8 thoughts on “Church web site publishes list of on-line resources, and it includes some apologetic web sites”
Interesting to see Brian Hales’ website linked there. He and Don Bradley have done a massive work in putting together as many original sources as possible.
I suspect we’ll have a decade or so where Brian’s particular spin on that history dominates, followed by more holistic interpretations as time progresses.
I would like to see the Joseph Smith Papers folks delve into the 1841-1842 heresy, but as much of the solid documentation there involves Church disciplinary actions involving repentant ancestors of living individuals, it would be understandable if those documents remain relatively buried for a while.
Keep up the great work. We truly support your efforts!
I didn’t know there was an entire website dedicated to Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. Meg, do they know about you? 🙂
I believe Meg’s work has had an impact on the evolving understanding of Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy, and yes, ‘they’ know about her. There are many other faithful, scholarly people whose ideas are brought to light through their presentations at the Fair Mormon Conference which is coming in a little over a week on August 3-4.
Hi Mormontarian,
It was my review of Brian Hales’s Mormon Polygamy books that brought me to the attention of Bruce Nielsen, who invited me to blog here.
Brian knew about me before I knew about him, as he cites me in his books regarding Elvira Annie Cowles. I think he referred to me as “polygamy researcher, Meg Stout…”
After finishing the second of his three books, I e-mail Brian (28 Aug 2013). I didn’t start blogging here until December 2013.
When I started blogging here there was an immediate outpouring of vitriol, with folks accusing me of effectively being a Mrs. Snuffer. Folks were being told that if they so much as mentioned my name, they would be unfriended. I didn’t know about any of that at the time. But in those online conversations shunning anyone who discussed me solely for titling my post “A Faithful Joseph,” we see Margaret Blair Young and Brian Hales admit they knew me to some extent, but neither defended me. And at least with Brian, his public response has been to attack me, though as he hadn’t actually read my work at the time of his attack, it didn’t really connect.
Among certain faithful Mormon intellectuals, I have been considered a hiss and a byword. I have continually requested that those who dismiss me prove why I am wrong, and to date, none have deigned to do so. In the one correspondence along that line that most frustrated me, the prominent scholar simply said my assertions didn’t align with their concept of the historical actors. They simply didn’t agree and felt no need to point out why my hypothesis was flawed.
At one point a good friend who is a noted historian told me he was going to prove I was wrong. At the time he was a high councilor in my stake and I had recently published a post asserting Hyrum Smith had likely been involved in the Martha Brotherton episode, germane as my stake president is not merely my cousin, he is a descendant of Hyrum Smith. But nothing more was ever said, and my friend has been consistently pleasant and generally supportive, issuing me callings once he was made a counselor in my congregations bishopric.
I’m not sure if I’m still considered a hiss and a byword. I’m not sure I much care, since it is only sticks and stones that break my bones.
Speaking of sticks and stones, I’m making a presentation today at Sunstone about the illicit intercourse heresy. Feel free to pray that I represent my hypothesis ably, without falling into any of the presentational errors that would make it easy for folks to continue to dismiss me. I understand videos of the presentations will be made public in about six months. But I’ll post my narrated slide deck here in a week or so.
By the way, I am given to understand that a leading person at FairMormon is among those who can’t say my name without spitting. So I doubt they’d ask me to present any time in the foreseeable future. Allegedly that leading person at FairMormon was an individual on a Mormon social site who went by some handle that makes identification impossible and had a avatar of an animal. When I spent some time at that Mormon social site, the online vitriol was rather amazing, though I did get some useful facts from the discussion. I once printed the content to pdf to make it easy to find comments I wished to respond to, and it took over 300 pages of ledger paper with size 6 font to cover the business. The only point where I thought they had disproved me was on my use of the term “striker.” But then I discovered I had been right originally. So it mostly was an exercise in learning how convinced people are of their current concepts regarding Joseph Smith. They mostly think he was a terrible person who did horrible things. And these folks don’t seem affected by contradicting evidence. Kind of like my friend Riley.
Meg, you’re overly internalyzing strong disagreement for your circumstantial hypothesises to be scorn for you as a hiss and byword. I’ve seen nor read nothing of the sort, though I’ve felt many of your evidences jump the shark.
None of this means Joseph wasn’t faithful. But it also doesn’t mean there was a conspiracy within a conspiracy with Joseph being shot by a far away sniper in a tree (if I remember the article properly).
Bran, when M* started publishing Meg’s hypotheses I was lobbied in a very strange way by many, many people not to let her publish. It was bizarre and over the top, in my opinion. There are dozens of disappointing fantasies published by left-wing Mormons every month, yet somehow Meg was a threat? To what, exactly?
I don’t know if Meg is right or wrong, and I don’t necessarily agree with all of her conclusions, but I don’t see her position as being beyond the pale of being published. We are not a scholarly journal and don’t claim to be one — we are simply a faithful blog written by volunteers that sometimes publishes good things, sometimes mediocre things.
As a neutral observer, I can confirm there is widespread “scorn” for Meg, and I find it exaggerated and unfair given all of the scorn-worthy things published elsewhere. So I don’t blame her for feeling put upon.
Now having said that, it is probably time to move on (in my opinion) and not concentrate on the scorn. Meg, just say what you have to say and let it be. Ignore your hateful critics and engage the ones who bring up good points and keep on truckin.’ That is my opinion anyway.
Interesting to see Brian Hales’ website linked there. He and Don Bradley have done a massive work in putting together as many original sources as possible.
I suspect we’ll have a decade or so where Brian’s particular spin on that history dominates, followed by more holistic interpretations as time progresses.
I would like to see the Joseph Smith Papers folks delve into the 1841-1842 heresy, but as much of the solid documentation there involves Church disciplinary actions involving repentant ancestors of living individuals, it would be understandable if those documents remain relatively buried for a while.
Keep up the great work. We truly support your efforts!
I didn’t know there was an entire website dedicated to Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. Meg, do they know about you? 🙂
I believe Meg’s work has had an impact on the evolving understanding of Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy, and yes, ‘they’ know about her. There are many other faithful, scholarly people whose ideas are brought to light through their presentations at the Fair Mormon Conference which is coming in a little over a week on August 3-4.
Hi Mormontarian,
It was my review of Brian Hales’s Mormon Polygamy books that brought me to the attention of Bruce Nielsen, who invited me to blog here.
Brian knew about me before I knew about him, as he cites me in his books regarding Elvira Annie Cowles. I think he referred to me as “polygamy researcher, Meg Stout…”
After finishing the second of his three books, I e-mail Brian (28 Aug 2013). I didn’t start blogging here until December 2013.
When I started blogging here there was an immediate outpouring of vitriol, with folks accusing me of effectively being a Mrs. Snuffer. Folks were being told that if they so much as mentioned my name, they would be unfriended. I didn’t know about any of that at the time. But in those online conversations shunning anyone who discussed me solely for titling my post “A Faithful Joseph,” we see Margaret Blair Young and Brian Hales admit they knew me to some extent, but neither defended me. And at least with Brian, his public response has been to attack me, though as he hadn’t actually read my work at the time of his attack, it didn’t really connect.
Among certain faithful Mormon intellectuals, I have been considered a hiss and a byword. I have continually requested that those who dismiss me prove why I am wrong, and to date, none have deigned to do so. In the one correspondence along that line that most frustrated me, the prominent scholar simply said my assertions didn’t align with their concept of the historical actors. They simply didn’t agree and felt no need to point out why my hypothesis was flawed.
At one point a good friend who is a noted historian told me he was going to prove I was wrong. At the time he was a high councilor in my stake and I had recently published a post asserting Hyrum Smith had likely been involved in the Martha Brotherton episode, germane as my stake president is not merely my cousin, he is a descendant of Hyrum Smith. But nothing more was ever said, and my friend has been consistently pleasant and generally supportive, issuing me callings once he was made a counselor in my congregations bishopric.
I’m not sure if I’m still considered a hiss and a byword. I’m not sure I much care, since it is only sticks and stones that break my bones.
Speaking of sticks and stones, I’m making a presentation today at Sunstone about the illicit intercourse heresy. Feel free to pray that I represent my hypothesis ably, without falling into any of the presentational errors that would make it easy for folks to continue to dismiss me. I understand videos of the presentations will be made public in about six months. But I’ll post my narrated slide deck here in a week or so.
By the way, I am given to understand that a leading person at FairMormon is among those who can’t say my name without spitting. So I doubt they’d ask me to present any time in the foreseeable future. Allegedly that leading person at FairMormon was an individual on a Mormon social site who went by some handle that makes identification impossible and had a avatar of an animal. When I spent some time at that Mormon social site, the online vitriol was rather amazing, though I did get some useful facts from the discussion. I once printed the content to pdf to make it easy to find comments I wished to respond to, and it took over 300 pages of ledger paper with size 6 font to cover the business. The only point where I thought they had disproved me was on my use of the term “striker.” But then I discovered I had been right originally. So it mostly was an exercise in learning how convinced people are of their current concepts regarding Joseph Smith. They mostly think he was a terrible person who did horrible things. And these folks don’t seem affected by contradicting evidence. Kind of like my friend Riley.
Meg, you’re overly internalyzing strong disagreement for your circumstantial hypothesises to be scorn for you as a hiss and byword. I’ve seen nor read nothing of the sort, though I’ve felt many of your evidences jump the shark.
None of this means Joseph wasn’t faithful. But it also doesn’t mean there was a conspiracy within a conspiracy with Joseph being shot by a far away sniper in a tree (if I remember the article properly).
Bran, when M* started publishing Meg’s hypotheses I was lobbied in a very strange way by many, many people not to let her publish. It was bizarre and over the top, in my opinion. There are dozens of disappointing fantasies published by left-wing Mormons every month, yet somehow Meg was a threat? To what, exactly?
I don’t know if Meg is right or wrong, and I don’t necessarily agree with all of her conclusions, but I don’t see her position as being beyond the pale of being published. We are not a scholarly journal and don’t claim to be one — we are simply a faithful blog written by volunteers that sometimes publishes good things, sometimes mediocre things.
As a neutral observer, I can confirm there is widespread “scorn” for Meg, and I find it exaggerated and unfair given all of the scorn-worthy things published elsewhere. So I don’t blame her for feeling put upon.
Now having said that, it is probably time to move on (in my opinion) and not concentrate on the scorn. Meg, just say what you have to say and let it be. Ignore your hateful critics and engage the ones who bring up good points and keep on truckin.’ That is my opinion anyway.