Gregory A. Prince

Gregory A. Prince (“Greg Prince”) is the author of Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History, the biography of the LDS Church’s first official (professional) historian that Kyle read as a study in the institutional-vs-scholarly tension in religious historiography. Prince’s account organizes around the structural shift — beginning under N. Eldon Tanner — in how the institution related to professional expertise, the repeated misjudgment of Spencer W. Kimball as an unremarkable traditionalist before he proved transformative, and the “heritage of deep question asking” that traces back to Joseph Smith’s founding question, “which of all these churches is true?”

Through Prince’s telling, Kyle draws out Leonard Arrington as an “entrepreneur of history” whose largesse in sharing research files (Open Source Knowledge) and cultivation of young scholars (Mentorship) seeded a generation of Mormon historiography, including Richard Bushman’s later Joseph Smith biography.

Context: Gregory A. Prince is an American author and scientist (a dental researcher by training) known for his books on LDS history, including this 2016 Arrington biography and a study of David O. McKay’s church presidency.

Where this appears

• Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History — author of the biography; its themes of institution-vs-scholarship, the misjudgment of Spencer W. Kimball, and the question-asking tradition structure Kyle’s reading