The Mormon religion is predicated on what are said to be historical events such as the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the historicity of the Book of Mormon, which describes a detailed pre-Columbian history of the Americas."The foundations of the Church are grounded in a series of historic events, without which the Restoration would be incomprehensible and impotent." Douglas F. Tobler and S. George Ellsworth, "History, Significance to Latter-Day Saints," in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 596. Joseph Fielding Smith, the tenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), declared that "Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground.""If Joseph Smith was a deceiver, who willfully attempted to mislead the people, then he should be exposed; his claims should be refuted, and his doctrines shown to be false, for the doctrines of an impostor cannot be made to harmonize in all particulars with divine truth. If his claims and declarations were built upon fraud and deceit, there would appear many errors and contradictions, which would be easy to detect." as quoted by As Jan Shipps has written, "Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history," and until after World War II, Mormons did not critically examine the historical underpinnings of their faith; any "profane" investigation of the church's history was perceived "as trespassing on forbidden ground."Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2000), 164-65.

Although traditional Christianity is likewise a history religion,For instance, in I Corinthians 15. 14, St. Paul says, "if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." (KJV) few primary sources survive from two or three millennia ago, and biblical places such as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bethlehem, are acknowledged to exist by scholars of every religious persuasion. Likewise, the Assyrian and Babylonian empires mentioned in the Bible are treated in all histories of the ancient Near East. By contrast, locations of Book of Mormon places are disputed even by Mormons, and the existence of those places is not acknowledged by any non-Mormon scholars. Martin Marty, a Lutheran scholar of American religion, has observed that LDS beginnings are so recent "that there is no place to hide. ... There is little protection for Mormon sacredness."Martin Marty, "Two Integrities: An Address to the Crisis in Mormon Historiography," in George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 174. Faithful History is a collection of essays expressing different views about how to approach the history of the LDS Church. The work includes essays written by two articulate Church apologists, Louis Midgley and David Earl Bohn, although neither is a historian.

"Mormons remember" As Richard and Joan Ostling have written, "Mormons remember." There has been an official church historian since the organization of the LDS Church, and "Mormon youths and their sisters are exhorted to keep journals as part of their religious commitment. Missionaries are reminded by their superiors that the journals represent a part of their sacred duties."Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Osling, "Faithful History," in Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 238-39. The pioneer era is an especially fertile field for faith-promoting history. As Wallace Stegner has written, the "tradition of the pioneer that is strong all through the West is a cult in Utah."Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 2. Mormons "tell and retell their stories of pioneer privations and persecutions." Mormon young people are often given the opportunity to pull a handcart through a patch of desert; Mormon children are early taught the miracle of the gulls, the story of seagulls that supposedly saved the crops of the earliest Utah pioneers from an invasion of crickets in 1848.Ostling, 241-42. "'Miracle' status apparently has grown since an 1853 General Conference mention by Apostle Orson Hyde, amplified and reinforced over the years by stories in Mormon publications and official church histories." On the story of the gulls, see William G. Hartley, "Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls: A New Look at an Old Story," in D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 137-151.

Under church president Joseph F. Smith, the LDS Church began to purchase, refurbish, and reconstruct its sacred sites, beginning with Carthage Jail in 1903. "Visitors' centers, restored houses, historic parks, monuments, and trail markers sprouted everywhere." In 1999, the church maintained forty-four such sites, many of which were staffed by its missionaries.Ostling, 240-41.

Mormons have also developed "something of an annual outdoor pageant circuit" which serves as both a proselytizing tool and a "faith-affirming" experience to the volunteer participants and most of the audience.Ostling, 243. An elaborate Hill Cumorah pageant, on the site where Smith said the golden plates were given to him, has been annually performed since 1937. Other LDS pageants are regularly performed in eight locations in the United States, including Nauvoo, Illinois; Independence, Missouri; Manti, Utah; and Oakland, California.

Likewise, the LDS Church has regularly produced faith-promoting films with excellent production values for showing in Salt Lake City and at the visitors' centers of Mormon historic sites. Historical films include Legacy: A Mormon Journey (1990), The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd (2000), and Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (2005). As the Ostlings have written, Legacy is "an example of ritualized history, effectively idealized and simplified." In discussing the Mormon pioneer heritage, "there is no hint of polygamy or millennial land claims or any other distinctive Mormon doctrine, just the idea that a prophet Joseph Smith came up with a new sacred book asking people to lead holy lives."Ostling, 242. Smith dies as a martyr without mention of Mormon destruction of a Nauvoo newspaper, which triggered the crisis. Nevertheless, "the drama and scenery of the trek are so beautifully photographed" that many Mormons saw the movie repeatedly when visiting Temple Square.

History and theology Mormon high school students are encouraged to take seminary, a four-year course of religious study. These one-year courses have annual focus on the following: the Old Testament; New Testament; Book of Mormon; and church history and the Doctrine and Covenants. The objective is to enable each student to be familiar with the scriptures and to assist them in applying gospel principles in their daily life. College age students between the ages of 18 and 30 are also encouraged to take religious classes known as "institute". At private church-sponsored universities and colleges, religion courses are required for graduation. Comparatively little of Mormon doctrinal teaching involves "what traditional Christian catechism would call 'pure theology.'"Ostling, 247. Mormon "history evolves as part of the church's canon," and an LDS Correlation Committee attempts to ensure that "all church publications, from periodicals to curriculum materials, follow official policy and express official interpretations. This means that sensitive historical issues frequently are downplayed, avoided, or denied."

Even the scriptures have been rewritten to fit current doctrine, in line with the idea of continuity and progressive revelation. But once a new version is published, historians are not supposed to notice the change, nor can they write about variations in previous editions. The church regards such reminders as unacceptably embarrassing. The result has been something of an underground traffic in early church documents and editions."Ostling, 248.

Historian D. Michael Quinn, later excommunicated from the LDS Church, noted that traditional "Mormon apologists discuss such 'sensitive evidence' only when this evidence is so well known that ignoring it is almost impossible."D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1992), xiii In an oft-quoted speech to church educators in 1981, apostle Boyd K. Packer warned them from the temptation "to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not. ... In an effort to be objective, impartial, and scholarly, a writer or a teacher may unwittingly be giving equal time to the adversary. ... Do not spread disease germs!"Boyd K. Packer, Fifth Annual Church Educational System Religious Eucators' Symposium, August 22, 1981, Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University Studies, quoted in Susan Stansfield Wolverton, Having Visions: The Book of Mormon Translated and Exposed in Plain English (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), 57. See also, Boyd K. Packer, Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991), 106. In addition, speaking on "scholars" and "intellectuals," Packer also stated "The dangers I speak of come from the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals." Online reprint by John W. Redelfs at ZionsBest.com Packer went so far as to question the spirituality of some Mormon historians: "One who chooses to follow the tenets of his profession, regardless of how they may injure the church or destroy the faith of those not ready for 'advanced history' is himself in spiritual jeopardy." In the same speech, Packer described how the things historians tell one another are not uplifting and "go far beyond the audience they may have intended, and destroy faith."

Packer has not been the only LDS Church leader critical of historians. Ezra Taft Benson, the church's 13th president, was also outspoken concerning LDS historians. According to Benson This humanistic emphasis on history is not confined only to secular history; there have been and continue to be attempts made to bring this philosophy into our own Church history. Again the emphasis is to underplay revelation and God's intervention in significant events, and to inordinately humanize the prophets of God so that their human frailties become more evident than their spiritual qualities. Benson also warned historians against adding context and background information concerning revelations and LDS history. Referring to Benson, church member and historian D. Michael Quinn explained, Elder Benson gives as examples the discussion by historians of the American temperance movement in the 1830s as part of the circumstances out of which Joseph Smith obtained the revelation on the Word of Wisdom, and he referred to historians who explained the revelation on the three degrees of glory in terms of contemporary questions by American philosophers about the afterlife

The result of this attitude of Mormonism toward history is that truth, "supposedly embedded in history," becomes "dynamic and fluid."Ostling, 249. Therefore, as Marxist historian Mark Leone has written, "the church has discouraged any intellectual tradition that would interfere with disguising historical factors or with maintaining much of the social reality through the uncritical way lay history is done."Mark P. Leone, The Roots of Modern Modernism, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 204, 211.

"Faithful history"