Fostering faith and grappling with complicated Latter-day Saint history are not mutually exclusive conversations. So suggests the agenda of a conference hosted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this Friday and Saturday in downtown Salt Lake City.
Helmed by the faith’s Church History Department, “I Am in Your Midst: Jesus Christ at the Center of Church History” will feature voices like artist and Brigham Young University history professor Anthony Sweat plus contributors to the faith’s popular multivolume history “Saints.”
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Copies of “Sounded in Every Ear,” the fourth and final volume of "Saints," are displayed.
“We hope that scholars interested in Latter-day Saint history and studies will attend,” said Matthew Godfrey, head of outreach for the Church History Department, “as well as general church members, especially those who have responsibilities for teaching church history either as part of their ecclesiastical calling or as seminary and institute instructors.”
To this end, the department has put together two roundtables reflective of recent efforts by the church to shepherd those with doubts and questions — “Making Peace with Challenging Questions in Church History,” scheduled for Friday morning, and “That They Might Know Him: Helping Students Find the Savior in Church History,” to be held Friday afternoon.
“It’s important to help those dealing with these challenges to understand that, just as Jesus was there in the presence of imperfect figures in the New Testament,” Godfrey explained, “he has been there to help imperfect Latter-day Saints in the past — and in the present — as they tried to live the gospel and be obedient to what they believed the Lord had commanded them to do.”
Presenter Jennifer Reeder, author of “First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith,” also emphasized this point of recognizing the humanity of early members, an undertaking studying history has helped her with.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Jennifer Reeder, with Anne Berryhill, center, and Lisa Olsen Tait, right, speaks at the Eliza R. Snow and Emmeline B. Wells collections media event at the Church History Library in 2022. Reeder will be presenting, along with others, Saturday afternoon on women of the early church.
“Especially with women’s history, we don’t really know who these women were and what they experienced other than they walked across the Plains or they made quilts,” Reeder said. “When we’re confronted with their feelings, expressed in their own words, we can” connect with them on a personal level.
Early Latter-day Saint women (and men) rectified their wrongs and persevered through trials the same way church members do today, she said, “by partnering with Jesus.”
She added, “And I think that’s beautiful.”
The theme for the conference is part of a larger emphasis within the history department to focus on Jesus, she said, calling this effort “the keystone” of general authority Seventy Kyle McKay’s tenure as its head.
The event will also feature a conversation between McKay and three of his predecessors as church historian — Marlin Jensen, LeGrand Curtis and Steven Snow — scheduled for Saturday morning. Other topics include the role of women in the early church, Jesus in the globalization of the Utah-based faith and historical sites in promoting belief.
The public can attend in person at the Conference Center Theater, or via livestream. Those attending in person are asked to first register online.