B. H. Roberts
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Brigham Henry Roberts (March 13, 1857 — September 27, 1933) was a leader, historian, and "defender of the faith" of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although he was elected as a representative to the U.S. Congress, he was denied a seat due to his illegal practice of plural marriage. He was also a prolific writer and editor and published a comprehensive history of the church.
Roberts was born in Warrington, a manufacturing town of Lancashire, England. At birth his name was Henry Roberts. Brigham was added to his name a few years later after his mother was baptized in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He emigrated to Davis County, Utah with the assistance of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund in 1866 and was baptized the following year into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was ordained a Seventy March 8, 1877. He spent some time as a miner in the Tintic mining area.
Roberts served a mission in Iowa, much of the time without a companion. He latter served as assistant president of the Southern States mission, where he was involved in removing the bodies of the missionaries slain in the Cane Creek Massacre.
He practiced plural marriage, marrying Sarah Louisa Smith in 1878, Celia Dibble in 1884, and Margaret Ship in 1894.[1] In 1889 he served six months in Utah territorial prison for "unlawful cohabitation."
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[edit] Church service
Roberts served three proselytizing missions: Iowa, Nebraska and southern states from 1880 to 1882; as assistant president of the southern states mission from 1883 to 1886; and Britain from 1886 to 1888. Elder J. Golden Kimball was in the mission office in Chattanooga, Tennessee when word came that three elders had been killed by a mob while conducting a service on Sunday, August 10, 1884. Roberts decided to retrieve the bodies of the missionaries and return them to their families in Utah. Given the dangerous situation, Kimball offered to make the trip; but Roberts insisted on going, disguising himself as a farm laborer. With local assistance, he recovered the bodies. Returning he took a wrong road back to the railroad station, an error, Roberts said, that may have saved his life, because a mob was waiting on the right road.
Kimball later said about Roberts:
- Brother Roberts has been my mentor; he has been my teacher; he has been my chronicler. I was relieved of reading the great histories; I didn't have to read a whole library searching for information. What did I have to do? When anything troubled me about the history of the Church or scripture, I went to Brother Roberts. He had the most wonderful mind and memory of any human being I have ever known, right up to the very last.[2]
Roberts was ordained to the First Council of Seventy on October 1888. He served as LDS Church Historian from 1901 until his death in 1933.
He also served for many years as a leader of the YMMIA.
[edit] Political Career
Roberts was politically active and served as a Democratic representative in the Utah territorial legislature and the 1895 Utah State Constitutional Convention. During the convention, he took an active role in the debate over the inclusion of woman's suffrage in the Utah State Constitution. In contrast to the vast majority of Latter-day Saint leaders of the day, he strongly opposed woman's suffrage in a number of well received speeches.[citation needed] However, woman's suffrage was strongly supported by both parties and was eventually included in the state constitution. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
Roberts was elected as a representative on the Democratic Party ticket to the 56th Congress, but the House of Representatives prohibited him from taking the seat to which he had been elected on the grounds of his practice of polygamy (William H. King, the Senator who preceded him won the election to succeed him).[3] A special election was held to fill his seat. He later testified in the Smoot Hearings when Republican Reed Smoot was being attacked in a similar manner (although Smoot was never a polygamist, and his case therefore different).
In addition to his attempted service in the Congress, Roberts was also a member of the Utah National Guard when it was pressed into service in World War I in 1917.[4] Roberts became the first LDS chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces.[citation needed] Being over sixty at the time of his service, he was one of the oldest chaplains to serve in World War I.
[edit] Career as a writer
Roberts was a prolific writer and author of some notable historical, biographical and theological works. He wrote A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which was printed as a series in Americana (a monthly periodical published by the "American Historical Society" of New York) from June 1909 to July 1915 and updated to 1930 when it was published.
Ironically, while he defended his faith and testified to the truth of the The Book of Mormon, a foundational work of Mormonism), he also wrote Studies of the Book of Mormon, which critically examined the origins of the book. In the manuscript he compared The Book of Mormon to the earlier-published View of the Hebrews and found eighteen points of strong similarity, and he reflected that the imaginative Joseph Smith might have written The Book of Mormon without divine assistance.[5] Whether the manuscript reflects Robert's doubts or was a case of his playing the devil's advocate has been debated by historians of Mormonism.[6] Significantly, upon presenting Studies of the Book of Mormon to Church leaders, he emphasized that "I am taking the position that our faith is not only unshaken but unshakable in the Book of Mormon, and therefore we can look without fear upon all that can be said against it" (see B.H Roberts' Purpose in Performing the Study)
Roberts asserted that the authenticity of the Restoration must “stand or fall” on the truth of Joseph Smith’s claim that the Book of Mormon was the history of an ancient people inscribed on a cache of gold plates. Roberts predicted that if church leaders did not address the historical problems of church origins and possible anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, the problems would eventually undermine “the faith of the Youth of the Church.”[7] Roberts continued to affirm his faith in the divine origins of the Book of Mormon until his death in 1933, but as Terryl Givens has written, "a lively debate has emerged over whether his personal conviction really remained intact in the aftermath of his academic investigations."[8]
Roberts has been celebrated by Latter-day Saints as "defender of the faith" for his apologetic writings of Mormonism. This title has been widely used for only one other Mormon to date: Hugh Nibley.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Hardy & 1992 Appendix 2
- ^ LDS Conference Report, October 1933, page 43
- ^ Roberts 1965, p. 363
- ^ "Inspiration Key to Thanksgiving Psalm", Church News, November 22, 1975, <http://www.lds.org/pa/display/0,17884,4888-1,00.html>. Retrieved on 2007-04-21
- ^ Roberts 1985, p. 235
- ^ Peterson 1997
- ^ Roberts 1985, p. 47
- ^ Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 110-11. For the view that Roberts found View of the Hebrews so disturbing that he abandoned his faith, see Brigham D. Madsen, "B. H. Roberts' 'Studies of the Book of Mormon,'" Dialogue 26 (Fall 1993), 77-86; and "Reflections of LDS Disbelief in the Book of Mormon as History," Dialogue 30 (Fall 1997), 87-97.
[edit] References
- Hardy, Carmon B (April 1, 1992), Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252018338.
- Peterson, Daniel C (1997), "Yet More Abuse of B. H. Roberts", FARMS Review of Books (Maxwell Institute) 9 (1): 69-87, <http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?id=248&table=review>. Retrieved on 2007-02-14.
- Roberts, Brigham H (June 1965), A Comprehensive History of the Church, vol. 6, Brigham Young University Press, ISBN 0842504826.
- Roberts, Brigham H (1985), Brigham D. Madsen, ed., Studies of the Book of Mormon, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252010434.
- Roberts, Brigham H (June 28, 2004), Sillito, ed., History's Apprentice: The Diaries of B. H. Roberts, Signature Books, ISBN 978-1-56085-173-8, <http://www.signaturebooks.com/history's.htm>.
Madsen, Truman G. "Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story". (Salt Lake CIty: Bookcraft, 1980.)
[edit] External links
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