Volume 41, No. 1

Writing in the mid-1990s, Mormon-watcher Massimo Introvigne made a counterintuitive observation about debates over Book of Mormon historicity among Mormon intellectuals, as compared to analogous debates between Protestant fundamentalists and liberals. Fundamentalists, despite their reputation for being anti-scientific, were “deeply committed to Enlightenment concepts of ‘objective knowledge,’ and ‘truth,’” confident that an impartial view of the data would confirm the historical authenticity of the Bible. Protestant liberals, in contrast, deployed a “post-modern, anti-Enlightenment epistemology” to undermine absolutist readings of the Bible. The opposite dynamic, however, prevailed in the Book of Mormon debates. Liberals publishing with Signature Books—such as Edward Ashment and David P. Wright—were “staunch defenders of the Enlightenment,” with its ideals of disinterested reason and the unfettered search for truth, while conservatives publishing with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) held “the late modernist and post-mod ernist position that knowledge is by no means objective, and that ‘true,’ universally valid, historical conclusions could never be reached.”

William Wine Phelps, an influential Mormon high priest at Nauvoo, Illinois, wrote a long emotional letter on Christmas Day in 1844 which praised Mormonism, the martyred Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Smith’s deceased brothers (Hyrum, Don Carlos, and Samuel), and current Mormon leaders. He also composed pseudonyms for the twelve apostles, the group which assumed the leadership of the Mormon Church following Joseph Smith’s death, pseudonyms which became associated with the twelve men. For example, he described Brigham Young as “the lion of the Lord,” Orson Hyde as “the olive branch of Israel,” and John E. Page as “the sun dial.”

One day when my BYU Greek class was awaiting the arrival of our teacher, Tom Rogers popped his head in the doorway and talked to us for ten or fifteen minutes or so. (One of my fellow students must have been a friend of his.) At that point he was well known for his plays Huebener and Fire in the Bones, which dealt with two conflicted tragic heroes in Mormon history, Helmuth Huebener and John D. Lee. Someone asked him why he wrote about such problematic figures. His answer, as I remember it, was, “Those kinds of situations are just so interesting!”