![\"Bolton](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/02\/The_Emigrants_statue_Albert_Dock_Liverpool_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_482942.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons photograph by Humphrey Bolton)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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An article of mine appeared in Meridian Magazine<\/em> last evening:\u00a0 \u201cA Mind Built to Believe.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 I hope that somebody will read it.\u00a0 Also . . .<\/p>\n \u201cThe religious term you should try to stop using: A growing group of scholars, journalists and others recommend against labeling a faith group as a cult\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I blush to admit that I already said exactly the same thing a long, long time ago, in a book entitled Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints<\/em><\/a>:\u00a0 See the last section, \u201cMormonism as \u2018Cult\u2019: The Limits of Lexical Polemics\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I think that I\u2019ll share another few passages from Eugene England, Brother Brigham<\/em> (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), which I re-read several months ago in preparation for the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s planned Six Days in August<\/em> film project<\/a>.\u00a0 In the passages that follow below, Gene England is discussing Brigham Young and the mission of the Twelve that, relatively new in his role as president of the quorum, he led to Great Britain.<\/p>\n On 10 June 1840, Brigham wrote to his apostolic associate Willard Richards about mission business, including these remarks, with illustrate his self-deprecating sense of humor:<\/p>\n Be carful not to lay this letter with the new testament writings.\u00a0 If you doe, somebody will take it for a text after the [Millennium] and contend about it.\u00a0 (cited on 48)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Near the end of the letter, he cautioned Richards:<\/p>\n Now my Dear Brother you must forgive all my noncense and over look erours.\u00a0 (cited on 48)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And his next letter to Elder Richards, written on 17 June 1840, ended as follows:<\/p>\n Excuse erours and mestakes.\u00a0 You must remember its from me.\u00a0 (cited on 48)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In that same 17 June letter, Brigham responded to a question about how Elder Richards, still in his early thirties and relatively recently married to his British wife Jennetta there in England, might be able to see his wife.\u00a0 The humor is there, but also evident is Brigham\u2019s sometimes-forgotten kindness:<\/p>\n Now as to the other question about Jennet thus saith the scripter he that provideth not fore his own house has \u2014 but perhaps he has no house.\u00a0 Well has he got a famely, yes he has got a wife.\u00a0 Then let him see that she is take care of and her hart comforted.\u00a0 But stop say som why doe you not tak care of your famely.\u00a0 I doe when circumstances doe not render it otherwise.\u00a0 There is a difference betwene 3 months jorny [i.e., Brigham\u2019s distance from his<\/em> wife] and a fue ours ride.\u00a0 Now I say to anser my own feelings com as soon as you can leve things there.\u00a0 This is not by revelation nor by commandment so put it not with the anapistles of the new testament but Brigham sayes come and see your wife.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of the recurring themes of Professor England\u2019s chapter regarding the British Mission is the role that that missionary experience had in shaping the Twelve and equipping them to lead the Church when events eventually required that of them.<\/p>\n Again the Prophet [Joseph Smith] had responded to persecution, this time the near extermination of the Saints in Missouri, with radical courage, sending his strongest group of supporters abroad to build the kingdom rather than clutching them close.\u00a0 Such inspired daring did indeed save the Church \u2014 by doubling its membership in one year; by starting the continuous flow of faithful and in many cases skilled converts who would help build Nauvoo and create the Zion in the mountains; and by testing, training, and unifying the group of missionaries (apostles and others) who would have to resolve the great crisis of leadership at Joseph Smith\u2019s death and would then provide four of the Church\u2019s presidents, those who would govern it to the dawn of the twentieth century.\u00a0 (36)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another theme is the role played by the Twelve\u2019s mission to Great Britain in establishing Brigham Young not merely as the nominal<\/em> leader of the Quorum but as the apostles\u2019 recognized natural<\/em> leader:<\/p>\n The eight apostles [who went on the British mission to] were an exceedingly diverse as well as able group of men \u2014 culturally, intellectually, and in their skills and interests; but during their year in England under Brigham\u2019s close leadership and association they came to work more and more in unity with each other and with the First Presidency in America . . . and it is one of the most significant and neglected evidences of Joseph Smith\u2019s and Brigham Young\u2019s similar greatness that they attracted and kept the respect and loyalty of such a group of men.\u00a0 (43)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These then were the gritty, complex, and diverse individuals who under Brigham Young\u2019s leadership in England forged themselves into perhaps the most dramatically effective missionary force the Mormon Church<\/a> has known and into a devoted, disciplined, and mutually loyal body who were never again, even in the crises of the Nauvoo persecutions and Joseph Smith\u2019s death, troubled by the problems that plagued the Quorum in its first four years.\u00a0 What was Brother Brigham\u2019s contribution?\u00a0 The evidence is not easy to come by, but the details come together from the various writings of the apostles and from the record of their activities and achievements which were like Brigham\u2019s own or of those he was directly involved in.\u00a0 Perhaps most telling is that he clearly won the respect and devotion of the Quorum members, being able not only to supervise their work from afar but to fit in directly with the extremely varied style and duties of the articulate editor, Parley P. Pratt, in Manchester, the almost frantically successful and curiously perceptive evangelist, Wilford Woodruff, in Herefordshire, and yet again with Elder Woodruff and Heber C. Kimball in the challenging and relatively unrewarding work in London.\u00a0 (49)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One crucial difference between an executive genius [which Brigham Young almost indisputably was] and a prophetic leader is the ability not only to produce followers who are willing disciples \u2014 even martyrs \u2014 but to produce other prophets as well.\u00a0 Brigham became that kind of prophetic leader as he developed during those two years of preparation and service in England the kind of qualities that come with confirmation from the Lord of spiritual success.\u00a0 He gained the unique confidence that results from daring and successful ventures in faith across a spectrum of supremely important life activities.\u00a0 And that confidence in turn empowered even more successful ventures and brought Brigham Young the crucial, liberating acceptance by himself of his own worth as a servant of God and acceptance by others of him in that role.\u00a0 (53-54)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In these scenes Brigham Young was the commanding figure and is referred to for the first time by Wilford Woodruff simply as \u201cThe President.\u201d\u00a0 (57)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>