To support their claims that the "dominant narrative" of Church history is "not true," some critics cite a statement made by Richard Bushman in an informal context. Here's the question, the answer, and Richard's later explanation.
Questioner: In your view do you see room in Mormonism for several narratives of a religious experience or do you think that in order for the Church to remain strong they would have to hold to that dominant narrative?
Richard Bushman: I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that's what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA0YS8LWWX4&feature=youtu.be&t=3503
Here's what Richard wrote to Dan Peterson, who asked him about the comment. Original in blue, my comments in red.
Thanks for coming to my rescue Dan. I had begun to pick up indications of these exchanges a few days ago. I have been using the phrase “reconstruct the narrative” in recent talks because that is exactly what the Church is doing right now. The Joseph Smith Papers offer a reconstructed narrative, so do some of the “Gospel Topics” essays. The short First Vision film in the Church Museum of History mentions six accounts of Joseph’s experience and draws on all of them. That is all reconstructing the narrative.
In this sense, "reconstructing the narrative" could mean rebuilding the narrative, not changing it because the dominant narrative was false. But as applied, the Gospel Topics essays do effectively change the narrative. They don't even quote what Joseph and Oliver said about the Urim and Thummim or the Hill Cumorah. Avoiding those teachings is not merely reconstructing the narrative, but replacing the prior narrative.
I got the phrase from a young woman who reported that she and her husband had both been through faith crises. She had come back; he had remained alienated. But both of them had to reconstruct the narrative. We have to include, for example, the fact that that the first words to Joseph in the First Vision were: “Your sins are forgiven.” That makes us look again at his life and realize how important a part forgiveness played. Similarly, we now have assimilated seer stones into the translation story. A picture of a seer stone now appears in the Church History Museum display. That would not have happened even five years ago. The list goes on and on.
The seer stones (stone-in-the-hat or SITH) have been part of the narrative from the beginning; none of the "new" evidence is new. Mormonism Unvailed laid it all out explicitly in 1834.
There are three ways to assimilate the seer stones.
One: reject the seer stone accounts as false claims by apostates and ignore them. That approach created the perception that the Church "lied" to people or "hid the truth." It may be persuasive to some, but only on an ideological level. It contradicts all available historical evidence, particularly because David Whitmer and Emma Smith were both trying to support the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
Two: accept the seer stone accounts as the "truth" about how Joseph produced the Book of Mormon. Because this contradicts what Joseph and Oliver always said, this approach leads inevitably to the conclusion Royal Skousen recently set forth by claiming that Joseph and Oliver intentionally misled everyone when they claimed Joseph translated by means of the Nephite interpreters. Some LDS historians have argued that Joseph and Oliver used the term Urim and Thummim to refer to the seer stone Joseph found in a well, but that idea contradicts the historical evidence, including Mormonism Unvailed, which distinguished clearly between the two, as well as David's and Emma's statements.
Three: accept the seer stone accounts as true regarding what the witnesses observed, but distinguishing between objective observations and subjective beliefs (inferences, assumptions) about what was happening in Joseph's mind. This is the demonstration scenario, the idea that Joseph translated by means of the U&T but, because he could not display the U&T or plates, he conducted a demonstration using SITH to satisfy the curiosity of his supporters.
I consider Rough Stone Rolling a reconstructed narrative. It was shocking to some people. They could not bear to have the old story disrupted in any way. What I was getting at in the quoted passage is that we must be willing to modify the account according to newly authenticated facts. If we don’t we will weaken our position.
I'm not sure what "newly authenticated facts" he refers to here. Perhaps the discovery of long-lost or forgotten accounts of the first vision. Mostly, RSR relates long-known facts that were not incorporated into the official Church publications.
Unfortunately, not everyone can adjust to this new material. Many think they were deceived and the church was lying. That is not a fair judgment in my opinion. The whole church, from top to bottom, has had to adjust to the findings of our historians. We are all having to reconstruct.
The reconstruction should involve multiple working hypotheses based on the known facts. I've pointed out the RSR does not carefully distinguish between fact and opinion. https://www.mobom.org/rsr-review. This is a problem with the Gospel Topics Essays, the Saints books, and other materials published by the Church History department.
In my opinion, nothing in the new material overturns the basic thrust of the story. I still believe in gold plates. I don’t think Joseph Smith could have dictated the Book of Mormon text without inspiration. I think he was sincere in saying he saw God. The glimpse Joseph Smith gives us of divine interest in humankind is still a source of hope in an unbelieving world.
The last sentence is an articulate expression of something faithful Latter-day Saints can agree upon, and something even critics can reasonably acknowledge.
If anyone has questions about what I believe, I would be happy to hear from him or her. I believe pretty much the same things I did sixty years ago when I was a missionary.
Richard
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