Conclusion

The church persists in omissions, alterations, and fabrications for several reasons. First, the leaders are ignorant of objective church history. Second, they rely on church employees, who have a vested interest in hiding and misrepresenting church history to present the church and its leaders in a positive light. When church leaders believe that the Holy Ghost testifies of all truth but only church-promoting truth,¹ it is not surprising that their policies of purposefully omitting, misrepresenting, and fabricating history to create a church-positive narrative continue.

These problems have no simple solution. To reverse the system now and interpret modern Mormonism within the context of true history would contraindicate many traditions in the church.

We should not fear true history. We must resist the pernicious tradition in the church that there is such a thing as non-faith-promoting history. All church history is faith promoting, no matter how disturbing, because the only thing it can displace is something that isn't true. Falsehoods can never save you. False traditions damn us. They prevent us from progressing towards God. You cannot have real faith in something that is false. Alma wrote, “If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” (Alma 32:21.) Even when it is painful, true church history will bring you closer to Christ through freeing you from false tradition. The efficacy of truth is not dependent on its source or how it is presented. Truth “is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;” (D&C 93:24). It is not things as we wish they had been. The heading in a chapter from the Joseph Smith priesthood manual says, “The gospel of Jesus Christ embraces all truth; the faithful accept the truths God has revealed and put aside false traditions.” Joseph taught “To become a joint heir of the heirship of the Son, one must put away all his false traditions.” (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 5:554.) It is not false tradition, but knowledge that leads us to eternal life. Saul was probably very disappointed to find out that all his pre-theophany Phariseeism was actually leading him away from God, despite his contemporary beliefs to the contrary. Still, he recognized that what Jesus had told him—the truth—would draw him closer to Christ than all that Phariseeism ever did. He said, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.” (Phillipians 3:8). Paul had no sacred cows, no false idols he wasn't willing to let go of when provided the opportunity to embrace knowledge from God that contradicted his traditions. Are you willing to embrace truth at all costs?

What Latter-day Saint can say that they are not interested in church history, when their very salvation depends on rooting out the many false traditions present in their understanding of the gospel, and when church history is so central to that end? This attitude is opposite of what Joseph demonstrated. He said, “When things that are of the greatest importance are passed over by weak-minded men without even a thought, I want to see truth in all its bearings and hug it to my bosom.” (History of the Church 6:477.)

Church history is vital to living the gospel of the restoration. Church history is the link to the gospel restored through Joseph Smith. Our familiarity with his teachings in the context in which they were given in a large part dictates at once the degree to which we can live the doctrines of the restoration and our capacity to detect deviations therefrom.

Modern church history has for decades matched Napoleon Bonaparte’s purported definition of history: “what is history but fables agreed upon?” He knew that “Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past.”² George Orwell said something similar but simpler: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” Ignorance of the past invites mistaken ideas about the present. One who thinks his forebears were righteous will seek God very differently than one who knew his forebears were wicked. The Lamanites consistently suffered from a mistaken idea of the righteousness of Laman and Lemuel.

In the New Testament, Jesus told the Pharisees that they had strayed away from the gospel by substituting the commandments of men for God's word. These Pharisees spent a lot of time studying the gospel and practicing religious ceremony. It was not for lack of effort that they missed the mark, but lack of focus. Had they spent only a little of that time studying their church history, they never would have been swept away by the traditions of their elders, which were contrary to the gospel. If we do not know the gospel as given through Joseph, we are just as incapable of noticing deviations from the gospel restored through Joseph as the Pharisees were of noticing deviations from the law given to Moses.

Without history we cannot know our religion, but only what it has become. With history, we can know what differences exist and where they came from. We can ascertain whether the spiritual fruits present today are different from those manifested in the past, and know what changes account for the difference in fruits. The purpose of church history is not to keep our testimonies strong, or in other words, reinforce our traditions. Rather, it is to seek the truth. The truth can and does disagree with our traditions. The descendants of Laman and Lemuel continued to believe that Nephi was a liar, that he stole governance, and that the people of Jerusalem were not wicked. All of these things could be disproved through accurate history. Apologetic history (“keeping our testimonies strong”) is a sure-fire way to dwindle in unbelief because it disconnects our current perspective from what was actually restored in the past.

As an institution, we need to repent of our ignorance and dishonesty, even if it requires a serious and reaching reevaluation of fundamental claims. God will not honor anything built on lies. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13.)