Brigham Young had four defining characteristics when it came to the things he said in public:
- Hyperbole. He used it as a rhetorical style, and used it as hyperbole.
- Logic. Much of what he said he would describe as pure logic or “kenning.” When asked he would state that there wasn’t any revelation to it at all, just logic.
- Needing refinement. He believed all revelation and knowledge was incomplete because all who have it are incomplete.
- Speculation. He enjoyed speculating with an audience and paying attention to where the Spirit went with him or not.
Those who knew him well were well aware of those four factors. These days we tend to ignore those factors and it leads us to not understanding him as he intended or as his listeners often did.
Hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration used to make a point. The antonym for “understatement.” It is from a Greek word meaning “excess.”
Brigham Young was good at it, but he complained about the fact that his audiences loved it and would just not listen to him if he did not use it. He also realized it led to audiences not taking him as seriously as he would like because they used it as a lens to view him.
These days we too often have people speaking in hyperbole but meaning it as accuracy (e.g. the current trend to call any action by “the other party” in the government as treason — something engaged in from left to right, from Mark Levine to Jay Michaelson). But in Brigham Young’s era it was an accepted (and understood) rhetorical form — of which he was a master.
Logic. Brigham Young was a big fan of the approach that people should act on their own initiative. He applied that to himself and worked things out with logic. Now that did not always make him consistent. For example, he could never make up his mind on pork. At times he is on record that every family should raise pigs and that pork and the related results of pigs should be a mainstay of diet (ham and pork), clothing (leather from pigs) and garbage disposal (feed it to the pigs). At other times he was certain that pigs and man were never meant to cross paths, to the extent of refusing to eat donuts fried in lard from pigs.
Refinement. Brigham Young believed that our understanding of inspiration and revelation was limited by our understanding, our language and our context. Joseph Smith’s father had a vision of the iron rod — except it was a rope (and had other differences of imagery). Lehi saw different things than Nephi did when they both had that same vision. The translation of the Book of Mormon, Brigham Young taught, was affected greatly by the education and knowledge and age of Joseph Smith at the time, such that Brigham Young was certain that if it had been done when Joseph Smith was older, the language and words would have been different.
He was also affected by having watched the process by which Joseph Smith received revelation and then the brethren would discuss it, think about it, and it would be refined by reflection and increased understanding before it reached its final form. We do not see that process played out in public the way it was and tend to think of revelation more as taking divine dictation rather than a process by which inspiration is refined by study and prayer (though think about the priesthood ban, David O. McKay and Spencer W. Kimball and how they both struggled with seeking authority from God to resolve that).
Speculation. One of the fun parts of studying Brigham Young is to debate that if he taught something, just what was he teaching? Some of his positions seem to fluctuate widely, and some of his doctrinal expansions are very inconsistent. That is because he believed that he could learn by speculating and then reflecting on how the Spirit interacted with he, his audience and his speculation. Again, that did lead to his audiences often feeling free to ignore him, and a great deal of debate about what he was really teaching. Joseph Smith also talked about how he enjoyed an audience that would let him speculate, and Brigham Young took the same joy in audiences.
Notice how refinement and speculation play into each other.
If you are going to read Brigham Young or try to understand the things he said, those are the four factors you need to apply to obtaining a better knowledge of what he was trying to say and how he said it.
Wheat & Tares 
Which also led to people feeling free to ignore him. When he spoke of women being equal to men and as suited as men to being doctors, lawyers, businessmen and artists, was he serious or just exaggerating?
When he spoke on racial issues (his most famous speech actually being *in favor* of all children of slaves being born free) how much was hyperbole and how much how he felt?
When he talked about how he would rather his daughters got divorced 2-3 times each than avoid marriage or stick with the wrong one, what was his real point?
Was he a feminist, a misogynist or neither?
The entire corpus of his speeches leads to a lot of interpretation and a lot of questions.
http://www.wheatandtares.org/8904/6-patterns-prophecies-5-ways-to-hear-them/ is also useful for looking at what he had to say.
I’d have gotten into more of the examples but for fear of getting off track and into rabbit trails. That is what the comments section is for. 😉
Excellent!
I’ll bet that not one person in a hundred would conclude that Brigham Young favored all children being born free from reading his addresses to the legislature or his debates on the subject.
You get some amazing things when you get the context.
Great post Stephen! I’m bookmarking this for future use in a lesson or even a talk–it seems that style has a lot to do with communication and clearly we can’t just take the words of prophets or of scriptures at face value. It reminds me of Hardy’s Understanding the BoM and how each narrator had a specific voice. E.g. Moroni said things that seem extreme if you don’t consider his style.
What was Brigham Young’s personality like? I’ve seen different portrayals in movies. There was Maurice Grandmaison’s loyal/stalwart congenial in the 1977 movie Brigham. There was the questioning/affable yet determined version in in 1940’s Brigham Young, by Dean Jagger. There was the benign/lawless good ol boy by Charlton Heston in The Avenging Angel in 1995, the horrible stonefaced, hateful tyrant of September Dawn by Terence Stamp in 2007, and there was the loyal/underspoken/following sly jokester in The Work and The Glory in 2005 and 2006 by Andrew Bowen. Were any of those representations based upon accurate historical accounts of his personality?
I don’t think they were.
My impression has always been that Brigham Young was a force to be reckoned with and not very consistent. Given how long he was prophet/governor, I’m sure he displayed almost all the traits that Rigel mentioned. People are complex. It seems like all the leaders of that time period used speculation and hyperbole when I read their sermons. Speculation has been a big problem even into the late 20th century (and, according to Elder Ballard last night, is still a problem today).
I grew up with family stories of ancestors butting heads with Brigham, so I’ve never really been all that fond of him (even though I still hold that he was a prophet).
A great quote from Planted:
“Without the critical distinction between Transcendent Faith and small faith, it wouldn’t make sense that throughout his life Joseph Smith was continually revisiting passages from scripture he had translated and refining them to reflect his latest understanding.
13 He doubted greatly. But he never Doubted . We often think of scripture, of religious belief, as having a certain finality. It takes great humility to continually reexamine our stories and challenge our own framing of things to see if we might arrive at something even more true. Even more lovely. Praiseworthy. Yet our tradition asks us to do precisely this.
If Joseph Smith could write and rewrite the content of scripture, maybe we, too, can revisit some of our cherished assumptions and understandings.”
Quote:
“ But, he cautioned, “do not come to my office to ask me whether I am mistaken, for I want to tell you now perhaps I am.” “I will acknowledge that all the time,” he elaborated, “but I do not acknowledge that I designedly lead this people astray.” Rather, “accord-[p.xii]ing to the best light and intelligence we are in possession of we will tell you what we think the Lord wishes of us and his policy concerning this people.””
Excellent and interesting post. I am intrigued by the comment that Brigham, at least on occasion, would refuse to eat donuts fried in lard from pigs. Can you please post a source for this? I have done a bit of internet searching but only find this article. I am familiar with other references from Brigham on the subject of pork, but had never heard this one. Thanks.
Joshua:
“Even those who are very familiar with Young’s life and teachings may be surprised to hear him say that … that Latter-day Saints should not eat pork…”
https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/the-complete-discourses-of-brigham-young
For an example of his thoughts on pork.
The donut story I’ve seen in print but not on line.
Sorry I don’t have the source available right now.