“We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout:” The Life of W. W. Phelps with LDS Historian Bruce Van Orden (Season 3, Ep. 3)

**Brad Westwood** (0:09)
Welcome to the podcast, Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history, produced by the Utah Department of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting, the most accurate history of Utah accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. If you subscribe to this podcast, or this is the first time you're listening, I hope you'll go back and listen to the dozens of other prior episodes. Please also rate and review Speak Your Piece on iTunes, Google, and elsewhere.
Today on Speak Your Piece, we'll be discussing the life and times of Willam Wines Phelps, better known as WW. Phelps, a man whose life and devotions and his intellectual accomplishments began decades before the vast majority of Mormons present in mid-1840s United States, relocated en masse to northern Mexico, to what is known today as Utah, land of the Shoshone, the Ute, and so many other active tribes, very much there in Utah. Now Phelps' work and influence extends a quarter century into the post-1847 Utah, I see Phelps' life and experiences as something of a hinge both in his person or the subject matter that can aid modern Utahns in understanding the religious devotions, that fire-in-the-bone convictions, that prior context for this American religion that swept over the western front of the Rocky Mountains. You really do have to understand Mormonism prior to their coming to Utah, to understand just the impact they had on the state, on the territory, on this land.
I will be speaking today with the author of Will Sing and Will Shout, The Life and Times of WW. Phelps, retired Brigham Young University religion professor and historian, Dr. Bruce A. Van Orden.
Good morning, Bruce.

**Bruce Van Orden** (2:22)
Good morning.

**Brad Westwood** (2:23)
It's been a long time to have this conversation with you.

**Bruce Van Orden** (2:25)
Thank you. You could have also said that I was an ardent Utah Jazz fan.

**Brad Westwood** (2:33)
Absolutely. Now, Bruce Van Orden received his degrees, all of his degrees, his Ph.D.
MA his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University. He is an emeritus professor of LDS Church, History and Doctrine at BYU. During his retirement, Bruce and his wife Karen, who is with us today, served a seven-year ministry to inmates at the Utah State Penitentiary in Draper. And I wish we would have the time to talk about that. That was an interesting work that they both accomplished after his retirement. Both their retirement actually. He has also served on the LDS Church's curriculum committee.
Besides many articles and curriculum works for his church and its history and writings on LDS Church scripture and his book on Phelps, which we will be talking about today, Bruce also authored a book, Prisoners for Conscience's Sake, The Life of George Reynolds, which was published in 1992 Now in 1878, Reynolds offered himself for the US. Supreme Court case, Reynolds v. United States, regarding if the LDS Church's practice of polygamy could be protected by the First Amendment. Now, Reynolds' case was the court's first freedom of religion case issued by that court, and that too is a fascinating book. Now, I recommend this book on WW. Phelps because it has drawn up the very best and the most recent scholarship about Phelps and his impact, his broad and deep influence on the development of Mormonism, and something that is not so well understood and is often ignored in the past. He had a major impact on the development of this church. I also want to say that Bruce lays bare. He pulls from various sources, broad sources, and then he speaks candidly and unapologetically about difficult history. He does not pull punches when the story becomes difficult, and he takes the narrative to places many prior Mormon historians may not have gone. Finally, Will Sing and Will Shout is a work of someone who has been doing history for a half a century, and it's done with honesty and grace.
Okay, now one other thing I want to say, and as someone who is a collector of books, I love the book's design. Its size, the brown cloth boards, the paper, the readable type, and the generous margins, which for me, I don't think my books will be of much value in the future because I write a lot of marginalia, a lot of notes, and I did that in this book. A lot of comments and support and arguing with the author. So it's a great book to really ingest, and I hope you will, after listening to this podcast, buy this book.