Transcription
Welcome to Mormon Book Reviews, where an evangelical encounters the restoration. I'm your host, Stephen Pineer, and I'm honored to have my good friend, Cheryl Bruno, back on the program today. Cheryl, how are you doing today?
>> Hi, everyone. I'm doing just great and I'm so glad to be here again.
>> That's great. Cheryl, how's the weather in California right now?
>> Oh, it's really warm today. Very nice and beautiful. Um, here in the central coast it's sometimes really cool, nice fall weather, but uh lately it's been so nice and warm.
>> Well, we're under a cold advisory here in Florida. We're darn good to get under the 30s. So,
>> oh goodness.
>> And the snowbirds have arrived. I can confirm they have arrived because I was out shopping today and the Costco gas station was full. I'm like, "Oh, the snowbirds are back here to Florida." So, welcome snowbirds back to Florida. And uh I wanted to have actually show reached out to the MI uh because recently there was a paper um um published by the interpreter foundation um and it's about um section 132 and recently there was a a large podcaster um in tied in through scripture central that uh also had a episode about this and that's the let's get real program and uh Joe reached out and said look this is getting some traction um and in this weekend they're going to be talking about section 132. So, she thought it was important that we get um maybe a counter to this narrative. U maybe folks don't jump on this don't be quite ready to jump on this bandwagon quite yet. And Cheryl's going to explain. So, Cheryl, I want you to kind of just give a little brief intro because this is obviously your wheelhouse, not mine. And uh talk about what that led up to you reaching out to me and then also um and whenever you want then do the presentation. You got a few slides. It's not really a formal presentation. It's just it'll be like a conversation. But but uh I I appreciate you doing this today, Cheryl. And so I'm just handing the floor over to you and just give the audience a little background here what what this whole thing with the section 132 and the recent uh issues going on with it.
>> Thanks. Um well, I I think I will just share real quick um um Okay, now it's lost. There it is. Okay. um the screen before I do that because um here we go.
>> Okay.
>> Um because I did um bake that into [laughter] my presentation. So um so do you see it now? Is it?
>> Yep, it's up. It's up.
>> Okay, great. Okay. So, um what has been um kind of a big deal lately that I've seen on Facebook and other places um on the YouTube channels and everything is um this um new well it's not not even new as we'll see. It's called stylometry and um we are now talking about stylometry and whether or not it proves the authorship of Doctrine Covenants 132. So all over the place, I've seen people talking about stylometry and how it's basically the nail in the coffin to polygamy revisionists and that they have nothing more to say because now it's proven um something very important to the revisionist narrative
>> and proven that it was Joseph Smith that authored section 132
>> only and that's that's what the claim is being made now.
>> Right. That's it. So, um I think I'll start off with just before I get into why exactly I um it's so important for me to talk about it. I just want to tell you what stylometry is because um some of you may never have heard of it. I heard of it back in the 80s, but um it hasn't been big lately. But what it basically is, it's a study of writing style. So, you're using little portions of the text like word frequency or how long a sentence is or what the punctuation is doing and um little words like and the and but and how frequently they occur that kind of thing to analyze who authored a particular piece of writing. So, um the reason why I know about it is because it's been okay, you know what, I actually can do this and better, right? [laughter]
>> Okay. So, stylometry um how has uh let's see now we go to the okay so how has it been applied to Mormon texts is first of all Enit Enarth back in 1969 did a thesis including a statistical study of Joseph Smith's writing style so of course we know back in 1969 we didn't have the computer to help us you know count all the ands in a text so she had to go through um pretty much by hand and do it. Um, but she found at the end of her thesis, she found that in the light of these findings as to sentence structure, phraseology, and peculiarities of vocabulary, it seems evident that Joseph Smith did not write any part of the purported revelation on polygamy known as section 132. So, she found exactly the opposite as what this new study is doing.
>> That's really interesting. I'm just curious, what was she RLDS or was she LDS?
>> Yes, I believe AR LDS um coming from that um sort of bias. Um so we know that we do have a bias and we'll talk about that a little bit later. We do have a bias going on with this interpreter article. Of course we know interpreter um sort of has this general bias where they're um apologetic which I use that in the most um you know kindest way of saying it. you know, apologetics is very important in Christianity to, you know, prove um um different things about the Bible. And so, it's it's not that I'm putting it down for being apologetic. I'm just saying that that's it's coming from that angle of trying to explain um the church's stance on certain things. And then Enid had a different had a different bias, a different um point that she was trying to prove and she wanted to prove that DNC 132 on polygamy was not related to Joseph Smith. And that's what her findings came up with. Uh the second um study that I'm aware of is Wayne Larson, Alvin Richer, Tim Leighton, and their Book of Mormon studies back in 1982. And I'm familiar with this because I was in at BYU in the 1980s and had a friend who was um Al Wayne Larson's daughter and had dinner at their house many times when he talked about this analysis that they had done. And what they did was study Book of Mormon authors like Nephi, Mormon, Moroni. and they came up with the um conclusion that based on our analysis of known nonbook of authors, non Book of Mormon authors, like this would be maybe Sydney Rigdon, um David Whitmer or something. Um based on our analysis of known non Book of Mormon authors, each Book of Mormon writer appears to have a unique set of unconscious style characteristics. So they found that the Book of Mormon was written by many different people. So Mormon's um style was a little different than Moroni's style was a little different than Elma's style and that kind of thing. That's what they found multiple authorship of the Book of Mormon. So since these were so long ago, the question arises, has styometry um evolved? Because we know like say DNA studies back when they were first being done, they weren't that reliable, but now they're very reliable. they're used in court and so forth. Um, so has styometry evolved over the years and is this maybe an explanation of why there might be some differences?
>> Okay.
>> so here's the interpreter article. Um, it's uh called historical and styometric evidence for the authorship of Doctrine Covenants 132. We have Paul Fields, Steven Densley Jr., Matthew Roer and Larry Basist. Those four got together to do this analysis and it's very recent. It just came up. and um their their conclusion is the combined historical and styometric evidence presented in the study strongly supports the long-standing claim that Doctrine Covenants 132 originated with Joseph Smith and was dictated by him in July 1843 rather than being composed later by Brigham. or any other potential author. And they studied several about 10 or so authors to see if um their writing style was similar to 132. So what I'd like to address is this really the nail in the coffin for polygamy revisionists. And I have to say I like the way they're calling polygamy revisionists that this term for them. I kind of like that term because it identifies them a little bit better than polygamy deniers might mean that they're denying polygamy ever even happened in Nauvoo. And that's not true.
>> But they are revising the standard narrative. They're wanting to revise a standard narrative that the church has. So I think revisionists is kind of a good term for that.
>> I think that's a more appropriate term. I think Yeah, I agree with that. And I think I'll start using that as well. Yeah, because even monogamy affirmers doesn't quite tell us exactly what's happening here,
>> right?
>> No, it doesn't. No, I agree. Okay. Yeah, that's good.
>> So, kudos to them. They found a good term. Polygamy revisionists. But, you know, do we have to stop paying attention to all polygamy revisionists? Because now the question is answered. Okay. So, I'm going to say that in this presentation, I'm going to show you what the strengths and weaknesses of the styometric analysis are. Um, so that we can decide if it's really the nail in the coffin. And so, we have the strength of styometry. It can detect patterns that we can't always see. Um, you know, computers are great at this. Um, and um, you know, it can quickly do this. it can it can go through a large number of texts at a time and look at all the differences and so it's great in that way as you would expect from computer analysis. Um, but the thing is that it really depends on the inputs that you're putting in and that's the problem with a lot of statistical analysis is what are the inputs and how are those related to um like human bias. So, um, what we're inputting in styometry is we need texts. So, we need lots of words by a certain author. You can't just take one letter that an author's written and discover their, you know, their um, style of writing. You need a lot of writing like a book that they've written or, you know, lots of different texts that they have contributed to. Um, you have to have clear authorship. So if a if a um if a text if we don't really know who the author is or if there's maybe some question of who the author is then that's a problem. Um sufficient writing samples. So here we have um like a lot of times we might encounter samples that are um dependent on if they dictated it to a scribe. So if you're dictating something, that's not a writing sample. That's kind of a speaking style,
>> right?
>> And and speaking styles can often be different than writing style. So So there's there's different ways your voice can be transmitted. And also if you're doing it speaking and you're dictating, you also have a person there that's dictating that might be another person that's kind of
>> Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And we'll get into that too a little bit more. But also you have to have the last one is um a premise. So you do have a qualitative this is quantitative analysis with the numbers and everything but you also have to have a qualitative premise like what are we trying to find out? So theirs here is we're trying to find out if Joseph Smith was the author of 132. So you have to have a really good well-defined premise. Um, so when the when these conditions are met you can get a lot of good insights from styometry but if you're not meeting the conditions then you have some problems and you can already see that some of these conditions are not going to be met. Um, so that brings us to Dr. Carl Puper who has um studied scientific research and told us some things about um scientific research and when it's valid and when it's not valid. So he says that they it remains scientific if you can challenge your conclusions, you can test your conclusions and maybe overturn them. So like let's look at um let's look at that Book of Mormon study that we were talking about. So they discovered that there were many different authors in the Book of Mormon. Well, now how can we test that?
>> So I mean there doesn't seem to be a way we can really test this. Okay, there's many different authors, but we don't know for sure. We can have, you know, a testimony that the Book of Mormon was written by Nephi and Mormon and Moroni, but we don't, you know, we cannot test that premise.
>> Does that make sense?
>> Okay. I'm I'm
>> so he's saying if you can't test the PR and and this remains true with many different studies that have been done with styometry. Um, another thing he says is when a study is treated as the final word, you know, instead of, you know, wanting to discover what's happening here, you know, no, they're saying, "Nope, it's the nail in the coffin. It's it's the final word here." Then we're not having scientific inquiry going on. You're seeking confirmation of your bias. And that would be the weakness of apologetics is
>> right
>> making those kind of statements. Yeah.
>> So you want to keep the inquiry open Carl Pauper says. So um we have um quite a few um evidences that the the interpreter article has an agenda. Okay. So um because it frames itself, you know, it it itself says we are defending the traditional LDS narrative here against revisionist arguments. They start out with a section talking about polygamy revisionists and what they're doing and how they are now going to try to um end the argument. The debate is over. And you see that in all kinds of Facebook posts going up saying, "Okay, here's the study. Now the debate is over." Um, but we don't want the debate to be over. We want academic inquiry to continue. We want to continue testing this testing and counter testing this. So Carl Pupper uses the um the example of white swans. He says, "Someone who's only ever seen white swans may have a theory that all swans are white, you know, and that theory will stand up until they encounter a black swan and then that will falsify this analysis." But you can't just um rely on your evidence that you've only ever seen white swans and then say, "Okay, the debate is now over. I've only ever seen white swans." you know, you have to continue um until you're able to falsify your analysis. And then this is one of the authors of this study um said on Facebook, "I've been concerned for some time about an increasingly vocal historical revisionist movement that denies that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. This claim tends towards a loss of faith in modern scripture, i.e. E DNC32 and in church leaders that succeeded Joseph Smith such as Brigham Young who openly practiced polygamy. Now the problem with this statement is and I came on your podcast the last time I came on your podcast and I was te talking about um to identify these people as basically apostates because they have a certain view. And I think this is kind of doing the same thing. He's saying if you're claiming that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith, you don't have faith in scripture and you're don't you don't believe in prophets and you know it's the same kind of thing that was been happening. And I think that this is a wrong way of it's not a scientific way to look at things. And so what we're doing now is when we're having when we have evidence come up from polygamy revisionists, we immediately can say they're apostates. We're not going to listen to them. Let's go to our study and see what has happened. So I'm real concerned about that >> as you know.
>> Yep. Understood.
>> So then um what I was really surprised at when I was reading this article and also the like main reason why I've why I reached out to you Steve and why I'm coming on this podcast is that the study cites the Journal of Mormon Polygamy. As you know, I'm a co-founder of the Journal of Mormon Polygamy with Michelle Stone. And so, it um it wants to it says that the Journal of Mormon Polygamy only exists to provide credibility to revisionist claims. I was very concerned when I read that. So, because in reality, we're doing kind of the opposite here. We want to bring these claims together. We want to bring credentialed and grassroots researchers together. those who have PhDs and those who don't have PhDs um who are willing to write a scholarly academic article bring them together ask difficult questions um sometimes these difficult questions are being avoided so we want to provide a place where they can be talked about and we want to model popper's principle of open inquiry so that is what we're doing and we are not only centering one point of view and trying to provide a place for them to be seen. We have many different perspectives going on in the journal Mormon polygamy. Okay, so the next section on this paper was a historical section. So this is interesting. They're taking their scholarly inquiry and before they even tell us what's happening quantitatively, they sometimes I have to make sure I'm getting quantitatively and qualitatively um used right. But before we tell us what's happening with the numbers and with their study, they're going to give us some historical background. And what they do in this section is they provide the standard narrative of the church in this historical context se section. So it's not really giving us historical context. It's giving us a church view of the history. Okay. And I think it would be very important to give the context of why our polygamy revisionists looking at 132 and thinking perhaps Joseph Smith um didn't write the whole thing. He only maybe wrote parts or he didn't write it at all. Why are we seeing this? Do they have documentation that they're looking at? Which yes they do. Um, and there's just no engagement in this section with these new discoveries, alternative readings, evolving historioggraphy. You're not seeing any of that here in this historical context section. It's missing. That's what Popper says we don't do. We have to be rigorous. We have to engage the competing evidence. We have to look for the black swan. We can't just sidestep the fact that it might not exist. Does that make sense?
>> So far so good. Yep.
>> Yeah. Okay. So um so stylometry um the the third section is on styometry and it talks about it gets into the brass tax of what is happening um with their study and um as we look at that we have to understand that styometry isn't like DNA um you cannot actually identify a fingerprint and that's what made it in in the 80s when I heard Wayne Larson and talk about it. That's what made it so fascinating to me. Like, can we really find a way to tell if a person is writing a certain passage? Does it have a fingerprint or what Wayne Larson called a word print? We have a word print that we can find here. But it turns out this styometry has even though it's progressed since I asked that question, has it progressed since the 1960s, 1980s? And even though it has progressed and now we have many more computer um generated ways to look at styometry, we still cannot find a particular fingerprint. We can look at somebody's like a poem they've written and then a book report they've written and then you know a letter they've written and all three will be different. We don't have a particular fingerprint that can be used. So I'll talk about that a little bit more. Um, so styometry is less reliable when texts are short. We have small samples that's not going to yield good results. Um when authors write in these different genres, you know, or modes, then that's not going to make it reliable. When texts are mediated by editors or scribes, okay, we already know we're going to have a problem here. when you have archaic language or you have biblical language or formulaic like thus sayeth the Lord or it came to pass or those kinds of things um we want to take those out of the equation which they're trying to do but you can't always get that stylized language out if it's um if it's trying to mimic like a biblical passage um then you can't always get that out. So the fifth one is if oral dictation is involved. We talked about that. If the person's talking and the scribe's writing it down, how much is that showing us about their their word print? And if the comparison corpus is flawed, they're comparing it to maybe like if they're comparing it to, I don't know, a 21st century author instead of a 19th century author, which they actually did, I think, a pretty good job at having a good comparison corpus. But let's talk about some of the other things. Okay, where am I here? Um, let's dig down into some of these things. Okay, so the um so the the changing voices that's interesting to me. So um one of the things I read about just recently here as I was studying this was they did a styometry um analysis of James Joyce's writing where he has two um two different samples. One is Ulisses and one is portrait of the artist as a young man. If you've ever read those two works he's got a totally different voice in those two works. So you look at those and the styometry will tell you that these are two different authors. Okay? They're not the same. And so we haven't been able to identify a word print or a a style that James Joyce that we can look at James Joyce because he's he's particularly using a different style. So if you're writing as Breer Rabbit, you know, you're going to have a different style than if you're you know you choose to have a different voice. So, I was very disappointed in that because I thought, you know, from what Wayne Larson had told me years ago that we could, you know, identify every author's voice and then we could just plug it in and look and see. But no, turns out we can't really do that. So um in this study um these authors in the interpreters u in the interpreter um paper talk about Joseph Smith's different styles and they say so we have his his letterw writing style we have his revelatory voice, you know, or we have different so they're they're they're I think arbitrarily deciding that well Joseph Smith has these three different voices his revelatory voice from the 19 1830s, his revelatory voice from the 1840s. And so basically that's telling us that stylometry is not going to be able to give us a good result um if we need to identify several different voices of an author. Does that make sense?
>> Yeah, it makes sense. And again, it it just shows too that now if you're com having all these different voices, you then often even have smaller um re models to work with, right?
>> Well, you have less data that you have to work with as a result when you parse it out that way.
>> Exactly. Because how many um documents do we have of Joseph Smith's um that are written in his own handwriting that we know came directly from him? Not many. The Joseph Smith papers tells us we have very few of those kinds of and all of these things are either letters or instructions, personal instructions. None of these are in his revelatory voice. So it's very hard to say this is Joseph Smith's voice.
>> Okay. Um, so scribes we know that this um comes into play in identifying 132 um because some of our samples that we're comparing it with many of the samples are going to be um contaminated let's see by scribe say by scribes so scribal influence it's called so whether William Clayton wrote it down and they even show this in their paper that it's different the the styometry is different when William Clayton wrote the revelation or when, you know, Thomas Bullock wrote it or when Brigham Y Young, you know, had influence. So this this is a problem here.
>> Most of Joseph Smith's work was dictated by other or was dictated using his voice and written by other people or maybe he was giving a a speech and it was written down, you know. So, it's like this little blend of what his secretaries are writing and editors are. Oh, and then the other thing is too, um, how many of these were edited before, you know, we get them before they come to
>> Yeah. And then also just the fact the fact too, Cheryl, when you think about it, when they're writing down his speeches, aren't they using shortorthhand as well?
>> So, you got one more level of contamination going on too, you know? So, okay. Yeah.
>> And I think that the authors were careful to try not to get much contamination in there. So, I can't, you know, I can't come down on them too hard, but um but we know that there is no matter if they're trying or not, we still have this happening. um because we just don't have enough um enough document documented um writings of Joseph Smith that come directly from his writing um to an analyze this. So the tool even if the tool was good, we are not putting in things that will make the tool work well. Um, so it's fooling the it's fooling the statistical test here. Um, so also another interesting thing too is imitation. Like say what if Brigham Young is trying to imitate Joseph Smith's style, which has been suggested in DMC 132. Perhaps um this was an imitation of Joseph Smith's style. And styometry cannot catch that very well at all. So if you're a skilled imitator, you can sound like the author. Styometry might not be able to catch that. Okay. So, Revelation, this is interesting to me, too. So, we have another challenge. So, these revelations that they're comparing Joseph 132 to, that's supposed to be God's voice, right? Those are supposed to be the words of God coming through Joseph Smith. That that is another like contamination, right? How much of it is supposedly coming from God? And I think that's why they like to they're they're dividing this where Joseph Smith's letters are different from Joseph Smith's revelatory voice which hopefully would um add the um the possibility that God could be involved in this. But this to me it it really poses a challenge. Um, so is it Joseph Smith channeling God? Is it blending his personal style with God's voice? Um, and also we have the problem of um scriptural conventions and biblical patterns. So you're using these he's Joseph Smith is using a revelatory voice that may include thus sayeth the Lord or I say unto my servant, you know, Joseph. Those kinds of things are really um a big problem for styometric analysis. Okay. Um, so the text we're using of Doctrine Covenants 132 is in question because it survives in late copies. Um, it wasn't canonized until several years after Joseph Smith martyrdom. pass through multiple hands and it um it it exists in this theological context. So many authors have talked about this. Um, the church says that we have a great provenence for 132 and others revisionists have said no we don't have a great provenence. You know there's a kind of a an issue there. And so because that's at issue and that's at stake I think that the authors of this study needed to um recognize this and they did not. So they didn't, you know, they didn't bring into play these other problems perhaps with with 132 being recopied and not being original. They just assume, nope, we've got a great provenence. Okay. So I'm starting to get towards the end here. So do you have any questions so far? Um,
>> no, I'm I'm just learning along with the audience. I have to tell I mean kudos to you because you called me last night and I said you want to put something together and then how soon can you film and she's like can you do it tomorrow? I'm like okay.
>> So
>> yes it's it's well, it's really important. Okay, going to do this. So I think it's really important that we are doing this now because um on Sunday we are going to be the church um is going to be throughout the entire church all across the world the church is going to be studying DNC 132
>> right?
>> in Sunday school. So, I saw a lot of places where people are saying, "Oo, I'm going to use this in my Sunday school lesson, you know, and I want to make sure people know that you got to be careful before you start prol before this starts proliferating and before we start using this analysis, we have to really understand what we have here and what the problems are with this." So, I'm so happy that you're going to be getting this out quickly so people can hopefully people can see um what the problems are before they just jump on the the bandwagon.
>> And by the way, I just want to open it up too. You know, of course, anybody who'd authored the paper for the interpreter foundation, you have an open invitation to come on and give a counter to this as well. So,
>> that's great. That's great. Okay. So, am I back to my share yet?
>> Not yet. You're
>> I am.
>> Not yet. Nope. No, that's okay.
>> Okay, let's get to it. Um, I think this is it. Whoops. Know what I did? I'm using I don't have
>> There we go. You're all good.
>> Okay, there I am. Okay, so limitations. Um, we did talk about this a little bit. So, limitations that can't be resolved by styometry. So, we can't there are many things that we can't resolve here. um we can't decide unprovenence by using styometry. We can't um we can't really discuss transmission. These are things that are still going to need to be discussed. Um, so the debate is not over. We need to still have these kinds of debates whether the test text is composite or edited. This is one thing they looked at. Um, perhaps some of DNC was written by Joseph Smith and perhaps some was written maybe the polygamy parts were added later by Brigham Young. So those are things that we need to talk about. Um, and I don't think that styometry can resolve this issue even though they attempt to do it in their paper but basically it can't be resolved. This is not the reason why styometry exists. Um, we can't decide if Hyram Smith played a role. um we know that he I'm actually doing a paper now on Hyram Smith presenting the revelation to the high council and um so but um even though I believe so I come from the p same perspective as the authors of this paper that I do believe Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and lived polygamy but even when I'm writing about this I still need to take into account the fact that there are
>> many different um there's documentation that um resists this interpretation. So, I need to I need to look at the documentation and add it to my paper and not just say here's everything that fits along with my theory. I need to take those things that don't fit and and try to figure out how does that work. And they're not doing that here. Um, also, we can't decide from styometry. We can't decide what William Clayton's influence is um or the evolution of sealing doctrines in Nauvoo. That's a big thing like how how did polygamy enter? Was it back in 1831 and Joseph Smith? Um, because one of their one of their um conclusions is that the 132 fits the revelatory voice of Joseph Smith in the 1830s in Kirtland more than it fits the 1840s voice of Joseph Smith. Isn't that fascinating? So their um their view of that is well maybe Joseph Smith already had received this revelation, memorized it, and then that's what he was giving to William Clayton.
>> Okay. So there's Okay, that's interesting that that's the take they're taking on that. Okay. Okay.
>> Yeah. And so another thing that was surprising to the researchers that they talked about, one of them talked about in a podcast um was it was surprising to see that Joseph Smith's revelatory voice from the 1830s was so different just 10 years later in the 1840s. And the reasoning he had for that is well Joseph Smith learned a lot in those 10 years. So that makes a difference in his voice. Well, you know, when you're looking at fingerprints, 10 years later, the fingerprints are going to be the same. They're not going to change because you learned a lot. So, um, that gives us a little bit of of idea of how stylometry has these limitations.
>> So, I'm at my conclusion here. [laughter] So, and really hope that people will get this um message out, especially to those who are saying this is the end all be all. Now, we know now you don't have to ever um look at any Jose Smith documents because you can trust the church. You can trust, you know, what the narrative has been. And I think that we want to look at there's a temptation to treat stylometry as hard evidence. these numbers. We have all these numbers. We have graphs. They have beautiful graphs. They're really interesting to look at where you can turn them and look at them in 3D. Um, so these seem to provide quantitative answers, but in reality, the field depends on how the researchers select, clean, and code their text. That's a big part of it. The choices about what to compare, how to define different genres, what data is attributed to Joseph Smith, all shape the final results. So for DNC 132, it's so tangled. We're looking at 132 in so many different ways, copying the lost manuscripts, describable, you know, contamination. So we should handle this with great caution and the conversation should continue. Styometry should be seen as a useful but limited tool whose findings are anything but strictly evidence-based or conclusive.
>> At the Journal of Mormon Polygamy, we want to continue having thoughts about these things. We actually have someone who's going to be publishing in the next few months another analysis of this styometry. So, we'll have another perspective on it. And that's what we do at the journal is we provide all these perspectives in an academic way so that we can all look at it's not it's not as hard and fast as we think it is.
>> Wonderful. Well, thank you very much for sharing this presentation today, Cheryl. And uh as you hop out of the uh screen share, um I just want to remind people too the Journal of Mormon Polygamy Conference is coming up. Was it next February or March now?
>> March
>> March 20th and 21st.
>> And do you have the link that you can send me for people who want to register or submit?
>> So we haven't opened registration yet, but it will be soon. We also have our call for papers which is out. And the um the deadline for that is December 1st to submit a paper for presentation.
>> So you have until December 1st. So, if you could provide me links and I can put that in the show notes so so that people can um uh if they're interested in, you know, you got it's kind of short notice for some of you maybe, but maybe if you want to put something together and submit it by December 1st for their consideration, uh definitely give it a shot. I imagine that this this paper that just come out will people will be talking about this particular paper that we we discussed today at the conference whether formally or informally. It will be part of the conversations to be sure.
>> Absolutely. Yeah. And uh and that's that's what I think is really cool with what you and Michelle and others have been doing to uh create this journal. Really, I think Mormon polygamy, you all you saw the vision that it it seems like it needs its own journal because it's such an important subject.
>> And so I just want to congratulate you guys on this, you know, being able to successfully launch a journal in these times and then have a wonderful turnout for your very first conference. Um, and of course I'm hope I imagine you're hoping for an even larger um uh one this coming March and maybe maybe this will be the year I'll be able to get out to it. I'd love to check it out.
>> I hope so. Steve, our seating is limited, so we won't have a lot more people than we had last year. So, I hope that people who really want to come will, you know, sign up early. Um, and we will let everybody know when that um is up and ready to to register for the conference.
>> Wonderful. And of course, I have links to the website there too, folks. so that when the time comes, you can then go to it and register. And I don't know if you noticed this or not, but I was wearing the I just happened to be wearing this shirt and then I realized, oh, it's the same shirt I was wearing when you did the painting of me [laughter]
>> and the hat, too.
>> Exactly.
>> Great.
>> I was like, oh, perfect. [laughter] So,
>> that's great. I love it. Well, Cheryl, I just want to thank you first of all for our friendship. Uh, I want to thank you for reaching out and and us being able to put this together kind of at the last minute so we can get this information out there. Again, you know, the uh section 132 is obviously a very controversial thing. It's one of those things that it causes a lot of stress and a lot of people have faith crisises over this whole thing. Um, it's one of the main uh negative points that people from my community like to point out to the restoration. Um, kind of delegitimizing it at some point. Um, and I just think it's really important that we really look at this issue because we had the RLDS until the 1980s was saying that Joseph Smith didn't practice polygamy and the uh the LDS church was saying um that they weren't practicing polygamy until 1852. So these churches both have been putting they put that narrative out there and so they can't just pretend that that didn't happen. And I think it's really important that lay people, especially when they're doing their own research, don't get slammed for um in their mind believing Joseph Smith, the founding prophet. Like that that's the key thing I think. You know, people shouldn't get slammed for that.
>> And there's all kinds of issues to discuss. It doesn't all just rest on Doctrine Covenants 132 either. There are many different um aspects to the conversation. Um, so this is something that's going to be ongoing and the church's um the church's narrative around DNC 132 and about the whole polygamy question has changed over the years. We see even recently that they changed the um 132's um um what's it called the the
>> preface to 132. they changed it to um to kind of give more space to the fact that maybe Joseph Smith received it as early as 1831 and maybe not quite that early because you know they they recognize that this parts of their narrative need to be refined and changed and that's what I think that even though I am on the side that just Mcpra polygamy again once more um I do believe that the polygamy revisionists are bringing out many things that need to change about our narrative and we need to be open to that. We need to look at evidence in a way that we haven't looked at it before.
>> Well, I think that's great and that's what we try to do here too is just, you know, look through things through different lenses here and get different perspectives and different voices on this channel. You know, I got a lot of flack for uh platforming Michelle and I was warned and told not to platform her. Um, I'm glad that I did and I stand by that because I think hers is an important voice. I tell people when they're writing the early the history of early 21st century Mormonism, there is going to be a chapter devoted to this community. And I think it's important that we document these uh events in real time so that scholars can actually use these podcasts to um as a resource when they're researching Mormon history. So I think that that's also a value that we try to perform here at MBR. And we very much value you as well, Cheryl. Thank you so much for coming on the program today.
>> Thanks, Steve. It was great to be here. Awesome folks. I have links in the description to everything that we talked about. Um, of course, for those of you who'd like to financially support the channel, we do have links there as well. And we do appreciate the donors to this channel. Couldn't do it without you. And remember, the most important thing is this. All the voices of the restoration will be heard here on Mormon Book Reviews.