'Saints' books historian says understanding church history can help members today find strength

SALT LAKE CITY — While James Perry was researching the local history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in his area of the United Kingdom, he learned about a mob that had once broken into a meetinghouse and attacked missionaries who lived inside the building.

He put together a church history walk for his congregation and told them about the story of that earlier congregation. As he ended the story and they got to the destination, he asked the church members to turn around and look at the same building where this had happened years ago.

"You could even see the vestibule where the attack had taken place. You could see like, different types of glass," Perry said. "Maybe, you know, 100 years ago it may be that was the glass that was smashed, or maybe that was the window the missionaries looked out of to see the things that were going on."

He said there are ways to bring history to life and to help children and adults become more engaged in the history of the church.

Now Perry is a branch president for his church congregation in Northumberland, a county on the north end of England that he describes as a "very rare, very rural, very picturesque area."

Perry is also a historian for the church who worked on the third volume of "Saints," a narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that contains stories of the men and women who dedicated their lives to establishing the church across the globe. Three volumes have been printed so far: "Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846"; "Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand, 1846–1893"; and "Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955."

Perry said the history of the church can be found all over the word, particularly in rural areas that have not been redeveloped and buildings can be hundreds of years old.

Church history supports his beliefs

Perry said he uses historical examples of Latter-day Saints to show his kids and youth in his congregation stories of others who have been the only church members at their school and have lived their faith in similar situations.

"It can be very faith promoting to see and know that there have been generations of people that have grappled with things that I'm grappling with today," he said.

Specifically, he said seeing how people have balanced religion in their lives in the past helps him. Learning about what has happened through hearing stories — especially of other church members in the U.K. — can help people know that others have lived the gospel for generations and things turned out well for them.

"There are thousands of stories of people around the country who've done amazing things, and have followed the Spirit perhaps or who have made tremendous sacrifices. And when I listen to those stories it strengthens my faith, and it also strengthens my understanding of my faith and why the church is the way it is today," he said.

Perry learned about the church through his grandfather's girlfriend when he was 10. He enjoyed playing cricket with missionaries but would hide so he didn't have to go to church. Later he went to some youth activities as well, but it wasn't until he learned firsthand about death through losing some family members at age 13 and 14 that he began to seriously consider religion.

"I knew that he had died. But where had that light, where had his spirit, where had his entity gone?" Perry asked himself. "Prior to that point, I had really zero interest in religion other than just knowing that these people were nice, and were good. So I started going to different churches."

He decided to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but his father, then a Baptist, would not initially give approval for him to be baptized. Perry was eventually baptized when he was 16, about 16 years ago.

Perry said his family is friendly toward the church now, but he only had one brother join and that brother is not active.

His wife's family is very different. They have been members of the church for three generations. Perry and his wife, who is a nurse, have three children — two daughters who are 7 and 5, and a son who is just a few months old.

"We live a very quiet life in the countryside. We have chickens. We go for walks in the countryside and along the beach. We enjoy water sports and kayaking and we try to eat healthy and are fully involved in community events and charity events. We're heavily involved in our congregation," Perry said.

Perry said his children "have to suffer" through him taking them to church history sites, showing them homes of members who donated to the Salt Lake Temple fund, locations where 19th-century congregations met and gravesites. Although the branch they are in is only 25 to 30 years old, they have learned of other members who lived in the area before that branch was formed.

Through delving into church history, Perry has learned a lot about his own neighborhoods. He said they previously lived in a house a few doors down from a home where a member of the church lived, and he thought through how many times missionaries must have walked around that street.

"I literally wonder all of the time ... my different ancestors, they must have come into contact with the church. I mean I know they did, but I'm always curious to think, 'How did they react to the missionaries?' … Knowing the drunken and violent history of some of my ancestors, I suspect it wasn't too positive," Perry said.

How Perry got involved

Perry joined the church at 16 and served a mission in the England Manchester Mission before studying history and obtaining a Ph.D. He then worked for universities and is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society and served on the U.K. and Ireland Church History Council as a church calling.

Through that calling, he was asked to go to a church history event in Prague in 2019 where he met employees of the church's history department who invited him to apply to work there. Perry ended up moving to Utah to work for the church in early 2020, and after about a year, he moved back to the U.K. after getting approval to work remotely.

Perry said much of his work is done behind a desk looking at digitized documents and journals, but the team also spends time going to places and tracking down people who may have information or old journals with information about the person they are writing about.

When he first joined the "Saints" team, he was asked to find stories of church members who could contribute to content toward the end of Volume 3, which discusses the church's Swiss temple in 1955. Perry said "the hand of the Lord was made manifest" in how the stories in the book came together.

He said a writer specified they needed to find a French-speaking Latter-day Saint woman who went to the temple after it opened and had stayed in Europe, but there weren't many people who fit all the criteria they were looking for. Perry said the woman they ultimately settled on was Jeanne Charrier, but at that time they did not have enough information to find her.

The team was eventually able to find people who knew her through FamilySearch, but her family had opposed her joining the church and destroyed some of her records. The writers kept searching and eventually were able to find information recorded by missionaries who served in the area at the time, including one who had kept interviewing Charrier over multiple years, as well as a journal from a sister missionary.

That sister missionary's family was just around the corner from where Perry was living in West Bountiful, and he was able to meet her twin sister and daughter and they let him take the journal and use it to research more details.

This is one example of an in-person visit to discover church history. Perry said he has also done many Zoom calls and What'sApp calls to various countries — whatever needs to be done to find the information needed to tell the stories for the books.

"It's a very varied role. And each day, you could be jumping from one country to another. One story that might be really fixed on violence in the Philippines in the 1980s, or the next minute, you might be looking at Mexico City and the dedication of the temple there," Perry said.

Those who work on "Saints" consider criticisms of the church at the time, changes in the church, and historical characters that match the creative writing narrative and have interesting stories.

Perry said he was able to help bring an international perspective to the third volume of "Saints," to help ensure the team understood historical and cultural nuances for the U.K. Although, he said they also have many external reviewers to help catch things that the smaller team working on the book might miss.

'Saints, Volume 3'

The third volume, "Saints: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent," covers a 60-year-period and seeks to tell the history of the church in a way that pulls in world history and shares perspectives from many different countries.

Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles featured the book in a recent devotional and invited young adults to read the book and learn from the examples of members it portrays.

"Why do we spend so much time telling these stories? It's because these stories give us real-life examples of the power of coming to know our Savior," said Elder Renlund.

Perry said people appreciate seeing international perspectives, giving an example of a young German girl who was a member of the church during the rise of the Nazi party.

"We've tried to do the best job we can to write a story that is interesting, tells the history of the church, but is also one that will ultimately uplift people and help them understand that their faith is more complicated and richer than they might have otherwise understood," Perry said.

He said the historians and writers tried to consider representation across genders and geography, giving space to stories that show what was going on in the world through missionaries and members, and telling things that were going on inside the church that many members today may not be aware of.

Perry said they make sure there are sources for every detail — even for a mention of rain on a certain morning — and they are seeking to be as candid and open-minded as they can be.

"We really do go to extreme lengths to ensure the veracity of every one of our claims because we want every one of those readers to have confidence that ... it's not all just some kind of spin," he said.

Perry explained those who work on the books work hard to get multiple different sources to verify all information to ensure that the books accurately portray the history as objectively as possible and cover different perspectives.

"It's not just taking one person's word for something, but it's about gathering multiple perspectives and trying to harmonize them," he said.

Having a few accounts or too many accounts can make this harder. Perry said they try hard to find diverse resources to do this.

Volume 3 was released in April and in less than six months it has had 257,000 unique visitors on the Gospel Library App and the church's website. Over one-third of those visitors listened to the book and the others read it. The church has also sold over 76,000 copies. Perry said for a historical book, it is doing extremely well.

"It's unlikely any of (the historians working on "Saints") will ever produce another publication that will get anywhere near the distribution and consumption as "Saints." "It's got to be one of our most successful products," Perry said.

Now Perry is working on Volume 4, which is unique because many of the people they are writing about for this book are still alive. He said Volume 4 includes stories that will help inspire people to try harder and be more optimistic about the future, because it tells stories about people who went through similar issues as the ones the world is experiencing today.

"That gives me all the confidence that no matter what I read on the news, no matter how depressing the world is, is that we've had — these are cycles, we've had generations of humans, of Latter-day Saints, who have gone through similar moments where they feel it's the end of the world or it's like everything is falling in. But it works out in the end," he said.

How to start learning about church history in your area

All around the world, people can find information about how the Church of Jesus Christ came to their area initially through magazines, newspapers and journals.

Perry suggested starting with the Church History Library for information about a specific area. There, he said, people can request records, access things digitally, or check out books that can help with family and church history.

He said this resource is amazing for helping with family history in addition to church history.

"Church history is basically stories of families and individuals who also happen to be Latter-day Saints," he said.

Perry is currently helping with a project run by the U.K. and Ireland Church History Council where they are writing a two-page history of each congregation of the church. He said the idea is to help missionaries transferring to the area or new members of the world get a sense of the history and notable church events in the area.

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