Dr. Shades wrote:
If the conversation really took place as reported, it appears Brother Madsen may be beset by his share of doubts, too. I wonder how he would react if someone could show him that alternate perspective.
Truman Madsen is a very fine author. I've read many of his books and found all of them very spiritual, especially
Christ and The Inner Life. In 1982-3 I read his biography of B.H. Roberts, titled
Defender of the Faith: The B.H. Roberts Story. This was the first time I encountered Roberts, and I was fascinated, but from reading between the lines I felt, instinctively, that Madsen left out significant portions of Roberts' life. Many of the things he recorded about Roberts seemed to be unfinished, and I had many unanswered questions. So I wrote Brother Madsen and asked him if he could tell me more about Roberts, because "I sensed you left out a lot". I really wanted to know more. Brother Madsen wrote back to me and referred me to a church historian and said he would answer my questions. I thought this was strange, because Madsen was the biographer. Shouldn't he know
everything about Roberts?
I didn't bother writing the church historian because I felt this was a fob off. It bothered me for a long time, until I came across Roberts again, first in spot commentary through
Dialogue and
Sunstone, then the bombshell -
Studies of the Book of Mormon which was published by Signature. It was only then I realised how much Madsen had left out of his biography. There was no mention of
Studies in detail, except that Roberts was working on "controversial" subjects in his studies. I got all the details from
Studies itself. I didn't feel angry at Madsen at all, because I really liked his other inspirational writings, but from then on I could not trust him as a biographer or historian. I was too naïve then to read the critical reviews of
Defender of the Faith, but my feeling is that if Roberts had read
Defender he would have been spitting chips. The irony is that this biography, or more appropriately hagiography, was about a man who was one of the most outspoken and honest GAs in the church's history. The issue here is not whether Roberts was right or wrong, but his courage to bring "these difficulties" to the attention of his Brethren, and their reply was "will it help or hurt us? If it will hurt us we don't want to hear about it". (parahprased)