Biographer, No Man Knows My History
Fawn M. Brodie
1915–1981
2 topics · 3 dated events · 1 source
Their part in each topic
The First Vision
Biographer, No Man Knows My History
Brodie's 1945 biography argued that the vision passed unnoticed in Palmyra and may have been 'an evolutionary fantasy beginning in a half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement,' or else invention. Her hypothesis set the terms of the twentieth-century argument; both defenders and critics have been answering it ever since.
Speaking Truth to Power
Biographer, No Man Knows My History
Brodie was David O. McKay's niece. Six months after Knopf published her naturalistic life of Joseph Smith, William H. Reeder Jr., president of the New England Mission, summoned her by letter of 23 May 1946 to show cause why she should not be excommunicated, charging that she asserted as truths matters denying the divine origin of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the priesthood. She was cut off. The Deseret News had already run an unsigned Church News piece, 'Appraisal of the So-Called Brodie Book,' calling the work wholly atheistic and attributing her lack of objectivity in part to her husband being Jewish. Brodie thought the church action 'might almost be considered a compliment.' Her biography is still in print and was, for decades, sold in Deseret Book stores.
In the timeline
3 events across 2 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.
Brodie proposes the vision was a later elaboration
No Man Knows My History argued that nothing happened in Palmyra in 1820 that anyone noticed, that Smith's own family confused the vision with the visit of the angel, and that the story may have been 'the elaboration of some half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement' or 'sheer invention.' Brodie was excommunicated the following year.
Fawn Brodie is summoned to show causehinge
Six months after Knopf published No Man Knows My History, William H. Reeder Jr., president of the New England Mission, wrote to Brodie in New Haven charging her with apostasy: that she asserted as truths matters which deny the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood and of Christ's church through Joseph Smith. She was excommunicated. The Deseret News Church News had already run an unsigned appraisal calling the book wholly atheistic and citing her husband's Jewishness as a source of bias.
Fitzgerald's Watergate article, and the answer from the pulpit that morning
The Salt Lake Tribune published John W. Fitzgerald's article accusing the church of a cover-up like Watergate. In general conference that same morning, church president Harold B. Lee said that some of the greatest of our enemies are those within our own ranks, recalled the woman who had written scurrilous things about Joseph Smith and George Albert Smith's prophecy that the odour of her infamy would ever be with her, and said that some who write in the public press had fallen by the wayside and befouled the honoured family names they bear. Fitzgerald was excommunicated.
Sources in their own name
Source records in the database whose author line names this person. Each links to the topic that uses it.
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
Fawn M. Brodie
The first systematic critical list of the wives, and the reading of plural marriage as libertinism given theological cover.
Appears alongside
People who share the most dated events with Fawn M. Brodie.
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