Mormon Angles of Historical Vision : Some Maverick Reflections
Journal of Mormon History
1976
3
Salt Lake City, UT
Mormon History Association
1976
13-22
This is a kindly and positive and impressionistic view of the 'new' Mormon historiography as well as some personal reflections on the nature of history. It is neither revelation nor science, but art, a literary art, Mulder says. Furthermore, LDS history has misplaced the immigrant. His most telling comments relate to faithful history. 'I think I have been saying that there is room in Mormon historical writing for several angles of historical vision, certainly for at least a dual interpretation of 'faithful history.' The historian as believer must be faithful to his religious assumptions, his vision of man's life as a spiritual quest; the historian as skeptic must be faithful to his secular asumptions, his view of man's life as a striving not always so illuminated. Both assume the yoke and burden of their particular historical outlook: for the believer the yoke is easy and the burden light until his conscience begins to trouble him about significant silences and immissions and recalcitrant and opaque fact; for the skeptic, the yoke and burden are the challenge to remain well-tempered, creative rather than corrosive; a creative skepticism is not disbelief but the tension between multiple and magnetic possibilities of interpretation. (pp. 21-22)