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Richard Bushman, author of ‘Rough Stone Rolling’ and ‘Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates’ reflects on the prophet Joseph Smith and the relationship of religion and scholarship.

How an accidental historian won over critics and shed light on two of Mormonism’s darkest hours (Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Richard Turley holds one of Joseph Smiths personal documents during a news conference to announce a release in the "Joseph Smith Papers" project in 2013. Turley recently retired. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m. It was 1986, a dark time for Mormon historians. Just months earlier, infamous document collector Mark Hofmann had forged his way into the market ...

‘Mormon Land’: Historian Richard Bushman explores faith, doubt, the gold plates, prophetic fallibility and feminism Author of Joseph Smith biography also talks about how he came to believe and how the LDS Church can be a force for good in the world. (Rick Egan | Tribune file photo) Mormon historian Richard Bushman speaks at Benchmark Books in South Salt Lake in 2018.   | Jan. 7, 2021, 3:23 p.m. In a wide-ranging interview published in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune, revered...

This week in Mormon Land: The Capitol gang, ‘First Vision’ poems, youth theme songs David Noyce © Rick Bowmer (Rick Bowmer | AP file photo) Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks during a news conference on Oct. 15, 2020. Romney is the most prominent Latter-day Saint in the 117th Congress. The Mormon Land newsletter is a weekly highlight reel of developments in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whether heralded in headlines, preached from the pulpit or ...

| Updated: Jan. 1, 2021, 9:13 p.m. Nearing his 90th birthday, Richard Lyman Bushman is the godfather, or, should we say, the patriarch of Mormon history. As an emeritus history professor at Columbia University, with a chair of Mormon studies named in his honor at the University of Virginia, and the author of “Rough Stone Rolling,” the much-heralded biography of church founder Joseph Smith, Bushman is revered as a gentle, thoughtful scholar, who explores the past and present of The Church o...