Apologetics

Apologetics is the framing Kyle brings to reading Mormon biography and history: the running tension between defending the faith and seeking truth for its own sake. In The Life of John Taylor — B.H. Roberts’s biography of the third LDS president — Kyle reads “with attention to the apologetic-vs-truth-seeking tension that runs through the Mormon historiographical tradition,” captured in Taylor’s own line, “Bring all the truth you have and let us see if we can add to it.” The same axis recurs when he flags The Crucible of Doubt as the canonical “apologetics-vs-truth question,” and treats apologetic biographies like Roberts’s as needing the historiographical context of works like Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History to be evaluated fairly.

Context: Apologetics is the discipline of systematic argument in defense of a religious doctrine or position. In Latter-day Saint intellectual life it names a specific tradition of scholarship (e.g. FARMS/the Maxwell Institute) that defends the faith’s truth claims, often set in contrast to more critical or “warts-and-all” historical writing.

Where this appears

• The Life of John Taylor — frames Kyle’s read of Roberts’s biography as a study in the apologetic-vs-truth-seeking tension, paired with Seeking.