{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.024677509814918678, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0033651149747616375, 'mean_word_length': 4.62776025236593, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective

SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, Moses Rischin, Fulbright Professor of History at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, in a review essay first used the phrase, "the New Mormon History." By it, he meant to categorize the attraction of "an array of sophisticated scholars within and without the Mormon fold" to the study of the Mormon past. Those within the Mormon fold, he said, have combined a study of "the details of Mormon history and culture . . . in human or naturalistic terms . . . 'without thus rejecting the divinity of the Church's origin and work' " (1969, 49). I interpret Rischin to mean that scholars writing in this tradition have recognized both the human and divine side of Mormon history, and that both they and non-LDS writers in this tradition have considered both the secular and religious aspects of the Mormon experience without trying to explain away the latter. As this loose coalition of scholars has continued to produce a body of work, two movements have grown up attacking the new history — not only the writing itself but also the premises underlying such history. One group, whom I might call traditionalists, seem most disturbed by what they erroneously perceive as an attempt to deny the religious aspect of Mormonism and what they rightly see as a retelling of the traditional story in different terms. In contrast, the second group of critics — let's call them secularists — find that New Mormon Historians fail to write adequate history because they accept in too great a degree the perception of actors in times past of their own motivation and actions on the one hand and because they seem unwilling to accept totally contextual interpretations of events in the Mormon past on the other.