James Brown "Jim" Allen (born June 14, 1927) is an American historian of Mormonism and was an official Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1972 to 1979. While working as Assistant Church Historian, he co-authored The Story of the Latter-day Saints with Glen Leonard. After Ezra Taft Benson dismissed the book as secular new history, other events led to the dissolution of the LDS Church History department in 1982. Allen resigned as Assistant Church Historian in 1979, returning to work at Brigham Young University (BYU) full-time.
He studied history at Utah State University (USU) for his Bachelor's, at BYU for his master's, and the University of Southern California for his PhD. After working as a seminary teacher and coordinator of seminaries, he joined the history department at BYU in 1964, where he was department chair from 1981 to 1987. After his retirement in 1992, he was a senior research fellow at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History.
Early life and education
On June 14, 1927, Allen was born in Ogden, Utah. During his childhood, his family lived in Coalville, Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, Fairview, Wyoming, and Afton, Wyoming. His family moved to Logan, Utah when he was ten, to give him and his siblings the opportunity to go to college. After graduating from high school in 1945, he joined the U.S. Navy and became a Navy photographer in Washington, D.C. A member of the LDS Church, he served as a proselyting missionary in the California Mission under Oscar W. McConkie from 1948 to 1950, "without purse or scrip," depending on the generosity of others for his room and board.
As an undergraduate student, Allen attended USU in Logan, receiving a B.A. in history in 1954. George Ellsworth and Eugene Campbell were two of his most influential teachers. During Campbell's graduate history seminar on how to write history, which Allen took as a senior undergraduate, Allen met Leonard J. Arrington, a new economics professor and classmate who greatly influenced Allen's career. Allen's paper from that seminar was published in Utah Historical Quarterly in 1955 and became the basis for his graduate studies. Allen pursued his M.A. in history at BYU, with Dr. Richard D. Poll as his major professor. In 1956, he completed his thesis, The Development of County Government in the Territory of Utah, 1850-1896, which drew from his earlier published article. Allen attended the University of Southern California on a full-tuition scholarship and received a Ph.D. in history in 1963. His dissertation, The Company Town in the American West, was later published as a book by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Career
Starting in 1954, Allen worked for the Church Educational System (CES) in a variety of roles. In Kaysville, Utah he was a seminary teacher, as well as in Cowley, Wyoming, where he was also the coordinator of seminaries from 1955 to 1957. He taught at LDS Institutes of Religion for nine years, and was director of the institutes in Long Beach and San Bernardino, California while pursuing his doctorate at USC.
Allen joined the religion faculty at BYU in 1963, and then the history department in 1964. He taught both religion and history classes. In the early 1970s he was the doctoral major professor and mentor of Ron Esplin, who would become another notable Mormon historian. He was chair of the history department from 1981 to 1987, and afterward held the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Chair in Western American History, until his 1992 retirement. From 1992 to 2005, he was a senior research fellow with BYU's Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History and served on its executive committee for a time. In 2002, he taught in the History Department of Brigham Young University—Hawaii as a volunteer. He co-edited The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Vol. 2.
Fellow historian Davis Bitton listed James B. Allen as a historian who maintains his church membership while also having a deep understanding of church history, arguing that the existence of faithful historians shows that a knowledge of LDS church history does not necessarily lead to leaving the church.