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 35: “Why Not Sidney Rigdon?”
- What did Brigham’s letter to the daughter he left behind reveal about how he saw himself as a substitute “father” to the Church?
- Why did the unfinished Nauvoo Temple become the sharpest dividing line between Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon?
- Did Sidney Rigdon believe that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles held the priesthood keys?
The hosts discuss Brigham Young’s inner life with Church historian Brett Dowdle. Brigham left few intimate journals, but the hosts use two documents to open a window on his feelings: a letter written days after the August 1844 Grove Meeting during the succession crisis, in which he comforts a daughter he had to leave in Massachusetts and describes the Saints as “tired children without a father”; and his February 1847 dream of Joseph Smith, who told him the people must stay humble, heed the still small voice, and keep their hearts open to the Holy Ghost.
Dowdle then walks through what actually happened in Nauvoo at that time. Contemporary records of the August 8 meeting are thinner than later testimonies, but enough accounts exist that historians take a spiritual manifestation seriously. Brigham himself emphasized the Spirit and the vote that sustained the Twelve. The episode closes by arguing that following the Twelve was what kept temple work alive.
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.”