Billie has many ideas about ways to enliven her term as JWHA President. Watch this page in coming days for upcoming Presidential Messages from Billie.
Someone wiser in the ways or historical thinking than I once remarked that history is the story we tell ourselves about our past. It is how we explain (and justify) what we have become. And since our present is undergoing constant change -inevitably the story of our past is changing as well. This is not to suggest that our historical enterprise, our attempt to know and understand our past, is fickle and inevitably subject to the present image we hold of ourselves. But it does explain why our history is never completed, the final version never told, the books never closed forever. For the story or our past is tied -like a child to its mother's apron strings -to what we have become and are in the process or becoming. As our present continually evolves into our future - so too does the understanding of our past.
Note how the stories or the past, as told by the two principal faith communities that grew out of the activities of Joseph Smith, often strongly differ. For three generations members of the (now) Community of Christ had one historical story to tell about the events that took place at Nauvoo - particularly the involvement of Joseph Smith in polygamy. That particular interpretation or history was told in order to explain what the RLDS church had become. Likewise, for three generations the LDS community told their history of the tragic events that took place at Mountain Meadow, Utah. The history was told based on how the LDS membership saw and wanted to present itself -as saviors of humankind and certainly not participants in a massacre of immigrants crossing the plains. These are bold brush examples -meant to illustrate a concept that is far more subtle and fluid, and therefore far more exciting; namely that history is not static. Instead the story of the past is changing, taking on nuances, burdened with the pathos, irrationality and tragedy or humanity.
The shifting sands of history will be much in evidence at this September's JWHA conference when historians will reexamine the issue of violence in Missouri in the 1830s When the image the early Saints had of themselves was as innocent victims of mob violence, the history they told portrayed the Missourians as unprincipled ruffians. When, sometime later, the more nefarious activities or the Danites in Far West came to light, the history was reinterpreted. No longer were the Mormon Danites the Army or Israel smiting its enemies. Instead, many of them may have been ruffians themselves. As the members of both the LDS and Community of Christ have become more at ease with themselves and with their history, they have been able to peer at their story through a lens other than that of "faith promotion" or "faith protection." As a happy result, a new history of the Mormon experience in Missouri is now being written.
Come to the September conference at Camp Doniphan to hear the latest perspective of that turbulent and tragic period. And discuss the latest concept, from a distinguished historian with ties to neither the LDS or Community of Christ, that, given the composition of the Missouri population in the 1830's, no matter what the Saints did, conflict between the two groups was inevitable. While that thought does not take us back, full circle, to the original, 19th century image of the Mormons at Far West as helpless victims -it does cast yet another light on those events. The historic ground is shifting under our feet. Make your reservation for the Camp Doniphan conference and join in the historic debate.
-Biloine Young, President
