When people learn that Keith Erekson works for the Church History Department, they often react with suspicion.
A person will say, “Oh, I’ve heard of you guys. You hide the Church’s history. You don’t want people to know about the church’s history,” Erekson said.
“And I usually answer with a big ‘Yes, that’s exactly our goal. And because we’re friends here, I’m going to tell you where we hide things so that no member will ever find them. … We found this place called the Gospel Library app.’"
The director of historical research and outreach in the Church History Department then typically provides a mini-tour of accessible resources available in the app, specifically the Church History and Topics and Questions sections.
Erekson shared the anecdote as part of a roundtable discussion on the topic of “Making Peace with Challenging Questions in Church History” at the Church History Conference, held in the Conference Center Theater on Friday, Sept. 5.
Erekson was joined on the panel by Claire Haynie Brown and Aly Conteh, both employees of the Church History Department. The panel was moderated by Matthew C. Godfrey, senior managing historian for Outreach and Engagement for the Church History Department.
The theme of the two-day conference was “‘I Am in Your Midst’: Jesus Christ at the Center of Church History.”
Primary and secondary questions
Conteh was 11 years old when he visited a cemetery in northern France where British and Commonwealth soldiers from World War II were buried.
Although not a child inclined to tackle big philosophical questions, Conteh found himself pondering profound thoughts as he walked among the gravestones.
“What happens to us after we die? What’s the purpose of our time here on earth?”
The questions lingered with him. Taught by his mother to pray, Conteh occasionally sought answers from Heavenly Father.
Three years later, missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught his family the “truths of the gospel.” He was given a pamphlet with the testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith and read it.
“There were no fireworks,“ he said, “I just knew it was true.”
Now working as director of preservation at the Church History Department, Conteh recalls this experience as the “still small voice whispering to me that what I read was true.”
Conteh said there are primary questions — foundational questions about faith, such as the existence of God, the divinity of the Savior and the truth of the Restoration — and secondary questions.
“Our focus should be on the importance of those primary questions,” he said. “There are a mass of secondary questions, including questions regarding Church history. There are no problems with having questions. It isn’t something we should be concerned about.”
‘Able to move forward’
Early in her career as a historian with the Church History Department, Brown encountered things regarding plural marriage that left her troubled.
Although she was researching from “good sources,” she felt darkness and wondered about her value as a woman in the Lord’s eyes.
“So many questions just started crashing in on me, and the only way that I can describe it is I just felt this spiral,” she said.
Sitting at her desk, Brown wondered, “What do I do with this experience?” She felt a gentle prompting to visit the temple, which she followed.
This led to an experience where she felt an “overwhelming sense of love from the Lord” and “that I was a divinely loved and cherished daughter of God.”
“It didn’t answer every question,” she said. “That experience didn’t give me a line-by-line, written-out-perfectly answer to my question, but it left me with enough peace and enough confidence in the love of the Lord that I was able to move forward.”
Extending mercy
When challenging questions regarding Church or world history arise, Erekson said it’s helpful to remember Doctrine and Covenants 20:9, where the Savior introduces the Book of Mormon as containing “a record of a fallen people and the fullness of (the) gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“These are the people that God is dealing with,” said Erekson, who added that “We don’t know everything,” and people should not be surprised, disappointed or feel betrayed when encountering difficult things.
“The dealings of God with humans are going to involve both miracles, because they’re God’s dealings, and they’re going to involve challenges and shortcomings,” he said. “I can’t just have the Book of Mormon without the war chapters. I can’t see the miracles of Jesus without comprehending the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years.”
This pattern can be traced “all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where God tells us that’s how you’re going to learn,” Erekson said. “You are going to taste the bitter, so that you know how to prize the sweet.”
One of Brown’s favorite lines from Preach My Gospel reads, “all that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”
She expanded the idea to “include that all that seems unfair about the things that happened in Church history can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”
That includes “the things that we don’t quite understand, the people who were imperfect, who made decisions that perhaps seem wrong to us, those things can be made right because of the grace of our Savior, Jesus Christ,” Brown said. “My hope is that as we study the people of the past who are imperfect, just like ourselves, that we will extend them the grace that God offers to us through his Son.”
Waiting for answers to come
Conteh said sometimes it takes a while for answers to come. “But we can gain clarity and understanding, which helps us as we go through that process,” he said.
After his baptism in September 1978, Conteh learned about the history of race and the priesthood in the Church. He questioned his own value and felt troubled.
With resources like the Gospel Library app unavailable and decades away, Conteh said he mostly relied on what others had heard, read or been told. Thanks to spiritual reassurance he had received on the “primary questions,” Conteh said, “I wouldn’t call it a faith crisis. I just didn’t understand.”
He found peace through a passage in the Book of Mormon — 2 Nephi 26:33, which reads in part: “And He (Jesus) inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of His goodness. And he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female.”
“I really felt like God was speaking directly to me through the prophet Nephi,“ Conteh said, ”and that lifted a burden from me.”
He continued: “Do I know why the priesthood was withheld? No … but God’s ways are not our ways, and I’m prepared to trust in my Father in heaven, to accept what he told me in this scripture, and to be comfortable and to use what I know to be true in those primary questions."
Conteh added that earlier stories of Black Latter-day Saints like Jane Manning James “brought great joy, almost tears to me, of her faith. And that strengthens mine.”
When the “Race and the Priesthood” Gospel Topic Essay came out with more information, Conteh said “that validated a lot of things that I believe to be true. It didn’t give me the answers, but I’m comfortable with what I know. I comfortable with not having all the answers.”
Seeking answers and helping others
In an interview with the Church News, Erekson said new resources have been added to the “Topics and Questions” section.
The first part, listed just below the contents, is titled, “Seeking Answers to Gospel Questions.” This includes the following:
- Introduction.
- Center your life on Jesus Christ.
- Be patient with yourself and others.
- Recognize that revelation is a process.
- Consult reliable sources.
- Work to understand the past.
Below that is another new section, “Helping others with questions." This section includes:
- Introduction.
- Respond with love.
- Listen with humility.
- Trust in the Lord.
- Nourish your own faith.
- Assist them throughout their journey.
“They go together and are written as principles,” Erekson said.
In the Church History section of the Gospel Library App is another resource called “Answers to Church History Questions.” A person can select a topic, such as “Lessons from the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” and watch a short video with historians and scholars discussing the topic.
