Today's guest post comes to you from Eliza N. She is an editor who lives and works in Salt Lake City. She grew up in the Midwest and misses the cornfields. When she's not working, reading, or watching Netflix, she enjoys running, playing volleyball, and hanging out with her dog.
Ed. Note: Trigger warning for discussion of rape.
I have some things to say.
Last week I attended the Church
History Symposium co-hosted by the Church History Department and BYU's
Religious Studies Center. I attended Dr. Andrea Radke-Moss's
presentation that has been quite the talk over the weekend in the Mormon
Studies world because of new information that she presented identifying
Eliza R. Snow as a victim of rape in Missouri during the persecution of
the Mormons there in 1838. Her write-up at the Juvenile Instructor as well as this one at By Common Consent by my friend Kristine A. give excellent overviews
of Dr. Radke-Moss’s presentation and explanations of her sources and
reasoning.
Since Thursday, there’s been plenty of pushback in
the comment sections of pretty much every article and post that’s
discussed the bombshell regarding the validity and credibility of Dr.
Radke-Moss’s source, the validity of her conclusions, and whether or not
this information should have been revealed. Dr. Radke-Moss handily
rebuts this criticism in her JI post, but here are my thoughts about her
presentation and some of the pushback I have seen.
