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What's New in Mormon History: A Response to Jan Shipps
Richard Lyman Bushman
| No one is better qualified to comment on the state of Mormon history than Jan Shipps. Not only has she been an observer of the Mormon historiographical scene for half a century; she has been one of the most vigorous and influential participants. Her Mormonism broke new ground in the conceptualization of the Mormon past. I meant it when I said for the dust jacket: "This may be the most brilliant book ever written on Mormonism." She is to be believed when she says Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling stands squarely in the tradition of the new Mormon history.1 |
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Shipps did not have the space to say more about the book's place in the other major current in Mormon intellectual life: apologetics. She knows full well the major role played by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS, now absorbed into the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship) at Brigham Young University, whose mission is to demonstrate the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon and to defend the faith wherever it is attacked. Like FARMS, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), an independent organization comprising zealous amateurs and professional academics, sponsors conferences, runs a Web site, and tries to answer virtually every criticism of Mormon claims.2 In addition to these insitutionalized operations, scores of Mormon writers and thinkers collect evidence in support of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Situating Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling in the Mormon apologetic tradition may serve to round out Shipps's illuminating analysis of the book's location in the new Mormon history. |
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One might expect Mormon apologetics to be closely linked to the new Mormon history: both focus on the history of Joseph Smith. Mormon apologists seek to authenticate the miraculous beginnings of Mormonism; the new Mormon history recounts that story along with everything else that happened in Mormonism over the century and three-quarters of its existence. As has been frequently observed, Mormonism is less a set of doctrines than a collection of stories. Apologetics and history writing necessarily overlap. |
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In reality, however, the two developed in quite different environments with quite different outcomes. In her opening sentence, Shipps describes the cultural circumstance from which the new Mormon history emerged. It came about "just as Mormonism itself was moving in from the margins to find a place on the American religious landscape as a respectable belief system and an upstanding faith community."3 The new Mormon historians could put aside their defensiveness and write for both Mormon and general audiences, she is postulating, because they no longer had to be on guard. Amiable relations between Mormon and non-Mormon historians developed just as Mormons of all kinds were leaving their enclaves in the Great Basin and finding places in non-Mormon neighborhoods around the country. Mormons got along perfectly well with their new neighbors, and Mormon historians made peace with their fellow historians. It was as unsuitable for them to do battle with other historians as it was for Mormons to fight with the people next door. The new Mormon history was a peace mission, expressing a desire for intellectual commerce with a nation that had once seemed like a wall of enmity to Utah Mormons. |
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