Customer Reviews

The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-Day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1838

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For many of the same reasons the reviewer (and so-called 'objective' historian) Roger Launius dislikes this book (see his review here also), I thought it was excellent. I read this book as a novice reader of LDS Church history, and I loved nearly every page. The life of Joseph Smith and the history of the church he restored include some of the greatest stories of all time. This detailed account of the Kirtland years does not disappoint in its research and inspiring narrative, leading the reader through the triumphs and trials of the saints in Ohio. Readers like Launius may ridicule the book's lack of objectivity, but the truth is that Joseph Smith really was called of God and that the church he restored really is true. This book contains many evidences of these truths, and I strongly recommend it.

The book arrived just a day or two after I ordered it. It was a hardback in great condition. The price was very low, and it was just what I was hoping for. Thanks!

This is the most detailed and probably the most significant--if only because it is the sole--general history of the Kirtland experience. Milton V. Backman Jr.'s, "The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1838" was originally conceived as one of the sixteen volumes on Mormon history sponsored by the Latter-day Saint church in commemoration of its sesquicentennial in 1980. Unfortunately, this book is both exhaustive and exhausting. It provides an exceptionally rich base of detailed information about early Kirtland, the Mormon stronghold in Ohio. Backman is a meticulous researcher. No amount of effort was apparently too much to obtain the stray fact; no amount of checking of the documents and the context and the details of the episode was enough. Backman not only surveyed literary sources, but also reviewed census, tax, probate, legal, land ownership, and other government records. In the process he helped to construct a snapshot of Mormonism at Kirtland that had much more depth than ever before. The result is richly detailed if somewhat pedantic coverage of the Mormon church in Ohio between 1830 and 1838.

But if Backman's research was voluminous and the facts piled into "The Heavens Resound" immense, they were also too often misleading. He concentrates on the sacred story of the Kirtland years, the religious activities of leading men--and they were all men that Backman emphasized--the revelations of the founding prophet, the doctrines espoused, and the spiritual manifestations taking place in the era. Backman's commitment to telling the sacred story is both honest and obtrusive. He sees the events in Kirtland only through the eyes of faith, explaining the point of view of the institutional church. Too often he acts as Joseph Smith Jr.'s defense attorney, arguing the case on behalf of the founder to revise revelations as he sees fit, to implement policy and doctrine flexibly, to deal harshly with both rivals and upright people holding honest differences of opinion, to create organization structures and make decisions in seemingly incongruous patterns. In that regard, Smith is depicted as being pursued by evil conspirators who brought "vexatious lawsuits" on a persecuted innocent. Backman never gives alternative positions equal time and neither Smith's motives nor his actions are ever challenged, and there is much room to do both when considering his activities.

In a few instances Backman ignores facts that contradict the sacred story he is reconstructing for present-day Latter-day Saints. For example, in describing Smith's "Civil War prophecy," he places it in its "Nullification Crisis" context and then announces its fulfillment in the Civil War three decades later. The implication for Backman, as it has been for so many other believing Latter-day Saints, is that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that this revelation is firm proof. Backman fails to indicate, however, that the "Civil War prophecy" was given against the backdrop of Mormon millennialism and that its last section states that the predicted war will lead to the overthrow of the United States and the advent of a Zionic theocracy. Viewed in that context, the major point of the prophecy did not come to pass and refutes Backman's suggestions of Smith's prophetic leadership.

I wish there were a better book available on the history of Mormonism in Ohio. Unfortunately, it will have to await a more diligent and skillful scholar.