UPDATE: As Loyd reminded me, gently, in the comments below, the quote in this post was filched unashamedly from his excellent and insightful blog,
Project Mayhem. Check it out. (Family, he is somewhat left-leaning, but check it out anyway! It'll be good for you.)
Here's an interesting quote I read on a blog post about Big Love (the quote is only tangentially related to the main post):
A few months ago I asked Church Historian Elder Marlin K. Jensen about the lack of historical accuracy in Church productions and manuals. He replied that in the last couple decades there has been virtually no communication between the Church’s curriculum and film departments with the historical department, and that rather than going to historians they have rather depended on historical myths that the culture of the Church has developed over the years.
As an example, he pointed out that the makers of the new Joseph Smith movie did not communicate with the Church History department until nearly all of the filming had been completed. When they saw a rough cut of the film, it was “full of bad history.” He said that, unfortunately at that point, too much money had been spent and that significant changes could not be made to the film.
One of his primary goals as the new Church Historian is to develop a level of communication between the curriculum, media, and PR departments with the history department to try to get so many of our historical myths corrected.
Quick, someone make this man an apostle! Please, oh please, won't someone shake up the correlation department––I will pray a novena to St Cleon of Skousen if necessary! Seriously, how could you
not want this man making policy?
