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 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 au- thorities 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 : 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 , 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. This joint declaration of doctrine by throw the work of the Lord, exposed his the other hand, even traditional LDS histori- weakness, wickedness and folly, and left him the First Presidency and Quorum of the ans and devotional historians today use Twelve lacks the force of scripture for the a monument to his own shame, for the world nearly every one of those apostate publica- to wonder at." contemporary Church. In fact, Apostle Bruce tions as important sources for understanding R. McConkie once publicly condemned as a With only slight variations, that was the what happened in nineteenth-century Mor- response to other famous critics of Mormon- "deadly heresy" the idea that God progresses monism. Why? Because these apostate au- in knowledge, a doctrine proclaimed by the ism, all of whom clearly had a discernible axe thors were knowledgeable insiders about the to grind: Sampson Avard’s court testimony 1865 joint declaration as part of its condem- Mormon past. That’s the irony of trying to nation of Pratt’s teachings on God’s omnisci- about the Danites in 1838, which was pub- dismiss historical information by attacking lished by the state: of Missouri in 1840; John ence. the messenger. In other words, even in the In a similar case, B. H. Roberts, a seventy, C. Bennettg History of the Saints in 1842, extreme case of apostate literature, the mes- which, is best known for its list of Joseph had problems directly involved with the sage is more important and complex than the writing of Church history. In November Smith’s plural wives (it was also the first label you give the messenger. expose by a former general authority); James 1910, Church President Joseph E Smith told the Salt Lake Temple fast meeting that Elder C. Brewster’s To the Money Diggers in 1843, the MORMON ACADEMICS first account of the treasure-search by a Mor- Roberts doubted that Joseph Smith had actu- mon participant; William Law’s Nauvoo Ex- ally received a priesthood restoration from THAT’S why the LDS hierarchy has usu- John the Baptist. Church president Heber J. positor in 1844; Maria and Increase ally been perplexed by Mormon academics VanDeuseng 1847 publication, The Mormon Grant also required B. H. Roberts to censor who have explored uncomfortable dimen- some documents in the seventh volume of Endowment: A Secret Drama, or Conspiracy, in sions of the Mormon experience. In most the Nauvoo-temple, in 1846... ; Lyman Wight’s the History of the Church. Elder Roberts was cases, the label "apostate" does not apply. The furious. "I desire, however, to take this occa- An Address... in 1848, about the theocratic academic may be a Mormon insider, but has Council of Fifty and the succession right of sion of disclaiming any responsibility for the rarely, if ever, participated in the events she mutilating of that very important part of Joseph Smith III; William Marks’s letters to or he examines. However, whether the aca- Zion’s Harbinger in 1853, about the Council of President Young~ Manuscript," Roberts re- demic is a believer or non-believer, she or he plied to President Grant in August 1932,

FEBRUARY 1992 PAGE 13 "and also to say, that while you had the published Huebner, and SUNSTONE pub- luctant stake president to revoke my temple physical power of eliminating that passage lished an article by two BYU professors about recommend due to my publication of "LDS from the History, I do not believe you had the anti-Nazi martyr’s experience. Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, any moral right to do so." Despite such stri- The same year as the Huebner incident, 1890-1904" in Dialogue. In June, Church dent defense of maintaining the integrity of Apostle Ezra Taft Benson took direct action headquarters instructed bishops in Utah, LDS church history, B. H. Roberts received no against Mormon historians. He tried to get Idaho, and Arizona not to allow discussion in formal censure. He remained senior presi- Deseret Book Company to destroy the unsold or other Church meetings of dent of the Seventy until his death in 1933. press run of James B. Allen’s and Glen M. Linda King Newell’s and Valeen Tippetts Contrast the hierarchy’s response to an Leonard’s 1976 Story of the Latter-day Saints. Avery’s biography, Mormon Enigma: Emma ardent disbeliever whose disbelief permeated Financial considerations prohibited a repeti- Hale Smith. In October 1985, Mark Hofmann her historical work. By instructions of tion of the Golden Legacy shredding and the killed two people with bombs as part of his Church headquarters, literary biographer large first edition sold out within a few elaborate scheme of using forged documents Fawn McKay Brodie was excommunicated months. Elder Benson successfully had Des- to manipulate the LDS hierarchy’s paranoia for her publication in 1945 of No Man Knows eret Book refuse to reprint the book for a about Mormonism’s unconventional past. My History: A Biography of Joseph Smith, the decade (despite steady popular demand). His For me, that sesquicentennial decade of Mormon Prophet. Although he refused to read concerns focused on their use of words like tensions in Mormon history ended a little her book, J. Reuben Clark asked the Deseret "communitarian" and "experimental" to de- early. In 1986, LDS Church Archives required News to publish his long review of No Man scribe Church programs, and on their discus- all researchers to sign a form whose wording Knows My History. Nevertheless, her research sion of the American environment which implied a retroactive right of censorship. and analysis raised fundamental questions preceded various revelations. At the same Upon inquiry by archives personnel, Apostle about the founding prophet. Those questions time Elder Benson publicly warned about Boyd K. Packer said that the form was in- had to be addressed in some way by every Mormon historians who "inordinately hu- tended to apply retroactively to my fifteen serious historian thereafter, beginning with manize the prophets of God so that their years of previous research in LDS Archives. I Apostle John A. Widtsoe’s devotional biogra- human frailties become more evident than declined to sign the form and ceased manu- phy in 1951. their spiritual qualities." Elder Benson’s activ- script research there. In 1988 1 resigned as a Compare the above with the treatment of ities in 1976 signaled the turning point in the full professor from Brigham Young Univer- Mormon academics who submerge personal process by which Church historian Leonard sity after several years of quiet conflict with beliefs while exploring the complex Mormon J. Arrington was gradually cut adrift from the Church headquarters and BYU’s administra- past. In 1950, Juanita Brooks and Stanford office of Church Historian. The Story of the tion about my publications of the controver- University published the Mountain Meadows Latter-day Saints had been written by the sial Mormon past. Massacre, for which local Church authorities officially sustained Assistant Church Histo- It’s an old saying that "the past is pro- considered excommunicating her, and for rian and another member of Arrington’s staff. logue." Certainly the 150 years of tension which she was ecclesiastically black-listed The 1980s were an unhappy sesquicen- about the truths of Mormon history have thereafter. In 1958, economic historian tennial of the consequences of emphasizing been prologue to the events of 1991-92. Un- Leonard J. Arrington published Great Basin the unconventional Mormon past. In 1980, aware of the ironic coincidence of dates with Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Church headquarters officially washed its the earlier joint declaration against Orson Saints, 1830-1900, which the Church hands of interpretive Mormon history by Pratt, the Council of the First Presidency and Historian’s Office classified as "Friendly Non- transfernng Leonard J. Arnngton and his Quorum of the Twelve on 23 August 1991 Mormon" for years, even though he was a staff of historians to Brigham Young Univer- issued a declaration against "recent sympo- member of a stake presidency. Nevertheless, sity The position of Church Historian was in sia." The statement obviously referred to the Arnngton was appointed official Church His- limbo. In 1981, Apostle Boyd K. Packer de- Sunstone Symposium a few weeks earlier by torian in 1972 and sustained to that position voted an entire talk to Mormon historians an unmistakable reference to a paper on the by several general conferences. who have an "exaggerated loyalty to the the- program that gave historical analysis of ter- That same year, however, folklorist ory that everything must be told." He criti- rorism against LDS missionaries in Latin Thomas Cheney’s Golden Legacy ran into an cized historians who "destroyed faith" by America. During the next several months, ecclesiastical snag. Church headquarters in- showing the human and fallible characteris- Church headquarters instructed stake presi- structed Brigham Young University Press to tics of prophets. In January 1982, the First dents individually to take various sanctions shred the entire press run of Cheney’s book Presidency formally acknowledged the re- against those who participated in Sunstone due to its inclusion of some of J. Golden lease of Leonard J. Arrington as Church His- forums. In the April 1992 general confer- Kimball’s vulgarisms. Cheney later re-pub- torian, and without fanfare set apart general ence, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks also spoke at lished an expurgated version of the book by authority G. Homer Durham as his succes- length against some historical interpretations a private publisher. sor. In February 1982, Newsweek chronicled of Joseph Smith’s words to the Relief Society In 1976, Apostle Thomas S. Monson in- the tension-filled climate with an article ti- in 1842. Those views were prominent in terw_-ned to stop the performances of BYU tled "Apostles Vs. Historians." Sisters in the Spirit, the University of Illinois professor Thomas S. Roger’s play, Huebner. A year later, general authorities began tak- publication by LDS women historians. The Gestapo had executed this seventeen- ing direct action against historians. In May The saga of Mormon history continues. year-old Mormon for his anti-Nazi activities. 1983 newspapers reported that Apostle Mark The main protagonists are not just historians Elder Monson was concerned that the play E. Petersen had instructed stake presidents to and Church leaders, but also the average could endanger the safety of Mormons in question historians and others who had con- Mormon who has interest in the past. All of what was then Communist East Germany. tributed to Dialogue and SUNSTONE. In May us are making a little bit of history when we Even before the Iron Curtain fell, Rogers later 1985, three apostles gave orders for my re- respond to the Mormon past. ~

PAGE 14 FEBRUARY 1992