Dear Brigham Young Haters: Leave My Prophet Alone!

Emotions are raw, and people are angry all over the United States. As members of the Church, we are not insulated from the rioters who are tearing down statues, defacing property, and attacking and demonizing historical figures.

Petitions to change the name of BYU, ‘racists’ quotes from church leaders have been circulating around social media, and this weekend a statue of Brigham Young on BYU campus was vandalized with the crooks spray painting racist on it and painting him in blood-red paint.

I have been getting a lot of messages on Facebook asking my thoughts on the current situation and, quite frankly, what I want to shout out is simply this: Dear Brigham Young haters: Leave my prophet alone! But don’t leave him alone because of me. There are two reasons to leave him alone, the secular reason is presentism, and the religious reason is covenants.

Presentism can be used to destroy anyone.

Presentism is the practice of judging people in the past based on today’s morals and or cultural expectations. This is dangerous for many reasons: but I would like to focus on two.

1st. Presentism is a wildly irresponsible approach to history.

The purpose of learning history is to learn from the mistakes of others rather than repeating those same mistakes ourselves. But too many professors today are pushing history for a different reason, to justify their worldview. Rather than teaching people HOW to objectively learn from history, they are teaching people WHAT TO THINK about history.

For example, it would be easy and justifiable to teach, “Hitler is evil.” as that is a commonly accepted belief, even by Germans. But what happens when the person/topic is less cut and dry? Say we are talking about Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che? Or maybe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, or even Brigham Young? They are loved by some and loathed by others. Professors teaching what to think will teach their world view of these historical figures and topics rather than the actual history. This is historical malpractice and intellectual dishonesty!

Instead, what we should be in favor of is a holistic approach to history. Where we teach the problems that led to the rise of Hitler, the promises he made to gain the support of the German people, as well as the evils of what he did. Let us learn what happened and then we can individually come to the conclusion as to what to think about the person.

2nd. Presentism is devoid of context and is simply an inquisition.

Teaching students history without context would be like watching Star Wars episode 1 and making your conclusions on the whole series based on it. One would think that Anakin is a good guy and Gungans will be a central theme. When in reality Anakin would commit genocide in episode 3 and Gungans were not even shown in later episodes.

Context is key that brings history and the scriptures to life. It is important to understand that the past is a not like the present. My favorite professor often quoted L.P. Hartley and would say, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” (The Go-Between)

When you take history out of context it is easy to attribute the shortcomings of the era and attribute it to an individual. For example, George Washington lived in a time most people either accepted slavery or even had slaves, Washington had slaves. But they were treated better than most slaves. But with presentism, you strip away the context and suddenly all you see is Washington as a slave owner.

But beyond just lacking contextual background, presentism has turned into an inquisition. No amount of good redeems any amount of evil, perceived, or real. Without George Washington, there would not even be America! But he owned slaves and therefore is evil. Matthias Baldwin, Fought for abolition? Well, he was still a colonizer. Presentism still destroyed him (source). President Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederacy and fought against the KKK? Well, Presentism still destroyed him because at one point he owned a slave that he soon after freed (source).

And as everyone has made or will make mistakes, it is only a matter of time before presentism will turn on you and destroy you.

Evil Speaking of the Lord’s anointed includes the dead ones.

Presentism is a good secular reason for everyone to be merciful to those who have gone before us, Brigham Young included. But as members of the Church, we have a much more important reason to stop criticizing Brigham Young and other Church leaders. Simply put, we have covenanted to abstain from evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed.

Our covenant does NOT have any asterisk marks to excuse our breaking of it. Even if our criticism of Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, or any other Church leader is justifiable or accurate.

“Does the commandment to avoid faultfinding and evil speaking apply to Church members’ destructive personal criticism of Church leaders? Of course it does. It applies to criticism of all Church leaders…Evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed is in a class by itself. It is one thing to depreciate a person who exercises corporate power or even government power. It is quite another thing to criticize or depreciate a person for the performance of an office to which he or she has been called of God. It does not matter that the criticism is true.” Dallin H. Oaks Ensign February 1987, “Criticism.”

Elder George F. Richards, President of the Council of the Twelve, also taught this in April 1947, General Conference, “When we say anything bad about the leaders of the Church, whether true or false, we tend to impair their influence and their usefulness and are thus working against the Lord and his cause.” (In Conference Report, Apr. 1947, p. 24.)”

The scriptures also teach us, “Cursed are all those that shall lift up the heel against mine anointed, saith the Lord, and cry they have sinned when they have not sinned before me, saith the Lord, but have done that which was meet in mine eyes, and which I commanded them.” (D&C 121:16.)

President Dallin H. Oaks also elaborated as to why evil speaking and criticism are so damaging when he taught, “The Lord acts through his servants. That is the pattern he has established to safeguard our agency in mortality. His servants are not perfect, which is another consequence of mortality. But if we murmur against the Lord’s servants, we are working against the Lord and his cause and will soon find ourselves without the companionship of his Spirit.”

We may not know everything, but we know enough.

Do I understand or have excuses for the actions or beliefs of prior church leaders? No, I do not. But, I don’t need to! If they sinned, then that is between them and God. My job is simple, keep my covenants and be true to the testimony I have been given or I will be the one sinning.

I know by a witness of the Holy Ghost that Brigham Young was a prophet of God. That witness did not come with the qualifier, “He is a prophet unless you find a quote you disagree with or a practice you don’t like.” It was simply put, he is a prophet. And in my book, that means PERIOD THE END. No action by him will excuse me in breaking my covenants, or you in breaking yours!