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Some might wish that Neal Rappleye had held his reader’s hand a bit more tightly in the way he introduced his review essay. I am, however, not one so disposed. I can explain for those unfamiliar with recent LDS historical scholarship on certain crucial issues that significance of the headnote to Neal’s review that he has taken from the eminent Professor Martin Marty’s important essay. This passage is an element in Marty’s essay that helps us grasp what is truly at stake in conversations about the founding narrative upon which the faith of Latter-day Saints is grounded. Marty’s essay, entitled “Two Integrities: An Address to the Crisis in Mormon Historiography,” is sufficiently well known, or at least ought to be, that informed Latter-day Saints should know the passage Neal has quoted and hence be aware of its larger context. For my own reflections on Marty’s essay, see my essay entitled “The First Steps,” FARMS Review 17/1 (2005): xi-lvi at xi-xiv, xvi-xix. (For details on the republication of Marty’s seminal essay, see note #3.)
For those who might be interested in understanding how Professor Marty, whose has enjoyed a large reputation as an astute American church historian, sees the faith of the Saints, they could have at his essay entitled “We Might Know What to Do and How to Do It: The Usefulness of the Religious Past,” which can be found in the FARMS Review 21/1 (2009): 27-44. (This essay can be accessed at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=21&num=1&id=754.)
I liked your review. Congratulations on being published! Keep up your good work. Nice picture as well.