Reconsidering No Man Knows My History

7. From Old to New Mormon History: Fawn Brodie and the Legacy of Scholarly Analysis of Mormonism

7 From Old to New Mormon History Fawn Brodie and the Legacy of Scholarly Analysis of Mormonism ROGER D. LAUNIUS If there had been no Fawn Brodie, Mormon historians would have had to invent her. Ever since she published No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet in 1945, calling into serious question most of the faith claims based on Mormonism's early history, an enormous amount of energy has been expended by Mormon historians, apologists, and critics of all backgrounds and persuasions either to defend or to deny her conclusions.1 The themes explored by Mormon historians since that time have too often responded to and sought to refute or substantiate Brodie's arguments. The degree to which Mor, mon historiography has been shaped by the long shadow of Fawn Brodie since 1945 is both disturbing and unnecessary, but it has been and remains a persistent tradition in the study of Mormonism's first generation. When Brodie first published No Man Knows My History in 1945, she analyzed Mormonism's founder using the standards of secular scholarship. She interpreted him as a charlatan at first motivated by self,serving desires but gradually coming to believe in his own prophetic mission. She also acknowledged his very real accomplishments in forming an important religious movement in the United States. In many ways it was a seminal study that served as a transition point between what has been inaccurately called 195 196 ReconsideringNo Man Knows My History the old and the new Mormon history, the "old" generally viewed as polemical while the "new" was considered less concerned with questions of religious truth and more interested in understanding why events unfolded as they did.2 In the words of Paul M. Edwards, this newer approach to Mormon history represented a decided shift away from polemics designed as either attacks on or defense of the Mormon movement. . . . This [type of history] is not to be understood as lacking faith, being unfaithful, or going beyond faith. Rather it is an affirmation that one moves through reason and understanding to a larger faith. It suggests that doubt and unanswered questions are not issues ofweak faith but the consideration of faithful persons seeking to know that which they do not understand. This assumption arises within historians and is based on their understanding of humans, and their own personal relationship with God. Thus they work fully aware that their faith is personal, not historical.3 It is a measure of the success of her biography of Smith that it is still considered fifty years later the standard work on the sub, ject and the starting point for all analyses of Mormonism. A sec' ond edition of this book, published in 1971, revised some of her earlier conclusions, especially her contention that Smith had been a charlatan, and incorporated recent trends from psychohis, tory to explain him more as an imposter who grew in his own self, belief in his religious mission as a prophet.4 But the importance of Brodie's No Man Knows My History should be measured also by the amount ofeffort made in the postWorld War II era by Mormon historians to take exception to her conclusions. Unfortunately, later historians have too often taken as their most important work responding to the questions she framed rather than pushing into other areas of investigation. Spe, cifically, Brodie set the agenda for much of the historical research conducted since that time; concentrating on the first generation From Old to New Mormon History 197 of Mormons, on the question of character and the church's origins , on the conflict between theocracy and democracy, and on polygamy and other theological innovations. The result, unfortunately , has been a stunting of Mormon studies. While the ghost of Brodie prompted other students of Mormon culture to wrestle with issues in ways that might not have arisen until much later had she not been present, a generally positive development, too often later Mormon historians have chased her shadow rather than researching in other areas that might have been more profitably explored. While these historians have been preoccupied with the issues raised in No Man Knows My History, they have ignored many of the important themes being investigated in the broader tapestry of American history; these range from issues of demography to institution building to power and the question of who controls it to social life. A...