Opacity instead of clarity

Everyone agrees that we have more access to Church history materials than ever before. The Joseph Smith Papers are a phenomenal resources. The Church History Library has been digitizing records that were largely unknown just a few years ago.

All of this openness is refreshing.

However, modern Church history--the events taking place right now--are opaque.

The Saints books, for example, are anonymous. We don't know who wrote or edited them, we don't have access to editorial decisions, and despite the numerous footnotes, readers can't tell what was omitted or spun unless they have extensive background in the source materials.

Steven Harper was one of the most important figures behind the creation of the Saints book, volume 1. He also wrote First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins.

Much of that book is an examination of the creation of the narrative about the First Vision that we have today. 

Such a book could never be written about the creation of the narrative in the Saints book because of the lack of openness.

For example, Harper has a chapter on B. H. Roberts' work on preparing Church history. He writes, "Roberts experienced dissonance when he came to Smith's account of what happened when he saw the divine beings... [after listing the well-known discrepancy in the 1842 version of JS history] The two lines seemed a contradiction to Roberts.... So Roberts silently elided the line "for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong."

It could be that Harper is merely mindreading, but even if so, at least the history Roberts prepared was Roberts' work. This level of detail is possible because of the records Roberts left.

There is no comparable source material behind Saints, at least not that anyone can see.

Harper continues. Roberts "felt licensed to edit as his predecessors in the Church Historian's Office did--redacting with no hint to readers that the end result was anything other than Smith's voice."

He next points out that "the editorial practices of B. H. Roberts made no difference to Latter-day Saints in the early decades of the twentieth century."

That's similar to the case today, when most Latter-day Saints don't care about the editorial decisions made when compiling Saints. 

But some of us do care, because we see in Saints a deliberate effort to change the narrative about Church history.

Opacity prevents us from studying the editorial decisions that produced Saints. We are left to infer the agenda of the editors and authors.

It's understandable why current historians prefer opacity. But it's not acceptable from a historian's perspective.