“If history always makes you feel good, you are probably not learning the real history,” said Spencer W. McBride, a senior managing historian for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
On Sept. 5, in Salt Lake City, a panel at the 2025 Church History Conference discussed “Learning by Study and by Faith.” Latter-day Saint historians described how they keep Jesus Christ visible in the record of the Restoration.
Moderated by Petra Javadi-Evans, an editorial manager in the Church History Department, she introduced panelists Brittany Chapman Nash, a Church historian; Scott Hales, history curator at the Church History Museum and former lead writer and general editor for "Saints,“ a multivolume narrative history of the Church; and McBride.
Christ as the ‘why’ of the story
McBride said his aim is to write history with professional rigor while keeping discipleship at the core.
“At the core of the history of the Church and its members is Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, reaching out with love to Their daughters and Their sons, and Their sons and daughters reaching back in faith.” He added, “It’s not necessarily ‘I’m going to keep Christ centered in Church history by writing His name a lot.’ [Rather] ‘I’m going to keep Him as ”the why" and make that the perspective from which I tell the story.’”
Hales noted that Church-employed historians also write as Christians in wider scholarly contexts. “We’re not just historians employed by the Church, but we’re also Christian historians, who sometimes write about things that, in some ways, have nothing to do with Jesus Christ — at least on the surface.”
Reflecting on writing “Saints,” he said it could be “a pretty big challenge to make Christ a focus,” but he saw the Savior functioning “in a mentoring role.”
Nash framed her responsibility in three directions — toward God, sources and readers.
“Integrity always needs to be there, to tell history as I understand it, as the people I’m trying to represent in the past understand it, and give the readership the best product that I can,” she said.
When writing about plural marriage, she said that meant “engaging in the most honest source I could find, which is people’s voices who lived polygamously and trying to find a well-rounded view of both positive and negative experiences to tell a truthful story.”
Addressing difficult topics
When asked how to discuss difficult topics without harming faith, Hales first emphasized framing in art.
“Frames are really important,” he said, comparing a painting’s frame to historical context. “It can really, really help improve the experience of looking at the painting.”
As a writer, he tries “not to judge those I write upon, but rather to see them as children of God.”
Nash said difficult subjects benefit from first-person sources that model different ways of wrestling with complexity. “It’s not my job to speak for them or to explain why they felt OK about polygamy.”
“So to just share stories from honest sources … can be helpful, while also being honest and saying, ‘hey, these are voices of people who struggled with it, and this is how they handled it.’”
An audience member asked about some who deny Joseph Smith’s role in introducing plural marriage, Nash observed, “People can pick and choose the sources they want,” but added that the evidence shows that it was practiced and “the concept originated with Joseph Smith.”
Inspired storytelling
Hales said writing “Saints” was often arduous, but was worth it when he first listened to it.
“I would listen to the audiobook, and I would just be amazed at how well the book worked,” he said, adding, “To say that we were not inspired, to say that Christ was not in the details of that project would be inaccurate.”
McBride shared a production moment from a Joseph Smith Papers podcast on the First Vision.
While interviewing Steven C. Harper, a historian of the First Vision, Harper shared an insight on the nature of God.
“The real resonance of the First Vision today is to know that it’s the nature of God to give to those who lack wisdom,” Harper said in the podcast. “The God that reveals Himself to Joseph Smith in the sacred grove is a God who answers teenagers in times of trouble.”
After struggling for hours to find a place to include that quote in the podcast, McBride realized, “At no point had I asked God for help.” He and his producer prayed, then “within 15 minutes” found a solution. “God inspired the work,” he said.
In October 2024 general conference, Elder Kyle S. McKay, a General Authority Seventy, would quote that exchange from Harper.
Nash shared that while compiling a book, “Women of Faith in the Latter Days,” key sources arrived just when needed.
“I came to expect miracles,” she said, adding, “God is in the work of history. He wants history to be preserved, to be shared.”
As the session closed, McBride shared counsel he said historians in the department hear often: “Don’t stop short of the mark,” then made the mark specific.
“Jesus Christ is that mark in Church history.”
