Content preview - You need a premium account to view this content.
Why Are We Here in New England:
a Personal View of Church History
Keith W. Perkins
Last fall we decided, in the Department of Church History and Doctrine, to adopt a new direction, one that would give our faculty an opportunity to become more professional.
Our plan is to retrace Church history by visiting all the major sites associated therewith, and to have formal papers presented in each area. Following each symposium we intend to publish the proceedings in a monographic series through the Department of Church History and Doctrine. This symposium, which we expect will be the first of many, is a result of that decision.
In determining where we would go for our first annual Church History and Doctrine Symposium, New England seemed the logical place. This was the birthplace of the Church, since it is the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Our plan is to be in Arizona next year to visit Latter-day Saint and other western history sites, and in the future to retrace Church history to other major historical areas.
Several questions ought to be answered in determining the direction we will take in these symposia. The basic question, which I have asked myself many times, is, "How do you write and teach Church History?" Many historians, and some General Authorities, have addressed this question.
Several approaches can be taken to establish a philosophy of history. Leonard J. Arrington has said:
The challenge of writing religious history is an old one .... Was the primary purpose of such history to be faith-promoting? Should it ignore or leave out items that did not fit the purpose? Should the less-than-admirable activities of religious leaders be mentioned?...Are historians well advised to abandon that which they can get hold of only in part and with the greatest difficulty, namely, the spiritual and supernatural, in order to deal with mundane topics like changing administrations, the construction of chapels, and the establishment of new congregations?
Another writer, William Mulder, advocated more than one way to look at Church history:
I think I have been saying that there is room in Mormon historical writing for several angles of historical vision, certainly for at least a dual interpretation of "faithful history." The historian as believer must be faithful to his religious assumptions, his vision of man' s life as a spiritual quest; the historian as a skeptic must be faithful to his secular assumption, his view of man's life as a striving not always so illuminated.... Perhaps choosing one's angle of historical vision is, ultimately, as mysterious as choosing a wife: logic has little to do with it. The hope is that, once the choice has been made, we have the temperament to live with it, and in this there is no more guarantee for the faithful historian than for the maverick.