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 38: “Sacrifice For What?”

• Why did a people preparing to abandon Nauvoo still finish the temple and receive their endowment?
• What did it cost ordinary Saints to complete the temple, and what does that sacrifice say to modern people who have a temple nearby?

Historian Matt McBride describes how Brigham Young kept the Saints finishing the temple while they were also preparing to leave for the west. He preached that the ordinances were an inheritance in the eternal world, and he risked losing a season’s crops by sending his teams to haul for the temple. Stone and lumber could be had locally. Cash could not, so members gave pennies, silver spoons, and wages, and missionaries collected donations overseas. The hosts compare that direct sacrifice with modern tithing, and doing temple work for our ancestors. McBride says the winter of 1845-46 bound the Saints together and expanded their sense of priesthood power.

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.”