Maxwell Institute Podcast #161: How Can We Judge Personal History with Fairness and Charity? Featuring Jenny Pulsipher

Rosalynde Welch: Hello, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast, where we seek out faith illuminating scholarship. I'm Rosalynde Welch, Associate Director at the institute. This season we're exploring the questions we should be asking. Thanks for joining us.

What does it mean to be an objective judge of history, of personal history, family history, or shared human history? Are charity and objectivity opposites? Or are they partners? Today on the podcast, I talked to Jenny Hale Pulsipher, a professor of history at BYU, and a contributor to the Maxwell Institute's recent book, Every Needful Thing, Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart. As an historian, Jenny specializes in finding the nuance in complex historical figures, never excusing wrongdoing, but never losing sight of the gospel’s witness that we are all children of God. In the October 2022 General Conference, Sister Annette Dennis, counselor in the Relief Society general presidency, asked, “How many wounded individuals do we have among us? How often do we judge others based on their outward appearance and actions, or lack of action, when if we fully understood, we would instead react with compassion, and a desire to help instead of adding to their burdens with our judgment?” Jenny and I talked about how to balance objectivity and charity by adding, not subtracting individual perspectives, and about how open-eyed interaction with our families and our histories can strengthen, not weaken our bonds of love. We talked about the ways that the histories we tell might unknowingly burden the wounded. Jenny shared an amazing story about her own family history. And she talked about how her youthful testimony of the Book of Mormon grew through a challenge that forced her to revisit the questions she brought to it. Thanks for joining us today. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jenny Pulsipher.

Hi, Jenny, and welcome to the podcast.

Jenny Pulsipher: Thank you glad to be here.

Welch: We are talking today about history. About how history is done, how history is used, and how we can do and use history in our own lives. We're talking about humans, we're talking about flawed humans, about the human condition, and about the way that we live in the world always loving and hurting those around us. I asked you to share with me a piece of scholarship that has made a difference in your life, and that kind of gets to the heart of both your spiritual convictions and your professional life. And you shared with me an amazing short article that you wrote called A Tale of Two Toms: On the Uses and Abuses of History. Will you tell us a little bit about that article, about its larger themes and why it matters to you?

Pulsipher: Sure. This is an article that had a really long gestation. I, for many years, have been looking forward to the time in my life when I could write about the history of my fourth great-grandmother and third great-grandmother, who were Shoshone Indian women. We know a lot about their history through family stories that have come down. There are primary documents that talk about things that have happened in their lives, and I thought I'd heard everything. But about… almost 20 years ago, actually, some relatives brought my grandmother a copy of a published journal that claimed that my fourth great-grandmother, who was known as Sally Exervia- that her husband had beaten her and been really abusive to her. And that as a result, the man who wrote the journal, a man named Thomas Fallon, killed him. So you know, defending this Native American woman. Well, that was shocking to me! And it didn't conform with anything that I'd read in the records that had come down to us. We'd never heard anything about my fourth great-grandfather, Baptiste Exervia being an abusive man. It was like being slugged in the gut when I read that. And I immediately thought, this doesn't match what I've heard. And I was suspicious of it. What is this? And as I dug into it, I went, found a copy of the diary, read the entire thing. Over time, I came to realize that it actually was a forgery. That the man who had written it, he kind of idolized this man, Thomas Fallon, identified with him in many ways. Both of them were mayors of San Jose. And saw him as kind of a potential mascot for The redevelopment and revitalization of downtown San Jose under his term as mayor of the city, and so he had created this version of Thomas Fallon that was really honorable, and that was inclusive and respectful of the many Latino residents of the city. But they weren't having any of it. Their understanding of the story was no, he was not respectful of native people or of Latinos. And there came to be a huge amount of controversy over whether or not to erect a statue that would honor Thomas Fallon. In the end, the statue was created, but then stuck in storage. And in the recent protests and things that accompanied the George Floyd incident, it was covered with spray paint. There was a huge amount of controversy over it, and it’s scheduled to be taken down yet again. After it was finally taken out of storage, put up, now it's going down again. So it's a symbol of that controversy, over how do you tell the story of a person? Is it true to the past? Is it true to the stories that we tell about our culture? Our people? I think it'd be easy to see this forgery as a callous attempt by Tom McHenry, the person who wrote the, the journal, to twist history to fit a political purpose. And I think that that would be kind of an extreme characterization of it. I think he really believed that the way he laid out Thomas Fallon's life in that manufactured journal was true to the past. He himself said that if history hadn't happened that way, it should have. But his version of history, just told one perspective. It whitewashed some of the real harm and pain that still existed in the present among Latinos who felt excluded from governance in the modern city of San Jose and saw Thomas Fallon as a symbol of abuse. So, I just found it fascinating to see the way that this story could become…kind of a crucible for two different ways of telling about the past. And of course, there was that personal element,. Unbeknownst to him, Tom McHenry, again, the author of that journal, had created a heroic person out of someone who had killed my grandfather in cold blood. Shot him in the back. That story needed to be told too. I had a conversation with Tom McHenry on the phone after many years trying to get a hold of him. And he said to me, I never imagined I would be speaking to a descendant of Baptiste Exervia. You know, that had not occurred to him. If he had imagined that, I bet he would have written the story differently.

Welch: It's such an amazing tale that your family history was wrapped up in this. Mayor of San Jose in the 1970s, wants to revitalize the city on a multicultural ideal. And so, he finds this perfect symbol for his vision of San Jose, and all he needs is a journal. So, he decides to invent one. Right? And then, perfect. And that your ancestor appeared in that journal. What really struck me in your article was not only, of course, the protectiveness that you felt about your grandfather (I guess it was your fourth great-grandfather), but also kind of the understanding that you showed towards McHenry, who is the one who actually forged the diary. And you, you reached out to him, you thought I want to understand better where he was coming from, you seem to presume that he must have had some kind of motive for doing this, right?

Pulsipher: Yeah.

Welch: And, and knowing that most people have good and bad in them, you thought, well, maybe possibly there's some reason, you know? Some justifiable reason in his own mind for why he would have pursued this. And in the end, though, what he did, maybe it was for good reasons. But his overly positive view of one historical figure ended up defaming another historical figure who is your ancestor, right?

Pulsipher: Right!

Welch: And just as you said, he had never considered that his partial perspective in that way could have real world consequences. That his words would find their way to descendants of this, of this man, and could hurt them. And that really brings up this question about objectivity. Right, as an historian yourself, do you strive for objectivity? And how is that the same or different from charity, right? Objective in one way, might you be hurting somebody in the process?

Pulsipher: Yeah, it's a very good question. I do strive for objectivity as a historian. But I also recognize, it's almost impossible to be completely objective. All of us have blind spots, all of us approach our study of the past and even of the present through our own experiences. Through the lenses that have been created by where we were born, who our family is, what experiences we've had. And that can't help but make us pay attention to some details, and ignore others. So, part of the task of a historian is to try to get as many different perspectives as possible, and then try to synthesize them. Try to understand the context, looking at all of those perspectives. Even though that is kind of the, the ethical approach of a historian, we're living in a time where interpretations of history tend to be pretty divisive. When I talk to my students, I talk about a pendulum. That the way that history has been told, is like a pendulum that swings to one side, and then in response to that kind of extreme position, it'll swing back towards the middle, and then over to the other side again. That's what happens with our stories, our narratives about every historical event over time. They swing back and forth, they react to the ways that people are telling that story. Now, because I'm a member of the church, because I am someone who believes in the gospel, one of the deepest obligations that I feel as a historian is not just to find out what happened, but to try to be charitable towards people in the past. Because I don't believe that those people poofed out of existence when they died. I think that they are part of you know, they existed before they were born. They have this brief moment on the earth, their spirits still exist, in a sense, they are still alive. And I owe obligations to those people to try to treat them as fairly as I can, to judge righteous judgments. And that can be challenging when you run across someone who does something you really don't like, like shooting my grandfather in the back. But charity demands that I recognize that that person is a child of God, and that they have just as much access to the atonement of Christ as I do. And that doesn't mean that I excuse the bad things that they did, or ignore them. But it does demand that I see it in context. That I tried to understand what may have created those circumstances. At the same time, as a historian, my obligation for charity extends to people in the present who might still be carrying the pain of actions that occurred in the past. Today, there are still consequences to things like Thomas Fallon's abuse of some Native people, including his own wife.

Welch: This is amazing. So, what you're describing here is the way in which your own personal belief comes into your professional work. It gives you a perspective on what human nature is, and our obligation and accountability to one another as children of God. And then, that lens allows you to see your historical subjects in a particular way.

Pulsipher: Yes!

Welch: What I really love is the way you talked about objectivity as the bringing together of many different charitable perspectives, right? If you're only looking at one subject, you may be treating him or her with great charity. But just as we saw with McHenry’s version of Fallon, right? In doing that, you may be unintentionally leaving out a charitable perspective of another historical subject. But, when you're able to bring together many of these charitable perspectives, that may be when we start to approach something like historical objectivity.

Pulsipher: Yes, I think it is not discovering, you know, one true perspective, it's bringing all of those perspectives together. That's a difficult thing to do. To bring all of those together, to recognize that there may be different ways of viewing things. Just as an example, sometimes I do this little exercise with my History 200 students. So History 200 is a class that's introducing students to the historical method, and I pick an event that maybe all of them have a memory of. So for instance, one that I've used is: where were you when President Monson announced the change in missionary ages, and how did you react to it? And then I asked the students to talk about it. And it's a huge range of reactions, depending on their perspective. So for instance, an 18 year old woman might have a very different reaction to that announcement. All of a sudden it opens up possibilities for her. A high school senior who's male, thought he was going to go to college for a year, and now has the possibility of going on a mission. Very different response. Parents who have children in those age ranges and have different ideas about whether their children are mature enough to serve a mission, or maybe need a year to grow up a little bit, all of those different perspectives come into play and make a difference about whether you hear that as great news, or kind of scary news. And you have to bring all of those together, and not just say, there's one way to respond to this event. All of those different responses are true for that person, for the various people.

Welch: Well, and it strikes me that what you're doing in your office and in the classroom, to be a good teacher, and a good scholar, in a lot of ways is what all of us have to do in our daily lives to be a good citizen, a good friend and a good family member, right?

Pulsipher: Yeah.

Welch: It's this gathering of multiple perspectives, and a willingness to hear individual voices, to get the full picture and the full range of the situation. You talk about something called a master narrative, which is a term that historians sometimes use. Tell me what a master narrative is. And might it be the case that we sometimes employ these master narratives in our own lives as well?

Pulsipher: Yeah. So when I use the term master narrative, in this article about the Tale of Two Toms, I'm talking about a dominant way of understanding history in a particular time and place. So for instance, when Tom McHenry forged his hiree, he was reacting, kind of building on a master narrative of the time, which was: California is this great melting pot, where different cultures come together and create something new and better. And it’s a great narrative! You know, we love to hear that story. But, over time- and even at the same time- as this master narrative, there are competing narratives that maybe just aren't getting as much press. And for Latinos in San Jose, the narrative was, we don't see ourselves in the story that's being told, we've been here for a really long time. And yet, we're invisible in those stories. And we want our stories to be heard. And so part of their objection to kind of, the glorification of Thomas Fallon was…this was a man who represented that old master narrative, they wanted a different narrative. And they particularly wanted a narrative that wasn't based on a man whose history they felt like was a whole lot more complicated than the way that it was told in that diary. In history, we call this historiography, which basically, one way to visualize it is a tree that has lots of different branches, different ways of representing the past, And overtime, maybe one of those stories becomes dominant, and then events will happen, or a new generation will come of age., and they will have different concerns, different questions that they're asking. And they will start telling history in a different way. That can feel really threatening to people, to suddenly hear the story being told in a different way. But that is as old as time. We can't help but interpret what happens based on the perspectives that we bring, because of our own life experience. And yes, I do think that we do that with our own lives. We create narratives, we understand our lives based on the experiences that we've had. And I just think that's the way humans are designed. The problem is, just like with historical narratives, sometimes we build our own master narratives on shaky foundations that can collapse under the weight of contradictory evidence. And we need to be willing to examine the structure that we've built that narrative on and say, “Okay, was I making some false assumptions there?” Just as an example, I read the Book of Mormon, all the way through when I was 12 years old. And in the process of that reading, I prayed about it, I got a very strong testimony that the Book of Mormon was true, a testimony that I still have. Because this is kind of the way my mind works, I was really interested in language and the way that things took place in the Book of Mormon, and I remember reading when I was around 13, and came across the passage in Jacob where he says, “Brethren, adieu”, and I thought, what, what do you mean adieu? That's French? What is it doing in the Book of Mormon? You know, I could have constructed a narrative. In fact, I probably had constructed a narrative in my mind, that this is the way Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon is that, you know, he literally translated it from words on those gold plates. It may be that that is part of the way that it happened. But we don't have anything to tell us exactly how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. So, when I read that it troubled the construct I had in my mind, and I remember thinking about it, and then finally praying about it. What is this adieu, in Jacob all about? And as I prayed, I got a strong impression that what had happened was that as Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon, he came across a word that was not in Jacob's native language, that Jacob had used some different language. But the only way that Joseph could represent that was using a different language in the present. Not that Jacob spoke French, but that Joseph knew that that was another language, and it represented what had happened. That inspiration still works for me. I still don't know exactly how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon, but at least I have that piece that helps me understand when I come across things that maybe don't fit my imperfect construct about how that happened.

Welch: So as humans, we can't help but build these kinds of mental shortcuts, right, that allow us to get through the day and handle the different things that come our way without an excess of mental energy. But sometimes, then, or often, something, some person, something will come along that doesn't fit in that shortcut. And what you're saying, if I'm hearing you is that, when those moments come, we can either retrench and double down on our mental shortcut and kind of reject what we're seeing. Or we can use that as a moment to say, maybe it's time to revise this mental shortcut, this master narrative, maybe I can make my story better, right? Incorporating this other voice or this other piece of evidence into it, that doesn't need to ruin or destroy my story, but it can make it better, it can make it fuller.

Pulsipher: Absolutely. You've just restated it much better than I could. That's exactly what it is. When that didn't match the construct I had in my head, I could have just said, “Oh, well, maybe the Book of Mormon isn't true”. Which I think is the wrong conclusion to come to, and didn't fit the experience that I had then and continued to have with the wonderful inspiration in the Book of Mormon. Instead, it forced me to say, okay, maybe I built the wrong construct there. Maybe I have made the wrong assumptions. And I need to revisit those assumptions.

Welch: I hope you're enjoying this conversation between me and Jenny Pulsipher, Professor of History at BYU. I was fascinated by Jenny's anecdote about the forged journal, the good intentions of the forger, and the hurt that Jenny's family experienced years later when they discovered the passage that falsely defamed their ancestor. The forger of the journal was trying, for decent if misguided reasons, to be generous to one particular historical figure, but in the process ended up deeply misrepresenting someone else. This story helps me think through the relationship between charity and fairness. Both are necessary when we're grappling with personal or family history, but how can we make sure that our charitable assessment of one person doesn't unfairly misrepresent another person? Jenny suggests that the key is inclusivity. Instead of asking who deserves generosity and who deserves condemnation in this history, we might ask how many different perspectives can I generously include? That feels right to me.

Before returning to the second half of the interview, I wanted to let you know about something fun happening here at the Maxwell Institute this summer. We're running a Book of Mormon art contest for BYU students. We're looking for art that showcases underrepresented scenes in the Book of Mormon, unique styles and techniques, and a variety of cultural backgrounds. There will be cash prizes for the winners, and submissions will be featured in the Book of Mormon Art Catalog Database. We're accepting entries until August 1st. So if you know an artistically inclined BYU student, send them to our website. at mi.byu.edu and look for the art contest tab on the homepage. And with that, I'll continue my interview with Jenny Pulsipher.

Jenny, the Maxwell Institute recently published a beautiful book called Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart, and it was edited by Melissa Inouye and our mutual friend Kate Holbrook, who we love and we miss. You authored a wonderful chapter in this book, and it's called “Warts and All”. And I think it's getting at a lot of these ideas. In that chapter, you talk about your own personal history, your family history, and church history, through this lens of looking charitably at our history and the people in it, looking objectively at our history and the people in it. And especially looking at our history, through the knowledge that the gospel gives us that all human beings are children of God, and yet all are imperfect and flawed in certain ways. Tell me a little bit about your chapter in Every Needful Thing, and how it might relate to these ideas we've been talking about?

Pusipher: Well, as you said, it does kind of combine my scholarly life, my personal life, and I talk about several different aspects of that. One of the things I talk about in that chapter is my most recent book, which was called Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England. It's about a complicated Native American man, a man who lived in 17th-century New England, had many opportunities that gave him a lot of privilege. He was able to attend Harvard College, he traveled to England on a couple of different occasions, he was very smart and savvy in both English and Native American ways. But he tended to use that privilege to enrich himself, sometimes at the expense of his kin, by selling their land without their permission, for instance. So it would be very easy to characterize him as a villain. And some historians who have noticed him in the past have done that. But as I looked at his story, and dug into it more, and looked at it over the course of his entire life, not just those short periods of time where he was doing things that were bad. I recognize that it was a more complicated story, that he was changing over time, that he seemed to actually have come to a point where he regretted some of his actions, and was trying to make up for them. To maybe solve some of the harm that he had done by for instance, leaving some of the land that he had claimed in his will to his kin. So, I saw him as more complicated. It's an aspect of my historical work that I feel very strongly about, that we don't do a service to the past or to the present by simplifying our depictions of people by leaving out either they're good, or they're bad. And it's too easy to do that. And a very common pattern today to just say this person was a bully or a villain, this person was perfect. And we won't look at any of the bad things that they did. Again, in the book, I cover that, but it applies to our personal lives as well. I have ancestors who did some bad things. And it's painful to us when we read these stories about our ancestors and realize that, you know, we carry their DNA. Does that mean we're bad too? I doubt there's a person on this earth who doesn't have an ancestor who they would rather not have. But we have to acknowledge that those people, just like the other people we've talked about today, are children of God, capable of redemption. And again, that doesn't mean we ignore the bad things that they did. Often, we have to honestly look at the harm that they caused. Especially when that harm carries on into the present, and try to mourn with those who mourn because of some of those actions, but also recognize that that person is on an eternal journey, and can get better.

Welch: I wonder whether some of these ideas can help us make sense of our church history as well.

Pulsipher: I think they can. There are some great stories in church history, and troubling stories as well. And sometimes they're very painful for people to hear about. To hear that people who they consider heroes, whether they're their own ancestors, or church leaders in the past, had blind spots, or sometimes got angry, or did things that they wish they hadn't done. Just as an example, Brigham Young did something really interesting. And it shows that all of us, as I've mentioned before, are subject to the understandings and blind spots of our own time. He was someone who was very interested in science, he urged people to look at science, to… to read it and understand it. And according to some of the theories of science that were prevalent in the 19th century, he believed that sedimentary rock would eventually transform into stronger stuff, into metamorphic rock that would be able to hold great weight. So he thought, Okay, this makes sense, I will build the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple out of sedimentary rock. And when the great weight of the rest of the temple rests on that rock, it will transform into metamorphic rock. Now, that concept was true, but it neglected the geologic scale of time, it was not going to transform into metamorphic rock in nearly enough time to support that temple. And when the members of the church, in the fear of the coming federal troops in the Utah war, fled South buried the foundation of the temple. And then later after peace came, they went back and uncovered that foundation, they found that there already are cracks in that 10 stone foundation. And they had to take it up and start over with granite. A rock that was already really strong. What do we make of this fact that Brigham Young made that mistake? Based on true scientific principles, but not a full understanding of how they played out over time? Well, Brigham Young himself gives us a way to look at this, he wrote, and this actually, this phrase appears in the second volume of Saints, a wonderful compilation of church history. He was talking about the move south. And he said that at the time, he wasn't sure if it was the right choice to make. And then here's what he actually said his, his words, “Can a prophet or an apostle be mistaken? Do not ask me any such question for I will acknowledge that all the time. But I do not acknowledge that I designedly lead this people astray, one hair's breadth from the truth. And I do not knowingly do a wrong, though I may commit many wrongs.” So what is he saying here? He's saying, I am a human. I'm a fallible human. I can only see within the context of my own time and place some things I might make mistakes based on that understanding, just like all of us do. I'm not doing it on purpose, I'm not trying to lead people astray. But I may make mistakes. And just like everyone else, we need to have charity for those and not ignore the good things that people did when we see that there were times when they were wrong.

Welch: Well, what I love about that anecdote, and that quote from Brigham Young, is that it helps me love him better. As Latter-day Saints, we love our leaders. I think that's one of our most salient characteristics is the love and the reverence that we have for our leaders. That's a part of the tradition that I myself, especially treasure. And I think Brigham Young is teaching us there how to love him better, love him more fully as our leader. And if you really listen to the words of Joseph Smith and of Brigham Young, and of President Nelson, what they're saying is, God is leading me to lead this church, but I'm not perfect. And you can sustain me and support me best when you understand who I am. So, I think knowing… having that context, having that broader perspective of what he had available to him, and how he was using the knowledge that he had available to him, how he was channeling that inspiration from God, then his decisions make sense in that context. And we can love him. And we can appreciate him for the ways that he led the church through that incredibly complex period.

Pulsipher: Yes, I think he would be very grateful for that charitable way of judging his record. He tried to tell the people, I'm going to make mistakes. Sometimes we have a hard time listening to that. We want our leaders to be perfect.

Welch: You know, throughout this whole interview Jenny, we've been talking about the ways in which your gospel knowledge informs your scholarship. And the other way around, right? Just your knowledge of history, just in this moment has actually allowed me to have a better understanding of Brigham Young, and it's grown my appreciation and testimony of him. So, those two ways of learning can inform one another. I wonder whether the same is true for the questions that we ask? As an historian, you have to come to these sources and these historical figures with certain questions in mind. And we come to the Lord as well with certain questions in mind. And that's how we grow spiritually and gain the knowledge that he wants to give us. So as an historian, what have you learned about asking better questions?

Pulsipher: That's a really good question. One of the things that I try to do is deal with complexity in a careful way. It's hard for us to bring together things that seem contradictory. And so I have to say, is it necessary to have just one answer or just one perspective? Or do I need to ask many questions, seek many perspectives in order to understand things correctly. And when I try to seek those perspectives, it pushes me to ask different questions. Was this person really acting in a hostile way when they did this thing? Or did they have an imperfect understanding? Was this person telling the truth, as far as they understood the truth? Did they have imperfect knowledge? All those kinds of questions can come as I'm digging up as many perspectives as I can get on the past. And I think it's really incumbent on us to do that, when we're doing work as historians, but also in our personal lives, try to understand the context of the people who we're interacting with. In a recent conference talk, Elder Eyring said that if we had a full view of the people that we're interacting with, we would realize that 80% of them are in real trouble, serious trouble. We don't see it, but it informs the way that they act. And so we have to try to find out what's going on in their lives, so that we can judge charitably.

Welch: I love that. I think that's wisdom that informs us in the office and at home, of course, and also at church, right? In our Latter-day Saint wards, we come into contact with so many different kinds of people, they’re our ward family, and yet we don't choose them, right? And I think precisely this process that you're describing of gathering perspectives of adding context, and asking the most generous questions that we can of the very baffling behavior that we may encounter in Gospel doctrine or in young women, right?

Pulsipher: It's hard to do that sometimes! We, we sometimes have an interaction with someone and they bite our heads off. It's really easy to say “That is a horrible person!” I had a number of those encounters during the, under the peak days of COVID lockdown. And I thought, wow, I can either decide that that person is a jerk, or I can say, this person is isolated, this person maybe is sick, this person is suffering from the huge stresses that we're all under. And it has nothing to do with me.

Welch: I so agree with that. And I came to the same perspective, that as a country, so much of the division that we experienced during that time, in part, was due to the isolation that we were experiencing. It was necessary at the time, but it's that kind of incidental interaction and the little frictions that we encounter in daily life, and sometimes the bigger frictions that we encounter. That's what gives us this kind of capacious and generous worldview. And when we are no longer being sanded down in those ways, things get rocky in our social interactions.

Pulsipher: It's true.

Welch: So, I agree with you there. Jenny, we’re so fortunate as scholars to have the resources and the time and the space to read and to think and to contemplate. As a scholar, and from the experience of your scholarly life, what are some insights or some ideas that you think our listeners might be able to apply to their everyday life just in the way that we've been talking now? Anything else you'd like to add to that?

Pulsipher: Sure, there's a number of things that I think cross that line from scholarship into, into life. One is the importance of listening and learning from other people's experience. We've talked about that. Gaining as many perspectives as we can. Another is the importance of recording our own stories. I remember sitting in on a workshop once with Claudia Bushman, and she had been editing a journal of a young woman in early 19th century New England. And she stopped and said, “I hope you are all writing in your journal.” She said, “Any day I don't write in my journal is a day lost.” And I remember thinking, Oh, my goodness! Well, it's true. We need to record our stories, our struggles, our triumphs, and pass them down to our children and other people who will read them who aren't even related to us. Another thing that I think is really important, and it has to do with what I've mentioned before about mourning with those who mourn. Being sensitive to the long term consequences of some of the things that took place in the past. Things like slavery, abuse, theft of property, or land, that have modern day repercussions, and change the way that people's lives play out in the present. It's really easy to think about some of these historical challenges/problems and say, you know, “Why dig up past wrongs? Why don't we just move forward and try to be good people?” And I think the answer to that is that for some people, the past is still present, their wounds are not healed, misconceptions about who they may be as a people or as a culture are not corrected. And part of the healing process is telling their story with charity for all and faith that we can repent and do better. So that's one of the principles that I kind of live by as a historian. I don't ignore those difficult stories in the past, but I do try to tell them with charity for all and that's, I think, part of my, my obligation as a disciple of Christ to mourn with those that mourn.

Welch: Jenny Pulsipher, thank you for joining us today on the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Pulsipher: Thank you.

Welch: Thanks for listening to the Maxwell Institute podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a rating or review on the platform where you listened. For updates about the Maxwell Institute. Follow us on our social media platforms @byumaxwell and sign up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu. Join us next time and take care.