The Restoration stands up to history

Decades ago, I attended a gathering where the late Stanley Kimball, a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and president of the Mormon History Association, spoke. His remarks have stuck in my mind ever since. (If anybody out there knows where a written version of the speech can be found, I would be delighted to see it.)

Kimball explained what he called the "three levels" of Mormon history, which he termed Levels A, B, and C. (Given my own background in philosophy, I might have chosen Hegel's terminology instead: "thesis," "antithesis" and "synthesis.")

Level A, he said, is the Sunday School version of the church and its history. Virtually everything connected with the church on Level A is obviously good and true and harmonious. Members occasionally make mistakes, perhaps, but leaders seldom, if ever, do. It's difficult for somebody on Level A to imagine why everybody out there doesn't immediately recognize the obvious truth of the gospel, and opposition to the church seems flatly satanic.

Level B — what I call the "antithesis" to Level A's "thesis" — is perhaps most clearly seen in anti-Mormon versions of church history. According to many hostile commentators, everything that Level A says is good and true and harmonious turns out actually to be evil and false and chaotic. Leaders are deceitful and evil, the church's account of its own story is a lie, and, some extreme anti-Mormons say, even the general membership often (typically?) misbehaves very badly.

But one doesn't need to read anti-Mormon propaganda in order to be exposed to elements of Level B that can't quite be squared with an idealized portrait of the Restoration. Whether new converts or born in the covenant, maturing members of the church will inevitably discover, sooner or later, that other Saints, including leaders, are fallible and sometimes even disappointing mortals. There are areas of ambiguity, even unresolved problems, in church history; there have been disagreements about certain doctrines; some questions don't have immediately satisfying answers.

Eliza Snow sought to caution new converts against starry-eyed naiveté back in the 19th century:

Think not when you gather to Zion,

Your troubles and trials are through,

That nothing but comfort and pleasure

Are waiting in Zion for you:

No, no, 'tis designed as a furnace,

All substance, all textures to try,

To burn all the "wood, hay, and stubble,"