I’m “blessed” with the “gift” of being critical. Rather than taking a historical claim at face value, I want to know how reliable the source is: How does she know that? What’s his motive for saying such-and-such? Did he make this decision before or after learning about this other thing? These things matter.

I once read a pre-publication manuscript of a history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and remember slamming up against the “evidence” that the Mormons were evil, murderous looters because an unnamed woman (described as an “old woman”) in Carson Valley, present-day Nevada, told somebody about how such decisions were made by Brigham Young and his henchmen. Who was she? How would she be privy to the internal workings of Brigham Young’s office? How long had it been since she had even been in Salt Lake? Why is her tale to be given any weight at all? Apparently mine wasn’t the only critical voice; that claim was removed from the manuscript before publication.

Criticism isn’t necessarily skepticism, although it can be. It’s simply the historian’s task to question, question, question, to look deeper, to consider credibility, to doublecheck one’s own assumptions as far as possible.

Today Sam Brunson posted another piece in his ongoing look at claims that the Church is/is not should/should not be at risk of losing its tax exempt status for this or that matter that someone objects to (see The Tax Roots of OD2(?) at BCC). He looks at a claim that the 1978 lifting of the priesthood restriction was motivated not entirely by revelation but at least in part because of fears that the Church might otherwise lose its tax exempt status. Sam is looking for contemporary evidence that something was going on in Wisconsin in 1978 to raise those fears.

The immediate provocation for his question about Wisconsin comes from a 1978 letter by Leonard J. Arrington to his children, concerning the then-very recent announcement, and its causes:

I thought I would take this opportunity of giving to you – and to the readers of my diary in which a copy of this will be placed – some personal reflections on the reasons for the revelation of June 9, giving the priesthood to every worth male member of every race and color … [Arrington here states his convictions that this came by way of revelation]

But a historian must ask an additional question. Why did the Lord wait until now? Why has the revelation occurred at this time? …

As to immediate reasons why the Lord may have permitted the announcement at this particular moment, let me mention four that may have been influential. (1) The Lord may have felt that the Latter-day Saints today are fully prepared to accept blacks as brethren and as leaders. Similarly, the Lord may have felt that black members themselves are fully prepared to exercise the priesthood honorably and to serve as leaders. (2) The opening of the Brazil Temple in August surely would have created problems and anxieties, and the [L]ord in his mercy may have felt that this was an appropriate time to resolve such difficulties and anxieties. (3) Various states are beginning to refuse to exempt Church property, including temples and chapels and stake houses, from taxation on the grounds that the Church discriminates against blacks. This has already been done by Wisconsin, was being considered in Hawaii, and plans were being made to take the case to other states. (4) The Lord may have felt that the continuation of this doctrine might lead the Saints to become bigoted – to take measures which were prejudicial to the civil rights of the blacks. The Lord may have used this means of reminding us that we are all the Lord’s children and that he is pleased with all of them and that he specifically is displeased with those who spread bigotry.

There is nothing in the historian’s craft that can speak to what “the Lord felt” (items 1 and 4); comment on that can only come from the realm of faith (or faithlessness) … and while a sociologist may have something to say about the doctrine “lead[ing] the Saints to become bigoted” (emphasis added), I’m not going there in this post.

But there ought to be something in the historian’s toolkit to evaluate the likelihood (or not) of items 2 and 3: If the situation in Brazil was a factor, there would undoubtedly be reports and minutes and other documents to verify that Church leaders were concerned about the matter and investigating the possibility. The unavailability of primary sources at the most relevant levels could be a barrier to the historian, but still, you’d expect the records to exist. But that’s not the concern of this post, either.

What I’m most interested in is item 3, the claim that Wisconsin had already revoked our tax exempt status, and that Hawaii was considering it. Something about this claim brings to mind that old woman in Carson Valley: How did Arrington know this was the case in those two states? It’s entirely possible that he could know it in an unimpeachable way – perhaps it had been in the news, and his staff had clipped reports for the Journal History; perhaps Arrington had had a request for historical research related to the matter. In any case, with so much at stake, I would expect there to be some paper trail. Whether or not I could follow that trail myself, the question is still one appropriate and solvable by the tools available to historians.

I wanted to see if there was anything in Arrington’s diary that documented his awareness of those tax-related claims, something that could help Sam in his own investigations.

I have access to the full Arrington diary, which includes a vast amount of material that could not possibly be squeezed into the excellent 3-volume published edition of that journal (Confessions of a Mormon Historian, Signature Books, 2018). There could have been additional material, I thought – maybe minutes of meetings, a request from the Church legal department for historical material, newspaper clippings – included in that journal that would shed more light on what was behind Arrington’s report that tax consequences were a factor in Official Declaration 2.

A typed index is part of the Arrington papers at Utah State University in Logan, where the original papers are deposited. No entry in that index pointed to studies of the Church’s tax exemption. There were quite a few entries pointing to the date of the 9 June 1978 announcement and the weeks following; the question of the “Negro,” the term used in the index, does not seem to have been of active concern to Arrington before that date; although he had a subject file where he saved relevant materials he ran across in the normal course of his work. There is no concurrent indication of discussions or requests or problems or curiosity detectable in the index.

I did carefully read every page of his journal beginning with the afternoon entry of 9 June 1978 (a morning entry shows Arrington to have been unaware of the announcement until about noon.). He records his own response, and those of his children and close friends who called to talk to him about it. In the days following, he shows the historian’s concern for documenting important matters as they occur: He gathers his staff together (more than once) and asks each to share the circumstances of their hearing the announcement, and their feelings and thoughts, and he records those events in his journal. He follows up with absent staff members to solicit and record their accounts. He queries those who call him from Provo and more distant places about how the announcement is being received beyond his immediate circle.

And there, in those raw materials, is what is apparently the source of item 3 in his 15 June 1978 letter to his children: A remark by one of his staff members. That staff member reported:

Everything at the office stopped until about 12:15. Everybody was xeroxing copies of the news clipping and the letter and Earl wasn’t concerned about who was paying for it. Becky Cornwall was supposed to read a paper on Brigham Young and Methodism in the Andrew Jenson Club. She broke down after a few pages and asked to leave, overcome by the news. [MS] from Church Law Department was there. He pointed out that Wisconsin had taken away the Church’s tax exempt status and tithing could not be listed as a tax exempt deduction. Hawaii was moving to this policy also because of the discrimination against blacks. They wouldn’t sell state land to the Church. This is something that could be spreading to other areas.

There it is. There is the line paraphrased in the 15 June letter: “Wisconsin” and “Hawaii” and “tax exemption.”

But my critical faculties jump in: How reliable is this report?

I do not doubt that the person making this statement believed it to be true.

I don’t question that Arrington recorded this person’s statement accurately in his journal.

The report about Wisconsin and Hawaii may be absolutely true regardless of how abundant or sparse Arrington’s information was.

But I’ll note that Arrington did not hear what the Law Guy said, and was totally dependent upon his colleague’s report of that conversation: Arrington was not in the office on 9 June 1978 – he was home, all day, with a sore throat, and completely missed all the excitement and discussion in the office. At no other point in all the pages of discussion that he records in the following week does Arrington refer to later remarks about potential tax consequences. It would seem that that third-hand report (Law Guy to Colleague to Arrington) is the chief or only source for Arrington’s consideration of tax exemption in relation to the revelation. There’s no nuance or extended conversation – you wouldn’t expect there to be, in the context of first learning of a momentous announcement – and no known followup confirmation.

It is, of course, quite possible that Arrington did seek out more information about the reported tax problems without recording it in his journal. But the line in the letter so closely parallels his colleague’s brief statement of what he heard from someone else that it seems likely that it was Arrington’s sole source for his claim.

And again, it may all be true.

But historians have a duty to examine and analyze the evidence, and not to uncritically accept a claim merely because it has been reduced to writing. It is not right to quote someone as absolute proof for a contention without querying that person’s reliability as a witness. I’ve seen that same uncritical acceptance in several important Mormon history contexts lately. I’m trying not to make the same mistake.