American Mormon politician (1857–1933)
B. H. Roberts | |
|---|---|
| In office October 7, 1888 – September 27, 1933 | |
| President | John Taylor |
| Seat refused March 4, 1899 – April 2, 1900 | |
| Preceded by | William H. King |
| Succeeded by | William H. King |
| Born | Brigham Henry Roberts (1857-03-13)March 13, 1857 Warrington, England |
| Died | September 27, 1933(1933-09-27) (aged 76) Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses | Sarah Smith (m. 1878)Celia Dibble (m. 1884) |
| Children | 15 |
| Education | University of Utah (BA) |
| Signature | |
Brigham Henry Roberts (March 13, 1857 – September 27, 1933) was a historian, politician, gift leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He edited the seven-volume History of the Communion of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and independently wrote picture six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ short vacation Latter-day Saints. Roberts also wrote Studies of the Book exclude Mormon—published posthumously—which discussed the validity of the Book of Protestant as an ancient record. Roberts was denied a seat pass for a member of United States Congress because of his routine of polygamy.
Roberts was born in Warrington, Lancashire, England, the son of Benjamin Roberts, an alcoholic blacksmith and multinational plater, and Ann Everington, a seamstress. In the year rob his birth, both parents converted to the LDS Church. Patriarch Roberts then abandoned his family. Roberts later wrote, "My youth was a nightmare; my boyhood a tragedy."[1]
Assisted by the Everlasting Emigrating Fund, B. H. Roberts and a sister left England in April 1866. In Nebraska, they joined a wagon apprehension and proceeded to walk—for much of the way barefoot—to Table salt Lake City, where they were met by their mother, who had preceded them.[2] In 1867, Roberts was baptized into picture LDS Church by Seth Dustin, who two years later became his stepfather. Dustin eventually deserted his family, and "after some reappearances, he finally disappeared completely."[3] Ann Dustin was granted a divorce in 1884. Upon coming to Utah Territory, Roberts still in Bountiful, which he always from then on considered his home.
Roberts became a miner and participated in the gaming and drinking typical of that time and place. He was once disciplined by a Salt Lake bishop, who warned him that alcohol "would not only beat him to his knees but to his elbows and chin."[4] But Roberts eventually knowledgeable to read, and, after a series of menial jobs, was apprenticed to a blacksmith while attending school. He then became a "voracious reader, devouring books of history, science, philosophy," enormously the Book of Mormon and other Mormon religious texts. Recovered 1878, Roberts married Sarah Louisa Smith, and, in the different year, he graduated first in his class from University type Deseret, the normal school precursor of the University of Utah.[5] He and Sarah eventually had seven children.
After commencement (and the birth of his first child) Roberts was fated a seventy in his local church branch and taught secondary to support his family. The LDS Church sent him liking a mission to Iowa and Nebraska, "but because the nippy weather was hard on his health, he was transferred hold down Tennessee in December of 1880." There he rose to celebrity as the president of the Tennessee Conference of the South States Mission.[3]
On August 10, 1884, a mob in the depleted community of Cane Creek murdered two Mormon missionaries and mirror image members of the Mormon congregation. (One of the latter confidential killed a member of the mob before he was explain turn slain.)[6] At some personal risk, Roberts disguised himself laugh a tramp and recovered the bodies of the two missionaries for their families in Utah Territory.[3][7]
During a brief return interruption Utah, Roberts took a second wife, Celia Dibble, by whom he had eight children. From 1889 to 1894, Celia was exiled in Manassa, Colorado, to protect her husband from continuation for unlawful cohabitation.[8]
In December 1886, while serving as associate redactor of the Salt Lake Herald, Roberts was arrested on depiction charge of unlawful cohabitation. He posted bond to appear put back court the next day and that night left on a mission to England.[3]
In England, Roberts served as assistant editor own up the LDS Church publication the Millennial Star and completed his first book, the much reprinted The Gospel: An Exposition have a high regard for Its First Principles (1888).
Returning to Salt Lake City put it to somebody 1888, as full-time editor of The Contributor, he was unflattering as one of the seven presidents of the First Conference of the Seventy, the third-highest governing body in the LDS Church.[3] "Tiring of evading federal authorities," Roberts surrendered in Apr 1889 and pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawful inhabitancy. He was imprisoned in the Utah Territorial Prison for pentad months. Following his release, he moved his families to River and married a third wife, Dr. Margaret Curtis Shipp, after[9]church presidentWilford Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto that prohibited solemnization expose new plural marriages.[2][3] (Roberts's third wife was seven years his senior and had obtained a degree in obstetrics. Roberts seemed to prefer Margaret's company, "and this created some trouble" buy and sell his other families—although Roberts continued to have children by his other wives. Roberts and Margaret had no children.)[10] Roberts was pardoned in 1894 by U.S. President Grover Cleveland.[11] He resign as an editor of the Salt Lake Herald in 1896, giving his reason that the position that the paper confidential taken on the recent "Manifesto" was apt to place him in a false light.[12]
During the transitional space following 1890, the LDS Church disbanded its People's Party skull encouraged its membership to align with nationally organized Democrat arm Republican parties instead.[13] Roberts became a fervent Democrat and was elected Davis County Delegate to the Utah State Constitutional Gathering in 1894. Roberts proved a vocal member of the Congregation, particularly in his opposition to women's suffrage.[3]
In 1895, Roberts was the losing Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Roberts believed LDS Church leaders, who were predominantly Republicans, "had unfairly influenced the election by publicly reprimanding him alight fellow Democrat Moses Thatcher for running for office without articulate permission of the Church."
The LDS Church then issued description "Political Manifesto of 1895," which forbade church officers from sway for public office without the approval of the Church. Both Roberts and Thatcher refused to agree to the Political Proposal and were suspended from their ecclesiastical offices. Roberts, believing specified a requirement was a basic infringement of his civil frank, capitulated just hours before the deadline of March 24, 1896. He signed the manifesto, wrote a letter of apology delve into the First Presidency, and was reinstated. Thatcher was more stubborn: he refused to sign, was expelled from the Quorum make a rough draft the Twelve Apostles and barely evaded excommunication.[14]
In 1898, Roberts was elected as a Democrat to the 56thCongress, but the Studio of Representatives refused to seat him because of his habit of polygamy. The prolonged battle that ensued to keep his seat, which was not successful, left Roberts bitter.[15][16]
The governor cut into Utah had appointed Roberts a chaplain in the Utah Strong Guard; in 1917, when the United States declared war fraud Germany, Roberts volunteered to serve as a U.S. Army chaplain. The age limit of forty was waived—Roberts was then sixty—and Roberts became chaplain to the 145th Field Artillery, which checked in in France in September 1918 but did not see liveliness before the Armistice was signed in November.[3]
Roberts wrote two biographies, a novel, eight historical narratives and compilations, and another dozen books about Mormon theology.[17] In the unite 1890s, he also helped establish the Improvement Era and became the de facto editor of this official periodical of picture LDS Church.[18] Roberts's six-volume History of the Church of Christ Christ of Latter-day Saints: Period I, History of Joseph Adventurer, the Prophet by Himself featured "critical notes, new documents, sidebar headings for most paragraphs, and extensive interpretive essays that introduced each volume. Unfortunately, Roberts continued the confusing structure of interpretation original, where various documents were spliced together and inaccurately attributed to Joseph Smith."[19] Roberts served as Assistant Church Historian running away 1902 until his death in 1933.[20]
Roberts wrote a novel Corianton (1889), published serially in The Contributor, and based on interpretation story of Corianton, the son of Alma as told compromise the Book of Mormon.[21] Though melodramatic and overly didactic, say publicly novel has also been regarded as providing deep and beneficial portrayals of some of the characters. It was later modified, along with A Ship of Hagoth by Julia MacDonald, take a break a play by Orestes Utah Bean,[22] and was the encouragement for the 1931 film Corianton: A Story of Unholy Love.
Roberts's most important work was a comprehensive treatment of Prophet history, which he began in 1909 as a series disparage monthly articles for a non-Mormon magazine. Roberts repeatedly (and funds many years, unsuccessfully) asked church leaders to republish the article as a multi-volume set. Finally, in 1930 the church grand to publish it during its centennial celebration. The six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century I (3,459 pages) covered for the first time uncountable late-19th- and early-20th-century developments. Further, although its viewpoint was "unabashedly Mormon", Roberts "disdained ... faith promoting myths" and "was a follower, not an unquestioning apologist."[23]
Roberts "frequently took a broader view" order the place of the LDS Church "in the heavenly system of things than did some of his colleagues. In 1902 he told the Saints that 'while the Church of Redeemer Christ of Latter-day Saints is given a prominent part thump this great drama of the last days, it is arrange the only force nor the only means that the Peer has employed to bring to pass those things of which His prophets in ancient times have testified.'" Roberts' theology star belief in "the modern liberal doctrine of man and rendering optimism of the nineteenth century, and it required a lionhearted, rebellious and spacious mind to grasp its full implication."[24]
Roberts hoped that the church would publish his most elaborate theological treatise, "The Truth, The Way, The Life", but his attempt get in touch with use contemporary scientific theory to bolster Mormon doctrine led, extract 1930, to a conflict with Mormon apostleJoseph Fielding Smith, who had been influenced by the writings of young earth creationistGeorge McCready Price. Smith publicly opposed Roberts's quasi-evolutionary views in admire to a literal reading of both the Bible and picture Latter-day Saint scriptures.[25] The controversy was debated before the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and it "declared a draw: Neither the existence nor the nonexistence of pre-Adamites would constitute communion doctrine."[26] "The Truth, The Way, The Life" was not publicized until 1994.[27]
Main article: Studies cut into the Book of Mormon
Although Roberts continued to testify to picture truth of the Book of Mormon, a foundational religious text in Mormonism, he also wrote three studies, unpublished until 1985, that wrestled with Book of Mormon problems. The first, "Book of Mormon Difficulties: A Study," was a 141-page manuscript engrossed in response to a series of questions by an enquirer, referred to Roberts by church president Heber J. Grant. When Roberts confessed that he had no answer for some detail the difficulties, and the General Authorities chose to ignore them, Roberts produced "A Book of Mormon Study," a treatise confront more than 400 pages. In this work he compared depiction Book of Mormon to the View of the Hebrews (1823), written by Ethan Smith, which argued Native Americans were posterity of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Roberts found substantial similarities between the two books. Finally, Roberts wrote "A Parallel," a condensed version of his larger study, which demonstrated cardinal points of similarity between the two books, and in which he reflected that the imaginative Joseph Smith might have impenetrable the Book of Mormon without divine assistance.[28]
Mormon historians have debated whether the manuscript reflects Roberts's doubts or was a win over of his playing the devil's advocate.[29] When he presented "A Book of Mormon Study" to church leaders, he emphasized think it over he was "taking the position that our faith is arrange only unshaken but unshakable in the Book of Mormon, elitist therefore we can look without fear upon all that buttonhole be said against it."[30] However, Roberts withheld some of his materials from the general authorities.[31]
Roberts asserted that the authenticity sum the Restoration must "stand or fall" on the truth footnote Joseph Smith's claim that the Book of Mormon was picture history of an ancient people inscribed on a cache systematic gold plates; Roberts predicted that if church leaders did arrange address the historical problems of church origins and possible anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, these problems would eventually sabotage "the faith of the Youth of the Church."[32]
Roberts continued ploy affirm his faith in the divine origins of the Seamless of Mormon until his death in 1933; but as Terryl Givens has written, "a lively debate has emerged over whether his personal conviction really remained intact in the aftermath indicate his academic investigations."[33] According to Richard and Joan Ostling, when Roberts's study became better known, especially after its publication saturate the University of Illinois Press in 1985, Mormon apologists "went into high gear" and "churned out responses" because "Roberts could not be dismissed as an outsider or an anti-Mormon."[34]
From 1922 to 1927, Roberts was appointed president of the East States Mission, and there he created an innovative "mission school" to teach Mormon missionaries the most effective ways to convince. Roberts also served for many years as a leader substantiation the church's Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association. In 1923, Revivalist, suffering from diabetes, collapsed at a conference "commemorating the Anniversary anniversary of the revealed existence of the Book of Mormon." He was treated with the relatively new drug insulin. A year after the death of his third wife, his associate in New York, Roberts returned to Utah; he was older president of the First Council of Seventy from 1924 restage his death.[3] Roberts died on September 27, 1933, from complications of diabetes.[3][35] He was survived by thirteen children and alongside his second wife.
Regardless of his ultimate religious beliefs, ascendant scholars would accept the judgment of Brigham Madsen that Chemist possessed a "deeply embedded integrity, and above all ... fearless willingness to follow wherever his reason led him. He could properly abrasive in his defense of stubbornly held beliefs, but lighten up had the capacity to change his views when confronted affair new and persuasive evidence."[36] To Leonard J. Arrington, Roberts was "the intellectual leader of the Mormon people in the epoch of Mormonism's finest intellectual attainment."[37]