Faithful Mormon historian Richard Bushman admits Mormon church leaders have been misleading members

Faithful Mormon church historian and former stake president and patriarch Richard Bushman admits that Mormon church leaders have been misleading members about its history for multiple generations.

Transcript:

Question: Yes sir. I’m wondering, us so for me a lot of the incongruity that exists now, that is giving rise to a lot of crisis of faith and bad situations seems to be caused, in my view, by by the disparity between the dominant narrative, what I call the orthodox narrative, which is what we learn as missionaries, what we teach you know investigators or we learn in Sunday school. Then as you get older, you start to experience Mormonism in different ways. And those ways become um very important, even dear to you but sometimes they may not jive with some elements of orthodox narrative. And so what I’m wondering is, like in your view do you see room within Mormonism for several different, multiple narratives of religious experience? Or do you think that in order for the Church to remain strong, they will have to hold to that predominant one?

Bushman: I think for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true. It can’t be sustained. So the Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds, and that’s what it’s it's trying to do. And it will be a strain for a lot of people, uh older people especially. But I think I think it has to change. Uh, you know Elder Packer had the sense of “protecting the little people.” He felt like the scholars were an enemy to this faith, and there was the grandmothers living in Sanpete County. And that was that was a very lovely pastoral image. But the price of protecting the grandmothers was the loss of the grandsons. They, they got a story that didn’t work. So we’ve just had to change our narrative.

Question: It seems to me the the like what you're saying I agree with you wholeheartedly, I just wonder — we have such a strong tradition of them deciding the predominant orthodox narrative. And so you know wow does the Church do that without, like you say, pushing some people away? While also introducing you know the idea that it’s okay to experience Mormonism in different ways.

Bushman: Yeah, yeah the question is will we leave room to experience Mormonism in different ways, or is our strength the fact that we can all hold on to same tree? All hugging the same true. Uh. Tree huggers. Uh. I actually am concern about that, and I think people who have a more progressive view or who are up to date on what’s going on, they know “a truer version,” have to be very sympathetic for people having trouble letting go. There just have to be many branches for growth in the Church, we want them to be sympathetic of us as we struggle on. It has to be a brotherly and sisterly act. We don’t want to break up our community, which is our great strength and the beauty of the church in the name of finding some abstract truth that works better for each one of us. Um, so it’s going to be its struggle for the next, I don’t know, two or three decades, anyway, as we go through this process.