Revelations In Context -- How cool is that?

Last week, Ardis alerted us to the unveiling of Revelations In Context at lds.org (link here).

At the website are a series of essays providing historical context to sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. It appears as articles are added, they’re featured on the main page, and older articles will be available in a list at the bottom of the page.

I was grateful for Ardis’ blog post at Keepa’ because I personally find lds.org a bit maddening when I am trying to find something. I don’t browse the site, and I never would have known to look for this new page. Now that I’ve found it, however, I’m loving it!

For yesterday’s Gospel Doctrine lesson, for instance, I was able to read about Martin Harris and the Three Witnesses in two separate posts. (I’m not the teacher, just a lowly student, but I was able to point out Martin’s huge contributions to the work of the restoration as the classroom banter focused on his misstep in requesting the 116-page manuscript.)

Ardis reports about the historical articles:

Written by historians – real live actual working professional historians who are also faithful members of the Church – drawing on the formidable resources of the Joseph Smith Papers project – illustrated by photographs from the Church History Library – linked to images of the original (or earliest extant) written revelations – footnoted to suit even the giddiest lover of footnotes – Revelations in Context explains what was going on at the time and and in the place when a revelation was given.

These essays identify the people involved, and tell of religious and civil history, about social customs, and the state of science and technology, and the geography related to the revelations, and whatever else is helpful to our understanding. They are long enough to be thorough, yet brief enough to be practical. The writing is authoritative yet accessible to all.

And, wonder of wonders, they are, or very shortly will be, linked to the Gospel Doctrine lesson manuals online, so that teachers and class members alike can be easily directed to these resources we have so long wished for.

This is really cool stuff, and will certainly aid me in my study of the Doctrine and Covenants this year. I’ve read about half the articles so far, and I’ve been impressed with their readability (both in terms of length and complexity) and thoroughness. In the Martin Harris article, for instance, I read about Martin’s switching out Joseph’s seer stone for another and, upon finding Joseph could not use the substituted stone, confessed that he was trying to put at rest nay-sayers. I’d never read that story before and was pleased to find it in the church-published article.

As I’ve thought about how to study the Doctrine and Covenants this year, one thing I wanted to do was get a better sense of the history of the revelations, and these articles on the church’s website will be a big help to that. Of course, the articles owe a great deal to the Joseph Smith Papers project and to the Church History library.

Learning our history

I’ve enjoyed a discussion in the comments of a recent post over at BCC. The post itself was about teaching the methods Joseph used when translating the Book of Mormon, and the subsequent discussion has touched on how we Mormons learn about our own history. There seem to be two broad points of view that have emerged in the discussion (which I will now simplify in such a way that proponents of either might not recognize them anymore…):

1. I learned my church history from Sunday School and seminary classes and learned only the very basic and most sterile view of the restoration and events surrounding it.

2. Somehow I learned not only the fundamental founding stories of the restoration but also the complexity of our history. This knowledge may have come from Sunday School and seminary lessons or from my parents or from my own exploration or perhaps from further study I’ve done as an adult.

There is a view advanced by some that the church, by “sanitizing” a history, has either misled or oversimplified or out-and-out lied to its flock in order to teach a certain faith-promoting point of view. I do not share that view simply because that has not been my experience.

I am a convert to the church. I was baptized with my parents at age eight (almost nine), so I had the benefit of hearing the missionary lessons AND “growing up” in the church. I attended Primary for nearly a year prior to my baptism (I was the first in my family to go to church), and I continued to attend MIA (back in the day), priesthood, Sunday School and seminary. Our family was not completely diligent in holding Family Home Evenings throughout my youth, but we did often enough and regularly enough that I knew what Home Evening was and how it worked. And I have fond memories of many of our family activities. I’m old enough that church was in the morning and in the afternoon on Sundays, and Primary and Relief Society were held during the week. Our family car made the half-hour trip to church every day of the week – often twice – except the rare Saturday that there wasn’t a stake meeting, a youth activity or some sports thing going on.

By the time I got to BYU as a freshman, I was not unfamiliar with some of the anti-Mormon stories. I’d heard some of the arguments of the day against the church (some from my well-meaning “Christian” friends, some from politically active folks who worried about blacks and the priesthood). Perhaps because I came to the church as a convert in a convert family, I was not steeped in a more narrow view of our history, so if I heard something new (like Joseph’s use of a seer stone), I didn’t worry about it; I just filed it away with other things I’d learned.

I took a church history class from our mission president the summer before I went to BYU and there I was likely exposed to a few new things about Joseph and his experience. Our instructor was Kenneth Godfrey, whom I didn’t realize at the time was quite a church history scholar. I also benefited from a rather progressive Sunday School teacher in my last years in high school; she challenged us to consider our testimonies and consider what we knew and could know. She gave me new ways to think about general authorities and how they taught. She was completely faithful, but also frank in her discussions in our class.

When I got to BYU, I had a roommate whose father had been leaving the church for years. My roommate was well-versed in the foibles of our history, and he was anxious to find resolution to many of his questions. To my good fortune, he included me in his search for answers, and we spent a good deal of time at the Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. Ultimately, he and I ended up in different places. Although we both left for our missions on the same day, he left his mission after six months unable to look himself in the mirror and truthfully testify that he knew Joseph was a prophet. My reaction was the opposite. I am still impressed with his integrity, and I cannot account for our different outcomes, only my own. I found peace in my study of doctrine and was ok with some ambivalence along the way as it related to specific historical questions.

Over time, I’ve been greatly encouraged by efforts by the church to make more real history more available. And I’ve sought out and enjoyed reading more scholarly efforts from Bushman and Arrington and Givens and others. The relatively recent (well, several years old, now) work by Walker, Turley, and Leonard on Mountain Meadows was far more satisfying to me than Juanita Brooks’ treatment that I read in my freshman year at the Y, though Brooks’ account was also illuminating and helpful as far as it went.

Recent online conversations have caused me to think again about how I’ve talked about church history with my children. I could do more. I have had the approach of waiting for their questions and then to answer as honestly as I can, and reaffirming my own faith. Perhaps there is value in my being more proactive than I have been; I don’t know.

When I have taught church history in Sunday School or institute classes or in priesthood, I’ve also done my best to represent truth as I understand it. I have generally sought supplemental information, and, when I’ve felt it appropriate, I’ve introduced it into my lessons. I try to measure such introductions against the needs and interests of my class.

My testimony is not as simple as saying “I know the Book of Mormon is true; therefore I know that Joseph was a prophet; therefore the church is true.” In fact, that is absolutely not my own path to testimony.

But my testimony is pretty simple. I do know from my own experience and in my own way that God is in His heaven. The scriptures, including the Book of Mormon, have taught me doctrine that has blessed my life. The fruits of the restoration – the priesthood and its ordinances, including temple ordinances – have been the source of great spiritual strength for me. All of those things point me toward the atonement and its remarkable power and grace.

Against that backdrop, I’ve yet to be overcome by historical issues. I realize my approach does not work for everyone. I have members of my family who have left the church over unresolved issues regarding our history, and one needn’t look far on the internet to find many others who are in the same boat. I read a comment a while ago that wondered what a TBM like me would have to learn to turn him away from the church, and I don’t have an answer to that question. I suppose the reason is that my testimony is rooted in the gospel, not the church; it is rooted in the Savior and His redeeming power, including the ordinances of His priesthood, not in the history of the restoration as I understand it, nor even the historicity of the scriptures. It’s not that I doubt the history or the scriptures’ historicity; those things are not the most important thing to me.

But I’m happy to learn more about them as I go along.

Teaching truth (to our kids)

I had a conversation with a reader on another blog post a couple of weeks ago. He asked about my thoughts on how to prepare our kids for “surprises” in church history. His question caused me to think about how I teach my kids the gospel and how I teach others (for instance now I teach occasionally in the High Priests group, and I share teaching of the Gospel Essentials class; in the past I’ve taught seminary and institute).

When it comes to exposing students (or our kids) to apparent inconsistencies in church history, here are some thoughts:

1. The setting matters. I would deal with this completely differently in an institute class or a High Priests group (where I’m more likely to be open) than in a Gospel Essentials class (where my charge is to teach basic doctrines). That said, I still accept the mandate to “teach from the manual” so I’m not interested in declaring whatever arcane historical things I’ve learned at the expense of the scheduled lesson. (I’ve blogged before about what teaching from the manual means to me, so I won’t belabor that point here.)

2. Age matters. I think whatever we teach our kids, we need to be aware of where they are. Just as the facts-of-life talk can be age appropriate, so can other issues, and I think church history issues are like that.

3. We don't have to know everything. I have had unanswered questions over time. And I think it's ok to admit to our kids or our students that we don't have every answer, and that we are looking. It's especially valuable if we can demonstrate that we have resolved some issues, but have other unresolved ones, suggesting that issue resolution takes time.

3. Encourage questions. I really believe that it's ok to ask questions. But it's also good to wait for answers, and to seek them in reliable places. (I acknowledge that one man's reliable may be another's biased source...)

4. Remember what you know. It's good for us, our students and our kids to remember the things we do know (or feel, or have faith in). For me, the sweet spirit of the temple is what helped me to hang on as I tried to resolve open issues about Joseph Smith, for instance. When we keep moving forward without complete knowledge, I think that's walking by faith, and it's ok.

5. The more we know the more we know what we don't know. Elder Theodore Burton taught me this principle on my mission years ago. As our testimony grows, the border between what we know and what we don't know also grows. And that's ok.

Some of my kids had no interest in talking about these things with me. Carlfred Broderick observed that these issues just don't matter to everyone, and that's ok. I have other family members for whom history issues were highly significant. Not every student will respond the same way, and for that reason, I think we need to be prudent in how we proceed as teachers.

For me, my period of discovery of church history matters began after high school. Having supportive and positive (but not dictatory) voices was helpful to me as I found my own way through it.