“LDS in survey call for unvarnished history”

53 comments for ““LDS in survey call for unvarnished history””

1. Nothing wrong with the truth.

   I just sent a son on a mission. Days before he left he mentioned something like “we should execute murders and rapists” (yes, wierd discussion). I brought up “blood atonement”. He had NEVER heard of this concept, not once in seminary, not once in church. Shouldn’t our missionaries at least have heard the concepts that anti’s will throw in their face before sending them out? Perhaps his mother and I failed in this area.

2. The church might be advocating openness, but I’m finding it hard to track down an ancestor’s involvement in Mountain Meadow and the possible adoption of a survivor. I know her name now, but most people won’t even talk about. They seem defensive almost.

   I talked to a guy today who was more than willing to tell me what he knew, but he said when he was a boy, if anybody mentioned Mountain Meadow, his dad would whip them. He’s only five years older than I am. His family is somehow involved in this, but it’s hard to sort out. Partly because, heck, there was a lot of intermarrying here in southern Utah. I’m finding out I’m related to almost everybody I know.

   I’ve never had trouble hearing negative reports of church history. It seems natural to me that negative events would happen, human beings being what they are. No sweat. I hope they open things up completely and let the chips fall where they may.

3. There’s a lot to discuss there. Not the least of which is the appropriateness of determining how Church history is taught as the result of a survey of the members.

   This hardly constitutes a survey of the members. This is an email survey of members that use online family history resources. I’m sure there are people on T&S that are much more qualified that I am that can rip this to shreds. If you’re going to use surveys you should at least use accurate surveys. I think Julie’s question of whether surveys are the way to go is a good one, but I think everyone can agree that using bad surveys is not a good idea.

4. I wonder just what the church curriculum writers will do with these findings….
   They want to know the unvarnished truth but they don’t want it during Sunday meetings (instead want inspirations stories) and they prefer historical fiction and movies….

5. I have a feeling that surveys like this don’t actually tell you anything. It is like asking people whether or not they want to eat food that is high in fat. Of course no one would say that they do, but the reality is that everyone chooses to eat food high in fat anyway.

6. When Ensign includes a picture of Joseph Smith behind a curtain with his head buried in a hat…

   That’ll be the day.

7. What I find most interesting is the reference to “to help God’s children make and keep sacred covenants” (which sounds an awful lot like the Young Women’s theme) as the purpose of a historical department. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but that’s a pretty beefy agenda hanging over the heads of people trying to produce work that is honest, regardless of impact, with sources coming from that department. And not that having that statement is a huge departure from what one would expect.

   I agree that the sample in the survey is too limited. I’m curious to see what all the MHA attendees have to say on this, I’m curious about the content of that discussion.

8. I agree with the majority of respondents on the survey.

   I think that the church should be honest and forthright, on a scholarly level, in facilitating a study of the controversies and making a place for discussion of the controversies. I think that the ideal place for members to learn about the controversies is from competent scholarly LDS sources. But when it comes to ministering the gospel in Sunday school, I don’t feel that these kinds of discussions have a place. Not because they’ll turn people off to the gospel, but because the higher priority is the gospel itself. If we spent a whole month in gospel doctrine studying the mountain meadows massacre, how would that help me in my daily life to draw closer to the Lord in gospel living? It’s not pertinent to the threefold mission of the church, and therefore not appropriate in a setting meant to minister the gospel.

   But I do believe that church members should know about this kind of stuff, and that it should not be taboo at all to discuss this stuff. I think that it’s generally a good thing for missionaries to come out prepared, though we shouldn’t expect every missionary to be a scholar, or even to be well versed on every issue. I studied a lot of the controversies before my mission, and that really helped me out a lot. Other missionaries I knew studied certain gospel doctrines, such as the godhead, and their knowledge helped them in different circumstances. But I do feel that that sort of study should be more private and individual, rather than church mandated for every prospective missionary.

   One thing, though, is that I don’t get hardly any of my church history from historical fiction. I’ve gotten most of it through books like Truth Restored, the CES manuals, History of the Church, and various discussions on the old FAIR boards.

9. I’m trying to imagine how the poll questions might have been worded and how you would expect people to respond to such a poll. It seems a bit obvious that if people are given the option, they would choose the “unvarnished,” “honest,” and “frank” history. It would seem a bit odd for someone to come out and say otherwise and keep a straight face about it.

   “No thanks, I prefer my history be ‘varnished.'”

   “Honest history? No thanks. That sounds too scary for me. Tell me some more lies. Skew the history.”

   I wish there was a rule, that anytime a report about a poll comes out, that there be a link to the actual questions that were asked. Maybe there’s a way to find these things out that is objective – but on the face of it, it strikes me as a poll that would have predictable answers.

10. Concerning the \”appropriateness of determining how Church history is taught as the result of a survey of the members\”, I understood that the most recent changes to the temple ceremony resulted from just such a survey. If true, that would seem to establish the required precedent.

    I agree that the text of the questions and the manner in which the survey is conducted are important elements in determining the validity of any conclusions drawn. I can\’t help wondering if the polling was designed by an organization with the necessary expertise, to avoid biasing responses.

    And don\’t we all relate somewhat to danithew\’s: “No thanks, I prefer my history be ‘varnished.’” It\’s disturbing to think that there could be rot under the veneer.

11. Malkie, it may be that the survey was handled very professionally. I just wish there was a way to verify it. I really meant it when I said that it would be great to be able to read the survey questions that were given. This isn’t merely a concern/desire I’ve felt in relation to this newspaper article. Almost every time I read any article involving a poll, I feel a desire to see the actual poll itself.

12. You can’t handle the truth!

    (Jack Nicholson, “A Few Good Men”)

13. Count my relatives as those (and there are a lot of them) who prefer their history varnished. Perhaps “painted over” or “killed and buried” as better terms.

    I am a descendent of a woman who was later sealed to JS … and none of them want to talk about it. Ever. There was a note in a document I found while at Nauvoo about how the family in 1910 petitioned the 1P to restore the sealing to the original husband (which was granted), and none of them want to talk about it.

14. The most interesting thing I find with this article is that it implies that the truth has been varnished in the past… and that people within the Church’s bureaucracy are discussing that openly. It may just be my reading… but I can’t help but think of the Quaker maxim “speak truth to power”.

    I tend to liken personal, organizational, and social development to child development… and right now, we’re stuck in that phase where we know there’s no Santa, but can’t bear to say it out loud.

    I love the Church with all my heart, and believe it is the veritable kingdom of God on Earth … but until we can speak plainly of our history — warts and all — we’ll continue to stumble.

15. There is a time and a place to bring up everything. You don’t teach polygamy and the MMM to five-year-old primary children at church. But you can, as I have, discuss some of the controversial points of LDS history with children as they grow up so they are not surprised by the antis when they bring it up. My 11-year-old knows all about polygamy, polyandry, the priesthood ban, the MMM and on and on. I deemed she was old enough and mature enough to learn about these things. “Milk before meat” is a very good way of looking at it.

16. I’m not sure how realistic the idea of not doing it at all on Sunday is. If it doesn’t happen on Sunday, it probably won’t happen.

    I’ve taught a bunch of Stake Institute classes, and I have a reputation for frank talk. But I always felt lucky if I could get six people to come to class. If there is a sufficient hunger for this stuff that will motivate your average member to make a special trip out for a class on a weeknight, I didn’t see it.

17. Any discussion of unvarnished history has to include implications of change on the BYU Religion Departments. Today, when a GD teacher wants to sound like he’s done “extra” research, he pulls out a BYU religion manual.

    One of my biggest regrets over attending BYU is that I took the wrong religion classes. I should have spent more time on history and such. I chose to take each of the “standard works” classes, wanting a BYU-depth treatment of the scriptures (2 BOM classes, 1 D&C, 1 NT class, 1 OT class, and 1 PoGP class – oh, and missionary prep).

    Of the 6 scripture classes (missionary prep back then was an absolute waste) – here’s how they rated:

    1. PoGP: Fabulous. Lots of great talk on the history. Great discussions on the Garden of Eden. Mild talk of feminism and how we perceive it in light of the GoE and our knowledge of the temple (without going into the temple ceremony as a discussion point). Alan Parrish was the professor.

    2. BoM, Second Half: I took the RM version. Great class, because it wasn’t taught by a religion department member or another BYU faculty member. It was taught by one of the partners in the group that founded Hogi Yogi (his twin brother was a BYU fundraiser). We got the perspective of “here’s what the BoM says, and here’s the implication for the rest of your life, and here’s what it means to real people in the real community doing real work. Oh, and did I mention I’m not a religion faculty?”

    3. Old Testament: Taught by Jim Harris (? – memory is fuzzy). He spent half the class trying to talk us into buying his book on the BoM. Great class. The best score was received by a non-member who continually joked that he was acing Harris’ tests because “Hey, I’m not a Mormon – I’ve actually *read* the Bible.”

    4. DoC: First half, I think. Professor was from a small town in south-central Utah and didn’t try to make it a rah-rah view of the early Church. He was willing to tolerate my comments about how the Church sometimes unfairly demonizes Martin Harris, even though my classmates didn’t. Oh, and I dated two girls from the class.

    5. New Testmant (first half). Not a bad class. Just didn’t improve on seminary very much. I took it with my wife, either the semester or the semester after we got married (have to check my transcript).

    6. [Reserved for the dreck that was my mission prep class, where if you got your call during the class, you got an A. Also, we had a girl get her mission call and the instructor saluted her for “being brave”, because she’d be happier getting married. We also learned how to apply the sales model to the discussions.]

    7. BoM, first half (pre-mission). Taught by Reed Benson. My very first semester at BYU. He spent half the time talking about going up to visit “Dad”. Our exams consisted of fill-in-the-blank sections of scripture and quasi-scriptures like: “All that is _______ for _____ to succeed is that _____ men do _____ “. He also ruminated on home-schooling and brought in his wife to tell the girls to prepare themselves for the return of polygamy. I don’t remember any actual teaching on the BoM.

18. I guess I should add – except for the PoGP class and the OT class – I didn’t learn anything in my BYU classes on the scriptures that I didn’t learn in seminary, which was taught in the early morning by outstanding unpaid seminary teachers in the midwest. In many cases, I could have replaced some of the BYU instructors I had with seminary teachers from my home ward and no one would have noticed a difference in quality. I had great seminary teachers. I had middling (at best) BYU religion professors, with the exceptions I noted.

    I guess I took the wrong classes.

19. I agree with what others have said, the poll couldn’t have been a great one. Who is going to respond that they want a whitewashed history? I know my in-laws would say they prefer a real history, but these same in-laws pulled my wife aside after seeing my copy of RSR to tell her I was reading apostate material. And the way they reacted to the PBS documentary (turning it off after 20 minutes) leads me to believe they don’t want anything that resembles the truth if it’s not squeaky clean.

    “• Get much of their information about the church’s past from historical fiction. When asked to respond to the statement, “I learned much of what I know about church history from ‘The Work and the Glory,”‘ (a fictional series of books and films about an early Latter-day Saint family and their trials) Olpin said almost half of the respondents answered “yes.”
    Ugh.

20. This hardly constitutes a survey of the members. This is an email survey of members that use online family history resources. I’m sure there are people on T&S that are much more qualified that I am that can rip this to shreds. If you’re going to use surveys you should at least use accurate surveys. I think Julie’s question of whether surveys are the way to go is a good one, but I think everyone can agree that using bad surveys is not a good idea.

    Let’s go a bit further. Who is it that uses online family history resources? Here are some thoughts (and many of these classes overlap):

    – People who actually have work to do on their family history lines. So 8th generation members who had faithful genealogists in their ancestry aren’t like to need to do the work and aren’t likely to be online.

    – People who are converts to the Church (or their parents or grandparents). These folks are less likely to have a “vested” stake in defending what early Church leaders did or didn’t do (because in some cases, those leaders are their ancestors).

    – People whose family history doesn’t follow predictable Utah pioneer heritage.

    – People who are computer literate (and prefer to do the research online, not at the FH center).

    I’m less concerned with the questions themselves than the actual sample. A much more appropriate “sample” would be to take all of the registered users of lds.org (you know, those who have entered an email address to access the “Stake and Ward Websites” pages). You’d get a lot more people, and you’d get a wider variety.

    Plus, you have to consider that the only people who respond to online surveys. They aren’t usually the people who want the status quo or who are indifferent to a topic.

21. A point in the “survey’s” defense: it is possible that the finding jjohnsen and others have such difficulty with (that those polled want “unvarnished” history) could have been inferred from responses to any number of questions that, combined, imply a collective stomach for unvarnished truth.

    But we can’t know, as we’ve not been given the questions… which is why I second danithew’s call for questions to be released any time a survey is heralded in the press.

22. I think I have the questions. I was one of the people who got the email for the survey, at least it sure sounds like the same thing to me. I realized quite early into it that it was interesting and saved them. John Dehlin was going to blog about it, but since it’s been several months since then, I figure I can just release them here. Will look later today.

23. Marlen Jensen gave a presentation at the MHA lunch on Saturday. During the beginning portion of his presentation, he said something that I believe is a profound truth: When we take other people’s views of us seriously, we are able to get our own views taken more seriously by them.

    His presentation consisted of a history of the church’s historical department, and it’s really amazing the things that the church’s historical department has contributed to the literature available about Mormonism. The sad part is that after they moved Arrington to BYU, the church’s historical department became utterly irrelevant — even to members — for more than 2 decades. In fact, in the 7 years preceding Jensen’s appointment and sustaining as Church Historian and Recorder, the church didn’t even fill the post.

    Near the close of Jensen’s presentation, he focussed on the common goals of the church’s history department and other historians, with the notable exception that the church is committed to bringing people to christ (an exception that is entirely appropriate, provided that it’s understood within the correct scope). Jensen ended by talking about the new building that the historical department is moving into. It seemed, to him, symbolic of a new era that is beginning in the history of the church’s history department. He showed a photo of an brass plaque from the old church history building that read “Library: No Admittance,” and he said that there is no need for such a sign in the new building.

    I think that we have reason to be cautiously optimistic about having a church history department that is actually relevant — not just to members, but to non-members as well. (I’m preparing a post on this to talk about it at more length on Mormon Mentality.)

24. Yay!

25. “Library: No Admittance” … wow, that’s a classic one.

26. I was in the church archives and library a few months ago for awhile, and was really pleasantly surprised at the differences I saw from my last visit about 10 years ago. It was still frustrating that I couldn’t read some records related to my own ancestor because someone else’s excommunication was described in the same document, but most other things I wanted were open to me. Also, I thought that some of the people who were at the desk were pretty lacking in some basic knowledge of common things– like how to find someone in Perpetual Emigration Fund documents, but on the whole it was a good experience.

27. danithew wrote: I’m trying to imagine how the poll questions might have been worded and how you would expect people to respond to such a poll. It seems a bit obvious that if people are given the option, they would choose the “unvarnished,” “honest,” and “frank” history. It would seem a bit odd for someone to come out and say otherwise and keep a straight face about it.

    “No thanks, I prefer my history be ‘varnished.’”

    “Honest history? No thanks. That sounds too scary for me. Tell me some more lies. Skew the history.”

    I took the poll, and fwiw, I’ve had to both design and critique more than a few surveys in my legal career (this means that I only know enough to be dangerous, of course). The questions and alternative responses were nothing like the hypothesized “gimme varnished” alternatives. The questions were relatively neutral, and the answers rated various outcomes on degrees of importance to the respondent.

    I think the poll was aimed at getting real information from users. I’m more than a little bit pleased that the Church saw fit to disclose the results of the survey. I suspect that it wouldn’t have done so (disclosed the results, that is) if it hadn’t first have formulated the intention of fulfilling the expressed desires of the poll’s majority.

28. UPDATE: Note that the survey questions are now included in the post. (Thank you to the person who sent them to me.) Sorry about the formatting.

29. #15You don’t teach polygamy and the MMM to five-year-old primary children at church.

    I don’t know. I grew up mostly in Utah and I can’t remember not knowing about polygamy. At least the Brigham Young, early Utah part of it. If you tour the Beehive House, it’s all out there and we learned about that in school, at home, at church.

    The Joseph Smith version, however, never, ever, ever came up.

    Either way, I’m glad they asked the question.

30. Since my dad has been working for the Church Historical Department since 1975, I have to take exception with the claim that they have been doing nothing for the last twenty years. It is absolutely true that in the wake of Arrington’s move to BYU the Archives division of the historical department became very defensive and restricted access to a lot of previously available sources. It is also true that published research on the part of historical department employees went from a torrent to a trickle. On the other hand, the church historical department during the same period has done some very important work such as:

    1. The opening of the Museum of Church History and Art, which included a massive expansion in the Church’s effort to collect art and artifacts from all periods of Mormon history and making them more widely available than every before.

    2. The sponsoring of numerous international church art competitions that served as a major stimulus in the creation of Mormon art, particularlly by Saints outside of the United States.

    3. The restoration of church historic sites especially in New York, Ohio, Nauvoo, and Utah.

    4. Significant involvement in the restoration of historic Mormon buildings, most notably the Manti Temple, which was saved from the sort of horrific gutting that the Church Building Department inflicted on the Logan Temple largely through the efforts of the historical department and support from some key general authorities, most notably Gordon B. Hinkley and Boyd K. Packer.

    I don’t want to sugar-coat the constriction in access to records that happened in the Church Archives in the 1980s and 1990s. On the other hand, it is unfair to a lot of people who have literally deovted their entire professional lives to the preservation of the history of the church to suggest that they have been sitting around doing nothing for a generation.

31. You’re absolutely correct, Nate, about the nature of museum work and the restoration of Mormon historical sites, which is some of the finest work being done of its type anywhere in the world. I was taking a very limited view of the history department by saying that, and I apologize for causing offense in so doing.

    I’m referring more what you say when you indicate that, “It is also true that published research on the part of historical department employees went from a torrent to a trickle.” This is the area where it’s role has been almost entirely overtaken by other groups, and (unfortunately) is the area where it had become irrelevant to members and non-members alike. The church can execute ambitious research projects on a grand-scale, akin to the Joseph Smith Papers project that it took over from BYU, that will only get done with funding from the church. And this is what I’d like to see happening — not competing with Dialogue, but creating the collections of definitive primary sources that are used by Dialogue researchers.

32. Since this discussion is about Mormon history, I will just note that on Sunday the Mormon History Association completed its annual conference in Salt Lake City and today it wrapped up two post-conference Utah War related tours to Echo Canyon/Fort Bridger and to Mountain Meadows. It was an extraordinary meeting directly relevant to the comments listed above. Of the 1,311 MHA members on the eve of the conference — most of them Latter-day Saints — more than 770 of them attended. This is an astounding participation level for any professional association. (While waiting in the line to use the conference hotel’s internet connection I ran into a member of the Community of Christ (formerly RLDS Church) who had flown in from Kuwait for the meeting.) It is a wonderful, stimulating way to learn about Mormon history. As DKL indicated above, Elder Marlin K. Jenson, Church Historian and Recorder, thought enough about MHA and the meeting to be there, as he was at the two previous annual conferences in Casper, Wyoming (handcart experience) and Vermont (Joseph Smith). It was at this conference that the “Deseret News” reporter (and anyone else who cared to listen) heard about the questionnaire on church history and got a chance to ask questions/complain about it. MHA’s program committee prepared a special segment on Helen Whitney’s PBS documentary “The Mormons,” and Helen herself flew in from NY to lead a conference discussion of her film after screening one of its ten “acts” for the audience and listening to a critique from BYU Prof. Richard E. Bennett and UMass. Prof. Mario DePillis. The Bushmans were there…a lot of people were there who could answer (or at least address credibly) about any question you might have about Mormon history. Not bad for a group that is independent — free-standing and unaffiliated with any religious or educational institution.
    Next year’s conference (May 2008) will be in Sacramento, with a heavy program content re the Mormon Battalion/gold rush connection and the expansion of the church beyond Utah. Check it out at http://www.mhahome.org. End of pro-MHA pitch. Disclosure: I am a long-time MHA member and have just completed a three-year term on its governing Board.

33. Addendum to #32 above: At the MHA conference, T&S’s Ardis Parshall gave a paper titled ” ‘Corianton’: Genealogy of a Mormon Phenomenon.” It was vintage Parshall — highly informative, offbeat, and funny while being informative. Everyone clear on what this novel/play/film was about? Hint: the first Mormon feature film and one intended to be both a “talkie” and one filmed in color (long before “Gone with the Wind” and “Wizard of Oz” — all in 1931. See what you missed! Ardis has just returned from Mountain Meadows tonight…maybe if someone asks she’ll say a few words here about that visit and about “Corianton.”

34. Bill, I am raising my hand to sustain your enthusiastic support of MHA. And yes, Ardis, please do as Bill suggests. I wasn’t able to make it to MHA due to a medical problem, so I would love to hear more about your presentation and the MM tour.

35. Do most LDS members really want honest history? Here is one account of what happens when honest history breaks out. I give it to you as a parable of warning.

    Many years ago my career took a turn that required me to spend 1 year working most Sundays. I was working 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week and received only one weekend off each month. Theoretically. In Jan. I took my weekend in tandem with Christmas vacation; Feb. was knocked out by a work-related conference; in Mar. co-worker and buddy DumbDumb Dave wrecked his car and I worked his weekend for him. In April I had general conference weekend off. May was job interviews and June was the house hunting trip.

    We took our preschool children to both sessions of general conference on Saturday and I attended Priesthood session, all held at the ward house. We were new to the area and the church was my stay-at-home wife’s main social outlet. It was extremely important to her to fit into the ward, to have as many friends as possible and to impress the right people. By April she felt like she had made a big social break-through when the Relief Society President invited her over to their house to see general conference by satellite on Sunday along with a select few of the rising younger ward leaders. I would guess about 10-12 adults and a handful of very small well-mannered children were invited.

    After the morning session I got into a discussion about President Ezra Taft Benson. We had all read or read at his thick semi-official biography. (The big blue book.) A couple of them knew President Benson had a distinguished political career topped off with a stint as Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. But none of them had read his book Crossfire, a tell-all sour-grapes description of those 8 controversial years somewhat typical of retiring Washington insiders. The Ezra Taft Benson, self-revealed in this work, was no charismatic progressive masterful calm generous but iron-willed (some called it stubborn) David O. McKay and definitely was no media savvy shrewd but wry Gordon B. Hinckley. Quite the opposite.

    In addition, I remember as a youth when one of my uncles was convinced by the sermons of Ezra Taft Benson to become a zealous member of the John Birch Society. This was Apostle Benson’s major preoccupation for a couple decades. My uncle believed that Cleon Skousen was a sort of ghost writer for Ezra Taft Benson in his book The Naked Communist and the two of them were very close in agreement on the subject. I had also read another anti-communist book by Ezra Taft Benson called The Red Carpet. I described some of these extreme political views that were promoted and the resulting friction within the church leadership over it at the time. (An excellent article in Dialogue magazine described Benson’s Birching adventures but I can’t remember if I read it before or after this event.) All of this sounded like fascinating but disturbing anti-Mormon distortions to these young ward leaders.

    At some point the Relief Society President, who had been listening quietly but making no comments, came forth. Simply but with enormous anger she told me to get out of her house immediately. She felt like I was disrupting the Spirit of the Sabbath, making light of the prophet and she would not allow an apostate possessed of a lying spirit to defile her home one more minute. I think what really frosted her was that some guy like me she thought she was reactivating, a mere child in the gospel, who did not even attend church meetings more than a few times a year, knew so many more interesting things than she or any of the other ward “heavy lifters” did about their favorite topic, Prophet Trivia.

    I asked her why she was kicking me out for things that President Benson did 30 or 40 years ago? It wasn’t my fault and everything I had said was directly from him. A trip to a library in Utah (actually even a well stocked LDS home library of the right vintage) would verify everything I had said. But she retorted: “Out!”

    My wife was in the kitchen helping with the food and without a word to her I was allowed to grab my flimsy windbreaker before leaving. I had to exercise extreme control to remain silent and to not really cuss them out, a skill raised to a martial-art form in my Pioneer family. (Any papers at the MHA meeting about Pioneer cussing?) I can not easily hide anger and though I said nothing more, I was extremely upset. It took me several minutes of vigorous walking to calm down.

    I realized that I did not have the car keys, and that I did not want to return and risk another confrontation to retrieve them. But this was in Minnesota and it was about 40 degrees F. If I stopped walking I started to shiver. The snow was only a few inches deep but it was melting with water everywhere and my feet were soon soaked. I found a small park, but no hearty mid-western soul braved the miserable weather that day, who might have kept me company. A bit of sleet spit at me but not enough to justify any alternative course of action. After about 5 hours the party at the Relief Society President’s house broke up, as the sun set and a bitter chill blew through me. My ears were frozen.

    They led my wife to believe that I was angry at something that was said during conference and I had gone for a long walk of my own volition. I was working so hard at the time that I was easily upset. It is true that at times I did go for walks for a couple hours to relieve stress so she had not worried about me and just enjoyed basking in the company of the ward elite and knew that I would get over it.

    What I learned that miserable afternoon, the only Sunday I had off from work in half of a difficult year was that most active members of the church do not want to hear about honest history. They can be like petulant children with their hands over their ears. They much prefer the comforting fables and myths that they have been fed or constructed. Books that tell us more about how we are today, like that laughable soap-opera The Work and the Glory series, than books that tell us anything substantial about real history are what is preferred. I would love to hear what real Pioneers or somebody like J. Golden Kimball would have had to say about our spiffed up “New Mormon History.” (I consider the disturbing honest truth the Old History and the rosy modern correlated fables the New History, but it seems others have a different perspective). If you go too far with honest history, you will find yourself out in the cold, socially at least and in my case quite literally. I warn you.

    And when I think about it, this spirit of viewing the world through rosy glasses tints the discussions here to a small degree. Perhaps it is an essential characteristic of Mormon culture at this time. More than one of you have dismissed, without rational response or otherwise closed your minds to ideas or events that I have described that are outside the boundaries of this group’s thinking. Which is precisely why I post them. I appreciate it when you disagree with me. I learn from it. I learn about you and I learn about myself. And at least for now you have not kicked me off, for this I am grateful. I presume when it comes to matters requiring tolerance, the folks here at T&S are a notch or three above our friends in Minnesota. Yet I wonder if it is not a bit hypocritical for us to call for honest history when we are not willing to consider something that disturbs us.

    BTW, this RSP still sends us Christmas cards. Very strange.

36. Speaking of unvarnished history –

    Has anyone gone to FamilySearch.com to look up the family file listing for either Joseph Smith or Brigham Young with their multiple wives? Which one listing is correct?

37. “What I learned that miserable afternoon, the only Sunday I had off from work in half of a difficult year was that most active members of the church do not want to hear about honest history.”

    With all due respect, you did not. I don’t have much confidence in the real accuracy of the historical department poll as a reflection of Mormon membership in general. Frankly, what I find far more interesting is the rhetorical use to which the poll was put by the historical department. That said, however, I doubt that we can generalize to the entire church membership on the basis of your anecdote, horrific as your experience sounds. It simply isn’t possible to generalize from one experience to “most active members of the church.” Frankly, I would be surprised if “most active members of the church” have ANY sort of an opinion about church history, a subject that I suspect they spend very little time thinking about. You may be right, but your conclusion — right or wrong — simply is not supported by your story.

38. To answer Mike’s question (#35 above) there were no papers at MHA-SLC on “Pioneer cussing,” although my Sunday morning remarks in Temple Square’s Assembly Hall did include President Harry S. Truman’s diary description of the pre-renovation White House as “a hell of a place” and Elder Jensen paused in the midst of his luncheon talk about church history to inform the group that one of his former bishops — spotted standing at the back of the room — had long ago counseled him to “take a lot of long walks and cold showers” upon learning that he was dating another member of the ward (his future wife). Elder Jensen then went on to confess that he had followed counsel. Nothing in the J. Golden Kimball league, though.

39. My non-Honors all freshman BoM class at BYU absolutely ate up our handout+discussion of Joseph Smith and the seer stone. I think many are interested in historical detail, even \”difficult\” topics, when presented the right way.

40. Nate;

    I share your interest in how the history department has made rhetorical use of it. That is noteworthy. And quite beyond me.

    How many antedotes does it take to make a generalization?

    Although the comparison is blasphemous, I find the parables in the New Testamient all suffer from the same flaws. Yet they have been generalized over 20 centuries to billions of people. Why?Because they reflect reality. I have not set out to use the T&S as a forum to publish scientifically defensible Mormon studies which I am not trained to do. Rather to broadcast experiences in story form which I believe might resonate with some few people and illustrate graphically some point. Horrific is what I wanted you to feel and I hope y’all think twice before kicking “apostates” out the door.

    I contend that a less horrific variation of this experience of mine is quite common. I might venture weekly at each ward. Yes, weekly except people are more courteous and smooth about it. Maybe we should conduct a prospective study. We could come up with some standard disturbing story from the annals of church history that most people don’t know about. We could introduce it to members in various settings and measure the responses. We could have it introduced to some members by people in authority like the Bishop, to some members by those with intellectual authority like a profesor at BYU, to some by the typical ward crank. We could try various venues like fast meeting, sunday school class and then at activities, at church basketball games (in lulls between fist fights) or as neighborhood gossip. Stratify it by geography and length of time in the church. We would see if people want to hear more about it or want to put their fingers in their ears. We could see how much tattling was generated to others in higher authority. Sure sounds like a great opportunity for a multi-disciplinary study. The null hypothesis would be Nate’s position. I bet you would have so many people with stories like mine that the funding institution’s ethics committee would have to put a stop to it. Now of course we would have to conduct a literature search to compare it with previous studies. We might only pause briefly at the Parable of the Sower since it is so ancient and antedotal.

    I think Nate and I are describing opposite sides of the same coin. Here is why. I think that the most common psychological defense is denial. I think that is why “most active members of the church (don’t) have ANY sort of an opinion about church history, a subject that I suspect they spend very little time thinking about.” Because if they did, they fear they’d kick themselves out in the snow. Yet I can think of no other religion that places as much importance in its sense of history, contrived as it might be. Do the Lutherans care if Martin Luther was wrestling with devils? Or that he started a war that killed millions? Or that he violated his vows of life-long chastity and married a nun? He is close to irrelevant in contemporary Lutheran church life and developments since his time overshadow him. In contrast, Joseph Smith is very much still with us Mormons. And like he said the angel told him, his name is had for good or evil among all nations.

    Would anyone agree with the idea that honest history is inherently subversive? Why study any history? That we might learn from the past and that it might lead us to do things we were not otherwise intending to do? Might this not run cross grain to revelation?

41. Mike,
    The difference between your story and NT parables is that NT parables are normative, not descriptive. That is, the parables tell us how things should be, not how they are. We don’t generalize from the parable of the Good Samaritan that all Jewish religious leaders are hypocritical and that all Samaritans are helpful. Rather, we say that all good people should be like the Samaritan. On the other hand, your story is descriptive; I have no doubt that you were unjustly kicked out of the RS president’s house on a freezing day. However, your being kicked out does not mean that, in every situation where unpleasant history is raised, the person raising the history will be kicked out.

    How many anecdotes does it take to generalize? I don’t know, but I can counter your horrific experience with plenty of experiences where I (or another speaker) was not ostracized for bringing up unpleasant history. I have know way of knowing whether my experiences or yours are more typical.

    And I agree with Nate that most LDS don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about Church history. It’s not, I think, generally because they’re in denial, or don’t want to face the facts (although both are probably true in some circumstances); rather, it’s that they focus their time and interests elsewhere. I don’t expect everybody to be as fascinated with hedge funds, even though (a la Long Term Capital Management) hedge funds may have a very real, very detrimental (or positive) impact on their lives. Still, I think they’re fascinating, and spend a lot of time thinking about them. That people don’t doesn’t mean they’re in denial; it probably means they have a life.

42. #36, Roland, the answer to your question is way too complicated to answer here. But basically you should not accept any information at familysearch.org without verifying with original documents. If you’re interested in the wives of JS, the best place to start would be In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton, where you’ll find a discussion of the difficulty of identifying exactly who was a wife. I’m sure there’s something like that for BY too, but I don’t know where to refer you.

43. Mike: I think a big study on Mormon attitudes toward history would be grand, but that wasn’t really what I was getting at. Rather, I have a rather more modest point. I think that we tend to generalize on the basis of intense, personally salient experiences. However, that which is intense for us is not quite the same thing as that which is representative of the group as a whole. I’ve blogged here about this in the past.

    I’ve no doubt that there is a considerable chunk of Mormondom that is overtly hostile to any depiction of the Mormon past that rises above the level of sugar-coated stories of dubious accuracy. I am not in favor of this approach, and I think that it creates real risks and can be spiritually damaging. On the other hand, despite anti-intellectual spasms from time to time within the church, I simply do not think that there is a massive and monolithic hostility to history that engages in difficult questions. Likewise, I find your explanation for widespread Mormon indifference to LDS history unpersuasive. No doubt your pyschological story holds true for some, but in most cases I think that we can find rather more quidotian explanations for popular indifference, the LDS emphasis on history notwithstanding. The church places a huge emphasis on home teaching, yet I have yet to live in a ward where the home teaching statistics were not abyssimal. There may be some deep ideological explanation for this fact linked to some sort of deep-seated self-deception in the dark core of the Mormon pysche, but I suspect that the reality is considerably less interesting…

44. When we talk about our history, what I want is a combination of honesty and charity. I want to know the stories, all of them, not just the de-polygamized and fluffy ones. But I want them to be given and received with charity. By this I mean that I want the people telling me to be doing so not to show off their knowledge of an obscure or unsettling story, but to truly help me understand LDS history, and therefore myself, a little better. I as the receiver also have a responsibility: to listen and learn from their lives, or as Jacob says, to “receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents.”

    I don’t want my history varnished. But I don’t want it unduly tarnished, either.

45. Mike, I would have thrown you out of my home, too, not because of a “fear” of “unvarnished history” but because you boorishly dominated the conversation (you must have, to have lectured in as great detail as you outline here), you violated the purpose of the gathering (vintage partisan politics was almost certainly irrelevant to anything discussed in conference, and the confrontational nature of your report certainly outraged the spirit of the gathering), and you either ignored or were oblivious to whatever social cues your hostess broadcast in an attempt to return her gathering to a focus appropriate to her home (no woman goes from welcoming hostess to defender of her hearth in the blink of an eye, without trying to change the subject or distract an unruly guest with food or drink, or otherwise politely asserting her authority). It wouldn’t matter whether you were a reactivating stranger or President Hinckley on a very bad day — my home is my sanctuary, and anyone who violates that sanctuary will leave.

    You’ve nursed the grudge long enough. Let it go. The RSP has, or you wouldn’t be on her Christmas card list.

46. Wow Ardis I didn’t know you were in the room with him. What a small world!

47. Emily, great insight. We must also acknowledge that in spit of all our study, we will never know the whole story. I think it best to give some allowance when judging situations that are not completely clear.

    Ardis, I think you’re probably spot on.

48. I unequivocally endorse Bill MacKinnon’s statement about Ardis’s paper. It was a 10. I’d love to see portions of it posted here.

49. Bill, DKL, and anybody else who cares, I will post my Corianton paper this week. You’ve given me a wonderful build-up that might not be realistic — I write very differently for an oral presentation than for something intended to be read. This paper probably generated more laughter than anything else at MHA except Elder Jensen’s lunchtime talk, but T&S readers may wonder why. The laughter was due partly to what playwright James Arrington, who was in the room, complimented as a comedic sense of timing, and due even more to the goodwill of listeners whose laughter encouraged others to respond in a like manner.

    Because of the inevitable scheduling conflict I was unable to attend his session, but we shouldn’t forget that T&S’s own Jim Faulconer also presented, as did commenter Bill MacKinnon who both delivered a session paper and spoke at Sunday’s devotional in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. Margaret Young was also there with Darius Gray, showing the trailer to their upcoming documentary.

50. Nate:

    Thanks for the further insight. I will chew on it a while. We have qutie a bit of common ground and I can see your points.

    Artis:

    I doubt you would have kicked me out. Because you know more about church history than I do. You would have been the one dominating the conversation once the topic drifted to ETB and his political career.

    We were remembering Benson and all the great things he did, not exactly unrelated to conference. Quite easy to drift into his past. Even easier to speculate what he might have done if he had served with Reagan.

    “no woman goes from welcoming hostess to defender of her hearth in the blink of an eye, without trying to change the subject or distract an unruly guest with food or drink, or otherwise politely asserting her authority”

    What the heck kind of over-generalization is this? You don’t know much about old time rural Mormon women and families and their propensity for feuding. Half my Aunts lack this social skill you describe. My mother has kicked people out of her house more than once and actually placed her foot into the seat of their pants forcefully. I grew up in a family that doesn’t do this so that is why I have a problem with it

    I do stand guilty of ignoring subtle cues; but communication is a two way process.

    President Hinckley might get the boot from your house on a bad day?? I think this is now quite beyond reasonable and clearly into the realm of hyperbole.

    Don’t you see the irony in your comment? The lecturing and boorish nature of your accusation of me? You add further proof to my point and seem to be kicking me out of this discussion? Nate is willing to patiently correct and instruct me, but what do I get from you?

    I have a funny feeling that if Artis and I were actually to engage in a face-to-face discussion we might like each other. I really think the bloggernacle with its lack of non-verbal cues (90%of communication) and the ease to read into comments unintended emotional overlays creates many of these problems.

    I will leave you for now with appologies for ruffling any feathers for now. I really do have a job and I am going to not get my work done today if this keeps going.

51. Mike, you haven’t seen my feathers ruffled here; I specifically reject that characterization while passing over grosser and equally false accusations for this reason: a standard technique for discounting a woman’s voice, no matter how reasoned and reasonable, is to accuse her of being upset — “hysterical.” It’s a cheap trick. If you have done so through the ignorance of habit, civilize yourself. If you have done it deliberately, I calmly expose your cheap trick for what it was.

    Another common, cheap trick is to diminish someone with whom one disagrees by denying that opponent’s identity through ignoring, mocking, or misspelling his or her name.

52. I remember a story from many years ago about a new cow placed in an existing group of cows. Typically the new cow would hang around the edges and slowly work her way into the group. However, if she immediately pushed her way to the center, she almost never became a “real” member of the group, even after a long time. (The other cows continued to be wary of her.) In my observation this generally works with people too. You can say almost anything to anyone, IF you have established prior credibility. Those whose associations have been minimal or nonexistent with you have no way of knowing your level of orthodoxy or even what your real level historical knowledge is and so they cannot know if what you are claiming as knowledge is credible or if you are spinning something completely out in left field.

    I am speaking from personal knowledge as one who frequently says things some might find “heretical” yet I have paid my dues to be a credible insider in all the places where I am talking about unvarnished history and such. I have only had minimal negative feedback, even from the most hidebound conservatives in my ward, because I have paid my dues and they know that I am coming from a body of knowledge that none of the rest of them have paid the price to know. The also know that I am a rock solid contributing member of the group who is willing to help and share—not just drop bombs and run.

53. Alison, thanks. :-) Marjorie, I love the cow analogy. I see the application in my own ward. I do think some herds are more welcoming than others, though.

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