I'll try to be brief.
As I alluded to elsewhere:
There is very little similarity between the LDS and the RLDS churches. After the assassinations of Joseph Smith and Hiram, his brother the group split between loyalists to Brigham Young and Joseph Smith Jr. Brigham Young took his loyalists, who more reflect the original movement, to Utah where they could set up their sovereign 'state' and practice their polygamy legally. The remaining group reorganized (the R in RLDS), abandoned polygamy and returned to Independence, Missouri, out from which they were earlier driven to Illinois by the Missouri militia. The Books of Mormon of the RLDS and the LDS do not match, and neither do their Doctrines and Covenants.
From the outside looking in, aside from their appeal to direct revelation, by which they revised the Scriptures, and their extra-biblical texts which they regard as inspired, there isn't much to distinguish them from mainstream Christian orthodoxy. Not so with the LDS. From the outside looking in, the LDS looks quite different.
Anyway...my earliest memories of church were the RLDS church. My parents married as teenagers. They had to get married. Before my mother was 20, she had two kids, my brother and me. And shortly thereafter, they were converted to the RLDS faith. I remember their baptism. But I also remember attending Bible school at my grandmother's church. They had a woman pastor, which might sound very liberal, but it wasn't. I explained in this post: https://www.fundamentalforums.org/threads/women-keeping-silence-in-church.11825/post-240623
Also, when visiting my grandmother, who was a faithful churchgoer, she always made sure I attended with her. I certainly liked their services better. The music was more lively, and boy-howdy so was their praying lol. By contrast, the RLDS services were more like funerals. But other than that, I knew of no real difference. I have to commend my late grandmother for her deference, in not making an issue of the RLDS, though I'm certain my parents' departure from the Pentecostal faith tremendously vexed her soul. I know few people who would have kept silent about it.
Shortly after I was baptized in 1975, for reasons not explained, my parents began attending the local Baptist church. It wasn't until I was in high school that I began to pay attention to the teaching and gained an interest in the Bible and spiritual things. I still knew of no real differences between the RLDS teachings and orthodoxy. I wasn't even thinking about them. But with roots in Pentecostalism, and still visiting the Pentecostal church with my grandparents through out my high school and college careers, I was more tuned in to the debates between them and the Baptists.
In high school, I made friends with some charismatics, and began attending their special services. I remembered my experience at the Bible camp I mentioned earlier (the only one I ever attended). I had an ecstatic experience there. I don't mention it often, because I'm not sure what to make of it. I know it was real, but it's never been repeated since, and I so wanted another experience like many in charismania claim to have regularly. But I now know most of them are lying, and those who aren't lying are manufacturing their experiences, but are deceived into thinking they're of the Spirit. (For that matter, now anyone who starts out saying, "God told me..." I automatically consider to be deceived or a liar.)
So, though a Baptist, women preachers and ecstatic forms of worship were nothing shocking or edgy to me.
By the end of high school, I was attending Gothard seminars, and thought I'd found the confirmation of Gospel truths I was looking for. So I am a real fundamentalist, LOL.
In college I fell in love with a girl. I don't remember how we met, but I remember our break-up. She was a gorgeous, and sweet, devout RLDS girl. I was ready to go back to the RLDS church with her. And that's when I began studying Mormon history and RLDS/LDS doctrines. Fortunately, the seeds of the Doctrines of Grace had been planted in my heart just that year as well. And I was also poring over John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, John Calvin, C.H. Spurgeon, etc. (And I'd been introduced to that Anglican divine, John Donne) I read the Book of Mormon through (the RLDS version) and their version of the Bible, the Inspired Version, which contains Joseph Smith's "corrections." By this time, I'd read the KJV through twice, and I'd read through the NAS, RSV, NIV, and the famous paraphrase, TLB. I had large sections of the Scriptures committed to memory. It didn't matter the amount of evidence I presented, she clung to her Book of Mormon. I ended up hurt and angry, and I ended up hurting her deeply. When breaking up, she said, "You know more of our history and doctrines than even some of our apostles do." And in tears she simply walked away. She earned her Master's that month in Speech Therapy, and I never saw her again. Not in person. I saw her in a commercial years later. She devoted herself to working with children who because of physical deformities had speech impedements, and was featured in a United Way commercial.
Later I married a woman who was devoted to herself, but she had the right doctrine...mostly.
This is getting to be a long story, and the half hasn't been told. But I found I truly believed the Doctrines of Grace, then. And the Pentecostal/Charismatic chains which are akin to the RLDS, were broken.
The Pentecostal/Charismatic and RLDS movements are related in their focus on extra-biblical revelation, works, and free will.
More on that later if anyone's interested.
Thought I was posting that in the what-are-you-listening-to forum. I have multiple threads open simultaneously when on a board, LOL.