Richard Turley retired in 2020 after working in various roles for the LDS Church. This will be a special treat, because I’m turning the microphone over to Barbara Jones Brown, executive director of the Mormon History Association. Barbara asked me to film the interview for the virtual meetings at the Mormon History Association meetings, and I’m happy to re-release this to the public. We’ll learn more about his time in the Church History Department, and how he was hired just after the tumultuous bombings by Mark Hofmann.
Barbara: So you were I believe you were only 29 years old at that time.
Richard: That’s correct.
Barbara: Was it intimidating to step into this major leadership role, and what was it like for you at that time?
Richard: Well, first of all, I think one of the parts that really appealed to me was that they essentially said, “You’d be in charge. You’d have access to everything 24/7, 365.” So, for someone who had a deep and abiding interest in Church History to know that at any time I wanted, I could go into the collections and handle the personal diaries of Joseph Smith or look at anything I wanted, that was fascinating to me. At the same time, I had a great respect for the people who were running the operation. When I arrived in January of 1986 in the Church History Department, there were good aspects of the department and there were bad aspects. The bad aspects were that I essentially entered a crime scene. The Mark Hofmann bombings had occurred just a little over three months earlier. There were federal, state, county, and city investigators who were trying to find out the motive for those three bombs that went off killing two people and injuring a third.
Richard: So, I walked into a crime scene, and as one who was trained in the law, it was fascinating to me. But [it was] also disturbing that people had been killed and that, obviously, something was going on that we didn’t understand fully.
Moving on to a different crime, Richard Turley’s book “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” was published in 2011. The book ends at the massacre in 1857. He and Barbara Jones Brown are writing the latest installment of the tragedy and this time they will focus on the trials of John D. Lee and aftermath. Barbara and Rick sat down as part of the 2020 Mormon history Association meetings and talk about their collaborative efforts on the upcoming book.
Richard: At the time we were working on the book, we were very optimistic about the schedule, as scholars often are. Sometimes we take on a project, and we think, well, this will be done in a few months or a few years. As it turned out that project which we started around 2000 or 2001, it didn’t wrap up until 2008. Because we actually divided the project into two parts, the first part and the second part. It’s actually continued to this day. So, on the first volume, because your skills as an editor were in high demand for this project, you did a tremendous amount on the book. In fact, I’ve got this copy of the book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows that was inscribed to you by Glen and Ron and me. Ron, put this inscription in which I think reflects the feelings of all three of us. It says, “Every page shows our debt to you with warmest appreciation,” Ronald W. Walker. So, you played a major role in that. When the book was published, and I was continuing to work on the next volume of the set, you and I were working together on it in an editorial sort of role, and then ultimately became co-authors of it. We’re still working on it. For those who remain interested in the topic, I will say, for this audience, that the draft of the book is done. But as was the case with the first volume, it’s too large to meet the page count for Oxford. So, Barbara and I are currently working on trimming it down to get it within the page count so that it can be published, which we hope to do by the end of this year.
Barbara: Great. Well, I for one, I’m really grateful to have that interview, that professional interview with you and grateful for the opportunity I had to work on this project. It led to my going back to graduate school and getting a master’s degree, and really has affected my life. The whole Mountain Meadows project was so meaningful on so many counts. I wonder if you could talk more about the reconciliation process that took place as a result of the book, and about the 150th anniversary when Elder Henry B Eyring, elicited or read an apology. Just talk more about that, and then ultimately achieving National Historic Landmark status for the Mountain Meadows.
Richard: So, writing about the Mountain Meadows was one part of what I think needed to be done with the topic. But, more than that, I think relationships needed to be built and more needed to be done, particularly to recognize and reflect the pain of the descendants and other relatives of the victims of the massacre, as well as to have a kind of catharsis for many of those who were descendants of participants in the massacre. As I mentioned that sort of relationship had begun in the late 80s, early 90s, and it continued. Ultimately, three groups developed to represent those who had been victims of the massacre. Those three groups worked together at times. At other times they worked independently. But ultimately, one of the groups–the group that was the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation, put together a group of proposals that were presented to the Church suggesting that the Church consider having the Mountain Meadows become a National Historic Landmark. That proposal was accepted. All three of the groups worked together with the Church in having that National Historic Landmark recognition occur.
Richard: When the meeting occurred that you mentioned with then Elder Henry B Eyring, of the Twelve at that time, now of the First Presidency, the purpose of that meeting was in part to read a statement on the part that had been drafted and signed by the First Presidency, expressing several things simultaneously.
Over the past 30+ years, Richard Turley has worked hard to promote women in the Mormon History field. Barbara Jones Brown sat down with Rick last summer and they share their collaborations together and how Rick has helped promote women.
Barbara: I owe so much to you, because you opened doors for me in terms of my career, to help me achieve the things that I wanted to work on and wanted to achieve, both in first hiring me to be content editor for book one, and then also asking me to join you as your co-author for book two. I know that it’s not just me that you’ve opened those doors for and extended those opportunities to. I’ve seen so many women for whom you’ve done the same thing. Our MHA President-Elect Jenny Lund, for example, other women who worked on Mountain Meadows: Janiece Johnson, LaJean Carruth. I wonder if you could talk about all that you have done to help promote women in Mormon History and to promote the field of women in Mormon History, as well.
Richard: Sure. Let’s talk first of all about women working in what was in the Church Historical Department, what is now the Church History Department. We wanted women and men both to be participants in all of the historical endeavors that we had in the Church Historical Department. At the time I arrived at church headquarters, there were very few women who were in the position of being a director. To understand the Church structure, you have the General Authorities, then you have managing directors, then you have directors of divisions. Then you have managers and supervisors and so forth. There were a number of women in some of those positions as supervisors and managers, but there were very few in director level positions. During the 30 years that I was privileged to be in the Church Historical Department, later called the Church History Department, my colleagues and I were able to promote women to the point where we ended up with five women total during that 30 years that I was there who were in director level positions. In addition to that, we wanted women to be reflected in the History of the Church.
Richard: Traditionally, in the United States, and in many parts of the world, history had been written from a male perspective. We wanted history to be written from a women’s perspective. So that led, over time, to the creation of Women’s History part of the Church History Department and women who were hired to write that. I can think of, you know, many who fit into that: Kate Holbrook, Jenny Reader, Lisa Tate and others. In addition to that, I had a meeting at one point with Sheri Dew and with Kathy Chamberlain of Deseret Book and suggested to them that we needed to have more women’s history as part of what was offered to Church members in particular. We got together for dinner at a restaurant in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. We talked it through, and at the end, I was expecting them to sort of take on that project and go do something about it. At the end, they nodded their heads and said, “Yes, we agree with you, 100%. Now, what are you going to do about it?” So I thought, “Well, if the ball is back in my court, then let’s see if we can launch something.”
Richard: So I thought to myself, if I’m going to do this, I don’t want to do this alone. This ought to be a project that a woman is participating actively in. So I thought about our staff. We had a young, recent hire Brittany Chapman, now Brittany Chapman Nash. So, I approached Brittany and asked her if she’d be interested in this kind of a project. Brittany and I worked together on a series. We ultimately produced four books on the subject.[1] She was new at the beginning, and so my name went on to the book first with hers after mine. I ultimately suggested that we maybe reverse that. At a certain point, she came to me and said, “I’m ready for that.” So if you look at the first volume, and the last volume and compare them, the first volume was my name first, her name second. The reality is, she did the majority of the work on those volumes, all four of them. At the end, her name is on top and mine’s underneath, and that’s more appropriate.
[1] The books are titled, “Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Volume 1-4.” Volume 1 can be purchased at https://amzn.to/349gygK . Volume 2 can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3gG37du . Volume 3 can be purchased at https://amzn.to/2KhExU6 . Volume 4 can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3mmxMxO .
We also talk about how Richard set up the Church Historian’s Press. Were you aware of Richard’s promotion of women? What are your thoughts on Richard & Barbara’s work on the Mountain Meadows Massacre? Do you have any thoughts on his work in the Church History Department?
Wheat & Tares 
As a lawyer myself, it’s funny to me that the Church history department keeps putting lawyers (instead of historians) at its helm. Hmm.
I appreciate the efforts he undertook to include more women in the department and its projects – bravo for that! In a church run by men, women won’t become more visible until men make that happen.
Yes, I agree! Given that Elder Oaks hired Turley back in 1985ish, I wonder if Oaks is in charge of the history dept. It would explain why lawyers keep getting called as Church Historian.
A cynical view is that lawyers are good at presenting facts in a way that minimizes the unfavorable and maximizes the favorable so that the reader is left with the desired impression but the writer can still claim to have been transparent. AKA, spin. The way the Saints volume deals with multiple accounts of the first vision is an excellent example of this. Lawyers are also trained to spot potential problems and mitigate risk, and weigh their words very carefully to avoid tripping landmines.
But my guess is that what really drives it (in addition to Oaks’ professional bias) is that a lawyer’s loyalty is to her client, not to the truth. An academic historian’s loyalty ought to be to the truth. I suspect the Church is trying to avoid some of the issues faced during the Arrington era so they are hiring quasi-academic advocates rather than truly independent academics. A lot of prominent apologists (Welch comes to mind) are also lawyers, and you have some recent examples of folks formerly associated with FAIR Mormon / Maxwell institute who have publicly denounced some of the work coming out of those places (Bokovoy, Hauglid).
That said, I’m not familiar enough with Turley’s work to judge one way or the other whether I think he’s a qualified historian so I’ll repeat my appreciation for his forward-thinking on gender and leave it at that. (Reading this also made me wonder if Church historian is a priesthood calling that only men can hold. As a law student, I was interested in working for the Church as a lawyer — until I realized that all the top jobs were actually priesthood callings and exclusively held by men. Not interested in pursuing a path with a gender-ceiling, I changed course.)
actually I have to take that back – the Church’s assigning certain positions (such as Church lawyers and historians) as priesthood callings is not a glass ceiling, it’s an impenetrable concrete wall. Otherwise I stand by my comments.
Thanks for pointing that out, Elisa. As a trained historian who has read and professionally critiqued a good number of articles and books written by other professionally trained historians, I have long taken issue with lawyers trying to pose as historians. It is one thing if they’re also trained historians; however, if all they’ve done is go to law school and work at a law firm or represent clients in a legal capacity, then their histories often end up coming off as amateurish and presumptuous. It is sort of like a historian pretending they can talk on the fine details of legal procedure and adjudication without ever having taken or passed the Bar. When we have questions about the law and procedure and how to best frame arguments in a particular case, let’s consult lawyers, by all means. But on historical questions, let’s consult historians.
One matter that often trips up lawyers when writing about the past is the question of the standard of evidence. In modern law, the standard of evidence has to be extremely high because living people are being issued sentences by judges that can severely impact their lives. In history, we’re often writing about dead people and are at greater liberty to arrive at conclusions by using as evidence greater considerations of context and patterns. Another issue that trips up lawyers is the question of guilt. In history we aren’t trying people for crimes, we’re simply trying to come up with good explanations for how and why things happened. Lawyers often get hung up on arguing or denying accusations. Lastly, the analogy that many lawyers, and also the larger public, invoke of history being a courtroom is extremely flawed. Historical arguments aren’t made before juries. Besides a historian is at liberty to look at all sorts of phenomena that are well beyond matters of right and wrong, lawful and unlawful. The narrative about the past is always a work in progress building off of efforts of earlier historians.
@John W I’ll remember that if I ever try to write a historical piece ;-).
I suppose one way of looking at it is that an attorney might be trying to defend Joseph Smith. An (objective) historian is trying to understand him.
That said, there are plenty of LDS historians who are probably not doing great history because they are beginning with the end in mind.
Enjoyable post and comment thread so far. Thanks to everyone.
I take the point about having reservations about lawyers acting as historians, because their professional bias is toward defending their clients, seeking to put their clients‘ cases in the best possible light, and not seeking the truth.
I think we should also be cautious about professional and academically-trained historians. History tends to be written by the victors and/or the dominant class or holders of ascendant cultural values . I immediately suspect that I am being had when someone tells me to trust him/her—whether it be a church leader OR a historian citing his/her professional credentials. Particularly when it comes to Church history, I have learned to examine footnotes carefully, because many cited sources are tendentious, whether they are written by apologists or critics. I think objective history is extremely hard to write.
As a side note, once the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, they faced the problem of histories written in the 1950s being condemned as counter-revolutionary in the 1960s. The leftist histories written in the 1960s were disgraced in turn in the 1970s as China emerged from the Cultural Revolution. China “solved” the problem for a long time by simply not allowing any post-1949 histories to be written.
Historians can write bad history. Similarly lawyers can be shysters in their practice of law. My point wasn’t that we should always trust something simply because it was written by a trained historian. Obviously there are a lot of cranks in the field of history. We should be able to evaluate who these individuals are. My point was that if we are seeking information about history, it is best to consult authors who 1) have special training and experience in the actual field of history and 2) ideally have a good reputation among their peers. Of course, when writing on obscure topics, it can be hard to stake out a good reputation even if you are a good writer. Lawyers do law. That is their profession. That is their field of expertise for which they were trained. I write this because in my many years of interactions on the topic of history, I have frequently come across people with different fields of expertise all of a sudden trying to write history and just can’t pull it off. It isn’t just lawyers, it is people in philosophy, literature, and a range of other fields trying to cross over. By all means, cross over. But commit yourself to rigor in learning the tools to do good history. Don’t just assume you can because you have developed a toolkit in another seemingly related, yet different, field.
Taiwan, you almost seem to be saying that we shouldn’t trust professional and academically-trained historians. Are you implying that we should trust laypeople more than experts when it comes to history? History has been written by victors, in the past, and in areas of the world that have restricted free speech, such as China. This is no longer the case in countries with greater free speech. Even China has changed. I recently came across Yuan Tengfei, a history teacher in Beijing who has delivered heavily critical lectures of Mao Zedong, which was just a few decades unthinkable in China. On church history, this is a heavily contested area, such as the Armenian Genocide (my field of expertise) and as such needs a good amount of scrutiny when reading histories. Lots of money with strings attached shaping outcomes on this subject, in the case of church history, coming from believers and the LDS church, and on the case of the Armenian Genocide from Turkish and Armenian interest groups and the Turkish government itself (Armenian government is dirt poor, but the Armenian diaspora has a lot of wealth).
John W:
Thanks for reply.
“You almost seem to be saying that we shouldn’t trust professional and academically-trained historians.”
That is NOT what I am saying, and is not what I wrote. Suggesting that we be cautious about history being written by professionals is far different than your assumption about my comment.
I have learned that Church leaders and the academic professionals that they (often uneasily) coexist with, in addressing topics of Mormon history, are much like any other group of people: some are reliable, some not. Same for plumbers, teachers, doctors, electricians, lawyers, etc.
I have a root canal scheduled next week to deal with a tooth that died, because the dentist I went to (I have chosen a new dentist, obviously) botched the insertion of a filling in that tooth, so badly that the tooth got infected and has passed through the veil.
Appreciated your reference to Yuan Tengfei and his critical comments about Mao. Yes, in many ways, things are now better vis-a-vis Chinese history. But are there any reputable Chinese historians who dare look at China’s mistreatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, or China’s intimidation of Taiwan? It has been my experience that just about ALL Chinese people, including professionals and laymen, have huge cultural blinkers on these issues. Professionalism has its limits, and your comments about the Armenian Genocide, your area of expertise, are a depressing case in point.
We are, I believe, a lot less objective than we would like to imagine.
Appreciated your feedback. Thanks!
Taiwan, thanks for clarifying what you meant. In the post-truth world we live in, there has been increasing skepticism towards intellectuals, and yet the demands for what intellectuals produce remain the same. People still want to read and know about history and a wide array of other issues that intellectuals specialize in. So people turn to echo chambers that confirm their biases instead of challenging them.
The dentist is a good analogy of what I’m trying to say. You see a dentist to fix your tooth. The one dentist does a bad job, so what do you do? See some know-it-all kind of person who just started dental school? See an alternative medicine guru? See the lady down the street? No, you see another qualified dentist. Why? Because dentists are all you have to fix your teeth and you know that. One dentist doing a bad job does not invalidate all dentistry. It doesn’t make the profession inherently incompetent and untrustworthy. Similarly, historians, collectively, are the best writers of history, because they’ve spent the most time and effort looking at history and have had to prove themselves in competitive environments, even if there are some historians who do a bad job. They understand the ins-and-outs and nuances of history better than non-historians. Are they subject to bias? Absolutely. But who isn’t? History is there, just like your teeth and tooth pain are there. To whom should we look to understand history and to understand teeth? The best we’ve got are, well, experts in those fields.
Now this seems like an obvious answer. But, unfortunately, it seems to be the thinking of so many when it comes to history, politics, coronavirus, or any other large issues that most adults have some desire to know things about, that a mistake by one expert discredits the whole. One historian, doctor, or other expert gets something wrong, even if it is small compared to the totality of knowledge in a given field, and all of a sudden the whole profession is suspect and to fill the desire for knowledge, they turn to non-experts. Hey, this guy’s a lawyer, he must know what he’s talking about. Hey, this guy spoke at length in a podcast. Hey this lady’s a self-proclaimed healer who criticizes the mainstream, she must know what she’s talking about. And even worse, hey, this YouTuber is speaking at length in an entertaining fashion that keeps my attention and seems smart, they must know what they’re talking about. All it takes is one YouTuber who validates a person’s feeling of distrust for the mainstream and their loyalties go to the alternative narrative that they’re pushing. They seek others pushing a similar narrative all the while building a massive wall of defense against some boogeyman figure be it liberalism, the government, large corporations, big-tech, or anything else mainstream, while never bothering to understand what the mainstream ideas and institutions are and why they are mainstream. And when mainstream experts need that person to understand what the mainstream ideas are and the evidence behind them (as in the case of coronavirus), well they are met with stiff resistance that rejects their ideas even before hearing them out.
John W:
Excellent thoughts, thank you.
Stretching my dental analogy a bit further, I think we can encompass the points that you and I are both trying to make. I learned from literally painful experience to be cautious about dentists, but I turned to a fortunately competent dentist to rectify the problem.
Same with my car. Once I found a reliable mechanic, after a series of “meh” experiences with poor mechanics, I used him exclusively for 20 years.
Same with historians. Your points are all apt.
The thing that bothers me, as you point out, is that in this age of the information explosion, the way people handle the problem of coping with too much data. is to seek out echo chambers that affirm one’s own biases. On W and T, Angela C has referred to this as post hoc justification.
I grew up in West Germany shortly after WW2, and lived there 1952-1970. I personally visited some of the death camps, which had been converted by the post-war government into shrines of remembrance. It is distressing to see Holocaust Deniers rearing their ugly heads.
The capacity of human beings to believe in garbage is a continual problem.
On a Church level, how do we deal with unsettling information. If I had gotten up in Fast and Testimony meeting in the 1980s and born witness of seerstones, my Bishop probably would have tackled me. Now we know and it is widely accepted that Joseph used seerstones to produce the BOM. This still upsets some church members, though.
Thanks again for the enjoyable exchange of thoughts:
John W, I would be interested in your take on the Armenian Genocide. Armenian history has always fascinated me. Thirty years ago, I visited Ani and other Armenian sites in eastern Turkey. I have read some material about the genocide. If you have a reference (or references), that would be appreciated.