Brigham Henry Roberts
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Brigham Henry Roberts (March 13, 1857–September 27, 1933) (commonly known as B. H. Roberts) was a leader, historian, and "defender of the faith" of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although he was elected as a representative to the U.S. Congress, he was denied a seat due to his practice of plural marriage. He was also a prolific writer and published a comprehensive history of the church.
Brigham Henry Roberts was born in Warrington, a manufacturing town of Lancashire, England. He emigrated to Davis County, Utah in 1866 and was baptized the following year into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was ordained a Seventy March 8, 1877.
He practiced plural marriage; he married Sarah Louisa Smith in 1878, Celia Dibble in 1884, and Margaret Ship in 1890. In 1889 he served six months in Utah territorial prison for "unlawful cohabitation".
He served three proselyting missions: Iowa, Nebraska and southern states from 1880 to 1882; southern states from 1883 to 1886; and Britain from 1886 to 1888.
He was ordained to the First Council of Seventy on October 1888.
He was elected as a representative on the Democratic Party ticket to the fifty-sixth Congress, but the United States House of Representatives prohibited him from taking the seat to which he had been elected and denied Utah of its representative on the grounds of his practice of polygamy. He later testified in the Smoot Hearings when Republican Reed Smoot was being attacked in a similar manner.
He was a prolific writer and author of some notable historical, biographical and theological works. He wrote A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which was printed as a series in Americana (a monthly periodical published by the "American Historical Society" of New York) from June 1909 to July 1915 and updated to 1930 when it was published.
He has been celebrated by Latter-day Saints as "defender of the faith" for his apologetic writings of Mormonism. This title has been widely used for only one other Mormon: Hugh Nibley. Ironically, while he was indeed a defender of the faith and expressed a strong testimony of The Book of Mormon (a foundational work of Mormonism) throughout his life, he also authored a manuscript entitled Studies of the Book of Mormon, which critically examined the book’s claims and origins. In the manuscript he questions some of the claims of The Book of Mormon regarding the native inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, compares the content of the book with an earlier book entitled View of the Hebrews (finding much in common between the two books), and comments on the likelihood that Joseph Smith could have been the author of The Book of Mormon (without divine assistance). Whether the manuscript reflects his true doubts or was a case of Roberts playing the devil's_advocate is a subject of much debate among Mormon historians and scholars.