

Durham married Faye Lenore Davis and they began having children while he attended college in Logan.

Having earlier attended school in California, Durham's higher education was in Utah. He received his M.S. from the Department of Speech at Utah State Agricultural College in 1957 (the year it became Utah State University), followed by his Ph.D. in history from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1965, writing his dissertation on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. Historian Donald Q. Cannon considered Durham's dissertation part of the "major scholarly contribution to the study of Mormon history" that occurred during the 1960s.

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