Review: "Becoming Brigham" New Documentary from the Interpreter Foundation

To watch on Youtube click here: https://youtu.be/uebcRgVNcBg

To listen on Spotify click here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0si88Aqm7vbibSe81k0q2x?si=Bh5P5XZ-T4CWunSEzgVzMw

The Interpreter Foundation, a group of faithful Latter-day Saints scholars who work to combat some of the misinformation spread throughout the world. The Interpreter Foundation has done two movies "Witnesses" and "6 Days in August" and now a new Documentary Mini Series in January 2025 on the Prophet Brigham Young, and it is worth watching. Taking on difficult conversations about the Prophet Brigham Young, and educating audiences about how past scholars have come to different conclusions.

Each "Becoming Brigham" episode is only about 10 minutes long, and each episode has valuable information, but they are super short. They shortened the episodes to keep people watching, but I wish they were longer, I need conclusions.

I am always skeptical about consuming information that does not come directly from the Church. I do not agree with every "expert" or professor, and the same applied to these. As a skeptic, I have been pleasantly surprised with the topics and have learned bits of information that build my faith. The scholars they have interviewed are faithful, knowledgeable and capable individuals who have helped me learn more about the History of the Church. I believe with more to come, more learning will occur.

Our family has late church this year, and it is has been good to watch in the mornings before church, but they are just too short for us all to sit down and watch together, even 20 minutes each would be an improvement. I was a bit unsure about how these would play out, if it was worth watching with my family on Sunday mornings. My children are older, so talking about how Joseph Smith was killed and other sensitive topics did not worry me. If you have a family with younger children, these would not be age appropriate. These are not geared towards children.

With only three videos out, so far, each episode has enough good information that I keep coming back. It is hard for me to watch something that leaves me hanging, and with these it seems like it might be better for me to start watching when more have come out, to hear some type of conclusions, instead of intros to things I will not heard the end to any time soon. When the episodes are so short, my critique is that the intros are too long, but hopefully as the series progresses the intros will not take up as much time.

The first episode takes on the topic of "Did Brigham Young plan the killing of Joseph Smith". I have heard this theory from anti's online, but never gave it much thought. This theory is not something I have given any credence, and did not think this episode would give me anything I cared about. The episode set up how Joseph Smith was killed, and it was still good, even though this topic did not get me super excited.

One of the main thing I learned from this episode was that Joseph Smith had his vision alone in the Sacred Grove. After the First Vision Joseph did not need to experience the miraculous experiences alone but always had someone with him, witnesses!

The second episode talking about the short hand, and how we miss understand Brigham Young because of how they recorded what he said. He was not actually as harsh as what was recorded. I am excited to learn more about this in the next episodes, because this will get me questioning every quote and who and how it was recorded, especially the ones where Brigham sounds harsh and unfeeling, which happens often.

Conclusion, its good. I'm ready for more, and wish more were coming out more quickly. I'm learning and am ready for more. I have really appreciated what the Interpreter Foundations has done in the past, my family has loved their movies and their efforts. I would love for everyone to support these types of ventures, it costs a lot to do these and it is worth it to support.

The https://interpreterfoundation.org/