In Memoriam: Paul M. Edwards

The historian, educator, and author Paul M. Edwards passed away on Thursday, October 13, 2022. He was 89 years old. Edwards taught primarily at Community of Christ (RLDS) institutions and worked in the church administration. He authored nearly thirty books, many about the Korean War (which he served in), as well as studies of RLDS/CoC history and theology. He was also the author of two bitingly humorous murder mystery novels The Angel Acronym (2003) and Murder by Sacrament (2014), both of which were set in the RLDS/CoC Church’s bureaucratic hierarchy.

Edwards, a descendant of Joseph Smith and grandson of RLDS President Frederick M. Smith, did his doctoral studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. He was a Professor of Philosophy at Park University in Kansas City, and a professor and vice president of the RLDS-owned Graceland College (now University) in Lamoni, Iowa, where he was he was a central figure in the creation a Center for the Study of the Korean War. He was director of the Community of Christ Temple School in Independence, Missouri, and served as president of both the the Mormon History Association (1976-1977) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (1979).

Among Edwards’ books about the RLDS/CoC movement are Preface to Faith: A Philosophical Inquiry into RLDS Beliefs (1984), Ethics: The Possibility of Moral Choice (1987), Our Legacy of Faith: A Brief History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (1991), and biographies of his prophet-president grandfather, The Chief: An Administrative Biography of Frederick M. Smith (1988) and his apostle father, F. Henry Edwards: Articulator for the Church (1995).

Among his many articles were two on literary subjects, a study of RLDS poetry, which he first presented at the 1983 AML conference, “’Moonbeams from a Larger Lunacy’: Poetry in the Reorganization”, and “When Will the Little Woman Come Out of the House?” (1985), a history of his mother, the author and poet Alice Smith Edwards, for which he was presented an AML Award in Personal and Family History Essay.

Edwards co-wrote several works with his son, Gregg Edwards, under their shared middle and last names, “Madison Edwards”. They include Termination Dust (2000, a philosophical novel, with alternating chapters about a father and son), the adventure novel The Brothers Crusoe (2002), and the poetry collection Echo in the Ice (2002).

In 2003, Edwards’ murder mystery novel The Angel Acronym was published by Signature Books. The protagonist was Toom Taggart, who like Edwards was educated in Scotland and worked in the RLDS bureaucracy as dean of the educational program. Despite being an RLDS/CoC insider, Edwards was humorously (and scathingly) critical of the church leadership in The Angel Acronym and its sequel.

He stated, “I first considered writing a murder mystery dealing with the Community of Christ—and indirectly the Latter-day Saints—right after I retired from several years working within the system. I was considering an intellectual history of the movement but decided that it would be a very short book and that no one would read it. If I wanted to consider some of the more interesting social and economic aspects of the movement, then I needed to do something that would entertain the reader and allow the reader to consider some commentary about the movement without seeing it as a threat. The murder mystery seemed an appropriate way to do it. Once I got started, I was having so much fun I did not want to stop.”

Lavina Fielding Anderson, Edwards’ editor at Signature Books, stated, “A philosopher by training and taste, Edwards has a ferocious eye for cultural incongruities, so when he’s writing Mormon crime fiction, he can skewer both the LDS and RLDS churches so deftly you have to check for blood. In addition to being very, very funny (his protagonist, Toom Taggart, collects titles by inadvertently appropriate authors—like Voluntary Euthanasia by Barbara Smoker), this mystery weaves together ultimate questions about how faith functions in human life, the limitations of institutions, the limitations of logic, and the potentialities of love . . .  Edwards’s Toom Taggart series is based on the proposition that every major religious sacrament, or event, has the potential to turn violent. This novel features delicious writing, an irresistible protagonist, suspense, a faintly sinister figure behind the First Presidency, a brainy and pretty lady lawyer who acts as Taggart’s sidekick and almost-romantic interest, and above all, the looming cat-and-mouse chase between a murderous mind and a logical one.”

A Toom Taggart sequel, Murder by Sacrament, was published by Signature in 2014. Doug Gibson, in a Standard Examiner review, wrote “This is the second book featuring Taggert, who plays a somewhat cynical philosophy professor who also heads the RLDS education department . . . He’s an unorthodox bureaucrat, coffee-drinking and less impressed by faith than his peers, uncomfortably nested in an environment of church hierarchy bureaucrats and hyperfaith junior members of the church staff . . . Someone is killing major church donors via poison. The first donor is killed drinking the sacrament in the church’s temple, another is killed sampling chocolates at an expensive church party. Ultimately, the pressures of performing in a highly religious environment play into the murder plot. This is a cerebral novel, with Taggert using his philosophy skills both to try to solve the murders, handle the anal behavior at work, and meander through a love affair he cannot consummate due to the presence of his ailing, comatose wife . . . The reader can’t help but like Taggert, a man who uses his wit to maintain his faith, a product most would laud, except in an environment filled with certainty. It’s interesting to read a novel that pits faith as the opposite of certainty . . . It’s a well-paced, well thought-out mystery in a Mormon setting and the story builds to a satisfying climax, with a bureaucracy-mandated twist at the very end that leaves a killer with a good legacy.”

There was supposed to be a third volume, Death by Tithes, but it has not yet been published.

Below is an interview with Edwards that appeared in Irreantum in Autumn 2002, just before the publication of The Angel Acronym.

 

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