Hello and welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast, where we seek out faith illuminating scholarship.

I'm Rosalind Welch, Associate Director at the Institute.

This season we're exploring the questions we should be asking.

Thanks for joining us.

What does it mean to be an objective judge of history? Of personal history, family history,

or shared human history? Are charity and objectivity opposites? Or are they partners?

Today on the podcast, I talked to Jenny Hale Pulcifer, a professor of history at BYU,

and a contributor to the Maxwell Institute's recent book, Every Needful Thing, Essays on the Life

of the Mind at the Heart. As an historian, Jenny specializes in finding the

nuance in complex historical figures, never excusing wrongdoing, but never losing sight of the

gospel's witness that we are all children of God. In the October 2022 General Conference,

Sister Annette Dennis, counselor in the Relief Society General

Presidency, asked how many wounded individuals do we have among us? How often do we judge others

based on their outward appearance and actions, or lack of action, when, if we fully understood,

we would instead react with compassion and a desire to help

instead of adding to their burdens with our judgment.

Jenny and I talked about how to balance objectivity and charity by adding, not subtracting,

individual perspectives, and about how open-eyed interaction with our families and our histories

can strengthen, not weaken our bonds of love. We talked about the ways that the histories we tell

might unknowingly burden the wounded. Jenny shared an amazing story about her own family history,

and she talked about how her youthful testimony of

the Book of Mormon grew through a challenge that forced her to revisit the questions she brought

...