Kyle S. McKay expects the era of research and transparency to continue.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Kyle S. McKay, General Authority Seventy, discusses his new vocation as Church historian and recorder at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Tuesday August 9, 2022.
The 16th historian and recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints himself has a shared history with a former Church historian.
General Authority Seventy Kyle S. McKay, who assumed his new role this month, lived and worked as a teenager on the Ogden Valley farm. Marlin K. Jensenwho served as historian and recorder until his retirement in 2012.
“It’s not like we’re talking about Church history,” McKay recalled in a Press release. “We were milking cows, hauling hay and fixing fences when I was there when I was 14.” I was 15 when I lived with him.
Yet he learned much more than farming during his childhood sojourn.
“I grew up under the tutelage of Marlin Jensen,” McKay said. “And he’s been a kind mentor my whole life.” I watched him from afar as he carried out this responsibility.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Kyle S. McKay, center, the new historian and recorder of the Church, with his parents and Marlin K. Jensen, right, a former historian and recorder of Church, and his wife, Kathy.
The new historian replaces General Authority Seventy LeGrand R. Curtis Jr., who turned 70 on August 1 and, as such, the noted exitwill receive emeritus status at the October General Conference.
A lawyer by profession, McKay, who has family ties to the ninth Prophet-President of the Church, David O. McKay, has been deputy director general of the Department of Church History for three years. He will now oversee that department, as well as the faith’s historic sites, a publications department, and the Church History Library and Church History Museum in downtown Salt Lake City.
“Church history, as you may know, is a subject in which some people discovered things that made them lose or question their faith,” McKay explained in the newspaper. release. “I believe that church history has the ability to strengthen faith and that it should be used for that purpose, and I am delighted to do so.”
In recent years, the Utah-based faith has faced thorny historical questions across official tests covering topics such as the founder of the church Joseph Smith’s polygamy; her translation from his signature scripture, the Book of Mormon; its variation stories of his “First Vision”; and the old priesthood/temple ban on black members.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Russell M. Nelson receives a copy of “Joseph Smith’s Notebooks: Revelations and Translations, Volume 5: Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon.”
The church also published three volumes of “Saints”, a four-book narrative history of the 192-year-old world faith.
For his part, McKay highlighted the enormous Joseph Smith Papers project and the light it shed on the first Mormon.
“There’s virtually nothing,” McKay said, “that hasn’t been published as far as things written by him or for him.”
The new Church historian hopes preservation and research will continue.
“Wonderful things have happened here. And wonderful things are happening,” he said in the release. release. “I hope to help record it and preserve it without getting in the way.”