The Interpreter Foundation and Redbrick Filmworks continues to release a new episode of their not-for-profit series of mini-documentaries titled Becoming Brigham each Monday. This week, they released the following episode:

Episode 36: “Brigham Young: Deeply Loved?”

• If the Saints would not leave without their endowment, how did Brigham try to both keep God’s promise and preserve their lives when Nauvoo was no longer safe?
• Why did so many Saints follow a blunt, sometimes offensive Brigham Young into the wilderness—and what does that fact say to modern people whose faith is shaken by that history?

Brigham Young tells the Saints they must leave because it is no longer safe, but members refuse to go without the endowment they were promised. Brigham receives inspiration that they need to complete the temple before they depart for the West. Historian Brett Dowdle traces the westward idea back to Joseph as early as 1838, to Brigham’s March 1845 dream of a mountain refuge, and then Governor Thomas Ford’s April letter warning that the mobs were growing and that Illinois could not protect them. By late August Brigham tells the Saints they have a second goal besides finishing the temple: get ready to leave. Dowdle also addresses a question for people unsettled by Church history: Brigham was sharp-tongued and made enemies, yet most Saints still followed him to Utah and regarded him as a father-figure.

Episode 37: “A Temple Finished Only to Abaondon?”

• Why did Brigham finish a temple he already knew they were going to abandon—and what does that decision say about Brigham Young as Joseph Smith’s successor?
• Why did the same Illinois neighbors who once sheltered the Saints later tell them their mere presence was the problem?

The temple walls were only about halfway up as the Saints faced mobs, an uncertain future, and two commitments that seemed to pull against each other: finish the temple and move west. Church opponents expected the restored church to collapse; instead Brigham Young, as leader of the Twelve, reported in January 1845 that the Lord had answered his inquiry by telling them to stay and complete the temple. That choice created a “pressure cooker” for the final months in Illinois, and a test of whether Brigham would carry out Joseph’s revelation when other claimants to leadership abandoned the temple, the westward move, or both.

The hosts discuss the irony of how Quincy, Illinois—the same town that had welcomed destitute Saints fleeing Missouri—later passed a September 1845 resolution urging them to leave Hancock County. They then visit the reconstructed Red Brick Store to trace how ordinances began before the building was done: baptisms for the dead in a basement font in 1841, the first endowments upstairs in May 1842, then winter 1845–46 work in the attic behind canvas partitions.

Why this docuseries? Many people are aware of Brigham Young as a pivotal figure in American religious and frontier history, but Brigham is also often misunderstood, seen as a larger-than-life caricature rather than as a man. Who actually was Brigham as a man, a father, a husband, and a prophet? The video web series Becoming Brigham debunks fictions and provides surprising new insights into the real Brigham Young. Learn more in the article “Becoming Brigham: The Video Series Premieres.”