Presentism

In Joseph Smith — Rough Stone Rolling, presentism names the practice of judging Joseph Smith’s actions by current perspectives and culture rather than by the laws and culture of his own era. Kyle pairs the book’s history with Dallin H. Oaks’s own framing of the idea. Oaks recounts that his scholarly research and publication “made me a life-long opponent of the technique of presentism — relying on current perspectives and culture to criticize official or personal actions in the past… Past actions should be judged by the laws and culture of their time.” In the page it sits among the modern prophetic voices (Russell M. Nelson, Boyd K. Packer, Spencer W. Kimball, Oaks) Kyle reads alongside the biography on revelation, over-prescription, and doing vs. knowing.

Context: Presentism is a term used in historiography for the anachronistic application of present-day values, attitudes, and standards to interpretations or judgments of the past. Historians generally treat it as an interpretive error to be guarded against.

Where this appears

• Joseph Smith — Rough Stone Rolling — defined as judging Joseph’s actions by today’s standards rather than his era’s, via Dallin H. Oaks’s “life-long opponent of presentism” quote