15 0 Years Of

History, SUNSTONE and the Sunstone Sym- TURNING THE TIME OVER TO ... posiums, the Utah Women’s History Associa- tion, the Mormon Pacific Historical Society, the B. H. Roberts Society, the HLT Forum in D. Michael Quinn Germany, the Canadian Mormon Studies As- sociation, the Australian Mormon Studies Association, and the Mormon Women’s Forum. Likewise, the RLDS church experi- 15 0 YEARS OF enced the short-lived magazine Courage, then the John Whitmer Historical Associa- tion and its continuing Journal, and also Res- TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES toration Studies. This independent historical disclosure ABOUT MORMON HISTORY has posed a special challenge to the modern LD$ leadership. Some general authorities have become hostile to the kind of earthy honesty of a Brigham Young or a J. Golden Kimball. Since 1950, individual general authorities and sometimes unified quorums have reacted in various ways to independent historical disclosure--sometimes with indif- ference, sometimes with endorsement, sometimes with private concern but no overt The 150 years of tension about the truths of Mormon history actions, sometimes with intimidation, some- have been prologue to the events of 1991-92. times with punishment, sometimes with public repudiation. THE TRUTHS OF Mormon history are own past. In the nineteenth century, LDS diverse. A truthful Mormon history will leaders like Brigham Young frequently spoke ATTACKING THE MESSENGER veal devoted and faithful people doing in- publicly "in love" of unsettling truths about spiring and courageous things. Such history Joseph Smith and the Mormon past. During HOWEVER, when LDS leaders have also includes a mass of mundane experience the Church’s first century, official Church strongly disliked an unauthorized exposure of that is the grist for demographers. These publications had many examples of such Mormonism’s checkered past, they have typ- devoted and faithful Mormons also had faithful disclosure. ically attacked the messenger. This has oc- experiences that were acceptable, even faith- From 1950 onward, significant Mormon curred in the nineteenth and twentieth promoting, to them, but which discomfort academics have adopted Brigham Young’s centuries. Those attacks have usually been current Latter-day Saints. And finally, in the model of "speaking the truth in love" about harsher when the messenger was a partici- Mormon past there were disruptions which difficulties in the Mormon past. For fifteen pant in the uncomfortable truths she or he troubled Mormons then and now. years, this was a solitary endeavor of lone revealed about Mormonism. There are different ways of publicly telling researcher-writers. In December 1965, aca- One response of the Mormon hierarchy uncomfortable truths about Mormonism. Not demic truth-telling about the Mormon past toward an unwelcome messenger has been all of them have been, like the Apostle Paul, became institutional with the organization of character assassination founded on a com- "speaking the troth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). the Mormon History Association. Then in a mon assumption about the general public: "If The LDS church used to have an institu- tumble came Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon you discredit the messenger, you discredit the tional commitment to telling both inspiring Thought, a new historical emphasis in BYu message." The logic is flawed but often effec- stories and uncomfortable truths about its Studies, Exponent II, then Journal of Mormon tive. Linked to character assassination has been the use of excommunication and the designation of "apostate," particularly in re- D. MICHAEL QUINN is an independent scholar whose recent publications include "Editor’s sponse to partisan accounts of Church history. Introduction," The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Character assassination was common in Signature Books, 1991); "Religion in the American West," in Under An Open Sky: Rethinking Nauvoo Mormonism. In 1842, Nancy America’s Western Past, edited by William J. Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin (New York: W. Rigdon rejected Joseph Smith’s polygamous W. Norton and Co., 1992); "On Being a Mormon Historian" and "Aftermath," in Faithful History: proposal. She told her family, and her brother Essays on Writing Mormon History, edited by George D. Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, went public. As a result, Joseph Smith pub- 1992); "Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843," in Women and Authority: lished affidavits that she had been sexually Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, edited by Maxine Hanks (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992); impure. In another example, Martha Broth- and "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism," in Fundamentalisms and Society: erton published an affidavit about her rejec- Reclaiming the Sciences, Education, and the Family, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott tion of Joseph Smith’s polygamous proposal. Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). As a result, he had her sister Elizabeth pub- This paper was originally presented to a meeting of the B. H. Roberts Society at the University of lish the answer that her sister was a whore Utah, Salt Lake City, on 17 October 1991 as part of the panel discussion, "Do What is Right, Let the and a liar. Elizabeth Brotherton later became Consequences Follow: Telling the Truth About Our History." a plural wife of Apostle Parley P. Pratt. PAGE 12 FEBRUARY 1992 Joseph Smith’s sometime lawyer, Robert D. Fifty and Nauvoo polygamy; George Miller’s usually tries to compensate for that by adopt- Foster, became the focus of a double-edged letters to the Strangite Northern Islander in ing a neutral tone and by examining all the effort at character assassination in 1844. Fos- 1855, about the Council of Fifty; Bill relevant evidence on the topic at hand. Some ter and Joseph Smith’s second counselor, Wil- Hickman’s Brigham Young’s Destroying Angel in regard Mormon historians’ efforts for aca- liam Law, joined in the Nauvoo Expositor 1872, about three decades of his murders and demic neutrality as more subversive than an which proposed to reveal details about Joseph thefts which were either sponsored or ignored apostate’s diatribes. Thus, the Mormon hier- Smith’s polygamous wives and his ordination by Apostle Orson Hyde and President Brig- archy has manifested a patchwork response as theocratic king by the Council of Fifty. ham Young; Fanny Stenhouse’s Expos~ of Po- to academics who tell uncomfortable truths. Exactly a week after Law and Foster obtained lygamy in Utah in 1872 and her husband T. B. For example, Apostle Orson Pratt was a the press to print their expose, Joseph Smith H. Stenhouse’s Rocky Mountain Saints in 1873, much-criticized academic whose ardent be- published an affidavit: "When riding in the about Utah Mormon society; Ann Eliza Webb lief permeated all his works. His printing of stage, I have seen him [Robert D. Foster] put Young’s Wife no. 19 in 1875, the first and only Lucy Mack Smith’s Biographical Sketches of his hand in a womang bosom, and he also expose written by the wife of a Church presi- Joseph Smith in 1853 resulted in the lifted up her clothes." This referred to the dent; John D. Lee’s Confessions in 1877, about hierarchy’s first public condemnation of an Prophet’s travels with his lawyer a year before. his former participation in the Council of academic. Dismissed by Brigham Young for Joseph Smith also privately testified that Wil- Fifty since 1845 and Mountain Meadows decades as a misled intellectual, Professor liam Law had once confessed to adultery. The Massacre of 1857; Emily M. Colburn Austin’s Pratt’s publication of that history and his uncomfortable fact of this belated attack on 1882 Mormonism: or, Life Among the Mormons, theological speculations became the target of these messengers is that the Prophet had tol- of her experiences since her conversion in the first joint declaration by the First Presi- erated their sexual adventures until these men 1830; Sarah B. Pratt and other apostates who dency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles turned against him. contributed to W. Wyl’s Mormon Portraits in on 23 August 1865. They recommended that 1886, primarily about Nauvoo polygamy; Mormons destroy Mother Smith’s history, APOSTATE EXPOSt~S David Whitmer’s 1887 Address to All Believers and threatened excommunication for anyone in Christ, about pre-1834 Mormonism; BEGINNING in October 1.831, Ezra who promoted Pratt’s doctrines. When the Ebenezer Robinson’s "Items of Remem- Quorum of Twelve tried to excommunicate Booth’s letters to the Ohio Star were first in brance," about Nauvoo’s radicalisms in The him, however, there was only one bottom the expose genre of apostate histories. They Return periodical of 188%90; Frank J. line: "If Orson Pratt were chopped into a were reprinted in the first anti-Mormon Cannon’s 1911 Under the Prophet in Utah, thousand pieces," Brigham Young said, book, Eber D. Howe’s 1834 Mormonism Un- about political manipulation by the Church. vailed. Booth’s letters were not only the first "every piece would shout that Mormonism is There is an irony about these usually true." He protected Pratt’s membership in the published expose, but also the first Mormon mean-spirited publications. On the one hand, Church and Quorum. history published by a Mormon. LDS church leaders rightfully condemned Although the joint declaration con- The official History of the Church stated them as apostate. Most of the authors had that Ezra Booth "became an apostate, and demned Orson Pratt’s theology that God had already broken with LDS church authority and all knowledge, his doctrine became the or- wrote: a series of letters, which, by their col- proudly wore the title "Mormon apostate." oring, falsity, and vain calculations to over- thodoxy of twentieth-century Mormon the- The publications were also self-serving. On ology.

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