Comments on: Multiple Brighams: Brigham Young in Mormon Memory

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:56:20 +0000

I remember him as a great carpenter

By: Juvenile Instructor » Multiple Brighams Redux: In the Midst of a Brigham Young Revival

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:53:57 +0000

[...] We’ve discussed before the changing place of Brigham Young in scholarly discourses. For academics during much of the twentieth century, Young was far more interesting that Joseph Smith in the panorama of American history. In most of these works, Young was lauded for his organizational prowess and his intrepid leadership on the frontier. He was also seen as the savior of Mormonism, the great leader who picked up the pieces after Joseph Smith’s death. This image of Young fit the needs of American historians who, following Frederick Jackson Turner, believed that the essence of America was found on the frontier. Although academic interest in the frontier had waned by the 1980s, and with it much of the interest in Young as a frontiersman, it was in that decade that Leonard Arrington published his landmark study of the American Moses. [...]

By: Juvenile Instructor » From The Archives: Posts You Might Have Missed, Part 1

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:44:44 +0000

[...] Multiple Brighams: Brigham Young in Mormon Memory [...]

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:51:41 +0000

Ben, I had a similar experience. I first heard of many of BY’s more controversial teachings on my mission, but it wasn’t until I returned home that I began to study them. What’s interesting to me (and relevant to this thread) is that the acquisiton of this new information about BY hasn’t really changed the narrative of his importance in my life at all. I’m still stuck with the competing “he said a lot of things” narrative and the “he was always right” one.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:38:53 +0000

The first time I was really exposed to some of BY’s teachings was on my mission. I wonder if that is a common place for many to be introduced to these kind of things. Can anyone relate?

By: David Grua

David Grua — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:51:49 +0000

Jared, you’re probably right, at least in general. I’ve got a friend that grew up in the Mormon colonies that read all of the Journal of Discourses before he got baptized as a teen. And let’s just say that he sees BY very differently than I do. He’s far from typical, but I’d say that some Latinos (and Africans) do have more access to BY’s thought than you’re giving them credit. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet.

By: Jared

Jared — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:46:27 +0000

David, honestly, I don’t find much difference between the two in my personal experience. The thing is, though these race issues are not far from the surface in BY’s rhetoric (and in some places on his sleeve), let’s be honest, how many even scratch the surface of BY’s thought? Look to the two main popular treatments of BY’s discourses/teachings, the Church Manual and Discourses of BY. There is very little to hint at BY’s racial views (You’re certainly not going to get miscegenation or the delightful decapitation statements). I don’t think you’d even know that BY was polygamist from these writings.

So, I think there’s just too little known about BY in general discourse for there to be cultural differences in how BY is viewed. I think black converts on the African continent would feel the same largely as what I described. This probably also because discourse on BY has been and continues to be dominated by American/English Speaking constructs. What does a black African from South Africa know about BY? What the priesthood manual told him. The same for South Texas and South Provo for that matter.

Once BY’s complexity becomes (and it will become) more common knowledge, there might be differences. For now, I think BY hasn’t been digested well enough generally for this type of analysis. I’m not just being cynical when I say it.

By: David Grua

David Grua — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:44:57 +0000

Jared: Thanks for sharing your experience in Texas. Now that you’ve lived in both Anglo wards and Hispanic wards, would you say that there’s any difference between how how BY’s viewed between the two cultures? (specifically I’m wondering if BY’s views on race are discussed more (or at all) among Hispanics)

Jordan: I agree that in order to understand BY’s place in our collective memory we must also look at how we cast JS. The two must be understood together. I also think that we should look at BY’s image historically. I would argue that BY used to be much more prominent in the stories that we shared with with others, largely because of the RLDS challenge. When there were major competitors to JS’s legacy we had to explain what made us different. But as the RLDS have changed, we have changed too in the ways that we present ourselves.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:16:29 +0000

David, good point. I agree that what we do not say is often as important to our narrative as what we do say. In the case of the stories we do not tell about BY I think it may have something to do with our emphasis on JS. Not only has miscegenation and polygamy been attached to BY in an attempt to clear JS (some say), but others have downplayed BY’s role (or innovation) as colonizer/city builder in arguing that BY learned what he knew from JS.

By: David Grua

David Grua — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:34:48 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, Jordan. The reason I ask that question is because you can learn a lot about a people by analyzing the stories that they tell about themselves (or their past) to other people. Obviously we as Latter-day Saints can’t give other people our complete history, so we carefully choose parts that we think will convey something of our identity (tell them who we are). And it is equally informative to ask what stories are we not sharing with others, and what those omissions tell us about ourselves.

So I agree that we don’t talk about Brigham Young much in public, except to mention the Pioneers, his role in settling the West and to defend him from accusations (like Mountain Meadows). What does it tell us about ourselves (and the place of BY in our memory) that we choose these instances from his life to share with those outside of our own circles and ignore the rest of his life?