Who has read Matthew Harris’s work and how much should we believe?

[Calm]

18 minutes ago, Rain said:

But if you are a faithful member I see how that will draw you to God to have Him help you through that - which will be of much higher value to people than having someone basically spoon feed you.

And if you are not a faithful member it should have you at least looking at yourself and where you can do better.

Nicely put.

[Teancum]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

Sometimes we can’t see things right in front of our faces because we are so set in our ways. Sometimes we might not see because there is too much clutter around us occupying our thoughts.

Well sure. We all need advice at times. But to say who else is better?  That seems a stretch.

[CV75]

10 hours ago, Rain said:

I don't think that would be a good thing, unless BIG MAYBE, he never planned or thought of doing it till after writing Second Class Saints. It would put him in bias mode too much, knowing that after the book he would be doing the second piece.

Have you read it? I've just finished and looking at it from a faithful saint perspective and not my own unbelieving perspective, I don't think it needs the spiritual piece. I'm reminded of how @BlueDreams talks about being ok with being uncomfortable.  The idea of how you learn more with that uncomfortability. The book actually ends with a lot of positive things the church is doing, and how it has changed.  It is not afraid to be honest though so it still shares things that will make people uncomfortable, and frankly should make them feel uncomfortable. 

But if you are a faithful member I see how that will draw you to God to have Him help you through that - which will be of much higher value to people than having someone basically spoon feed you.

And if you are not a faithful member it should have you at least looking at yourself and where you can do better.

I have not read the book, but am speaking in general terms for well-researched, objectively-presented material by a Church member. I take it on good faith this book is an example of that. Well-documented and interpreted history can be good, bad and ugly. Our or the author’s responses to it do not have to be bad and ugly.

See this talk by Elder Holland: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/be-faithful-disciple-scholars-even-in-difficulty-elder-holland-says-at-maxwell-institute?lang=eng It encourages disciplined scholarship along with a witness of how Christ helps us deal with difficult facts and information. I am suggesting that a historian (intellectual) saint (spiritual) can, and even has a responsibility to, express both. This is not apologetics (intellectual). That is a tall order, hence, “great.”

I do not see it as biased to lay out the facts and then share how you process them on a spiritual level without explaining or contextualizing the facts away.

I know people who joined the Church before 1978, despite the hurt they felt from missionaries and members informing them of and explaining the ban. Calling it a discomfort is a gross disservice. They went ahead, not with apologetics, but with Jesus Christ helping them handle their situation and circumstance and all involved. I am seeing that as time goes on, some of these stories have been lost, or people won’t bring them up anymore in situations where they are taken as a challenge to a more just resolution or an angrier narrative, or they otherwise feel pressured to balance both narratives.

I can understand your explanation as to why you don’t need the spiritual piece. I don’t need it either, but I still think it would be great (and a reasonable) thing for a disciple-scholar to do.

[Teancum]

16 hours ago, bluebell said:

I wish that the apostles would acknowledge the places that they went wrong, or needed to regroup, but I don't agree with Teancum that going wrong sometimes means we can't trust them anytime. 

Maybe I can clarify a bit. LDS leaders provide reasonable and decent advice that is helpful I am sure in living a good life and raising a good family, all of it in the context of Mormonism's world view, which is fine if someone is a believer.  It is in the points of major doctrinal issues, the claim to hold God's one priesthood and the founding claims of the church as it relates to Joseph Smith.  I think it is pretty obvious the leaders have gotten some major doctrine issues wrong, or they have dramatically changed doctrines along  the way.  This puts their claim of special divine providence into question for me. For me they have no more special directives from a divine being than anyone else.  

 

16 hours ago, bluebell said:

 

If I applied that logic to myself (or anyone else), it would catastrophic.  I think there are plenty of reasonable reasons to decide that these men are not prophets, seers, and revelators (none that I agree with, but still reasonable from certain perspectives), but the 'not always right = not trustworthy does make sense to me.

And that is not my position. I just think it is clear they are not prophets in the way that term is generally understood. So I feel no need to conform my life and give my time and money to an organization that has such high demands of its members but has men claiming to be something they are not while still expecting obedience to their words.

16 hours ago, bluebell said:

It's a fair point that sister Dew's talk won't be completely valid for every saint who has a testimony, but I think you have to have a testimony to find any of it supportable.

It is great talk to confirm one's bias of beliefs.  And I do not mean that in a negative way. There  was a time I would have agreed wholeheartedly with her comments.

Edited October 9, 2024 by Teancum

[Teancum]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

Just an FYI for accuracy…

It is possible that Harris is no longer a member, not disciplined, but by choice. Doublechecking if I can get a source of him making the statement as I don’t know if the source I read is repeating what they heard or has personal knowledge. 

I di not know his status as far as the church goes.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Maybe I can clarify a bit. LDS leaders provide reasonable and decent advice that is helpful I am sure in living a good life and raising a good family, all of it in the context of Mormonism's world view, which is fine if someone is a believer.  It is in the points of major doctrinal issues, the claim to hold God's one priesthood and the founding claims of the church as it relates to Joseph Smith.  I think it is pretty obvious the leaders have gotten some major doctrine issues wrong, or they have dramatically changed doctrines along  the way.  This puts their claim of special divine providence into question for me. For me they have no more special directives from a divine being than anyone else.  

 

And that is not my position. I just think it is clear they are not prophets in the way that term is generally understood. So I feel no need to conform my life and give my time and money to an organization that has such high demands of its members but has men claiming to be something they are not while still expecting obedience to their words.

It is great talk to confirm one's bias of beliefs.  And I do not mean that in a negative way. There  was a time I would have agreed wholeheartedly with her comments.

And it’s an irrelevant talk for people who have the bias of belief that you have.  Like I said, I get that.

[rpn]

There is a new resource for those interested in this topic at

https://www.google.com/books/edition/This_Abominable_Slavery/SvMiEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

All of Brigham Young's speeches (for which we had shorthand but apparently not transcribed versions, which have now been completely transcribed) during the 1852 time frame that Utah was discussing what to do about slavery (and apparently also native americans) in the Territory.

[MrShorty]

I know I'm late to the game, but I finally got a copy of Harris's book and am in mid read. A couple of things so far that have stood out to me (I hope it's not inappropriate to share these kinds of specifics).

1) Harris suggests early on that a major influence on the 20th century history of the priesthood and temple ban was Elder Joseph Fielding Smith's 1931 book "The Way to Perfection." It appears that this is one of the earliest publications that made a "spirited" defense of the ban. It's influence was further extended as it was apparently used for some time as a manual for use in LDS Sunday School classrooms. Later Harris observes that Elder Petersen's '54 talk "quoted liberally" from "The Way to Perfection." If there's a question here, is there anyone else who would agree with Harris that "The Way to Perfection" had this kind of influence over the opinions of church members (and those who later became leaders)?

2) I've read up through the '78 revelation. From what I can see, Harris identifies only two occasions when the entire quorum prayed about the ban. The one everyone knows about, obviously, is June of '78 when, as Scott Woodward observed, the first time that all 15 apostles were gathered together to pray about the ban, with the earnest intent of following the Lord's instruction to lift the ban, should such instruction be given, God granted the revelation. Harris appears to have evidence for a time in June of 1971. This was in the lead up to organizing the Genesis Group. As a few influencial Black members (Darius Gray is among this group) convinced a few apostles to meet with them. In this meeting, a few of the men pressed really hard to know if the brethren had ever prayed about the ban. The answer was, apparently, that no, the brethren had never prayed about the ban. A few weeks later, Harris claims that, for the "first time to their [the apostles present] knowledge in the history of the church" the Q15 prayed about the ban and received a "not yet" answer. Add to this Pres. McKay's private entreaties about lifting the ban, and it seems that we have good evidence that leadership waited until the mid-20th century to seriously pray about the ban. For me, the big question that still remains is whether these "no" answers were a true reflection of God's will or if they represent something more pragmatic, in that God knew that the leadership and membership were not sufficiently united in lifting the ban.

May have more comments later as I finish reading. These two points were particularly interesting to me.

[Calm]

52 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

If there's a question here, is there anyone else who would agree with Harris that "The Way to Perfection" had this kind of influence over the op

I can’t give any more than vague memories, but I am confident it was a very popular book.  I remember seeing it quoted quite a bit.  Used bookstores in Provo had quite a few (the name always stood out to me so it caught my eye and was one of the first church books I tried to read iirc).  My semi educated guess is he is right.  My one grandmother has a small set of church books (15 maybe?) on her one bookcase, all the usual volumes and it was one of them.  My other grandmother had it too and she had even fewer books that she held on to (she was an English teacher so read a lot) as did my parents, who had a ton of books eventually and always had this one from my memories of dusting our library every Saturday…I think it was a gift from a relative as I remember a cool looking inscription…though I could be confusing it with another book as the cover and size was similar to quite a few books my parents had.

I just did a site search on the Church’s website and even limited to English only, there were quite a few hits on it being used as a reference.

Joseph Fielding Smith’s Doctrines of Salvation (that was a compilation done by Elder McConkie) were published in the paperback Gospel Reference Library (name may be wrong, it was a group of cheap, mass produced paperbacks, boxed set iirc, but may have been sold separately) iirc by Deseretbook.  Not sure about Way of Perfection, but there was likely duplication between the two.

Edited February 13, 2025 by Calm

[MrShorty]

I finished the book. It was surprisingly shorter than it looked, because about 1/3 of the book was end notes. (If you are the kind to examine most notes in a work like this, then it may seem surprisingly long). Some thoughts after finishing.

1) It is interesting how the "fear" of race mixing and interracial marriage seemed to drive the priesthood and temple ban. At time in Harris's narrative, when it seemed that other ideas might be able to push the church towards full racial inclusion, this fear of interracial marriage by itself seemed to keep the ban in place. Even after 1978, counsel against interracial marriage continued in the church until well into the 21st century (Harris cites a 2011 Aaronic Priesthood Manual that discouraged interracial marriage in one lesson). 

Harris explored to a limited extend how prevalent ideas about race and race mixing were prominent in early 20th century America, it seems like one might need to delve even deeper into the origins of these racialist beliefs to better understand why 20th century LDS were so opposed to interracial marriage. I did some internet research of my own, and landed on this Wikipedia page on "scientific racism" (now considered pseudo-scientific) that seems to summarize the major thinkers and developers of the ideas (noting how one Thomas Jefferson was "One of the most influential pre-Darwinian racial theorists..."). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism It seems to me that an understanding of this prominent line of thinking that was given a certain prestige by being considered "scientific" really helps to understand 19th and 20th century LDS attitudes towards race.

2) In many conversations around the ban, someone will suggest that we look to the lives and opinions of Black LDS. Harris includes several of these voices and anecdotes, including a section of Chapter 6 dedicated to the Genesis Group. As an attempt to summarize the views of "faithful" Black LDS, Harris concludes that "first: Black people would never be happy in the church as long as they were denied the priesthood; second, they would struggle to remain in the faith as long as the church denied them full access to sacred Mormon rituals." As I consider the voices of Black Latter-day Saints on the ban, I find very few who fully embrace the theology(ies) that was used to implement and perpetuate the ban. I find differing levels of tolerance and patience with allegedly "false" beliefs, but not many who fully embrace what the church was teaching.

3) I've shared before in this group that the main issue that I see around the ban is not about the specific teachings and practices, but what the entire enterprise says about our process of being led by God/Christ through direct revelation to church leaders. As I noted earlier, it seems interesting to me that we fully adopted "scientific" explanations for the ban, contrasting interestingly against our reluctance to accept "scientific" explanations for human origins.

I don't see anything in Harris's narrative that would suggest any kind of revelatory source for the ban. Harris notes in a couple of places the importance of "unanimity" among the top quorums before something can be called revelation in the 20th century church, and it is interesting to see how the lack of unanimity seems to be the central reason why the ban wasn't lifted before '78. Harris goes so far as to claim that Pres. Kimball had decided (received private revelation??) early in his presidency that he would lift the ban, and that most of his efforts on this front during his presidency were mostly about convincing (without strong arming) his brethren in the Q15 to join him in this goal. IMO, this still seems like a troubling aspect of how the church receives revelation, because it seems to suggest that the most conservative member of the Q15 or the least willing to accept something new is the one who determines if and when new -- especially progressive -- revelation is received. While I didn't expect anything different, I still find myself troubled by this particular example of how our own stubbornness to receive revelation seems to prevent God from leading the church in newer, better directions.

[Stargazer]

On 10/5/2024 at 4:16 PM, Rain said:

I'm about 15% of the way through it so far.  At the moment it just makes me sick.  

The treatment of any black person in the US over the same period would make any person sick. 

[Stargazer]

On 10/5/2024 at 9:33 PM, The Nehor said:

And many of those people are not biased. They are just wrong. Slavery caused the civil war. The rest is ‘lost cause’ lies.

Indeed. 

I recommend the Atun-Shei Films playlist "Checkmate Lincolnites" which talks about the true origins of and the history of the Civil War. He does this in a format as himself as both a Union and Confederate soldier having a discussion on various topics related to the war. 

• Here's a link to the one that discusses "states' rights": Wasn’t it KINDA About STATES’ RIGHTS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
• And the one talking about tariffs and taxes as the cause of the CW: TARIFFS and TAXES: The REAL Cause of the CIVIL WAR?!
• Finally, the one about slavery being definitely about slavery: THE CORNERSTONE OF JOHNNY REB
• The "Lost Cause Myth": Is Civil War History Being REWRITTEN?!?!?!?!?!

Now, this is intended to be entertaining as well as factual. Your mileage may vary as to the entertainment component, but I've found them to be both informative and entertaining. Uncouth language warning!

 

Edited February 17, 2025 by Stargazer

[CV75]

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

I finished the book. It was surprisingly shorter than it looked, because about 1/3 of the book was end notes. (If you are the kind to examine most notes in a work like this, then it may seem surprisingly long). Some thoughts after finishing.

1) It is interesting how the "fear" of race mixing and interracial marriage seemed to drive the priesthood and temple ban. At time in Harris's narrative, when it seemed that other ideas might be able to push the church towards full racial inclusion, this fear of interracial marriage by itself seemed to keep the ban in place. Even after 1978, counsel against interracial marriage continued in the church until well into the 21st century (Harris cites a 2011 Aaronic Priesthood Manual that discouraged interracial marriage in one lesson). 

Harris explored to a limited extend how prevalent ideas about race and race mixing were prominent in early 20th century America, it seems like one might need to delve even deeper into the origins of these racialist beliefs to better understand why 20th century LDS were so opposed to interracial marriage. I did some internet research of my own, and landed on this Wikipedia page on "scientific racism" (now considered pseudo-scientific) that seems to summarize the major thinkers and developers of the ideas (noting how one Thomas Jefferson was "One of the most influential pre-Darwinian racial theorists..."). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism It seems to me that an understanding of this prominent line of thinking that was given a certain prestige by being considered "scientific" really helps to understand 19th and 20th century LDS attitudes towards race.

2) In many conversations around the ban, someone will suggest that we look to the lives and opinions of Black LDS. Harris includes several of these voices and anecdotes, including a section of Chapter 6 dedicated to the Genesis Group. As an attempt to summarize the views of "faithful" Black LDS, Harris concludes that "first: Black people would never be happy in the church as long as they were denied the priesthood; second, they would struggle to remain in the faith as long as the church denied them full access to sacred Mormon rituals." As I consider the voices of Black Latter-day Saints on the ban, I find very few who fully embrace the theology(ies) that was used to implement and perpetuate the ban. I find differing levels of tolerance and patience with allegedly "false" beliefs, but not many who fully embrace what the church was teaching.

3) I've shared before in this group that the main issue that I see around the ban is not about the specific teachings and practices, but what the entire enterprise says about our process of being led by God/Christ through direct revelation to church leaders. As I noted earlier, it seems interesting to me that we fully adopted "scientific" explanations for the ban, contrasting interestingly against our reluctance to accept "scientific" explanations for human origins.

I don't see anything in Harris's narrative that would suggest any kind of revelatory source for the ban. Harris notes in a couple of places the importance of "unanimity" among the top quorums before something can be called revelation in the 20th century church, and it is interesting to see how the lack of unanimity seems to be the central reason why the ban wasn't lifted before '78. Harris goes so far as to claim that Pres. Kimball had decided (received private revelation??) early in his presidency that he would lift the ban, and that most of his efforts on this front during his presidency were mostly about convincing (without strong arming) his brethren in the Q15 to join him in this goal. IMO, this still seems like a troubling aspect of how the church receives revelation, because it seems to suggest that the most conservative member of the Q15 or the least willing to accept something new is the one who determines if and when new -- especially progressive -- revelation is received. While I didn't expect anything different, I still find myself troubled by this particular example of how our own stubbornness to receive revelation seems to prevent God from leading the church in newer, better directions.

Some additional springboarded thoguhts:

1)      For those that held the fear of race-mixing (one of many biases), this fear would also drive the need to justify the ban to validate and assuage their fear. But there were many other fears and biases, the roots of which I believe are touched upon in the Church essays.

2)      Scientific racism was a repackaged religious racism which began to justify the slave trade, the bias in this instance being that for money! This bias toward greed engendered other biases to support the economic/political aims of the powerful. Again, these are biases among so many other biases.

3)      From my experience, the reason people stay with the Church is far deeper (i.e., the testimony of Jesus and His will for them) than their discomfort with and complaint about being treated in a disadvantaged, less-than manner than expected of saints: "[Identity] would never be happy in the church as long as they were denied the priesthood; second, they would struggle to remain in the faith as long as the church denied them full access to sacred Mormon rituals." Many people of [identity] remain true to the testimony of Jesus (Saints 4 offers some great examples), and many in so-called ideal circumstances are still never be happy in the Church, even with the priesthood and sacred rituals available to them, but they still stay because of the testimony of Jesus.

I think the following scriptures offer hope to those who are discouraged with fallibility: Alma 29 (“O that I were an angel…”, in which case he is not lamenting his prophets’ fallibility but his own) and Helaman 7:7-9, and how realistic and apropos is that?

But yes, more perfect people would yield more perfect results, whether innately more conservative or more liberal -- either a manifestation of fallibility due to sheer imbalance.

[Stargazer]

On 10/6/2024 at 4:25 PM, The Nehor said:

I really wish Brigham Young hadn’t revised quorum seniority to knock down those apostles who had left for a time. If he had not Orson Pratt would have succeeded him instead of John Taylor and the whole Priesthood Ban thing might have died with Brigham Young

I only just realized that this thread was about 4 months gone. I saw it show up after MrShorty had necromanced it, and didn't realize it was semi-ancient until just now. After I decided to answer your post above.

But to your point about revisions of quorum seniority, just as a point of information, there was a second quorum seniority revision that occurred after Brigham Young. Seniority was originally based simply on seniority as an ordained apostle, not as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. There was an ordained apostle, John Willard Young, a son of Brigham Young, who had been called to serve as a Counselor in the First Presidency (to Brigham Young). He was ordained to the office of Apostle, but was never made a member of the Quorum. When it was recognized that Lorenzo Snow was in poor health, and Young had been ordained an apostle before Snow, they made a change to the policy so that it was the apostle senior in length of time in the Quorum of the Twelve who would assume the Presidency. Many of the general authorities disliked Young and felt that his succession to the presidency would be a disaster for the church. If one reads Young's biographical article on Wikipedia, one might tend to agree with them!

 

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

The treatment of any black person in the US over the same period would make any person sick. 

This is true, but I didn't believe most of those people were called by God and what they said didn't influence my own thinking.

[Stargazer]

33 minutes ago, Rain said:

This is true, but I didn't believe most of those people were called by God and what they said didn't influence my own thinking.

Nothing church leaders ever said about black people ever influenced my thinking. I was ready to accept that perhaps there was a valid divine exclusion in the case of priesthood ordination, but that was that. The thing I understand is that although we would like to have had church leaders who were perfectly godly men who had divorced themselves from the negative parts of their worldly social milieus, they were all men and women who had to live in such milieus, and were far from perfect. The Apostle Peter came in for harsh criticism leveled at him from Paul. Was it valid? Perhaps. And Paul himself had some rather harsh views on women. These views reflected his social milieu. Women can't speak in church, according to him. He also had a problem with men wearing long hair. Were these divinely inspired? I think not. 

When Church leaders achieve perfection, you will know we have entered the Millennium. 

[Rain]

44 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Nothing church leaders ever said about black people ever influenced my thinking. I was ready to accept that perhaps there was a valid divine exclusion in the case of priesthood ordination, but that was that. The thing I understand is that although we would like to have had church leaders who were perfectly godly men who had divorced themselves from the negative parts of their worldly social milieus, they were all men and women who had to live in such milieus, and were far from perfect. The Apostle Peter came in for harsh criticism leveled at him from Paul. Was it valid? Perhaps. And Paul himself had some rather harsh views on women. These views reflected his social milieu. Women can't speak in church, according to him. He also had a problem with men wearing long hair. Were these divinely inspired? I think not. 

When Church leaders achieve perfection, you will know we have entered the Millennium. 

I'm glad it never influenced your thinking.  It's still ok to be sick about what they taught. It's ok to say what was taught was wrong.  

[Stargazer]

29 minutes ago, Rain said:

I'm glad it never influenced your thinking.  It's still ok to be sick about what they taught. It's ok to say what was taught was wrong.  

Yep. Even good people sometimes believe and teach things that are wrong. 

[Rain]

3 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Yep. Even good people sometimes believe and teach things that are wrong. 

Thank you for listening to my heart.

[Teancum]

On 10/5/2024 at 12:03 AM, grapevine said:

South wasn’t trying to take over central government.  Tariffs and states rights caused war not slavery.  People were citizens of states first.  People with libertarian economic ideas usually.  Sympathizers on every side of history.

Sorry um no. The Lost Cause argument is a total myth and attempt to rewrite history and has been debunked over and over again.

[Teancum]

On 10/5/2024 at 12:03 AM, grapevine said:

Historians have there biases.  There are some people feel American Civil war was not Civil.  South wasn’t trying to take over central government.  Tariffs and states rights caused war not slavery.  People were citizens of states first.  People with libertarian economic ideas usually.  Sympathizers on every side of history.

 

There are historians with liberal and conservative biases too.  Even in the church.  One is Matthew Harris.  Has been discussed before on priesthood revelations.  Harris has liberal biases anyway and wishes members of the church would share them.   You can use gospel principles to justify any political philosophy you already espouse.

 

On blacks and priesthood wrote books calling them second class saints.  God not man made the rules.  Could of ended sooner if not for some apostles that opposed it.  Doesn’t God call those he knows will listen to him?  Can’t he remove them.

 

Spencer Kimball wanted to end ban.  Had to win over all the apostles.  As apostle he defended ban and in press conference said could had to be revelation.  He received it.  Sent Mark E Petersen on assignment to get unamity?  President of twelve makes assignments months in advance. Delbert Stapley in hospital.  They would of opposed it in temple meeting?  He could read there mind?

Twists book on priesthood to criticize brethren and talks about problems they still had do to ban.  He had inside info others didn’t.  We’re did he get it.  Most people are glad that all of Gods children can receive priesthood and temple blessings now.  He just twists things around to degenerate some leaders.  Was Hugh B. Brown not retained in 1st Presidency do to his disagreements?

 

Another attack is books he wrote on Ezra Taft Benson.  Everyone of decency hated communism. He may of been more vocal.  Criticizing him for that.  Did Benson cause people to go to extremes in government?  Berlin Wall fell during his presidency.  Prophets asked us to pray for nations to open and he spoke against governments that did not allow freedom of worship and murdered many people.  Did he slow down work in communist countries?  Ed Kimball's lengthen your stride had some information there.

On fourteen fundamentals talk did he have to apologize to brethren?  Talk quoted in conference.  Church has it up still.  Church has spoken on civic matters such as prohibition, same gender marriage, equal rights a,end,ent, gambling and the like.  Prophets wife told brother in law he didn’t like talk.  Even in Kimball's bio he said only meant to underscore President Kimball’s call and Camilla felt if someone else gave talk would not of been as much controversy.  M. Russell Ballard gave similar talk at byu and byu Hawaii ensign published.

 

We are repeatedly taught to follow the prophets.  Etb and SWK both said it is more important to follow living prophet than dead one since dead ones no longer around to declare word.  There was lots of agreement between what they said there.

 

I will not pay to read sal lake trib online.  Has many articles there.  Cease not to counsel God is in scriptures.  And the work of God is not frustrated what Joseph Smith was told.  So man could not delay or speed up Gods timing.  He is critical of several brethren says what church should do on several issues.  Who called and ordained him?  He gets much of his information from same source as Michael Quinn  was excommunicated.

 

I read books he wrote available online won’t buy them.  He wants to publish more.  How does he find information other people didn’t get?  How much is true and how much is his own bias?  
 

If we believe prophets are called of God will faithfully follow them and not historians who have different ideas or know things the brethren don’t.

 

 

Harris is a great historian. How do you know he is liberal?  I have not read the book Second Class Saints but I did read the Benson book. It was excellent.

[Teancum]

On 10/5/2024 at 12:36 AM, grapevine said:

He is a member who takes an interest in history.  No way the church itself would hire him. Has articles critical of some church leaders.

He is more than a member interested in history:

https://www.csupueblo.edu/profile/matt-harris/index.html

 

 

Edited February 18, 2025 by Teancum

[Stargazer]

9 hours ago, Teancum said:

He is more that a member interested in history:

https://www.csupueblo.edu/profile/matt-harris/index.html

 

 

Wow, quite a resumé!

[Teancum]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Wow, quite a resumé!

Whether one agrees with his take on the history he writes or not he is pretty bright and a good writer. I have also enjoyed podcasts with him on and he does not seem overtly hostile towards Mormonism.