August 1844 and the Reorganization

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This relatively short piece by Kyler Rasmussen went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation yesterday, after I had begun the round of errands that I needed to undertake prior to last night’s debut of Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon:

“Interpreting Interpreter: Reynolds’ Scribal Proposal”

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I really enjoyed this performance by a daughter of President Dallin H. Oaks (on the violin) and a former Secretary of State (on the piano).  I think that you will, too:

“See the music video featuring a medley of spirituals by Condoleezza Rice and Jenny Oaks Baker”

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Some of you are aware of the fact that I have a deeply committed detractor whom I call my “Malevolent Stalker.”  (I have no idea as to his identity in real life; I have no reason to believe that we’ve ever met.)  Over approximately the past fifteen years, I’ve been his dominating obsession.  For reasons known only to him — if, indeed, he understands them himself — he appears unable to allow anything that I do or say to be anything other than some combination or other of ridiculous, malicious, hateful, mercenary, or a lie.

He is not, by the way, to be confused with his less-talented wannabe, who also posts anonymously on the Peterson Obsession Board and whom I call my “Mini-Stalker.”  And both are distinct from the anonymous fellow who has sent me hundreds and hundreds of personally insulting and increasing foul-mouthed emails over the past decade.  (For the past year or two, his effusions have gone automatically into a file on my computer.  Checking that file, I find that he’ll be able to celebrate his tenth anniversary this coming August.)  It’s my Malevolent Stalker to whom I’ll be referring here.  I have little doubt that he’ll be energized by the attention.  Still, in my judgment, I feel that I need to contradict his latest accusation.

Last night, along with premiering the new Interpreter Foundation docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon and one specimen example of our “Snippets” or short features, we announced our next project under the name Six Days in August.

One of my Malevolent Stalker’s lesser accusations against me is that I’m a religious bigot.  (He especially enjoys labeling me an anti-Semite, occasionally going so far as to suggest that I’m pretty comfortable, on the whole, with the Nazi Holocaust.)  Despite the fact that, for roughly the past four decades, I’ve taught, spoken, and written sympathetically about other faiths (including nearly a decade of Deseret News columns about religious traditions other than my own; multiple speaking engagements in churches, in mosques, and in synagogues); participation in local and international interfaith dialogues; creating a major translation series to render classical Jewish, Eastern Christian, and Muslim works into English; and leading tours to Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and other such places), he’s insisted that I hold non-LDS faiths in contempt

My Stalker has now posted the claim that Six Days in August is designed to be an attack on the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).  A major element of evidence for his claim, he says, is the fact that, while the Six Days in August website mentions such claimants to leadership of the Saints as Sidney Rigdon, James Jesse Strang, and Brigham Young, along with important contemporaries of theirs like Emma Smith and Thomas Sharp, it fails to mention Joseph Smith III, the first president of the Reorganized Church.

One might be pardoned for thinking that the failure to mention Joseph III shows that Six Days in August actually isn’t an attack on the Community of Christ.  But my Stalker is no conventional thinker!

However, the real reason that Joseph III doesn’t figure prominently in our conception of Six Days in August can be readily seen in its very title:  Our story focuses very intently on the days in early August 1844 when Sidney Rigdon and the Twelve (led by Brigham Young) asserted their claims to leadership of the Church before the Saints in Nauvoo.

At that point, Joseph Smith III, who was born in 1832, had not yet turned twelve years of age.  He wasn’t a factor.  (However, his mother, Emma Smith, was.  And, for that reason, we include her in our list of important characters.)  The Reorganization, as it is called, occurred in 1860, in Amboy, Illinois.  That’s when the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now the Community of Christ, was formally organized.  That’s when Joseph Smith III assumed the leadership of the new church.  That was nearly sixteen years after the events upon which our film project will concentrate.

It appears to me that that’s a perfectly good reason why our film project won’t concentrate on Joseph Smith III.  A desire to attack Joseph III and the Reorganization, by contrast, doesn’t seem to be a very persuasive explanation.

Let me say it as clearly as I can:  The thought of attacking the Community of Christ, the former Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has never entered my mind.  It isn’t even remotely a goal of Six Days in August.  Not a primary goal.  Not a secondary goal.  Not a tertiary goal.  Now, do I believe that Brigham Young and the Twelve were God’s (and Joseph’s) choice for leadership of the Saints after his death?  Yes.  I do.  So do my fellow filmmakers.  And our films will reflect that conviction.  Implicitly but obviously, my sustaining of Brigham and the Twelve means that I don’t endorse the claims of Joseph Smith III.  But that’s as far as it goes.

Also, to deny yet another of my Stalker’s claims (which he made yet again today):  Our film projects have not been financially backed or in any way directed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Period.  I hope that’s clear enough.

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Some have continued to ask me about how they can gain access to Witnesses and, now, to its sequel, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.  I’ll try to answer that question again:

Witnesses is already available on DVD and by streaming via Deseret Book, and in DVD form in Deseret Bookstores, and should soon also be available for streaming from Living Scriptures. The full two-part 2.5-hour version of Undaunted will come out on DVD on 24 May and should be available for streaming by somewhere around that same time, probably through both Deseret Book and Living Scripture. We may possibly put the 90-minute special cut of Undaunted up earlier than that, though, on the Interpreter Foundation website. That’s the version that was shown at the LDS Film Festival last night.