A sacred history capturing the age, gender and ethnic diversity of a global faith

American writer Will Durant once spoke of “our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts” — a “dramatic side of history” that captures the “interest of the reader,” while generating pessimism. “Too often a picture of the bloody stream,” the true history of civilization, he argues, “is a record of what happened on the banks.”
Departing from past depictions of history, a new era of “people’s history” emerged in the 1970′s — focused less on war and leaders of state, and more on “history from below,” which “attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people,” including the poor, women, children and minority groups.
The recently completed four-volume Saints history integrates key moments across two centuries of prophetic leadership with the sacred experiences of members all around the world, a collective story told “through the eyes of the Latter-day Saints who lived it,” according to Matthew Grow, managing director of the Church History Department.
Soon after Saints volume 3 was released, managing historian for the project, Jed Woodworth pointed out that President Heber J. Grant is central in 15 scenes within the text, while the German woman Helga Meiszus Meyer occupies 12 scenes as the second most common character, first as a 9-year old primary child, then as a young woman and later as a widow ministering to others in the branch before becoming a refugee and immigrant.
The estimated 1,000 people involved in the creation of this landmark text went to extraordinary measures to ensure the completed history would reflect the true diversity of Latter-day Saints across ages, ethnicities, gender and backgrounds. Among other things, this Saints series gives us as Latter-day Saints “the opportunity to tell our own story and represent our own history,” says Lisa Olsen Tait, a general editor for Saints and specialist on women’s history at the Church History Department.
One of the biggest challenges, literary editor Scott Hales says, was trying to figure out how to tell “such a big story in so little space.” Compared with the fairly limited cast and setting in Volume one, each subsequent volume has involved a bigger cast and setting to cover in order to make the history representative.
Compared with a couple of dozen countries in early years, by the time the story closes (for now, in 2020), the church is in over 150 countries and territories, Woodworth summarizes. That made a mention of every country impossible, aiming instead for stories that represent a region. In Volume 4, that includes stories from Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, India, Mongolia and Philippines (Asia); Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa (Africa); Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chili, and Peru (South America); El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico (Central America); and Tonga and Fiji in the Pacific.
The Saints team also sought out “characters of all sorts of different ages” and “by particular circumstances in life or challenges in life,” Hales says, working to ensure the histories felt relatable to all ages. They kept asking “How can we allow Latter-day Saints things to see themselves in these stories?”
“We’ve tried very hard to identify young people from the church,” Hales continues, with stories of teenagers and young adults figuring prominently even in the earliest history, highlighting “their struggles to find Christ in their own life, and their desire to seek out truth and find their way.”
On top of the cherished narrative of a boy prophet and his first vision, this new history aims to “expand” members’s sense of their own history to where they can “see themselves in more ways” in their heritage, witnessing for themselves how “the church is bigger and dynamic” especially as the faith has “grown and changed and developed over time.”
There’s a “whole lot more” in addition to those critical early beginnings, Tait says. “You know, there’s almost 200 years more after that founding narrative.”
Since past histories have not included as many voices and perspectives of Latter-day Saint women, Woodworth describes their team’s intentionality to include scenes from a woman’s point of view as often as possible. That parity increased with each successive volume, as the scope of available characters expanded with the Church’s growth.
Volume 1 featured 55 male (59%) and 38 female characters (41%). There were 98 scenes from a female point of view (27%), including Emma Hale Smith, Lucy Mack Smith and Emily Partridge. And there were 268 scenes from a male point of view (73%) — most frequently Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff and Oliver Cowdery.
Volume 2 features 63 male (63%) and 37 female characters (37%). There were 97 scenes from a female point of view (34%), including Louisa Pratt, Susa Young Gates, and Ida Hunt Udall. And there were 192 scenes from a male point of view (66%) — most frequently Brigham Young, George Q. Cannon, Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith.
Volume 3 features 60 male (57%) and 46 female characters (43%). There were 100 scenes from a female point of view (41%), including Helga Meyer, Leah Widtsoe, and Susa Gates. And there were 142 scenes from a male point of view (59%) — most frequently Heber J. Grant, John Widtsoe, Joseph F. Smith, David O. McKay, Paul Bang.
Volume 4 features 53 male (50%) and 53 female characters (50%). There were 110 scenes from a female point of view (42%), including Belle Spafford, Ardeth Kapp, Silvia Allred, Alice Johnson and Bertha Chavez. And there were 151 scenes from a male point of view (58%) — most frequently Henry Burkhardt, Spencer W. Kimball, Darius Gray, Gordon B. Hinckley and Hélio da Rocha Camargo.
Tait said from the beginning it has been “an intention, a goal, and a very serious undertaking” in the project to make sure they were addressing “some of the more difficult, controversial subjects.”
“You might disagree with the way that we talk about Joseph Smith and plural marriage, or that we talk about race and priesthood, or some of the issues around women there,” she continues. “There are many, many ways that we could have treated those subjects, and believe me, we as a team, are aware of all of them.”
Yet these areas were addressed squarely, she points out. “We have made a good faith effort to show some of the difficulties, some of the mistakes, some of the messiness that is part of our history.”
It’s true that some of these episodes de-emphasized in the past, Woodworth acknowledges, where “the church just didn’t want to talk about” something, such as a tragedy that took place. But in a time when the faith had been “belittled in the public press for decades” and “struggling for respectability” he points out some of that reticence was understandable.
“We’ve matured as a people, and I think that maturity is manifest in being able to talk frankly about ways that we’ve fallen short.”
It was a scripture emphasizing the fallen nature of men and women that became a founding inspiration for the project, with original managing editor Stephen Harper highlighting scriptural teaching about what can happen as flawed human beings “yield to enticings of the Holy Spirit” and “through the atonement of Christ” become “a (Latter-day) saint.”
The collective history reminds us, Woodworth says, that we have our “own stories of captivity and deliverance to tell” as a people — like is witnessed throughout scripture.
People “want to know about the struggles and messiness of the past,” says historian Matthew J. Grow, the managing director of the Church History Department. “When we face a challenging issue in history, we try to address it, talk about it, explain it as best as we know how from the records we have.”
“But there needs to be a balance,” Tait adds. “We weren’t interested in writing four volumes of problems in church history,” which “wouldn’t be fair to the history.”
”We have a bigger story to tell than that, and we have a lot more to talk about,” as believing readers know, since they come to the books expecting an “inspiring narrative of our collective history.”
“As Latter-day Saints, we don’t need to be afraid of our past,” Grow adds. “We have an amazing history. It’s a history full of faith. It’s a history full of devoted people doing their best to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it’s a history full of people, so there’s messiness and there’s confusion at times as well. But our history can withstand scrutiny.”
“If the Church were interested in producing a history that tried to stack the deck in its favor,” Woodworth points out, “it would tell those of us who write the history what to say. This does not happen.”
After 10 years of professional work on the project, including the last seven years as its managing historian,” Woodworth says, “Not once has a Church leader told us what stories or characters to include in Saints. The writing team alone finds the stories and develops them.”
“Our writing team has been given the freedom to conceptualize, research, outline, draft and edit,” he continues, recounting how the historians have welcomed feedback from senior leaders and incorporated it into the narrative, seeing the “inspiration and wisdom in the recommendations of Church leaders.”
“But anyone who says they are giving us talking points is just plain misinformed,” he adds. “My experience all the way along has been that our leaders have great faith in what Elder Neal Maxwell once called ‘disciple-scholars’ — Latter-day Saints who can speak both the language of scholarship and the language of faith.”
“In a lot of ways, our religious claims are based on historical claims when it comes to the restoration, like we believe that certain things happened no matter how improbable they look from other points of view,” shares Tait.
“So, we have a historical narrative at the core of our identity as a church.” As she said earlier, “As Latter-day Saints, we are all part of the Church and the family of God. These books give us a shared story, and a shared vision, of what that means.”
More than that, Grow quotes the First Presidency’s emphasis in the preface, “you are an important part of the continuing history of this Church” — adding himself, “it is our deepest hope that Latter-day Saints around the world will be able to see themselves in the story and the stories presented here in Saints, and ponder how they can carry on the legacy of faith and service exemplified in our history.”
“The church starts with a young boy who’s uninitiated, who is faltering, he has questions, he has doubts, he’s uncertain in the world,” Woodworth says. “There is a sense in which we’re all the young initiate who’s going into our own woods,” without knowing “our standing in the world” and with our own “questions and confusion.”
But then God tells Joseph he has a special work for you to do, he says. “There’s a sense in which that’s true of everyone.”
“It’s very important,” Tait adds, for members of the Church today looking back on their heritage “to see ourselves as a community and that collective sense of all of us as saints engaged in the common project of building Zion.”
“So today, as we approach the 200th anniversary of The Church of Jesus Christ,” Grow emphasizes that Latter-day Saints “in ever greater numbers live the gospel and build the Lord’s Kingdom and nations around the world. In all their kaleidoscopic diversity, they strive for unity in Jesus Christ and in His Church.”
“One way that they find that unity is through a shared history, a common spiritual heritage, a legacy of faith, devotion and perseverance.”
Trent Toone contributed to this reporting
The digital version is available for free on the Church website and in the Church History section of the Gospel Library app. The Church is also launching a fourth season of the “Saints” podcast, which tells more about the people and events in the books.