In the
preface to their delightful book Best Loved Humor of the LDS
People (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999), Jay A. Parry, Jack
M. Lyon, and Linda Ririe Gundry wrote the following:
“One
must have a sense of humor to be an optimist in times like these,”
Hugh B. Brown once said. “And you young women will need a sense
of humor if you marry these young men and try to live with them.
Golden Kimball once said in a conference, ‘The Lord Himself
must like a joke or he wouldn't have made some of you people.’
But your good humor must be real, not simulated. Let your smiles come
from the heart and they will become contagious. You may see men on
the street any day whose laugh is only a frozen grin with nothing in
it but teeth. Men without humor tend to forget their source, lose
sight of their goal, and with no lubrication in their mental
crankshafts, they must drop out of the race. Lincoln said, ‘Good
humor is the oxygen of the soul.’ And someone paraphrased, ‘The
surly bird catches the germ.’” (The Abundant Life
[Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965], 50)
Everybody
loves a good joke. Whether we're giving a talk in sacrament meeting,
teaching a Sunday School lesson, or presenting a family home evening
message, we instinctively turn to humor to bridge the gap between
speaker and listeners. Humor lets us see life's bright side, gives us
new perspective, and allows us to laugh at our own foibles.
While
rambling around in Church history one will inevitably run across
numerous humorous incidents and stories – not just jokes, but
real life experiences that had a touch—often more than a
touch—of humor. Here are a few of them.
PARLEY P. PRATT AND THE BULL DOG
While
Parley P. Pratt was on a mission to Missouri in 1830 he was arrested
on trumped-up charges, tried, and sentenced either to go to prison or
pay a fine. He decided to do neither. Here is what happened, as he
told it in his autobiography:
I
was soon ordered to prison, or to pay a sum of money which I had not
in the world. It was now a late hour, and I was still retained in
court, tantalized, abused and urged to settle the matter, to all of
which I made no reply for some time. This greatly exhausted their
patience. It was near midnight. I now called on brother Petersen to
sing a hymn in the court. We sung, “O how happy are they.”
This exasperated them still more, and they pressed us greatly to
settle the business, by paying the money.
I
then observed as follows: “May it please the court, I have one
proposal to make for a final settlement of the things that seem to
trouble you. It is this: if the witnesses who have given testimony in
the case will repent of their false swearing, and the magistrate of
his unjust and wicked judgment and of his persecution, blackguardism
and abuse, and all kneel down together, we will pray for you, that
God might forgive you in these matters.”
“My
big bull dog pray for me,” says that Judge.
“The
devil help us,” exclaimed another.
They
now urged me for some time to pay the money; but got no further
answer.
The
court adjourned, and I was conducted to a public house over the way,
and locked in till morning; the prison being some miles distant.
In
the morning the officer appeared and took me to breakfast; this over,
we sat waiting in the inn for all things to be ready to conduct me to
prison. In the meantime my fellow travellers came past on their
journey, and called to see me. I told them in an undertone to pursue
their journey and leave me to manage my own affairs, promising to
overtake them soon. They did so.
After
sitting awhile by the fire in charge of the officer, I requested to
step out. I walked out into the public square accompanied by him.
Said I, “Mr. Peabody, are you good at a race?” “No,”
said he, “but my big bull dog is, and he has been trained to
assist me in my office these several years; he will take any man down
at my bidding.” “Well, Mr. Peabody, you compelled me to
go a mile, I have gone with you two miles. You have given me an
opportunity to preach, sing, and have also entertained me with
lodging and breakfast. I must now go on my journey; if you are good
at a race you can accompany me. I thank you for all your
kindness—good day, sir.”
I
then started on my journey, while he stood amazed and not able to
step one foot before the other. Seeing this, I halted, turned to him
and again invited him to a race. He still stood amazed. I then
renewed my exertions, and soon increased my speed to something like
that of a deer. He did not awake from his astonishment sufficiently
to start in pursuit till I had gained, perhaps, two hundred yards. I
had already leaped a fence, and was making my way through a field to
the forest on the right of the road. He now came hallooing after me,
and shouting to his dog to seize me. The dog, being one of the
largest I ever saw, came close on my footsteps with all his fury; the
officer behind still in pursuit, clapping his hands and hallooing,
“stu-boy, stu-boy—take him—watch—lay hold of
him, I say—down with him,” and pointing his finger in the
direction I was running. The dog was fast overtaking me, and in the
act of leaping upon me, when, quick as lightning, the thought struck
me, to assist the officer, in sending the dog with all fury to the
forest a little distance before me. I pointed my finger in that
direction, clapped my hands, and shouted in imitation of the officer.
The dog hastened past me with redoubled speed towards the forest;
being urged by the officer and myself, and both of us running in the
same direction.
Gaining
the forest, I soon lost sight of the officer and dog, and have not
seen them since. (Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P.
Pratt [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1961], 49-51.)
HOW TO STUDY LAW
Joseph
Smith had a sense of humor, part of which is suggested in an entry in
his History for May 18, 1843:
About
noon, I lay down on the writing table, with my head on a pile of law
books, saying, “Write and tell the world I acknowledge myself a
great lawyer; I am going to study law, and this is the way I study
it;” and then fell asleep.
A BIT OF BRIGHAM
Brigham
Young had as good a sense of humor as anyone, often reflected in his
sermons and letters, as well as in the memories of people who knew
him. Sometimes his humor consisted of caustic words about people he
disliked, but at other times he was simply having a bit of
light-hearted fun in connection with his sometimes tedious duties.
Here is one illustration, as told by Leonard Arrington.
Elizabeth
Green was an early convert to the LDS Church. However, in 1851 she
wrote to President Brigham Young requesting her membership be
cancelled because she had become a “spiritualist.”
Brigham's
reply was classic:
“Madam:
I have this day examined the records of baptisms for the remission of
sins in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and not
being able to find the name of 'Elizabeth Green' recorded therein I
was saved from the necessity of erasing your name therefrom. You may
therefore consider that your sins have not been remitted you and you
may consequently enjoy the benefits therefrom.” (Quoted in
Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York:
Alfred Knopf, 1985), 199)
Mark Twain
(Samuel Clements) made fun of everyone and everything, including
Brigham Young and the Mormons. As a humorist it was his business to
make people laugh. His book Roughing It (published in 1872)
told of his adventures in the so-called “Wild West,”
1861-62. When his brother Orion Clements was appointed Secretary of
Nevada Territory, Twain joined him on his way west. They spent two
days in Salt Lake City. Twain was more than a little put off by the
way Brigham Young treated him, though Brigham was probably just being
jovial and light-hearted. This is from Chapter XIII of Roughing
It:
The
second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased)
and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king.
He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed
old gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his
eye that probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was
just taking off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and
the Indians, and Nevada, and general American matters and questions,
with our secretary and certain government officials who came with us.
But he never paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made
several attempts to “draw him out” on federal politics
and his high handed attitude toward Congress. I thought some of the
things I said were rather fine. But he merely looked around at me, at
distant intervals, something as I have seen a benignant old cat look
around to see which kitten was meddling with her tail.
By
and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the
end, hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant
savage. But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen
flowed on as sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer
brook. When the audience was ended and we were retiring from the
presence, he put his hand on my head, beamed down on me in an
admiring way and said to my brother:
“Ah--your
child, I presume? Boy, or girl?”
MARK TWAIN’S REVENGE
I don’t
know which got under Mark Twain’ skin the most: Brigham’s
referring to him as a child or indicating he could be either a boy or
girl. Or maybe he just took it in stride and reported the story only
because he knew it would make his readers laugh. At any rate, in the
next chapter of Roughing It he commented on other things,
including Mormon women, in a way that Brigham might not have found
very funny. But his comment on women is cleverly written, and just
what the American public would love in that day and age:
Our
stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we
had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of
polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory
to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the
matter.
I
had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I
was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform
here--until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart
was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and
pathetically “homely” creatures, and as I turned to hide
the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, “No--the man that
marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which
entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh
censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand
uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.
HERE’S TO OUR ENEMIES
Whether
justified or not, most Mormons detested Martin Van Buren who, as
President of the United States, refused to support the Saints in
their request for federal financial aid in recompense for the
property lost in Missouri. On July 24, 1849, the Saints in Utah
celebrated the first arrival of the pioneers a year earlier.
Jedediah M. Grant gave one of the various toasts, a very pithy one,
as recorded in the journal of Lorenzo Brown:
To
Martin Van Buren and all mobocrats: May they be winked at by blind
men, kicked across lots by cripples, nibbled to death by ducks, and
carried to hell through the keyhole by bumblebees. (Quoted in Davis
Bitton, Wit and Whimsey in Mormon History [Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book, 1974], 54.)
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
In1861,
after the outbreak of the Civil War, Church leaders called 309
families to move to the area now called St. George, Utah, and
establish the Cotton Mission. The effort to grow cotton was part of
the hope for self-sufficiency in Utah. This hot, desert-like area was
not exactly inviting, but the pioneers, many of whom were from the
American south and knew how to grow cotton, exercised their faith and
works, grew cotton, and established a permanent community. In 1862,
Charles L. Walker and his bride of one year were called, with several
other families, to join the Cotton Mission at St. George. His first
impression of St. George was that it was a “barren place . . .
very windy, dusty, blowing nearly all the time.” Amid all the
difficulties of eking out a living, he joined a literary club, began
writing, and eventually became the poet laureate of Utah’s
Dixie. A bit of the harshness of pioneer life in St. George was
captured in his cleverly-written song “St. George and the
Dragon.” It was first published in his own small local paper,
The Veprecula. The song quickly caught on and has become a
favorite piece of folk music. Note, especially the third stanza.
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
Oh, what an awful place this was
When first the Mormons found it.
They said no white man here could live
And Indians prowled around it.
They said the land it was no good.
And the water was no gooder,
And the bare idea of living here,
Was enough to make men shudder.
CHORUS:
Mesquite, soap-root, prickly-pears and briars.
St. George ere long will be a place
That everyone admires.
Now green lucerne in verdant spots
Bedecks our thriving city,
Whilst vines and fruit trees grace our lots,
With flowers sweet and pretty.
Where once the grass in single blades
Grew a mile apart in distance.
And it kept the crickets on the go,
To pick up their subsistence.
(CHORUS)
The sun it is so scorching hot,
It makes the water sizz, Sir.
The reason that it is so hot,
Is just because it is, Sir.
The wind like fury here doth blow,
That when we plant or sow, Sir,
We place one foot upon the seed,
And hold it till it grows, Sir.
(Reprinted from Utah Historical Quarterly 28 [July 1961], 222.)
WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?
As a
teacher, one of my favorite stories concerns Karl G. Maeser, a German
immigrant who became Principal of Brigham Young Academy (predecessor
to Brigham Young University) in 1876. His duties as president did not
release him from teaching, and he was an effective and inspiring
teacher. Among his students were such notables as Reed Smoot, George
Sutherland, William H. King, Alice Louise Reynolds, William Spry,
Bryant S. Hinckley, James E. Talmage, George Albert Smith and J.
Golden Kimball. (I leave it to you to Google those whose names you do
not already know.) As Alma Burton tells one story about him:
He
endeared his pupils to him by his ready wit and his ability to meet
situations that called for quick thinking. According to his daughter,
Eva, he had a motto: “Never take a joke, always get it back,
and never let it hurt you.” One morning he was detained from
getting to devotional services on time. A group of his students
brought in a jackass and tied it up in front of the assembly where
the Principal always stood and conducted the exercises. When Brother
Maeser arrived he walked up to the donkey and addressing the
congregation said: “Dat is right, dat is right, when I cannot
be present at our meetings appoint one of your number to preside.”
(Alma P. Burton, “Karl G. Maeser: Mormon Educator [Master’s
thesis, Brigham Young University, 1950], 94.)
WE CAN’T IGNORE J. GOLDEN KIMBALL!
Whenever
we mention Mormon humor most of us (at least those of us of the older
generation) immediately think of J. Golden Kimball. Elder Kimball
served as one of the seven presidents of the Seventy from 1892 to
1938. He became a folk legend for his humor, his trickery, and his
sometimes salty language. This was picked up from his days as a mule
driver and, later, a rancher in Rich County. A common cliché
in the West was “You can’t be a mule driver if you can’t
swear!” He was also full of practical wisdom, often expressed
in humor or seen in the stories about him. Many of the stories we
hear are probably mythical, but there are many that really happened.
What follows are a few of them.
He was
sometimes a little self-depreciating, as the following story told by
Austin Fife suggests:
His
nephew once asked him, “Uncle Golden, people laugh every time
you begin a sermon. Do you intend to be funny?” “No, I
don’t. I don’t expect it at all. But they laugh at me
anyway. I don’t know why. I say what others say. Now take
Apostle Ballard [Melvin J. Ballard]. He can get up and say, ‘Brethren
and sisters, I haven’t prepared a sermon today. What I’m
going to say the Lord alone knows.’ And then he’ll preach
’em a fine sermon. I get up and say the same thing: ‘Brethren
and sisters, God only knows what I’m going to tell you.’
And they all laugh!” (Austin Fife, Saints of Sage and Saddle
[Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1956], 312.
Elder
Kimball was known for sometimes swearing in his talks, but, legendary
and otherwise inspirational as he was, he seemed to be unable to
quit, as the following story suggests:
In
an outlying ward a young man, known in the small community to be
profane in his language, applied to his bishop for a recommend to go
to the temple to be married. But the bishop, concerned about the
man’s worthiness to go the Lord’s house because of his
swearing, asked if he would quite swearing. The man said he was
afraid he couldn’t, he’d used the language so long. So
the bishop told him to go to President Grant and ask him if he could
go to the temple. In Salt Lake City the man went to the Church
offices. President Grant’s secretary, after consulting the
President, told the man to go to Brother Kimball’s office and
he would handle the case. Alerted to the problem, J. Golden Kimball
invited the man into his office and before the man presented the
problem said, “Well, young man, so you have a problem with
swearing! But you can quit. Hell, I did.” (Thomas S. Cheney,
The Golden Legacy: A folk History of J. Golden Kimball (Provo:
BYU Press,1973), 100-101.
J. Golden
the humorous problem solver is illustrated by the following story:
In
a stake in Idaho the spirit of criticism and apostasy threatened to
destroy the church. J. Golden Kimball took a quartette and went there
to hold some meetings and get the people on the right track, the
seventies in particular. Attracted by his style of preaching, they
came from far and near. He began the meeting by dividing the
quartette, having two members on the one side of the house sing
“Come, Come Saints,” while on the opposite side the other
two sang “O Ye Mountains High.”
Immediately
he followed with these and other remarks: “How do you like that
singing? Sounds like hell, doesn’t it?
“Now
you people up here are working like that. Part are pulling one way
and part another. You have forgotten the Lord and how be blessed you.
When you settled here, there were little drizzling streams coming out
of these canyons, hardly enough water to give a canary bird a drink.
The Lord has increased the streams and multiplied your crops until
you have prospered and become independent. Now you have forgotten
him. And there is contention among you, and you are pulling about the
way that first song went. And if you continue you will not prosper.
God will not give you a damn thing.”
The
leader of the apostate gang, who was at the meeting, must have felt
these remarks were aimed directly at him, for every time the speaker
made a new point he would sink deeper into his seat. The next day he
remarked to a group of his followers in dissent, “What Golden
Kimball he say ain’t true. No, it ain’t true. But I’m
damned scart it is true.” (Cheney, The Kimball Legend,
79-80.)
J. Golden
the trickster is illustrated by one of the most famous stories about
him. It took place at a time when, once a year, General Authorities
attending stake conferences read the interminable list of all the
general and stake officers of the Church, including the auxiliaries.
Once
this irksome task fell to Kimball’s lot. ‘It has been
proposed,” he said, “that we sustain Brother Heber J.
Grant as prophet, seer, and revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. All in favor make it manifest by the raising of
the right hand; opposed, if nay, by the same sign. . . . It has been
proposed that we sustain Brother Anthony W. Ivins, as. . . .”
On and on it went, monotonous and tiresome like the ticking of a
clock. J. Golden looked up from his list and noticed that his
audience was nodding, on the very verge of sleep. In the same
monotonous tone he continued: “It has been proposed that Mount
Nebo be moved from its present site in Juab County and be placed on
the Utah-Idaho border. All in favor make it manifest by raising the
right hand; opposed by the same sign.” Guffaws from the few who
were still awake revived the congregation and the ritual was
completed in due course. (Cheney, The Kimball Legend, 80-81.)
THE PROBLEM WITH TRANSLATION IS. . . .
Frederick
W. Babel’s book, On Wings of Faith, tells the
heartwarming story of LDS relief efforts in Europe after World War
II. At one point in the story he recalled an interesting experience
in Germany, in the days before the war:
In
commenting upon this matter, I could not help recalling a particular
job of translating I once did for Elder Richard R. Lyman when he was
serving as European Mission President before the war. I was serving
as his translator in Leipzig, Germany, in the spring of 1937. It was
a cold day and he began by saying, “Many are cold, but few are
frozen,” a take-off on the scripture “Many are called,
but few are chosen.” This usually resulted in a hearty laugh
from American audiences.
Realizing
that this joke could not be translated into German and still come out
funny, I said to the saints in German: “President Lyman has
told you a joke that is funny in English. He expects all of you to
laugh.” They did so. At this, President Lyman put his arm
around my shoulder and said, “You’re the best translator
I’ve ever had!” (Frederick W. Babel, On Wings of Faith
[Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1972]. 174.)
I don’t
know if the following story is true, so you may want to just consider
it apocryphal. But whether true or not, it’s fun, some form of
it is part of Mormon missionary folklore, and something like it could
well have happened.
Back
in the days before missionaries went to the Language Training Mission
they had to learn the language on the job, and it usually took them
quite a while to carry on a gospel conversation in the native tongue
of whatever country they were sent to. The story is told of a pair of
missionaries who were called upon to bless a sister who was ill. The
seasoned senior companion, thinking it would be good for the
“greenie” to pronounce the blessing (supposedly he had
been tutored in various prayers and ordinances) anointed the sister
then called on his companion to seal the anointing and give her a
blessing. When the two left the house the senior companion burst out
laughing. “What’s the matter?” the new elder asked.
His older companion put a comforting hand on his shoulder and
confided: “You didn’t bless her, you ordained her an
elder!” (Presumably the woman did not understand the elder as
he struggled with her language. Presumably, also, in this case the
Lord accepted the good intent as valid.)
FUN THINGS HAPPEN IN CHURCH
In
November 1929 the Improvement Era published an article by
Bryant S. Hinckley (father of Gordon B. Hinckley), who, at that time,
was President of the Liberty Stake. Here are two of the stories he
told:
Most
Latter-day Saint bishops are obliged to make a living in addition to
carrying the responsibilities of their ecclesiastical office, and one
smiles and forgives the bishop who, announcing the hymn in a
religious gathering, said, “We will now sing from page three
dollars and fifty cents.”
A
girl in the Primary wrote the following composition on monkeys:
“A
monkey is an animal that wears a red cap and has a long tail. Monkeys
have four feet; cows also have four feet, one on each corner. The
other day me and my sister were going through a pasture and one of
the cows ran after us and helped us over the fence—that was the
other cow's husband.”
A few
weeks ago my bishop was the first speaker in Sacrament meeting. He
began his talk by telling one of the funny things that happened in
his family. It went something like this:
When
his oldest son (now on a mission) was four years old the family spent
an evening at Chuck E. Cheese’s. The food, he said, was
questionable, and there was a lot of noise—so much so that it
gave him a headache. But the four-year-old loved it (which
illustrates beautifully a difference between generations). The
following Sunday the family was getting ready for Church, but the
four-year-old said he did not want to go. “Why not?” the
father asked. The boy said he wanted to go to that other church.
“What other church?” “The Church of Chucky Jesus!”
BREAK FORTH INTO JOY, SING TOGETHER (Isaiah 52:9)
In 1972
the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association (MHA) was held
in Independence, Missouri, the headquarters of the Reorganized Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now known as the Community of
Christ). Members of MHA included anyone interested in Mormon history,
so in attendance were members of both the LDS and RLDS churches, as
well some who were members of neither. At an evening banquet an
address was given by the RLDS Church Historian, Richard P. Howard. He
talked about the development of hymns in both traditions. At one
point he noted that there were several hymns that the two churches
had in common. One was “Redeemer of Israel.” He then
suggested that we all sing it—the whole group singing the first
verse, the RLDS group singing the second verse, and then the “Utah
Mormons” singing verse 3. So we began.
First
verse, by the whole group:
Redeemer of Israel,
Our only delight
On whom for a blessing we call. . . .
Then the
second verse, sung by the RLDS group:
We know he is coming
To gather his sheep
And lead them to Zion in love. . . .
Then the
Utah Mormons began to sing the third verse:
How long we have wandered
As strangers in sin,
And cried in the desert for thee. . . .
We hardly
got started before we realized that we had been “had.”
Everyone in the room burst out in laughter, and that ended the
singing. And now, every time we sing that song in church I am
reminded of that delightful practical joke played on the
“Brighamites” by a “Josephite.”
NEED YOUR HOME TEACHING DONE?
And then,
of course, the rise of technology has led to all kinds of humorous
internet satire and spoofs, such as the Zion Home Teaching Service:
Zion Home Teaching Service
We care when you don’t have time to.
Home
teaching getting you down? Can’t get that annoying Priesthood
Leader off your back? Home Teaching interfering with your TV and
Golf? We can help! At Zion’s Home Teaching Service we’ll
do your Home Teaching for you. For a small monetary fee we will send
one of our trained representatives to the homes of your families.
Basic Visit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10
Basic Visit plus Spiritual Message . . . . . . . . $15
Birthday and anniversary cards in addition
to the Basic Visit and Spiritual Message. . . . . . $20
PLEASE NOTE: Because of heavy volume, an extra $15 will be added for the last day of the month.
The web
site goes on to offer all kinds of additional services (for
appropriate fees, of course), such as meeting attendance, (the best
value is 3-hour Sunday Block--$50), preparing talks and lessons (all
talks are guaranteed to last 15 minutes, with $1 added for each
additional minute), and food for all ward occasions.… Author
unknown http://mormonsite.wordpress.com/
(Note: If you go to this website and see the name Allen, it is not
me.)
JAMES B. ALLEN, Professor of History, Emeritus, Brigham Young University
James B. Allen was born June 14, 1927, in Ogden, Utah. He married Renée Jones, April 16,
1953. They have five children, twenty-one grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren . He
received his bachelor's degree in history form Utah State University in 1954, a master's degree
from Brigham Young University in 1956, and the Ph.D. from the University of Southern
California in 1963.
Active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all his life, he has served in numerous
positions, including bishop of two BYU wards and a member of 5 different BYU high councils.
In 1999-2000 he and Renée served as missionaries at the Boston Institute of Religion.
He has also been active in the Republican party and twice served as a delegate to the state
convention.
In his professional career, he taught in the LDS Seminary and Institute program from 1954-63,
after which he was a member of the faculty at Brigham Young University until his retirement in
1992. From 1972 to 1979 he also served as Assistant Church Historian (splitting his time
between BYU and the Church Historical Department). He was chair of the History Department
from 1981-1987 then, during his last five years at BYU, he was honored to hold the Lemuel
Hardison Redd, Jr. Chair in Western American History. After his retirement he became
associated with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at BYU, where
for several years he held an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow.
He has also been active in various professional organizations, including the Western History
Association (served on various committees, and as chair of a program committee) and the
Mormon History Association (president, 1971-73). He has been on various boards of editors and
advisory committees and presented numerous papers at the meetings of various historical
associations.
As a researcher and writer he is the author, co-author, or co-editor of fourteen books or
monographs and around 90 articles relating to Western American history and Mormon history,
as well as numerous book reviews in professional journals. Some of his books include the
following:
The Company Town in the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966)
The Story of the Latter-day Saints (with Glen M. Leonard; Deseret Book Company, 1976;
2nd edition 1992)
Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon (University of Illinois
Press, 1987). Revised and republished in 2002 by BYU Press under the title No
Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton. In 1986, while still in press,
this book won the prestigious David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans
Biography Award.
Men With a Mission: The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the British Isles, 1837-1841
(with Ronald K. Esplin and David J. Whittaker, Deseret Book Company, 1992)
Studies in Mormon History 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography (with Ronald W.
Walker and David J. Whittaker; University of Illinois Press, 2000). Allen was the
lead investigator for this important work. It lists, and provides an index to, all the
significant books, articles, doctoral dissertations and master's theses on Mormon
history produced between 1830 and 1997. It has been widely hailed as one of the
most important aids to finding LDS history ever published. In 2001 the Mormon
History Association awarded the authors a special citation for the publication of
this book. After that, working with J. Michael Hunter, Allen continued to update
the bibliography database. Hunter has now taken over the updating, and the
database is online at mormonhistory.byu.edu.
Mormon History (with Ronald W. Walker and David J. Whittaker, University of Illinois
Press, 2001). This book is a history of the writing of Mormon history, from the
days of Joseph Smith until the present time.
Over the years he has received various awards, honors, and recognitions, besides those indicated
above. Among them were several "best article" awards; the Karl G. Maeser Research and
Creative Arts Award, Brigham Young University, 1980; named Distinguished Faculty Lecturer,
Brigham Young University, 1984; named a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, July 15,
1988; the Leonard J. Arrington Award for a Distinctive Contribution to the cause of Mormon
History, awarded by the Mormon History Asociation, 2008.
James and Renée have enjoyed living in Orem, Utah since 1963.
He currently serves as Sunday School President in his ward, and he and Renée have been officiators
in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple since 2004.
