I am a believing Latter-day Saint: I believe that God is intimately involved with humanity; I believe in the divinity and mission of Jesus Christ; I believe in the Restoration of the eternal gospel through Joseph Smith; I believe in the continuation of that restoration and the legitimacy of living prophets and apostles.

I very seldom state that explicitly, but I hope it is obvious to regular readers, because that belief underlies everything I do here at Keepa. When I post a collection of photos, for example, I’m not just posting historical artifacts; I’m saying – without saying it in so many words – “Look at all these people, in all these places, engaged in all these activities: This is visual evidence that the same faith that moves me to action today was at work in their lives, too.”

Sometimes that faith is more explicitly stated than usual. When I do write from time to time with a devotional purpose – my notes for a Sunday School lesson, or the outline of my testimony – there is no distinction between sacred and secular. I step into a sacred space and draw on the full range of evidence available to me as a believer, from any realm: visible and invisible, revealed and discovered, human and divine, intellectual and emotional and spiritual, fully realized or inchoate, historical or contemporary. All these are the sources and sustenance of my testimony, and all are relevant to devotion.

When I write as a historian, however, my toolbox is more restricted. History may serve a devotional purpose, but devotion is not history. Bearing my testimony that I know George Washington was the first president of my country is nonsense in the historical context – if that fact were in dispute, I would have to produce documentary evidence, not faith, to support my claim; I would have to read that documentary evidence in a logical, defensible, consistent way; I would have to account for contradictory evidence; I would have to defend my deductions against challenges from other historians – and I would have to do that with more evidence and more clarity of reasoning, not merely by ignoring, sneering at, or shouting down the opposition. If I can’t do all of that, then whatever I’m doing, I’m not doing history.

As a historian writing in the historical voice, I cannot assert that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. That fact – and as a believing Latter-day Saint, I believe it to be a fact – is outside of history, beyond the evidence available to the historian. I can say that Joseph Smith reported that event; I can say that what we know of Joseph’s age and location and family history is or is not consistent with his report; I can say that this or that follower believed Joseph’s account, I can even let my personal belief in that event color my affection for Joseph when I write about his life. But – as a historian – I cannot produce the evidence to document that vision as a historical event. That is simply the nature of history. Some may see that as a weakness, others as a strength – but it is the nature of history.

Last week’s meeting of the Mormon History Association showcased both the devotional voice and the historical voice. One presenter opened her paper with the statement that “the hand of God orchestrated events” to bring about a certain outcome which was the focus of her session. That was a strongly devotional voice – while faith may lead her to interpret events as the guiding hand of God, no evidence can document that claim empirically. Most presenters spoke with the historical voice: Here is what the documents suggest; here is how I interpret the evidence. Each voice has its place. But just as a clinical academic examination of the evidence for or against life after death would be out of place in an LDS worship service, so is the interjection of devotional claims in a setting geared toward professional history.

Because I do not have formal training as a historian, I do not know how closely my division between the devotional and the historical measures up to professional and academic standards. It is possible that I have not been entirely consistent in making that division over the course of thousands of Keepa posts. But in my self-taught way, in my conscious effort to be true both to what I believe as a Latter-day Saint and to what I can demonstrate using historical evidence, this post represents my thinking at this stage of my development, at least.

(These thoughts filled my mind overnight as I have stewed over the misrepresentation of my historical conclusions by an unnamed “reporter” for an online LDS magazine. I’ve moved these particular thoughts to their own post because they don’t bear directly on that misrepresentation. Later today I will post again to clarify what actually did happen when Churchill investigated Mormonism in England in 1910-1911.)