Mormonism and history

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Unlike other 19th-century religious movements such as Shakerism, the Bahá'í Faith, and Christian Science, the Mormon religion is predicated on what are said to be historical events such as the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the historicity of the Book of Mormon, which describes a detailed pre-Columbian history of North America.

Traditional Mormonism relies on the historical reality of the prophetic mission of Joseph Smith, Jr as a matter of faith. Therefore, if Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon from Golden Plates engraved by Ancient Americans, then Mormonism loses its historical underpinnings. As President Joseph Fielding Smith, the tenth LDS prophet said, "Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground." [1]

Although traditional Christianity is likewise a history religion,[2] few primary sources survive from two or three millennia ago, and many places mentioned in the Bible, such as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bethlehem, are acknowledged to exist by scholars of every religious persuasion. Likewise, the Assyrian and Babylonian empires mentioned in the Bible are treated in all histories of the ancient Near East. By contrast, locations of Book of Mormon places are disputed even by Mormons, and the existence of those places is not acknowledged by any non-Mormon scholars. Martin Marty, a Lutheran scholar of American religion, has observed that LDS beginnings are so recent "that there is no place to hide....There is little protection for Mormon sacredness."[3]

Contents

[edit] "Mormons Remember"

As Richard and Joan Ostling have written, "Mormons remember." There has been an official church historian since the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and "Mormon youths and their sisters are exhorted to keep journals as part of their religious commitment. Missionaries are reminded by their superiors that the journals represent a part of their sacred duties."[4]

Legacy: A Mormon Journey (1990), a faith-promoting film produced by the LDS Church. Image from the DVD cover.
Legacy: A Mormon Journey (1990), a faith-promoting film produced by the LDS Church. Image from the DVD cover.

The pioneer era is an especially fertile field for faith-promoting history. As Wallace Stegner has written, the "tradition of the pioneer that is strong all through the West is a cult in Utah."[5] Mormons "tell and retell their stories of pioneer privations and persecutions." Mormon young people are often given the opportunity to pull a handcart through a patch of desert; Mormon children are early taught the Miracle of the Gulls, the story of seagulls that supposedly saved the crops of the earliest Utah pioneers from an invasion of crickets in 1848.[6]

Under President Joseph F. Smith, the LDS Church began to purchase, refurbish, and reconstruct its sacred sites, beginning with Carthage Jail in 1903. "Visitors' centers, restored houses, historic parks, monuments, and trail markers sprouted everywhere." In 1999 the Church maintained forty-four such sites, many of which were staffed by Mormon missionaries.[7]

Mormons have also developed "something of an annual outdoor pageant circuit" which serves as both a proselytizing tool and a "faith-affirming" experience to the volunteer participants and most of the audience.[8] An elaborate Hill Cumorah pageant, on the site where the golden plates are said to have been revealed to Joseph Smith, has been annually performed since 1937.[9] Other LDS pageants are regularly performed in eight locations in the United States, including Nauvoo, Illinois; Independence, Missouri; Manti, Utah; and Oakland, California.[10]

Likewise, the LDS Church has regularly produced faith-promoting films with excellent production values for showing in Salt Lake City and at the visitors' centers of Mormon historic sites. Recent films include Legacy: A Mormon Journey (1990), The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd (2000), and Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (2005). As Richard and Joan Ostling have written, Legacy is "an example of ritualized history, effectively idealized and simplified." In discussing the Mormon pioneer heritage, there is no hint of polygamy or of distinctive Mormon doctrines. Smith dies as a martyr without mention of Mormon destruction of a Nauvoo newspaper, which triggered the crisis. Nevertheless, "the drama and scenery of the trek are so beautifully photographed" that many Mormons saw the movie repeatedly when visiting Temple Square.[11]

[edit] History and theology

Mormon high school and college students take required church history courses as part of their training, and their required study of the Mormon scripture Doctrine and Covenants "is largely history as well."[12] Comparatively little of Mormon doctrinal teaching involves "what traditional Christian catechism would call 'pure theology.'" Mormon "history evolves as part of the church's canon," and an LDS "Correlation Committee" attempts to ensure that "all church publications, from periodicals to curriculum materials, follow official policy and express official interpretations. This means that sensitive historical issues frequently are downplayed, avoided, or denied."[13]

Even the scriptures have been rewritten to fit current doctrine, in line with the idea of continuity and progressive revelation. But once a new version is published, historians are not supposed to notice the change, nor can they write about variations in previous editions. The church regards such reminders as unacceptably embarrassing. The result has been something of an underground traffic in early church documents and editions."[14]

Historian D. Michael Quinn, later excommunicated from the LDS Church, noted that traditional "Mormon apologists discuss such 'sensitive evidence' only when this evidence is so well known that ignoring it is almost impossible."[15] In a famous speech to Church educators in 1981, Apostle Boyd Packer warned them from the temptation "to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not....In an effort to be objective, impartial, and scholarly, a writer or a teacher may unwittingly be giving equal time to the adversary....Do not spread disease germs!"[16]

The result of this attitude of Mormonism toward history is that truth, "supposedly embedded in history," becomes "dynamic and fluid."[17] Therefore, as Marxist historian Mark Leone has written, "the church has discouraged any intellectual tradition that would interfere with disguising historical factors or with maintaining much of the social reality through the uncritical way lay history is done."[18]

[edit] "Faithful History"

During the early years of the church, Mormons concentrated on telling providential history as they had been commanded to do by Joseph Smith.[19] Church clerks compiled a history of the Latter-day Saint movement, weaving the accounts of various people together "into a seamless narrative as though Smith himself were speaking." Then between 1902 and 1912, Mormon apologist B. H. Roberts prepared the work for publication, including as part of the title the phrase "History of Joseph Smith the Prophet, by Himself." "Even worse than causing confusion over Smith's lack of authorship, Roberts made corrections, deletions, and emendations to the six-volume work without explaining his reasons for doing so."[20]

[edit] Support and criticism

Richard Bushman, a modern Mormon historian has written about the tension he feels in writing accurately while also supporting the faith of members. In his book, Rough Stone Rolling, he does not conceal the more controversial aspects of Joseph Smith's character, but he does try to ameliorate their impact on believing readers while still maintaining historical objectivity. In his essay "The Balancing Act: A Mormon historian reflects on his biography of Joseph Smith," Bushman noted that one reviewer had written of his "walking a high wire between the demands of church conformity and the necessary openness of scholarly investigation."[21] Bushman argued that one did not have to be objective to write history.

Passion and belief are certainly not requirements for historical inquiry, but neither are they crippling handicaps. Once we relinquish, as we must, the "noble dream" of objective history, personal commitment becomes a valuable resource…Contrary to the idea that belief closes the mind, our passions open our eyes and ears. Stifling my belief in Joseph Smith would extinguish one of my greatest assets.[22]

Bushman said that he could not give way to writing a hagiography because

I also knew that if I overly idealized Smith, I would lose credibility with non-Mormons. With a broad readership in mind, I could not conceal his flaws. Moreover, I tried to voice unbelieving readers’ likely reactions when Smith married additional wives or taught doctrines foreign to modern sensibilities. When he went beyond the pale, I acknowledged readers’ dismay.[23]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "If Joseph Smith was a deceiver, who willfully attempted to mislead the people, then he should be exposed; his claims should be refuted, and his doctrines shown to be false, for the doctrines of an impostor cannot be made to harmonize in all particulars with divine truth. If his claims and declarations were built upon fraud and deceit, there would appear many errors and contradictions, which would be easy to detect."McConkie, Bruce R. (editor) (1971). Doctrines of Salvation, Vols. 1-3: Sermons and Writings of Joseph Fielding Smith. Bookcraft, 188. ISBN 978-1-57008-646-5.  as quoted by Cowan, Marvin W. (1997). Mormon Claims Answered. Retrieved on 2006-11-11. 
  2. ^ For instance, in I Corinthians 15. 14, St. Paul says, "if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." (KJV)
  3. ^ Martin Marty, "Two Integrities: An Address to the Crisis in Mormon Historiography," in George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 174. Faithful History is a collection of essays expressing different views about how to approach the history of the LDS Church. The work includes essays written by two articulate Church apologists, Louis Midgley and David Earl Bohn, although neither is a historian.
  4. ^ Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Osling, "Faithful History," in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 238-39.
  5. ^ Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 2.
  6. ^ Ostling, 241-42. "'Miracle' status apparently has grown since an 1853 General Conference mention by Apostle Orson Hyde, amplified and reinforced over the years by stories in Mormon publications and official church histories." On the story of the gulls, see William G. Hartley, "Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls: A New Look at an Old Story," in D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 137-151.
  7. ^ Ostling, 240-41.
  8. ^ Ostling, 243.
  9. ^ Website of the Hill Cumorah Pageant
  10. ^ Ostling, 240-41.
  11. ^ Ostling, 242.
  12. ^ Ostling, 247.
  13. ^ Ostling, 247.
  14. ^ Ostling, 248.
  15. ^ D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1992), xiii
  16. ^ Boyd K. Packer, Fifth Annual Church Educational System Religious Eucators' Symposium, August 22, 1981, Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University Studies, quoted in Susan Stansfield Wolverton, Having Visions: The Book of Mormon Translated and Exposed in Plain English (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), 57. See also, Boyd K. Packer, Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991), 106.
  17. ^ Ostling, 249.
  18. ^ Mark P. Leone, The Roots of Modern Modernism, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 204, 211.
  19. ^ Ronald Walker, David J. Whittaker, and James B. Allen, Mormon History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 5.
  20. ^ Mormon History, 8.
  21. ^ Richard L. Bushman, "The Balancing Act: A Mormon historian reflects on his biography of Joseph Smith"
  22. ^ Richard L. Bushman, "The Balancing Act: A Mormon historian reflects on his biography of Joseph Smith"
  23. ^ Richard L. Bushman, "The Balancing Act: A Mormon historian reflects on his biography of Joseph Smith"

[edit] See also

Latter-day Saints Portal

[edit] References

  • Devery S. Anderson, "A History of Dialogue, Part Three: The Utah Experience, 1982-1989" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 35.2 (Summer 2002). Discusses the controversy that followed the publication of Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophet's Wife, Elect Lady, Polygamy's Foe (New York: Doubleday, 1984).
  • Leonard J. Arrington, "Faith and Intellect as Partners in Mormon History" in "The Collected Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lectures" Special Collections & Archives, Utah State University Libraries, 2005. ISBN 0-87421-598-6.
  • Davis Bitton, "The Ritualization of Mormon History," in The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 171-187.
  • Terryl L. Givins, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. (Oxford University Press, 2007). ISBN: 0195167112.
  • Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Osling, "Faithful History," in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 238-58.
  • D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994).
  • George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992).
  • Gary Topping, Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003) ISBN 0-8061-3561-1
  • Ronald W. Walker, David J. Whittaker, and James B. Allen, Mormon History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001) ISBN 0-252-02619-5