As they receive more public attention, not only from Romney's candidacy but also from the HBO series "Big Love," about a polygamist family, and the coming movie "September Dawn," about a 19th-century massacre led by Mormon zealots, "Mormons are ambivalent about how to respond," Bushman said. "There's this feeling that we'll rise above the fray."

"I think we've overdone that," he said. "That's how a lot of misunderstanding gets propagated."

At the same time, Bushman's efforts to straddle the devout Mormon and secular academic worlds have won him critics in both. His 2005 book "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling" (Alfred A. Knopf), a biography of Mormonism's founder, upset some believers with its depiction of Smith's father as an alcoholic and its claim that Smith wed 10 women who were already married.

Some secular historians, meanwhile, criticize Bushman's reliance on the writings of Smith and his followers as the best sources on early Mormon history.

"He never follows things to their final conclusions to say this did or didn't happen," said Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis who admires Bushman's work. "He simply tells the story the way that Joseph Smith and his family and followers tell the story."

Bushman, who published a book of essays in 2004 titled "Believing History" (Columbia University Press) admits as much. A Columbia professor emeritus who is being considered for a new chair in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, he is the first to warn Mormons against defensiveness. He responds to the news media's questions — which often reflect incredulity at Mormon beliefs — by owning up to Mormonism's eccentricities, calmly explaining its doctrine, and, if need be, gently setting the record straight.

"Every time you meet a reasonable Mormon, you have to readjust your beliefs about how wacky Mormon beliefs are," Bushman said. "You have to say, 'I can't stomach it myself, but apparently it really works for these people."'

So when a journalist at the Pew conference asked Bushman about the historical justification for polygamy, which thrived in Mormon circles before the church outlawed it in 1890, he framed it as a "perplexing problem for Mormons" themselves because it is "so contrary to Mormon contemporary ideas of family." He also floated a practical-sounding theory, that roughly half of all plural wives were converts to Mormonism who lacked husbands or older brothers in the Mormon community; plural marriage provided male protection.

Once the conference transcript was posted online, e-mail messages from Mormons poured in to Bushman, praising him for braving "the lions' den" of reporters.

Even the church, which had not previously endorsed Bushman's work, linked to the transcript on its Web site. The church has also expressed interest in a seminar he is convening this summer, bringing together Mormon intellectuals to discuss how to better communicate Mormon doctrine and history.

Still, Bushman has his work cut out for him.

"He was really, really good, and as good as he was, people still came away with questions," said Michael Cromartie, a religion and politics scholar who moderated Bushman's appearance at the Pew conference.

For Bushman, the invitation to address an elite group of journalists on Mormon history and doctrine was itself a victory.

"Simply being accepted as normal is a pretty big step for Mormons," he said. "That is the only progress we can hope for."