Should Fawn Brodie's Excommunication be Over Turned?

[readstoomuch]

Brodie was actually a gifted writer.  Her style was very readable and entertaining.   I spent a summer going through every one of her footnotes.  This was long before there was an internet and it wasn`t an easy business.  I found her footnotes to not be accurate and tended to favor anti-mormon books and not primary sources.  For example she relies heavily on Wylhelm Wyl`s Mormon Portraits for the polygamy portions of the book.  Her book has been often called a psychobiography.  She tried to get inside Joseph`s heads and describe the motivations he was feeling.  There were similar criticisms of her books about Jefferson and Nixon.  Brodie Revisited by Marvin Hill and Reconsidering No Man Knows My History edited by Compton and Bringhurst qualify and explain much about Fawn Brodie.  Nibley was flippant and not a great response to Brodie, but still brought up issues that are relevant.  

Still an interesting book that has to be explained in some way.  Thus, it is discussed and reviewed many times in Mormon history.

[Johnnie Cake]

26 minutes ago, Nevo said:

Well, maybe Richard Bushman can convince you:

Thus, for example, Elder John Widtsoe, in Joseph Smith: Seeker after Truth, Prophet of God (1951), argued that Joseph was never involved in money-digging except during his brief employment with Josiah Stowell (p.34) and denied that Joseph ever used a seer stone to locate lost treasure: "Enemies have suggested, and widely circulated the suggestion that Stoal employed Joseph because he was said to have a peepstone by which lost treasure could be located. The suggestion is of course based upon his claim of having had communications with heavenly beings" (p. 34). Widtsoe also claimed that Joseph's 1826 charge of being a disorderly person "was found groundless" and suggested that "it was done to get him out of the country and away from Emma" (p. 35).

Hugh Nibley's 1961 The Myth Makers went even further, suggesting that there never was an 1826 trial. In his 1991 foreword to Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass, historian David Whittaker acknowledged that a number of Nibley's conclusions had not aged well. Noting that Nibley "made no claims to be an expert in American or Mormon history" and wrote "in part under assignment, and preferring that his time could be devoted to other projects," Whittaker wrote: "Readers thirty years later should not be surprised to discover that, with the subsequent professionalization of the Church library and archives, the study of Mormon history has progressed on a variety of details discussed in Nibley’s works. For example, recent work has been done on the now available accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, as well as on money digging and his 1826 trial, and the earliest treatments of his religious claims. . . . Such new research has strengthened Nibley’s arguments in many cases; it has corrected him in others."

Now, of course, Joseph Smith's youthful involvement in folk magic and his 1826 trial as a "glass looker" are old hat. A senior historian in the Church History Department and research and review editor for the Joseph Smith Papers even wrote a thesis on "Joseph Smith as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet."

Drop Mike...walk away

[Calm]

2 hours ago, JulieM said:

How can he possibly know what Brodie's thinking or what did or didn't "occur" to her?   And he uses himself as a source?  That's my point.

If this is what he was doing, he was doing the same thing she has been criticized for...claiming what Joseph and others were thinking when she could not have known.

It has been a couple of decades since I read that work.  I will have to do so again when I have some uninterrupted time...

Edited February 2, 2017 by Calm

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Here's another example Scott

Yes she accepted them and she was right to do so...and now the church accepts them also. What once was anti is now mainstream

The Church accepts the stories of ghosts and magical incantations?

[JulieM]

21 minutes ago, Calm said:

If this is what he was doing, he was doing the same thing she has been criticized for...claiming what Joseph and others were thinking when she could not have known.

So, that justifies him doing it too?  I thought more of him from his other writings.  I just think that review was a low for him to sink to the type of writing and attacking he did there.  Brodie must have really made him angry because to be honest, it seemed way out of character for him, IMO.

(And, I've posted that I think her book had errors in it too, so I agree on that.)

[Johnnie Cake]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

The Church accepts the stories of ghosts and magical incantations?

What do you mean by "the church"?  If the institutional church...I'm not aware of them teaching Joseph's involvement with folk magic...but bushman and Quinn certainly cover it...so by the greater church community...yes it's an accepted reality that Joseph smith was involved with ghosts and magical incantations...is it taught in Sunday School...not yet

[Ouagadougou]

If a member wrote the same book today, would he/she be excommunicated?

Even if Brodie was wrongly excommunicated, do you think the church would ever admit it?  Nope.  She was correct on several issues,which the church now is forced to admit to because, as we all know, access to information today is not what it was in 1945; the church can't just sweep certain topics under the rug anymore.  

The church doesn't issue apologies or ever admit they were ever wrong because prophets and leaders are always fallible (or it was just a different time 150 years, so we don't really understand).  It's almost as if some claim God allows false doctrine to be part of the sifting process, which, unfortunately, allows the church to paint a bullseye around the arrow wherever it has landed.  

What I find troubling is this: I have friends and family members (who are members) who have been talked to, counseled, warned and even reprimanded for blogs and/or social media posts that don't caste the church in a positive light, despite the fact that what they are sharing/posting is a historical fact.  The church wants everyone to accept a correlated narrative, in which everything and everyone (leaders especially) is caste in a positive light, without any flaws or problems.  It almost reminds me of an alcoholic who claims he never had a drinking problem -- it's cognitive dissonance at its finest.  

 

 

Edited February 2, 2017 by Ouagadougou

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, JulieM said:

So, that justifies him doing it too?  

That was a critical (as in negative) assessment, not an approving one...if that is what he is doing, it is hypocritical imo.  I would like to see myself first.

[Calm]

10 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

What do you mean by "the church"?  If the institutional church...I'm not aware of them teaching Joseph's involvement with folk magic...but bushman and Quinn certainly cover it...so by the greater church community...yes it's an accepted reality that Joseph smith was involved with ghosts and magical incantations...is it taught in Sunday School...not yet

I am not talking about individual members, I mean the institution.  Seer stones are published in the Ensign and shown in church museums.  Any comparable discussion on LDS.org, manuals, or other publications about ghosts and magical incantations?

If you are only talking about individual members, I don't see what if different.  In the past there were those who accepted the claims of ghosts and magical incantations just as now.  The institution didn't then and doesn't now as far as I am aware.

Edited February 2, 2017 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

12 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

It's been about 14 years since I read Fawn Brodie's biography on Joseph Smith "No Man Knows My History".  As a young man her name was synonymous with the most vile, evil and loathsome people to have ever walked the earth. ...

Wait.  Fawn Brodie once was a young man?  

 

To paraphrase the inimitable Inigo Montoya, "I danna think sentence means what you think it means."

[Johnnie Cake]

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am not talking about individual members, I mean the institution.  Seer stones are published in the Ensign and shown in church museums.  Any comparable discussion on LDS.org, manuals, or other publications about ghosts and magical incantations?

If you are only talking about individual members, I don't see what if different.  In the past there were those who accepted the claims of ghosts and magical incantations just as now.  The institution didn't then and doesn't now as far as I am aware.

The only ghost I'm aware that the institutional church teaches is the Holy Ghost 

[Johnnie Cake]

21 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Wait.  Fawn Brodie once was a young man?  

 

To paraphrase the inimitable Inigo Montoya, "I danna think sentence means what you think it means."

Cute Ken go, <---(another auto correct unforced error. So funny ) can't stop laughing...haha...please stop, its hurting ...haha oh stop you caught my iPad auto correct a word and oh I didn't catch it haha...so funny oh and then you quoted princess bride oh ha ha stop it. Haha 😐 You're so clever

Edited February 2, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[rockpond]

13 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

It's been about 14 years since I read Fawn Brodie's biography on Joseph Smith "No Man Knows My History".  As a young man her name was synonymous with the most vile, evil and loathsome people to have ever walked the earth.  Her book was cast by those who were even brave enough to mentioned to mention it portrayed it as anti-Mormon trash fit only for the rubbish bin or better yet the fire.  The LDS church even commissioned Hugh Nibley to write a counter apologetic attack on her work called "No Ma'am that Not History".  Ironically its Nibley's work that has been fallen into disfavor while much of Brodie's work has been vindicated.  Mormon historians even quote from and refer to her work.

From Wikipedia:

and

One of her most controversial claims of Joseph's translation process of using a rock he discovered while digging a well being placed in his hat has even been accepted by the LDS church as factual and is in the process of being moved from its once lofty status as an anti Mormon lie to a mainstream faithful truth.

Since baptism is an essential LDS ordinance for admittance to the LDS Heaven and since Brodie has for the most part been vindicated...perhaps its time to let by gones be by gones and have her excommunication made null and void by reinstating her.  After all the church does have a history of forgiving those who have committed far worse transgressions such as John D. Lee who was posthumously rebaptized and allowed into the Mormon Heaven. Does someone whose work, with the passage of time, has become mainstream deserve to languish in hell?

So what do yeah say...will all in favor so signify...

I'd love to see her case reevaluated but find that unlikely since the Church's excommunication process with public figures seems largely about boundary maintenance these days (maybe always and I have only been tuned in lately).  I don't think that they want to be seen as acknowledging that they are now accepting a new narrative.

[Calm]

She was an atheist, was she not?

Did she not promote the beliefs that there was no First Vision? As well as rejection of other fundamental aspects of the Restoration as well as the reality of the Father and Son?

[Nevo]

39 minutes ago, JulieM said:

So, that justifies him doing it too?  I thought more of him from his other writings.  I just think that review was a low for him to sink to the type of writing and attacking he did there.  Brodie must have really made him angry because to be honest, it seemed way out of character for him, IMO.

I agree that it wasn't his finest hour. The sexism and condescension are barely veiled. As one scholar has noted, "Nibley relentlessly reminded readers that Brodie was a mere woman."

• "The reader who has plunked down four dollars has a right to expect something better than proof that is always found to rest on nothing but the woman’s instincts."
• "In dealing with Emma, our author allows free rein to her woman’s intuition."
• "Time and again the discriminating reader asks in wonderment, 'Can’t the dear woman do better than this?'" 

Throughout, Brodie is referred to as "Mrs. Brodie," "the lady," "the woman," "little Brodie," "our Sybil," and so on. (Can you imagine a reviewer nowadays referring to Margaret Barker as "the lady" and "little Barker"?)

Brodie, for her part, was unimpressed with Nibley's performance (the feeling was mutual it seems). In a letter to her parents, she wrote: "Thank you for sending the Hugh Nibley pamphlet. I had expected better things in this 'scholarly reply to Mrs. Brodie.' It is a flippant and shallow piece. He really did me a service by demonstrating the difference between his scholarship and mine. If that is the best a young Mormon historian can offer, then I am all the more certain that the death of B. H. Roberts meant the end of all that was truly scholarly and honest in orthodox Mormon historiography." (Fawn M. Brodie to Thomas E. and Fawn B. McKay, May 27, 1946).

[Glenn101]

9 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Glenn did you read my other posts where past church leaders deny smith had or used peep stones even calling their use tools of the devil? All I'm saying in this now  high jacked thread is that this and other topic shared in Brodie's book, once viewed as anti Mormon lies have now been embraced by the church as mainstream truths

Okay, I understand what you are saying. I haven't been following all of your posts. I believe that most of the past church leaders were aware that Joseph had used his seer stone in the Book of Mormon translation process. That was not always something understood by many church members. That understanding has now become "main stream." The extent of his treasure seeking and how it actually transpired is a mixture of fact, fancy, and superstition and still is not "main stream. Some leaders of the church may have looked askance on those activities, which only shows that they were not immune to a bit of presentism themselves.

Glenn

[Atheist Mormon]

15 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

So it was debunked by certain groups.  Not that the debunking has received universal or broad spectrum support both LDS and non LDS.

How is that a certain fact will not be accepted? Certainly not by the religion that purports it. When was the last time both parties reached a consensus? But this book was filled with so many embarrassing non_facts it was ridiculed as I recall.  

[thesometimesaint]

8 minutes ago, Atheist Mormon said:

How is that a certain fact will not be accepted? Certainly not by the religion that purports it. When was the last time both parties reached a consensus? But this book was filled with so many embarrassing non_facts it was ridiculed as I recall.  

You don't have to accept a single word of what the Church says. If a member does that we don't have to accept them as LDS.

[Jeanne]

12 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Drop Mike...walk away

Picks up Mike and beating head with it.

[JulieM]

11 hours ago, Calm said:

That was a critical (as in negative) assessment, not an approving one...if that is what he is doing, it is hypocritical imo.  I would like to see myself first.

Oh, got it.  I misread what you wrote.  I see we agree...sorry!

[JulieM]

10 hours ago, Nevo said:

I agree that it wasn't his finest hour. The sexism and condescension are barely veiled. As one scholar has noted, "Nibley relentlessly reminded readers that Brodie was a mere woman."

• "The reader who has plunked down four dollars has a right to expect something better than proof that is always found to rest on nothing but the woman’s instincts."
• "In dealing with Emma, our author allows free rein to her woman’s intuition."
• "Time and again the discriminating reader asks in wonderment, 'Can’t the dear woman do better than this?'" 

Throughout, Brodie is referred to as "Mrs. Brodie," "the lady," "the woman," "little Brodie," "our Sybil," and so on. (Can you imagine a reviewer nowadays referring to Margaret Barker as "the lady" and "little Barker"?)

Those are some more great examples of the type of insulting and demeaning writing Nibley used for his review.  

I don't understand how anyone can defend that or find humor in it (or call someone who doesn't a "humor challenged" individual).

I see nothing funny about it and I think it was completely unnecessary to stoop to doing that in order to write an effective review of Brodie's book.  

Edited February 2, 2017 by JulieM

[Peppermint Patty]

On 2/1/2017 at 9:53 AM, rongo said:

I'd be interested in what people think are "historical details that are now vindicated" in her book. How many can actually be listed?

I don't count rock-in-a-hat, because B.H. Roberts wrote about that in the early 1900s. This was available to anyone who read easily- accessible Church history material going back a long way, so it doesn't qualify for the complaint of "the leaders blame the members for ignorance, but the sources were really obscure." 

There are several "historical details that are now vindicated" that I can list.

For starters Fawn Brodie wrote (about the Bainbridge court record), "There may be little doubt now, as I have indicated elsewhere, that Joseph Smith was brought to trial in 1826 on a charge, not exactly clear, associated with money digging."  No Man Knows My History.

In Hugh Nibley's book, The Myth Makers, he devotes almost an entire chapter discrediting the "Bainbridge court record. On page 142, he wrote  "if this court record is authentic it is the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith"  and on the same page he wrote,  " and the most devastating blow to Smith ever delivered."

Since the discovery in 1971 of the summons, trial notes, court record, Judge Neeley's bill for the trial costs and court witness statements, the charge is no longer disputed by Bushman, FARMS or any other LDS source I can find. 

It seems that Dr. Nibley wasn't the only one who discredited the trial when it first came out in No Many Knows My History. The Deseret News and Apostle John A. Widtsoe, among many others, called Brodie's charges false, fraudulent and a blatant attempt to discredit Joseph Smith.

 

Edited February 2, 2017 by Peppermint Patty
Grammar

[Gray]

17 hours ago, readstoomuch said:

Brodie was actually a gifted writer.  Her style was very readable and entertaining.   I spent a summer going through every one of her footnotes.  This was long before there was an internet and it wasn`t an easy business.  I found her footnotes to not be accurate and tended to favor anti-mormon books and not primary sources.  For example she relies heavily on Wylhelm Wyl`s Mormon Portraits for the polygamy portions of the book.  Her book has been often called a psychobiography.  She tried to get inside Joseph`s heads and describe the motivations he was feeling.  There were similar criticisms of her books about Jefferson and Nixon.  Brodie Revisited by Marvin Hill and Reconsidering No Man Knows My History edited by Compton and Bringhurst qualify and explain much about Fawn Brodie.  Nibley was flippant and not a great response to Brodie, but still brought up issues that are relevant.  

Still an interesting book that has to be explained in some way.  Thus, it is discussed and reviewed many times in Mormon history.

Any history book written 65 years ago will have problems, of course. 

[rongo]

1 hour ago, Peppermint Patty said:

There are several "historical details that are now vindicated" that I can list.

For starters Fawn Brodie wrote (about the Bainbridge court record), "There may be little doubt now, as I have indicated elsewhere, that Joseph Smith was brought to trial in 1826 on a charge, not exactly clear, associated with money digging."  No Man Knows My History.

In Hugh Nibley's book, The Myth Makers, he devotes almost an entire chapter discrediting the "Bainbridge court record. On page 142, he wrote  "if this court record is authentic it is the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith"  and on the same page he wrote,  " and the most devastating blow to Smith ever delivered."

Since the discovery in 1971 of the summons, trial notes, court record, Judge Neeley's bill for the trial costs and court witness statements, the charge is no longer disputed by Bushman, FARMS or any other LDS source I can find. 

It seems that Dr. Nibley wasn't the only one who discredited the trial when it first came out in No Many Knows My History. The Deseret News and Apostle John A. Widtsoe, among many others, called Brodie's charges false, fraudulent and a blatant attempt to discredit Joseph Smith.

The Bainbridge trial is of special interest to me, and I have a lot on it in my files. Researching it was actually my first experience with apologetics research. I even had a copy of the Benton account mailed to me by BYU Special Collections when I went to read it, because the copy that we have is very fragile and brittle. 

For the record, I believe that the Bainbridge trial happened, but I also believe that all of the records that we have of it are forgeries or inventions. Because Nibley made such a good case against it in The Mythmakers, I was convinced that it had never happened and was conflated with the Bainbridge trial in 1830 under Justice Chamberlain. When my oldest was a baby, I was corresponding with a professional anti-Mormon who referred me to Marquardt and Walters' book (can't remember the title). I called the Chenango County historian's office to confirm the record's existence, and spoke with the county historian, Dale Storms (a woman, by the way --- and the third woman named Dale involved in some way in this search along the way. What are the odds?  ). She seemed a little reserved when I asked her about the record, and asked if I wanted to make an appointment to see it. I told her that that wasn't necessary; that I was simply verifying its existence and location. She explained again the process for making arrangements to view it, and I told her again that I wasn't in a position to be able to come to New York --- that I was simply verifying, and that she had been very helpful.  About ten minutes after hanging up with her, I got a phone call from Steven Sorenson from Church archives. Somewhat sheepishly, he asked me if I had just called Dale Storms in the Chenango County historian's office. He wondered if I would mind telling him who I am. He said that she had called very upset, and he told her he would find out who I am for her. He told me that amateur and professional historians had inundated them for decades, and a BYU professor had marched in with guns blazing (figuratively) and a court order to see the record. He also explained that a very young Mark Hoffman had been poking around in the basement of the Norwich court house weeks before Justice Neely's bills were found. He also said that Walters and Poffarl had done several illegal things by removing the record without permission, and that these things allow the provenance to be questioned --- and that there was some acrimony between the county historian's office and the anti-Mormons because of Walters' behavior. He said, "You have to understand, given this background on both sides, why they get antsy when researchers from the intermountain west call with questions about the record." He was relieved to find out that I am a nobody, and not a crackpot (he did question me about my extended family when I explained that both sides of my family were well read in Church history. I had to tell him that he wouldn't have heard of any of them). The real treat was that he asked me if there were any questions he could answer for me, and we spoke for about an hour about Church history topics (I remember in particular asking him about, and discussing, Fanny Alger and the Mosiah Hancock account. Things like that). 

Sources friendly to the Church mention the 1826 trial (examination, if we're being technical). In particular, Oliver Cowdery's letters to then non-member W.W. Phelps. But, Nibley's criticisms (which largely followed Francis Kirkham. I also photocopied and bound Kirkham's "A New Witness for God in America," which is the source for much of Nibley's points against the 1826 trial accounts) of the existence of the record are still valid, in my view --- there are a lot of problems with all of the accounts that haven't been adequately dealt with (they fatally conflict in key points, even though each claimed to have insider, eyewitness provenance). Wes Walters, Fred Poffarl, and Mike Marquardt also detailed an exhaustive search to find the original records referenced, combing Salt Lake, San Francisco, and Denver. Nibley's taunting clearly bugged them, and only after documenting that it did not exist anywhere (they claimed, lamely, that it probably perished in a fire in Denver), did they "providentially" find the Neely bills in the basement of the Norwich court house, in a water-soaked box with only the Neely bills surviving. A lot of their descriptions of the find and clandestine taking of it for preservation contains too many small details, as if they were conscious of objections and trying to bolster the find. Of course, by removing it from its surrounding environment, they welcomed questioning . . .

I was also struck by the bill listing various charges and examinations, but singling out "Joseph Smith The Glass Looker" as the only one with extraneous commentary --- as if wanting to make it painfully obvious what the significance of this is. I don't know if the timeline even works with Mark Hoffman poking around in the basement in the 70s, but I found Sorenson's comment interesting, given that Hoffman spent his mission stealing period paper from libraries in England, and his apparent involvement in the John D. Lee lead sheet forgery found right after the 2002 Winder Olympics ended. In other words, he had a track record and obvious motive to use forgeries to embarrass the Church, and was pretty sophisticated at a young age.

At any rate, while I do accept that Joseph Smith was examined by Neely in 1826, the Benton, Pearsall, Tuttle, and Marshall accounts all conflict on key points (especially the outcome), and were a thorn in the anti-Mormon side until the discovery of Neely's bills in the 1970s. I think that Nibley was correct about the problems with the accounts. At worst, the examination did take place, with no actual legal consequence (although Walters tried mightily to argue that he had been driven from the county under "leg bail" --- which is odd, given that Joseph Smith and Emma were married by a JP in Chenango County later. You would think that people would have still remembered that, especially when Joseph was tried by Chamberlain in Chenango County in 1830). 

What others among the "several that you could list" can you list, Patty?  

[CA Steve]

Very impressive Rongo, but if the whole point of Nibley and others trying to cast doubt on the trail (arraignment?) was to disassociate Joseph Smith from Brodie's  accusations of treasure hunting, a fact clearly established by numerous other sources since then, I am not sure what difference whether or not the trail happened makes any difference in her being vindicated at this point. She was still correct about the treasure hunting part, was she not?