from “Sojourner in the Promise Land”, regarding Linda Newell:
Yes history is always there to provide a subtext, an alternate voice, reminding the Saints that role models change and that precedents point in more than one direction. For that reason, in addition to their straightforward attempts to control history itself, LDS leaders are making an effort to control the church’s pulpits and podiums to be sure that the history dispensed from them is faith- promoting and that it provides acceptable models for modern members of the church.
In this instance, the concern was Mormon women’s history. The church leadership wanted to be confident that anything said about the LDS women’s experience would hold up female models that priesthood leaders would regard as appropriate for the end of the twentieth century. It is easy to see, looking back from the end of the twentieth century, that what happened to Laurel Ulrich fits squarely into the defensive program with which the church guards its fortress against heterodoxy by exercising close oversight of public discourse about sensitive dimensions of LDS history, public conversation about the meaning of scripture, and unauthorized explications of dogma.
The standard pattern for controlling church rostrums had been established in 1985 with the silencing of Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, coauthors of Mormon Enigma, an unauthorized biography of the wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Their work, publishedin New York by Doubleday in 1984, was a sympathetic portrayal of the prophet’s wife, one of the preeminent female models for Mormon women. At the same times, the biography included a picture of the prophet as seen through the eyes of his suffering wife on whim the introduction of plural marriage took a terrible toll. No doubt this less than sympathetic “nontraditional” depiction of the prophet was, in itself, disturbing to church leaders. What was more alarming however, was that the work, which became a prizewinner, generated enough interest to make it practically a bset-seller. Almost inevitably, the authors became the recipients of numerous invitations to speak, often to LDS women’s groups and adult “firesides”.
Shipps then references the aforementioned banning of Newell from talking about her book at church meetings. I do not have full access to the book, which I have not read but thought this quote was clear enough to serve its purpose on this thread. Shipps also references this event in a footnote on page 189:
See also Boyd K. Packer, “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect.” It was clear that the LDS apostle Packer spoke for the church in this warning against professional history. Further evidence of the concern of LDS general authorities about new historical writing was supplied when Linda K. Newell and Valeen T. Avery, the authors of Mormon Enigma, a critical biography of the Mormon Prophet’s first wife, were forbidden to talk about their work at LDS women’s groups or any other official church meetings.
Of course not allowing historians to speak about their work in church meetings is slightly different than what we’re discussing with regards to the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, but it does reflect the basic desire to control history, which is the entire point of the conflict of interest.