Lying for the Lord

A load-bearing framing in Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History for the conflict between institutional protection and honest historiography. As the book puts it, the New Mormon Historians’ commitment to “tell the truth” about Mormon history “exacerbated the fears of General Authorities who were only one generation away from the protective strategy termed ‘lying for the Lord’ (in B. Carmon Hardy’s memorable phrase).” Those leaders were “so ill-informed about the facts of Mormon history that they were genuinely alarmed at the possible damage of ‘telling the truth.’” In their frame, faithful and believing historians could fall into the same category as outright enemies of the church.

The concept names the institutional instinct Arrington’s History Division ran up against: a generation of leadership that treated candor about difficult history as itself a threat, rather than the antidote that Arrington believed it to be — he held that the answer to one-sided polemics (like the Tanners’) was “nuanced, contextualized narratives,” not denial.

Context: “Lying for the Lord” is a phrase associated with historian B. Carmon Hardy, used to describe the practice — particularly around plural marriage in the post-Manifesto era — of LDS leaders publicly dissembling to protect the institution. The book cites it as Hardy’s coinage.

Where this appears

• Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History — the older General Authorities’ protective instinct, set against Arrington’s “tell the truth” historiography.