Faith Promoting History

This week I am covering Mormon History in my American Religious Histories classes. As always, I find it is every bit as challenging to teach the history of my own faith tradition as it is to teach the history of the faith traditions of others. If not more challenging!

I am, of course, vividly aware of the fact that I don't teach LDS Church history to liberal Protestant seminary students in a graduate level history course in the same way I would teach it to LDS members in a Sunday School or Priesthood class. Yet, I have a testimony, and that certainly informs my teaching in the academic setting, just as it would inform my teaching in a church setting.

For instance, in three and a half years of attending LDS Sunday School and Priesthood classes, I have witnessed only one mention of polygamy (that I can remember). And it was referred to only parenthetically, as the teacher discussed how Emma Smith's faith and how her love for her husband were put to the test by polygamy. (That was actually a rather remarkable discussion!) Yet, no graduate-level history class that includes any coverage of Mormonism could afford to minimize discussion of polygamy in the same way. (By the way, one of the best treatments of LDS polygamy, from a doctrinal as well as a historical perspective, is Lawrence Foster's Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. The author is a non-Mormon, but the book is written from a perspective that is very sympathetic toward Mormonism, and the discussion of LDS polygamy is respectful and insightful.)

I'm not saying that the lack of discussion of polygamy in modern LDS devotional settings is wrong. I believe it is appropriate to focus discussion in devotional settings on what is necessary for us to live the gospel today -- to focus on teaching with the Spirit in such a way that we will be equipped to practice faith, repentance, and charity in our daily lives. And in general a detailed discussion of the history of polygamy really would be irrelevant to that objective. I do believe it behooves Church members to be well-enough educated about their own history to be able to answer questions by non-members intelligently (and correctly). But it is probably right that Sunday School is not the setting in which all of that education needs to happen.

But while the content of a more secular teaching setting must necessarily be different, still I do not believe that teaching in that setting should exclude the context of faith. Of course, just as certain academic teaching norms would be inappropriate in Sunday School, so certain devotional approaches would be inappropriate in a grad school course. Yet I do not -- I cannot -- teach church history (my own or others') merely as an academic exercise. My students need to understand how the historical travails of the church have produced a dynamic, living community. They need to understand something about the faith that provides Latter-day Saints a compass for navigating through the challenges of today's world. As a believing Latter-day Saint, I can also share how that works for me personally.

Every time I teach, it is challenging and exciting. I'm still re-examining and weighing old approaches, thinking about what worked last time, and what I'd like to do differently this time. And each class is different. The student dynamics are different, and what I bring to my teaching is different, depending on what questions and challenges I am wrestling with. So every teaching experience is really art more than science, really spirit more than letter.

I can't wait to see what happens tonight!