The History of Mormonism

Kelly  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then, talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. On December 23, 1805, Joseph Smith, Jr. was born in Vermont, the fifth of 11 children born to Joseph Smith, Sr, and Lucy Mack Smith. The family, facing financial difficulties, moved frequently throughout New England, eventually heading to Palmyra, in upstate New York, where they farmed and ran a downtown store. Palmyra offered more than just financial opportunity. That region of New York State became known as the burned-over district in the early 19th century, as the explosion of religious revivals, and creation of new religious movements during the Second Great Awakening, made it seem like the area had caught fire. In September of 1823, the younger Joseph Smith, while up late in prayer, witnessed a vision of an angel dressed in white, who informed him that there were gold plates buried nearby with records on them of the continent's former inhabitants. Smith had searched for buried treasure before, but after this vision, he claimed that he had found a box containing the plates, but that the angel told him he could not yet have the plates, because he sought them to obtain riches. In January of 1827, Smith married Emma Hale, the seventh of eight children born to Isaac and Elizabeth Hale of Harmony, Pennsylvania. The Hales did not approve of the marriage, and so Emma married Smith against their wishes. It was with Emma that Joseph Smith finally said that he recovered the gold plates, in September of 1827. Smith described the plates as, "10 times better than I expected," but he instructed that no one else, including Emma, would be allowed to see them. With multiple scribes, one of them Emma, Joseph Smith translated the writings on the plates. That translation was published in Palmyra in 1830, as the "Book of Mormon." The Book of Mormon was not an immediate bestseller, but it did launch a new religion. On April 6, 1830, several dozen people joined Joseph Smith, in Fayette, New York, to organize the church. Smith and Oliver Cowdery ordained each other as the first two elders, before followers were baptized into the church of Christ in a nearby creek. Emma joined the church that June. But during her baptism, a mob hurled taunts at her, and the day ended with Joseph Smith's arrest. It would not be the last time that a mob would attack the Mormon faithful. In the face of increased hostility in New York, Smith led his followers to Kirtland, Ohio, 20 miles northeast of Cleveland, where missionary Parley Pratt had converted a third of the town's residents to Mormonism. In 1831, Smith proclaimed a home for his followers, which he called "Zion," in Jackson County, Missouri, and within two years, 1200 Mormons resided there. The quick influx of the Mormon faithful upset the residents of the area, who violently expelled the Mormons from the county. Relocation to a neighboring county didn't stop the violence, however. In an attempt to stem the hostilities, Missouri authorities created the county of Caldwell as an enclave set apart for Mormons. In 1838, Joseph Smith relocated to Far West, Missouri in Caldwell County, moving the headquarters of the church there. In Far West, Smith received the revelation to rename the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the name it still goes by today. Later in 1838, residents of Carroll County, which bordered Caldwell, voted to expel any Mormons living in their county, launching the Mormon Missouri War. After several weeks of armed fighting, Missouri Governor Lilburne Boggs signed an executive order for Missouri militia men to quell the rebellion, stating, "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state." A few days later, a group of Missourians opened fire on hundreds of Mormons, killing 17 men and boys. Around 10,000, Mormons fled to Illinois, led by Brigham Young, where they established the city of Nauvoo. Smith joined them upon escaping from prison in Missouri. It was in Nauvoo that Joseph Smith dictated a revelation in July, 1843, that became known as Doctrine and Covenants 132. It was that revelation that introduced the doctrine of plural marriage, or polygamy. Within the revelation were commandments specifically directed to Emma. "And I command mine handmade, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment, she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord." Even so, Emma threatened divorce, relenting only when Joseph agreed to take no further plural wives, after he had already taken over 30 wives. In June, 1844, Smith, who was then Mayor of Nauvoo, declared martial law after ordering the destruction of the printing press for the anti Mormon Nauvoo Expository newspaper. Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram were imprisoned on the charge of treason against the state for declaring martial law, when a violent mob broke into the prison, and assassinated them. In 1846, Brigham Young led a large contingent of Mormons west. In July of 1847, Young, who would be named church president later that year, reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake, with an advanced party, and he determined that that is where they would settle. At the time, the region was outside of the borders of the United States. But that quickly changed as the United States acquired the land from Mexico in 1848. Not all Mormons followed Brigham Young west, and in April of 1853, a group of Mormons who rejected both Young's leadership and the doctrine of polygamy, founded the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Wisconsin. By 1860, the reorganized church was led by Joseph Smith, III, and headquartered in Independence, Missouri. According to its own count, there were over 17 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in over 31,000 wards and branches as of December 31, 2022. Joining me now to discuss the history of the LDS church is Dr. Benjamin E. Park, Associate Professor of History at Sam Houston State University, and author of, "American Zion: a New History of Mormonism," where you can read much more of this piece of American history. First though, this is, "Oh My Father," a hymn with lyrics by Eliza R. Snow, who was the second general president of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Snow was also a plural wife of Joseph Smith, and then later of Brigham Young, and sister to the fifth LDS president, Lorenzo Snow. A choir sang, "Oh, My Father" at Eliza's funeral in 1887, and the New York Times ran an obituary on her death, calling her, "one of the central figures of the Mormon galaxy."

Hi, Ben, thanks so much for speaking with me today.

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  11:51  
I'm glad to be here.

Kelly  11:52  
 I loved this book. My master's degree is in religious studies. So I was like harkening back to my own scholarly work. So I want to talk a little bit about, this isn't the first book you've written about Mormonism, but this is a an overview, a long history. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why you chose to write this long history and how you do that.  It seems like a lot of work to take, you know, hundreds of years of history, however many millions of Mormons there are now, and try to figure out like how you're gonna put that into one book? 

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  12:26  
Yeah, it's a great question. It's, and the answer is there's no right way to do it. And it was a stupid project to set out. So I'm actually glad that you enjoyed the end result. But I mean, it was it's, it's a grandiose preposterous task to try to write such a large history covering so many people. I wrote it I mean, the most basic answer is I wrote because I was asked to and the press, who published a previous book of mine, "King of Nauvoo," asked me if I'd be interested in writing a general survey on the church. At first, I was hesitant for a number of reasons. But then I figured that there was a story here to tell that I was interested in telling. Most notably, I think there were two main points I tried to get across in this book. One is that to understand American religious history, writ large, Mormonism provides a useful prism through which to view that development. And second, having been raised within the Mormon tradition, I witnessed a lot of contestation and debate within, you know, the faith, a contestation that I rarely saw in the histories of Mormonism. And so I wanted to demonstrate in the book, which was my aim to show that modern Mormonism is the production of 200 years of culture wars and fighting both inside and outside, and that, in a way, this helps make sense of our very fractured present. So I'm giving a historical genealogy to our currently divided world through the lens of the Mormon experience. Now, how I do that, of course, is a bit more difficult. "With a wing and a prayer," is probably the shortest answer. But the more technical answer is, I wanted to make this book approachable for people who might not be interested in the individual trees of the story, but are more interested in the broader forest. Right? So I tried to make it character driven. I tried to, you know, have some narrative arcs that you find both within subsections of chapters, as well as arcs that cover multiple chapters with certain individuals. I tried to make each chapter a short story with, you know, a climax and tension and characters who push the story along. I also recognized that it was that in trying to do that, it means it couldn't be a comprehensive history. And that was a sad realization that I had early on, that I wasn't going to be able to dive into everything that I wanted to, let alone, everything that I could dive into, and that every single paragraph I wrote, contains ideas and topics that could be expanded into entire chapters, if not books. And so I know there's gonna be many people who know Mormon history and are going to read this book and like, "Well, why didn't you talk about this?" And in some instances, I could say, "Well, I did write about that. And they got cut on the left on the cutting room floor, because I just didn't have room." And in other cases, I just, it didn't fit into the broader story. So I had to be very selective, I had to be as efficient as possible. And as a result, you know, things get left out. But I hope there is a not a comprehensive, but at least a compelling story that remained.

Kelly  15:47  
I mean, I literally kept coming back to it and being like, "Oh, what happens next?" So I think you got there. 

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  15:52  
 Well, thank you. That's so great to hear.

Kelly  15:54  
So I want to talk a little bit about the struggle for a historian in writing about any living faith, but especially a living faith where even the founding of the faith is within historic record. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, how you do it, how you do it as a historian, how you do it respectfully, and you know, sort of talk us through that?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  16:20  
Yeah, it's a great question. Charles Dickens once wrote that the great heresy of Joseph Smith was he claimed a story of angels in an age of railroads, that in a sense that were like this religion is to research to be able to take seriously. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they have centuries under their belt to be able to lay back on and when you're writing about Mormonism, it's both so recent, and so relevant to people. These are stories that hold the sacred function within the Latter Day Saint tradition. There are some arguments that I don't fully agree with, but are somewhat persuasive, that Mormonism doesn't have a theology, it has a history, and that what most believers are most interested in is the story of Joseph Smith and the prophets who have followed him. And so I wanted to both give respect to that, because you can't understand Mormonism without understanding why it has been found so compelling by millions of people across the globe. And so I tried to capture that, but it's hard to it's hard to just put it in a common language within a secular narrative. And it's also important to divorce that story from a devotional hagiographic account, because otherwise, you're going to lose a lot of people who are on that side, we're like, "Well, is this just reproducing an orthodox history?" And so I try to both demonstrate what makes the faith so powerful to believers, while at the same time placing it within its everyday context. And, and at some points, those two things are in competition, and you can never mesh those things. At other points, I think you can't understand one without the other, that to understand what made Mormonism so compelling to people, you need to understand, you know, the historical era in which it was taking place, because the era is shaping the questions that the faith tried to answer. And so to understand those two way, dialogue is quite crucial. Now, of course, there are going to be some believers, who are not going to see their religion in this book. And that's fine, I did not try to capture that. There are going to be some people who say that this church is driven by direct revelation from God to prophets, and that that's the most important thing that drives this change. As a historian, that's theological baggage that I can't particularly write about. That's in a different realm of what I'm trying to do. And so I try to be both reflective of that internal dialogue, while also being cognizant that I need to provide some explanations that would reach people outside of those faith commitments. And I would say that one of my favorite phrases that I've gotten for the book or feedback was an early pre publication review that came from Kirkus that, that called the book, "respectable, but not uncritical," and if I could write that on my business card, I would because that's the very type of thing I try to accomplish.

Kelly  19:42  
So this feels like an incredibly meta question, but let's talk about the relationship between the Mormon Church itself and history. So you talk about from the very beginning, there were historians. You talk a lot in some places about the historians and the struggles that they had within the church. Could you talk a little bit about out that in the way that it becomes a really complicated relationship?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  20:05  
Yeah, on the very day that the LDS Church was founded, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation that they claim is the voice of God speaking to His followers, saying, "There shall be a record kept among you." So from day one of the Mormon faith, there has been a call to have history. The first historian is called shortly afterward. And ever since then, with very few breaks, there has been an official church historian within the Latter Day Saints  tradition. At the same time that gathering records and producing historical accounts has also been a crucial part of the faith. There has been a historian's office within Mormonism, a literal place that ever since, wherever the church would go, you could go to a literal historian's office that where they're gathering those records that they feel are important, because it's to be part of the church meant to be preserving these records of his sacred calling. At the same time, that same revelation in 1830 said that those records that shall be kept, shall call Joseph Smith, a prophet and seer, and revelator, someone who is called of God. In other words, that record should not just be kept, but should be kept for a purpose. And the purpose of that historical record is to attest to the divinity of that position. So on the one hand, historians are going to praise the fact that Mormons are record keepers, and there's going to be a lot of, you know, clasping hands of celebration that that record has. I talked to many people who are historians of different types of religious organizations. Most are jealous of the record collections that Mormonism produces. You can write a compelling history of top to bottom, bottom to top of Mormonism through these records. At the same time, there's always going to be an inherent conflict between church histories that are meant to attest to Joseph Smith's prophetic calling, as well as those who follow him, versus historians who take a more critical eye, critical in the sense of trying to take a non judgmental approach to understanding that history. At some time, at some points, church leaders are happy to see that neutral history as long as it's respectful. At other points, they're not happy with it. And so throughout the last 200 years, you have a very complicated relationship between the Mormon Church and the historians who tried to document it. You have several moments where key historians, including the first church historian, run afoul of church leaders, and that first church historian gets excommunicated from the faith. More recently, you had a string of significant Mormon scholars and historians who were excommunicated in the last few decades, because they challenged orthodox narratives and threatened the church's main truth claims as found through history. Now, that relationship ebbs and flows over time, sometimes it's more positive, sometimes it's more tense. And so just like any religious tradition, that's going to be a tension that consistently works out in relation to whatever's going on in the world around it.

Kelly  23:15  
So we could have made this whole thing about women and I thought about doing that, but I want to start, I have a few questions about women in the Mormon faith, but I want to start with Emma Smith. She is, I mean, this whole podcast could have just been about Emma Smith. She's fascinating. So I wonder if you could talk about her, about her importance in growing the faith from the very beginning. But then, you know, she ends up sort of in the sect, I don't know if that's the term that we want to use sect denomination of Mormonism that is not the one that's the main LDS church. So could you talk a little bit about that? What's going on there and her centrality?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  23:53  
I think it's fair to say that Emma Smith helped shape Mormonism even before the official Latter Day Saints Church was founded. I make an argument in the book that Joseph Smith's relationship to Emma Smith shapes the way he views what I call the gold plates project that results in the Book of Mormon. Emma Smith is there from the founding years of the church. She drives Joseph Smith on a number of issues like what eventually becomes the word of wisdom. The dietary code for the Mormons comes as a direct result of Emma Smith's prodding over tobacco. You have Emma Smith framing the first hymnal for the Latter Day Saint tradition in 1835. And then in Nauvoo, you have Emma Smith driving a Relief Society, which was a women's organization pushing for change, and a political space space that you rarely saw women operated in antebellum America. At the same time, Emma Smith was the foremost opponent of polygamy in Nauvoo, where at some point she had a general and very reluctant agreement with the polygamous project, as much as she was understood about it, and then at another point she outright rejected it. And it's still impossible to know how much she knew, how much Joe Smith let her in on, how many of the 30 to 40 wives Joseph Smith took in polygamy, he informed Emma about. It was in response to Emma Smith's opposition to polygamy that Joe Smith dictated a revelation that is now known as Doctrine Covenants 132, which provided the doctrinal foundation for polygamy that had been used by the faith ever since, that still frames not just marriage, but gender relations in the church. All of that is in response to Emma Smith's protesting. So you get both Emma Smith framing the Latter Day Saints experience, defining what it means to be a Latter Day Saint woman, and also originating a protest movement within the Latter Day Saints tradition that exists until this day. And further, after Joe Smith dies, Emma Smith has a foundational disagreement with Brigham Young over a number of things, including polygamy. She does not follow Brigham Young and a lot of the Latter Day Saints out west to Utah, and eventually her son, Joe Smith III, is the founding prophet of a of a new church, what eventually becomes known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, later change to the Community of Christ, as they are known today, a rival sect. And Brigham Young institutes both a number of policies and ideas in response to Emma Smith's protest. And that complicated legacy has followed Emma's death, all the way up to the present, where sometimes you have Latter Day Saints who are anxious to find Joseph Smith, a loving husband and a traditional family who want to highlight his relationship with Emma, and others who see Emma as an apostate and someone who did not follow the church and therefore should not be cherished. I, in my previous book, "Kingdom of Nauvoo," where I just talked about the Nauvoo period, one critique of that book that was written by an apologetic organization that tried to defend the church against what they felt were some unfair stories of my of my book, said that "Kingdom of Nauvoo" was the most pro-Emma book wrote in several decades, and they meant that as a criticism. I took that as a badge of honor, because I think Emma Smith represents a lot of these tensions that are at the heart of the Mormon tradition, and whether or not that's reflected in Orthodox traditional narratives.

Kelly  27:41  
One of the other really fascinating pieces about the role of women in the Mormon church is their relationship with the women's suffrage movement. And, you know, especially the relationship between Emmeline Wells and the suffrage movement, they end up with the vote very early at times. Could you talk some about that?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  28:04  
Yeah,as I'm sure many of your listeners know, this debate over women, women's suffrage is a key issue from the 1840s on in America. And that, of course, touches on the Mormons and the Mormons both take part in as well as reject the broader feminist movement in America at that time in some respects. But it becomes a key issue in the early 1870s, when the federal government decides that they are going to finally crack down on polygamy in Utah, that they saw it as a relic of barbarism. In fact, when the Republican Party was founded in the 1850s, they said that their agenda was to destroy the, the twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy. Once they abolished slavery in the Civil War, they turned their attention to polygamy. And one of the ways that they thought that they could could end and polygamy would be to enfranchise women in Utah, because if we just grant women the vote, grant women the autonomy they need, they will turn out those misogynist polygamous patriarchs and reform society. This kind of based on a long standing Victorian era sense of women up on a pedestal who can change you know, society through their persuasive powers and morality. Mormon women are like, "Heck, yes, let us vote." And so in 1871, the Utah legislature passes a suffrage law. And then women act on it just a few months later becoming the first women in America to act on a on a woman's suffrage law. Wyoming passes a law a little before it, but they don't act until later it's it gets New Jersey has their own thing but yada yada yada. Just know that Utah women were one of the earliest to act on this woman suffrage law. You get a national journalist who responds, "What a juxtaposition that from these Mormon women, we get both polygamy and suffrage." And you don't see that. And so these Mormon women, these activists have close relations with Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, and other of these other national suffragists. However, much to the chagrin of national politicians, Mormon women don't then use that suffrage to overturn the patriarchs. It turns out Mormon women were, you know, still voting in lockstep with the Mormon church, and many ended up defending polygamy. And so a decade later, politicians declared a failed experiment, and in one of the anti polygamy legislation, they revoke women's right to vote in Utah, because they just said, "Well, if a man has five wives, and we give those five wives right to vote, that's just giving the man six votes, his own and his five wives'. So we're not we're not going to grant those women the chance just to be pawns of the Mormon patriarchs." And so what's fascinating is out of this era, you get born this twin allegiance, both to suffrage from these women who are some of the most profound robust defenses of women's suffrage, in the same newspapers and publications in which they are providing profound robust defenses of polygamy. And those two things are at the heart of the Mormon suffrage experience. And it also reflects the paradox of the Mormon religious world where these women are often very creative, smart, powerful, energized activists who are firmly committed to the patriarchal institution of Mormonism. Now, of course, I will say that there are plenty of women who dissent from the Latter Day Saint tradition, as well as during this time that you get a strong and robust tradition of women who break away and denounce polygamy and denounce Mormonism as well. And all those things kind of grew together. And one of the things I tried to do in the book is highlight the diversity of this experience, noting the ironies and trying to place them within the broader context of these women's debates in America.

Kelly  32:11  
Mormonism is this American grown religion, it's born in America. And then they have to flee the United States in order to practice, and then the United States comes in and takes over the land that they just fled to. And there's this sort of ongoing tension throughout this history that you write about, between the church wanting to retain the things that makes it unique, and wanting and sometimes needing to adapt to be part of mainstream American culture. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that tension, how it plays out over time?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  32:47  
Yeah, so for much of the 19th century, Mormons defined themselves as in opposition to what they see as a corrupt and degraded American society, mostly based on issues of polygamy, and theocracy. Once they give up those twin pillars, theocracy and polygamy, in the 1890s, at least publicly, they start a long and uneven dance with American culture in which they tried to assimilate enough in American society to be granted the rights and privileges and obligations as an American denomination, while at the same time not conceding on what they feel all are their core identities, or their core values and doctrines. And so throughout the 20th century, you see this very complicated and very nuanced and often tenuous relationship between the Mormon tradition and American culture. In some ways, Mormons become fully American, and they do all they can to emphasize that Americanness. They embrace Boy Scouts. They take part, many take part in the two party system. They embrace the consumerism that is that drives much of American society. But they're also, especially certain leaders, terrified that they may be giving up too much, that they are conceding some of their fundamental values in return for acceptance. So you will get moments of retrenchment or backlash, especially on topics like gender, and race for a long time that they feel we need to maintain the firm boundaries between us and them. And as a result, you get some debates within the Mormon tradition between those who think we can assimilate more on some topics or less on others. And you see many, many activists who tried to petition for more change, and leaders who say, "No, this would be too much of assimilation, and therefore we are going to cut off that threat. I think one of the key moments of this and that is in the 1930s, which I argue in the book is really the decade that created modern Mormonism, and it fits into the broader American debates between fundamentalism and modernism. And it showed that there were limits of how far the church was going to go on conceding on some topics like intellectual issues and philosophy and history. And we're going to retrench and maintain our fundamental value. So using the same language that was often used by evangelicals and fundamentalists throughout the nation, as well. And those are tensions that remain all the way up to the present to where today, the Latter Day Saints Church is an increasingly global church. It has far more members outside the United States than in, but it's never fully divorced from the American culture in which it was birthed. And it's still framed by a lot of these American issues. And so I think you both need to understand the understand America, you have to understand the Mormon experience. But to understand Mormonism, you also have to understand these broader American issues that are shaping it. 

Kelly  36:06  
So one of the things that also happens over time, especially in the latter half of the 20th century is the increasing bureaucracy of the Mormon church. I mean, it's always a fairly complicated structure from the beginning. But it becomes more and more complicated, and that allows the church to do some incredible things, to grow really quickly, to build up its bank reserves, all of that. But it also has the effect of silencing certain people, of not allowing women as much of a voice, for instance. So could you talk a little bit about that, why they thought it was necessary to make those moves, but also what the outcome of that is?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  36:49  
Even during Joseph Smith's era, there is a need to bureaucratize the faith, because otherwise, there's gonna be no consistency, there's going to be no stability, especially as you grow. So as early as 1835, five years after the church's founding, Joe Smith is creating councils that are going to oversee the face organization. Those councils are going to exponentially grow and modernize over the next two centuries. As the church becomes much more global, as it gains 10s, then hundreds, then 1000s of members, and then eventually hundreds of 1000s of members and millions of members of the 20th century, you're gonna need ways to maintain both purity of doctrine and practices throughout the church, as well as safeguards to make sure that the faith remains tethered to the primary organization. Perhaps the best example of this is in the 1960s and in the 1970s, when the church, like many religions in the post World War II era experiences that explosion of converts and really grows exponentially throughout the world. And they realize we need some streamlining system that is going to maintain our ideas and practices no matter where you are. And so they introduce a policy known as correlation, which means that all of our lessons, all of our practices, all of our events, our positions are going to be the same whether you are in Salt Lake City or in South Africa, to the point of where if you attend a Sunday school lesson on the second Sunday of December, whether you're in Los Angeles, California or Singapore, you're going to be covering the same scriptures that week. Now, there's obviously clear benefits to that because it makes sure that you have a consistent project, right. This is part of a much broader bureaucratization globalization project that America is pioneering throughout the 20th century. I think it's not a coincidence that if you were to find where Mormonism is growing the quickest, in Africa, it's the same places where there's growing number of McDonald's in the same areas, right? It's the same type of cultural colonialism going everywhere. At the same time, it grants a much more narrow boundaries for what people can say and do. Because once you correlate to Mormonism's message, it defines things that don't fit within that message. And so while Latter Day Saint leaders envisioned a streamlining and unification of Mormon discourse in the 1960s, with the correlation movement, in reality it had sprung lots of countering messages. So you get a number of new periodicals a number of new organizations, dissent movements, who are trying to present and represent and project ideas that they feel are not being captured in the mainstream message, especially when the mainstream message is matching a dogmatic and theological projection of what the church wants the faith to be then, rather than what it actually was. And perhaps one of the most cogent examples of this is, of course, its history. As part of this correlated message, the church is going to present a very correlated version of its past, a past that doesn't really match the historical record, because it matches more of a dogmatic image of what you want that record to be. And so when historians start correcting that record, and presenting alternate histories, they get in trouble, because not only are their histories different, but they're challenging that correlated message. And that's where you get some of the central tensions of the modern church, between what the main correlated message is, and what some of the dissenting voices are proposing in response.

Kelly  40:48  
Well, I could ask a million questions, but I think I'm just going to tell people now that they should go read the book. So how can people get a copy of the book?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  40:55  
The book should be available at every independent seller as well as those, when we're talking about corporatized, a number of corporatized booksellers online. There's a number of independent presses that I strongly recommend. Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City will send you signed copies, mail them wherever you are. Otherwise, wherever you get your books, and I hope you enjoy them.

Kelly  41:17  
Excellent. Was there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  41:22  
No, I just hope that people can come away from reading the history of Mormonism to understand not just the faith itself, but also to understand the world that created that faith and why that story is important to understand the world that we're in today. We're in a very divided society with cacophonous voices offering dissenting views and I think the Mormon story is one piece of that puzzle to help us understand how we got here.

Kelly  41:52  
Ben, thank you so much. I loved the book and I've really enjoyed speaking with you.

Dr. Benjamin E. Park  41:56  
It's been an honor.

Teddy  44:12  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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