In his thematic treatment, which primarily relies on newspapers and periodicals, Mason provides two case studies of anti-Mormon violence—the murder of Joseph Standing (1879) and the Cane Creek Massacre (1884)—explores the ecumenical, bipartisan, and national nature of attacks on polygamy, outlines three overlapping southern approaches to its eradication—vigilantism, evangelism, and legislative reform—and quantifies and qualifies southern anti-Mormon violence. Though focused on southern anti-Mormonism and its violent aspects, Mason also describes how the South contributed to Mormon constructions of an oppositional identity and suggests that the emphasis on difference informed the violence. While filling a gap in the historiographical record, Mason’s attention to southern anti-Mormonism also allows him to address larger questions about postbellum American culture, including the limits of religious toleration, the process of national healing and reunion, and the politics of domesticity in the South and the nation.

Mason argues that polygamy propelled southern anti-Mormonism. In two of his most illuminating chapters, he traces the emergence of a national bipartisan anti-polygamy movement, most evident in the widespread support of Reynolds v. U.S. (1879) and the Edmunds Act (1882), and describes the ecumenical nature of the southern Protestant repulsion toward the practice. Building on Sally Gordon’s study on anti-polygamy legislation, Mason characterizes the national anti-polygamy campaign as a second Reconstruction. He also makes use of David Blight’s argument in Race and Reunion to describe the southern reversal on federal intervention, shrewdly explaining that “anti-Mormonism…served to subsume regional and partisan identities by uniting southern Democrats with their erstwhile northern Republican foes in a common religious and national cause” (100). To highlight this shift, Mason demonstrates how Representative John Randolph Tucker of Virginia refused, despite his condemnation of polygamy, to support the Edmunds Bill, only to later change his position and back the federal crackdown on the Latter-day Saint Church.

At times Mason attends to Mormon responses to anti-Mormon violence and this subject receives extended treatment in the eighth chapter. LDS speakers used the memorial services of Elders John Gibbs and William Berry to reinforce their identity as a persecuted people with ties to suffering saints of the primitive church and forbearers from the immediate past. In describing how Utah Mormons’ positioned themselves within a tradition of religious persecution, Mason utilizes the scholarship of D. Michael Quinn, R. Laurence Moore, and Jan Shipps. Persecution narratives emerged in the pages of the Deseret News, missionary reports, and autobiographies. Mormons pinned the violence on the Southern press, local anti-Mormons, and a bigoted Protestant leadership. As Mason argues, “violence and other forms of resistance experienced in the church’s southern hinterland considerably shaped Mormon identity in the western hinterland” (151).

Mason’s study is sensibly structured, well written and carefully argued. He admirably narrates a neglected story in southern and Mormon history and in the process illuminates national developments and explores broad themes. I’m left with only a few questions. Mason rightly stresses the qualitative and quantitative differences between racial violence against African Americans and religious violence against Mormons, while still addressing points of overlap. He explains how questions of honor and manhood informed southern attempts to check LDS proselytizing efforts and, in doing so, notes the parallel between the characterizations of the Mormon “home wrecker” and the “black beast rapist” (66-68). Beyond these loose rhetorical connections though, one wonders how southerners racialized Mormons or contributed to the claim that polygamous Mormons had committed what one scholar labels as “race treason.” [1] If southerners did not view Mormons as a “new race” or a “new ethnic group,” that also begs some explanation. [2] W. Paul Reeve’s forthcoming work, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, will likely shed light on at least some of these issues.

Mason does not pretend to offer a complete account of the Mormon experience in the postbellum South and indeed he explains that his work is “less about the experience of Mormons in the South than the reaction of southerners to their presence” (11). Still, at times Mason’s discussion seems to present the South as monolithic and this owes in part to his focus on necessarily circumscribed anti-Mormon reactions and representations. In other words, the emphasis on southern anti-Mormonism, a phenomena constrained by narrow views of the Mormon other, can be mistaken for a consensus southern response to and representation of Mormonism. And yet, while we should not collapse southern anti-Mormonism with Southern responses to Mormonism, Mason’s efforts rather successfully demonstrate that southern reactions to Mormon presence often partook of anti-Mormon sentiment. Mormon proselytizing efforts, their polygamous beliefs and practices, and notions of southern honor all contributed to this sentiment. But the reach of this sentiment may have also had to do with antebellum North/South debates about slavery. This is not to suggest that the South’s response to Mormonism was monolithic after all, but perhaps the extent to which postbellum anti-Mormon sentiment permeated southern discourse about Mormons corresponds with an antebellum proslavery consensus. Southerners were hardly of one mind on slavery, and indeed some in the Upper South preferred racial exclusion to racial subordination, but most agreed that the institution was historically and biblical legitimate, and thus divinely ordained. [3] Thus, as Eugene and Elizabeth-Fox Genovese note, when Mormons defended the widely condemned practice of polygamy on similar grounds this “plunged Southerners into a quandary.” No wonder then, that after the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent military defeat, southerners turned their attention from a careful defense of their anachronistic system to a wholesale castigation of the Mormon’s relic of barbarism. [4]

Pointing out Mason’s neglect of antebellum slavery, though, is tantamount to critiquing a book that he did not write. Indeed, one of The Mormon Menace’s great strengths is its tight and focused discussion and incorporating debates over slavery into the mix might have overwhelmed the focus on postbellum anti-Mormonism. Mason’s work, in short, gives us a lot to think about and directs us to ask further questions. In attempting to answer these questions, The Mormon Menace will prove invaluable.

[1] Martha M. Ertman, “Race Treason: the Untold Story of America’s Ban on Polygamy,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 19, no. 2, (2010): 287-366.

[2] On the claim that Mormon polygamy produced a “new race,” see Roberts Bartholow, “Sanitary Report-Utah Territory,” in Sickness and Mortality in the Army of the United States, prepared by Richard H. Coolidge (Washington: George W. Rowman, 1860), 302. On the idea of Mormons as a “new ethnic group,” see Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987), 282. Incidentally, in a class discussion with Limerick via telephone, I asked her whether scholars or other readers had questioned this claim and she stated that, surprisingly, no one had broached the issue with her before.

[3] See, for example, Lacy K Ford, “Making the ‘White Man’s Country’ White: Race, Slavery, and State-Building in the Jacksonian South,” Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 713-737.

[4] Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth-Fox Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the South Slaveholder’s Worldview (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 513-15, quote on 514.

Mormonism continued to deeply influence Pratt’s ideas during the last few decades of his life, but Latter-day Saints leaders, including and especially Brigham Young, checked Pratt’s perceived unorthodoxy. Pressure from church leadership contributed to Pratt’s decline in theological discussion, and perhaps stunted his theological thought.[5] England explained that during his later years, Pratt advanced “less and less of his philosophy as he turned to the more abstract and less controversial method of describing Mormon cosmology in mathematical terms.”[6] Given Pratt’s intellectual prowess and what some perceived as unfair ecclesiastical treatment, Pratt could have been, as England noted, “the perfect schismatic.”[7] At the expense of further developing and expanding his theology, Pratt decided to cut back his metaphysical expositions and remain within the organization whose loosely defined doctrines had provided him with what he believed to be the perfect philosophical system.[8] Mormonism functioned as both the primary source of Pratt’s creativity and the most direct reason for his gradual withdrawal from public theological exploration.

As a student of Mormon history and thought, including those aspects deemed unorthodox or strange, I regret Pratt did not further develop his theology. Yet, as one of many descendants of Pratt, I owe my current interest, in part, to his remaining within the LDS faith.

For contemporary Mormon scholars, how does Mormonism foster and/or hinder intellectual creativity?

_________________________________

[1] Smith certainly borrowed from Orson and Parley Pratt as well, as evidenced in what became the Articles of Faith, which he formulated based upon a portion of Orson’s A Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions. Breck England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), 68-71. Many Latter-day Saints created sketches of the Church’s beliefs prior to Orson, who may have borrowed from any number of these sources. With respect to these early sketches, and their likely influence on what became the Articles of Faith, see David J. Whittaker, “The ‘Articles of Faith’ in Early Mormon Literature and Thought,” in New Views of Mormon History, A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington, ed. by David Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 63-92.

[2] England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, xvi.

[3] England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, 67. As with some nineteenth-century English theologians and American intellectuals, including Thomas Chalmers and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pratt sought to bring science and religion together.

[4] England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, 102; see also, England, 169. England also noted that, “Any attempt to locate Orson Pratt within an established school of philosophy will falter.” England, 166.

[5] Pratt’s ideas respecting the Mormon Godhead in light of this theory brought public and private priesthood denunciations. See Gary J. Bergera, Conflict in the Quorum: Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002); Breck England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), 188-193, 206, 209-215, 227-230; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume Two: 1848-1852 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2005), 188.

[6] England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, 216.

[7] England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, 267.

[8] England noted that “even within the bounds of his adopted church, where he rose near the summit of its leadership, Orson Pratt remained isolated, curiously and assertively set apart in his independence of mind.” Surprisingly, many of the ideas Pratt had developed persisted in the LDS Church, and as England explained, “the twentieth-century Mormon church leans in its dogma much in Orson’s direction.” England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt, 20, and 216.

In Pratt’s reply to La Roy Sunderland’s series of articles on Mormonism, Pratt outlined what he labeled as the “doctrine of equality,” a teaching that many non-Mormons found blasphemous.[1] In Sunderland’s February 1838 editorial, “Mormonism,” under the heading, “The Writings of the Mormonites are Replete with Nonsense and Blasphemy,” he cited a sentence from a revelation Joseph Smith had dictated to Frederick G. Williams on December 27, 1832.[2] Sunderland may have come in contact with this revelation in Pratt’s Voice of Warning, in which Pratt included a large section of the revelation.[3] The quoted sentence explained that, “the saints shall be filled with [the Lamb of God’s] glory, and receive their inheritance and be made equal with him.”[4] Pratt, in responding to Sunderland, quoted the scripture, explained that Christ had taught the same doctrine, as evidenced in the New Testament, and outlined his doctrine of equality. [5]

In explicating the revelation, Pratt explained that God possessed all truth, and thus contained all knowledge, which made him the all-powerful God. According to Pratt, through the Spirit God’s followers could also obtain all truth, and become equal with God in knowledge and power. In this process, Pratt wrote, “the redeemed return to the fountain, and become part of the great all, from which they eminated. Hence the propriety of calling them ‘GODS, even the sons of God.’” Peter Crawley suggested that in describing this doctrine of equality, Pratt anticipated “the dramatic ideas outlined by Joseph Smith in the King Follett discourse.”[6] Though Pratt had based his doctrine of equality upon Smith’s revelation, and only in response to Sunderland, Pratt’s exegetical analysis seems to carry forward the 1832 statement, suggesting a number of possibilities with respect to the provenance of Pratt’s idea.

Possibly, Pratt heard Smith, or another Latter-day Saint, explicate this scripture and simply repeated what he had heard. Alternatively, Pratt may have independently interpreted the scripture in this way at some point before 1838, and his ideas may have influenced Smith’s subsequent teachings.[7] Perhaps, though, Sunderland’s citation of the scripture led Pratt to contemplate the revelation’s meaning, and then offer an interpretation. Likely, a combination of the above scenarios helped Pratt develop his “doctrine of equality,” but scholars should pay careful attention to the dialectic between anti-Mormons and Latter-day Saint leaders, and the latter’s succeeding shaping of Mormon thought.

[1] Parley P. Pratt, Mormonism unveiled: Zion’s Watchman unmasked, and its editor, Mr. L. R. Sunderland, exposed: truth vindicated: the Devil mad, and priestcraft in danger! By P. P. Pratt, minister of the gospel, 3d. ed. (New York: Published by O. Pratt & E. Fordham, 1838), 27. All quotes from Mormonism Unveiled can be found on page 27. Contemporaries of Pratt often used of the phrase, “doctrine of equality,” in reference to democracy, and only rarely did religious figures appropriate the phrase. The phrase, as Pratt used it, did not take hold within Mormon rhetoric.

[2] La Roy Sunderland, “Mormonism,” Zion’s Watchman (February 10, 1838).

[3] Parley P. Pratt, A voice of warning and instruction to all people, containing a declaration of the faith and doctrine of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, commonly Called Mormons. By P. P. Pratt, minister of the gospel. (New York: Printed by W. Sandford, 1837), 142-146, pertinent citation on page 145.

[4] Doctrine and Covenants (1835), 7:33; Doctrine and Covenants (1979), 88: 107. Sunderland again cited this scripture in his 1842 expose on Mormonism. La Roy Sunderland, Mormonism Exposed. In which is shown the monstrous imposture, the blasphemy, and the wicked tendency, of that enormous delusion, advocated by a professedly religious sect, calling themselves “Latter Day Saints.” (New York: Printed and Published at the Office of N. Y. Watchman, 1842), 35, 55.

[5] Specifically, Pratt noted Christ’s prayer for his disciples to become one with he and his Father, the reference to becoming joint heirs with Christ, and the scripture explaining that those who overcome will sit with Christ, as Christ overcame and sits with the Father.

[6] Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, vol. 1 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1997), 78.

[7] In Voice of Warning, Pratt did not explain the revelation’s meaning, but the scripture is situated within a multi-page citation focused upon warning the wicked of immanent destruction. In a December 1841 editorial, O. Bacheler cited Pratt’s Voice of Warning as stating “that there must be equality” between the saints and God, but it seems he probably had also read Pratt’s Mormonism Unveiled. Bacheler preceded to note that “the Mormon Church believe that they will have power to create worlds, and that those worlds will transgress the law gives; consequently that they will become Saviour’s to those worlds, and redeem them; and that never until this is accomplished, will their glory be complete; and then there will be ‘Lords many, and Gods many.’” O. Bacheler, “Miscellaneous,” Christian Secretary 4, no. 42 (Dec. 31, 1841), 4, in American Periodical Series [database online], UMI-Proquest (accessed on May 30, 2009).

The UVU Religious Studies Program presents the
Eighth Annual Mormon Studies Conference

Mormonism in the
Public Mind
Perceptions of an Emerging World Faith

April 2 – 3, 2009
Lakeview Room, UVU Library (Thursday)
Ragan Theater, UVU Student Center (Friday)

Conference Description

The past few years have seen an unprecedented public discussion of Mormonism. From the 2007 PBS documentary “The Mormons” to Mitt Romney’s run for the White House, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon groups have been the subject of nearly unceasing scrutiny. 2008 was a year in which we witnessed the raid of an FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas and the tumultuous debate over Proposition 8 in California.

Throughout their history, Latter-day Saints have struggled with the public image of their faith. This challenge has persisted from early confrontations in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and territorial Utah to the ongoing attempt to gain acceptance within the broader streams of American culture. Media attention on
the peculiarities of Mormonism has shown that, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerges as a world faith, the challenges of understanding and respectability are far from over.

This conference will address the place of Mormonism in public discourse and examine the strategies involved in the Latter-day Saint response to skepticism and prejudice. Pertinent questions include: What are the current perceptions of Mormonism? What is the extent of misinformation? Have the attempts by Latter-day Saints to shape their image been successful? To what extent is media coverage accurate and fair? How has the Internet impacted public discussion of Mormonism?

Mormonism in the Public Mind
Perceptions of an Emerging World Faith

Schedule of Events
all sessions are free and open to the public (seating is limited)

Thursday, April 2
Lakeview Room
UVU Library (4th Floor)

8:30 – 9:45 a.m.
Welcome
Brian D. Birch
Director of Religious Studies, UVU
“Mormonisms”
Daniel Stout, University of Nevada Las Vegas
Dan Wotherspoon, Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy

10:00 – 11:15 a.m.
Keynote Address
Michael Paulson
Religion Reporter, The Boston Globe

11:30 – 12:45 p.m.
Brownbag Lunch Panel
“The Mormon Beat”
Michael Paulson, Boston Globe
Lynn Arave, The Deseret News
Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune
Jennifer Dobner, Associated Press

1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
“New Media and Pop Culture”
Jana Riess, Westminster John Knox Press
Stephen Carter, Sunstone Magazine
Kristine Haglund, Dialogue

2:30 – 3:45
“Symbols and Boundary Maintenance”
Joel Campbell, The Mormon Times
Charles Randall Paul, Foundation for Interreligious
Diplomacy
David Scott, Utah Valley University

7:00 p.m.
Eighth Annual Eugene England Lecture
Lakeview Room
“The Prehistory of the Soul”
Terryl L. Givens
Bostwick Professor of English, University of Richmond

Friday, April 3
Ragan Theater
UVU Student Center

8:30 – 9:45 a.m.
Welcome
Boyd J. Petersen
Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies, UVU
“Political Discourse and the Latter-day Saints”
Boyd Petersen, Utah Valley University
Kirk Jowers, Hinckley Institute of Politics
Morris Thurston, Joseph Smith Papers Project

10:00 – 10:50 a.m.
“Public Relations for the Twenty-First Century”
Val Edwards, LDS Public Affairs Department
Richard Bushman, Claremont Graduate University

11:00 – 11:50 p.m.
“LDS Public Relations: Strategies and Applications”
Gary Lawrence, Lawrence Research
Claudia Bushman, Claremont Graduate University

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Brownbag Lunch Panel
Val Edwards, Claudia Bushman,
Gary Lawrence, Richard Bushman

1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
“The Mormons in American Religious Thought”
Grant Underwood, Brigham Young University
Terryl Givens, University of Richmond
Brian Birch, Utah Valley University

2:00 – 3:00
Panel Discussion
Grant Underwood, Terryl Givens, Brian Birch

Matt Grow’s impressive new biography, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer, captures the life of a little-known nineteenth-century reformer and, in the process, illuminates understudied and misunderstood aspects of nineteenth-century America. Grow organized his work, now the definitive text on Kane, both chronologically and thematically, emphasizing Kane’s reform efforts while providing enough information about less relevant aspects to offer a complete narrative.  Kane’s reform activities, from pursuing women’s rights to defending polygamous Mormons, reveal the antebellum anti-evangelical reform culture which developed within the Democratic Party.  Grow, following Kane himself, placed Kane within the categories of romantic hero and gentleman of honor.  Ultimately, Grow’s study depicts Kane as both a type and an original in nineteenth-century American reform.

Raised in an upper-class and influential Philadelphia family, Kane benefited from his upbringing as evidenced in his trips to Europe during the early 1840s for health reasons.  Europe sparked Kane’s interest in reform.  In France, August Comte and positivism “fueled both [Kane’s] humanitarian drive and his religious unorthodoxy” (p. 22).   Upon returning to America Kane launched into educational reform, battling the anti-Catholic reform attempts of the evangelicals.  Soon, as Grow noted, “Kane’s own religious unorthodoxy and antipathy toward evangelicalism allowed him to find value in Mormon religion” (p. 68).

In 1846 Kane met the Mormons who became the featured group of Kane’s reform activities during the remainder of his life.  Kane, who eventually joined efforts with his wife Elizabeth, actively engaged in multitudinous reform movements, including peace reform, antislavery, temperance, women’s rights, and marriage reform, among others.  Yet, Kane’s extended efforts in behalf of the Mormons, and in particular his labors from 1846 through 1858, reveal his place in nineteenth-century anti-evangelical reform and reflect his roles as romantic hero and gentleman of honor.  Though Kane engaged in other activities during this period, he frequently served as the Latter-day Saints greatest non-Mormon ally.  Kane used his family’s powerful standing to encourage the federal government’s support of their move west.  After meeting with President Polk and visiting Mormon camps Kane knew the opportunity to mediate between the Federal Government and the belittled Latter-day Saints offered him a unique chance to battle evangelical reformers.

During the period between 1846 and 1852, when the LDS Church officially announced its practice of polygamy, Kane successfully reshaped the Mormon image.  Through important media organs, including Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, and the publication of his pamphlet, The Truth of the Mormons, Kane weaved a narrative which emphasized the Latter-day Saints’ suffering and drew national sympathy.  As Grow explained, this represented the only period from the 1850s to the 1890s “when the Mormons prevailed in the halls of Congress and in the press” (p. 91).   This, as Grow noted, complicates the traditional historical account of unhindered anti-Mormonism during the last half of the nineteenth-century.  Yet, Kane’s narrative strengthened Mormonism’s separatist tendencies, encouraging further separation from the American mainstream.

After the Mormons surprised Kane with the truth about polygamy, Kane encouraged a public announcement and continued to defend the Latter-day Saints.  Yet, the admission reversed the Mormon’s public image and the consequent increase in national antipathy toward Mormonism paved the way for the Utah War.  Grow shrewdly noted that Mormonism provided a cause that temporarily united a dividing nation.  As Grow highlighted, the resulting Utah War evidenced the limits of American tolerance and religious liberty.  Fighting this intolerance, Kane again constructed a powerful narrative, which described Brigham Young as the leader of a peace party in opposition to a Mormon war party, and consequently, Kane argued, a peaceful resolution necessarily involved the Mormon leader’s help.  Kane’s manipulation of events and mediating efforts “proved crucial in avoiding a military clash between the Mormons and the federal army and in keeping the peace in the succeeding years” (p. 174).

Grow’s work, much more than this review suggests, engages Kane in the context of nineteenth-century reform, and beyond his advocacy of the Mormons, Kane’s reform activities shed light on nineteenth-century America.  Although Kane found his way from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, with various stops in between, his antebellum reform efforts illuminate the anti-evangelical reform movement aligned with the Democratic Party.  As Grow noted, Kane’s antislavery activities reveal Democrats in the center of the movement to restrict and end slavery, which historians have largely ignored.  Kane eventually joined the Free Soil Party, and during the Civil War period transferred political loyalties from the antislavery Democrats to an abolitionist Republicans. Serving as an officer in the Civil War, Kane, as Grow explained, “examined the war through the lens of honor and chivalry, but he initially tried to avoid war altogether” (p. 211).  Following the War, Kane’s activities in charities, educational reform, and communitarian building reveal the post-War shift from gentlemen reformers to governmental reform during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.  His final efforts with Elizabeth in behalf of the Mormons and against anti-polygamy legislation further reveal Kane’s role as romantic reformer and heroic gentlemen battling in behalf of the downtrodden against evangelical reform.  Grow correctly noted that Kane’s life “makes him an ideal window onto this culture of reformers” (p. xvi).   This brief analysis incapably suggests the capability of Grow’s achievement.  Liberty to the Downtrodden successfully provides an interesting, illuminating, and comprehensive study of Thomas Kane, romantic reformer and gentleman of honor.

The UVU Religious Studies Program and
Happenings in Humanities present

Perspectives on a Massacre
A Panel Discussion on Mountain Meadows

Thursday, March 5, 2009
Lakeview Room, UVU Library (fourth floor)
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre is among the most tragic events in Utah and Mormon history. On September 11, 1857, over one hundred California-bound emigrants were killed by Mormon settlers near Cedar City, Utah with the aid of local Indians. Events surrounding the massacre have been among the most hotly debated topics among scholars, church leaders, and descendents of the victims and perpetrators. The UVU Religious Studies Program and Happenings in Humanities are bringing together scholars from various perspectives to address public interest and to promote civil dialogue.

Panel Participants

Richard E. Turley, Jr.
Assistant Church Historian and Recorder, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Co-author of Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Will Bagley
Independent historian and columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune
Author of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (University of Oklahoma
Press, 2004)

Forrest Cuch
Executive Director, Utah Division of Indian Affairs
Editor of A History of Utah’s American Indians (University of California Press, 2000).

Moderated by Alex Caldiero, Poet and Scholar in Residence,
UVU Department of Philosophy and Humanities

Co-Sponsors
UVU Religious Studies Program
UVU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Utah Democracy Project, Center for the Study of Ethics

for more information, contact
Alex Caldiero at acaldiero@uvu.edu or (801) 863-8038 or Brian Birch at brian.birch@uvu.edu or (801) 863-8759

The Claremont School of Religion,
The LDS Council on Mormon Studies and the Mormon Scholars Foundation
are pleased to present

Parallels and Convergences
Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision

A conference featuring
keynote speaker Terryl Givens and a panel of LDS engineers

The conference seeks to expand the discussion of Latter-day Saint  perspectives on the attributes of God and the potential of man by examining the possible resonance between Mormon and engineering thought.  In Mormon thought, God is the architect of the Creation and the engineer of our bodies and spirits. Man, on the other hand, is believed to be capable of growing to become like God. The conference’s governing question is: Where does engineering fit in the convergence of these two realms?

A panel of LDS engineers will discuss topics that include materialism, free will, models of spirit matter, quantified morality, spiritual underpinnings for a space program, the New God Argument, God as a perfect engineer, technical interpretation of Mormon physiology, transhumanism, Gaia and the paradisiacal Earth, and technical advancement leading into the millennium.

Keynote Lecture by Terryl Givens: Friday, 6 March 2009 at 8pm

Conference: Saturday, 7 March 2009 10am-5pm

Albrecht Auditorium in Stauffer Hall, Claremont Graduate University
925 North Dartmouth Avenue, Claremont

Free and open to the public

It is possible to overstate religion’s impact on these Americans, but Christianity, broadly speaking, provides a meaningful framework through which we can examine certain aspects of their successes. At times religion may have informed the way they lived their lives, or perhaps more often, the way they lived their lives informed their views of religion. They all came in contact with Calvinist doctrine, including original sin, human depravity, and the problem of evil, and they responded variously to these beliefs and the questions they raised. There is no doubt Calvinist doctrine was, with seasons of revival, declining in its power over American Christians throughout the nineteenth century. In some cases, as with early nineteenth-century Christian Restorationist movements, groups were indeed reacting against the Calvinist beliefs their Puritan ancestors left them. In different ways, Franklin and Emerson responded negatively to the idea that humans were naturally evil, or that evil, whatever it was, necessarily and independently had any deep hold on humankind. Similarly, and perhaps more to the point, they strayed from the mainstream American views about God. Thus, the following analysis attempts to discern the characteristics, virtues, and perceived religious beliefs which influenced or were shaped by their decisions and lifestyle.

Who’s God and Whose God: Benjamin Franklin on Particular Providence
Benjamin Franklin’s status as a successful American is undoubted, but to what can we attribute his success, and does religion fit into the conclusion? There are both similarities and differences in how he won while living, and how he has continued to win in American minds for nearly two centuries. Franklin’s ability to understand people and their desires seems key to his mortal success. Perhaps equally important was his capacity to speak for people, whether they were Pennsylvanians or Americans. In some cases this may have meant sacrificing what Franklin really wanted, or what he really believed, but as he stated he was a reasonable person and consequently, maybe it was not much of a sacrifice. With regard to religion, and belief in God specifically, Franklin did indeed withhold some of his thoughts, partly because he thought the public would find them uninteresting. In some of Franklin’s metaphysical writings, he critiqued both deistic and orthodox Christian explanations of God, but to some extent tempered his promotion of his ideas.

Franklin’s spiritual journey is marked by change, and for all his comical commentary, he was serious about religion in some sense. As Jerry Weinberger noted, “Franklin moved from agnostic and almost atheistic immorality to pragmatic morality and pragmatic religion.”[3] Weinberger stated that Franklin’s metaphysical writings both argued for and against a “particular providence”—the notion that God intervenes in human affairs. In 1725 Franklin published his most famous metaphysical piece, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, “a radical Deist treatise” that mocks even the Deist belief that all human experience (including what we normally call evil) is just and good because an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God is perfectly just. In summarizing this work, Weinberger suggested that for Franklin, “There will be no persuasive defense of God’s wisdom, goodness, and power without an equally persuasive account of particular providence,”[4] i.e., “if God must be just, then he cannot be all-powerful.”[5] As noted in his autobiography, Franklin felt the publication of this work was an error, and he claimed to have burned copies of it.[6] It is unsure why he did so, but it seems obvious that he was worried about public reception and comprehension, although whether he was worried they would or would not understand, or both, is hard to say.

Another metaphysical work, the Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (cir. 1728)—Franklin’s purported personal code of worship—“presumes a just but less-than-all-powerful God.”[7] This piece, like the Dissertation, is comic in its mockery of the conclusion that because the Supreme Being is beyond the need of worship, and man naturally must worship an unseen power, the Supreme Being created a good and powerful God to worship. In Franklin’s argument for particular providence he uses the primary rationalist argument against particular providence. Perhaps it was this sort of discussion which, as noted in his autobiography, had led others to call him an infidel and an atheist.[8] Consequently, it is not surprising he composed Articles of Belief for personal use. Franklin reaffirmed his “radical” beliefs in an address, “On the Providence of God in the Government of the World” (1732). Again, Franklin critiques Christians and also Deists who “want God to be infinitely good and thus necessarily just—they want God’s power to be bound by the demands of justice.”[9] Thus, from 1725 to 1732 the young Franklin was interested in critiquing a society that believed in a perfectly just God despite the abundance of pain. Franklin believed original sin was a horrible fraud, but he did find evil in the world, and thought Christianity’s all-powerful God to be an undeserving object of worship.[10] Franklin proceeded to give up metaphysical speculations as he became “disgusted by the great uncertainty of metaphysical reasoning.”[11] Perhaps an increasingly diplomatic and political Franklin also found his metaphysical attempts inconvenient, especially as he became a spokesman for a people who’s religious sentiments were often based in the omnipotent God he critiqued. Thus, prudence was central to Franklin’s success in dealing with theology.

Franklin’s success is found, at least to some extent, in his conscious cosmopolitan universality. Franklin was both a nationalist, and an internationalist. His fame among European nations increased Americans’ interests in claiming him as one of their own. In a similar way, because Franklin filled so many roles, such as printer, public servant, politician, diplomat, and scientist, among others, many different groups have found Franklin accessible, and consequently have utilized his words. For example, in the film A More Perfect Union: America Becomes a Nation, the climatic scene shows a venerable Benjamin Franklin address the constitutional convention:

I’ve lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.

While his earlier writings suggest that Franklin did believe that a “God governs in the Affairs of Men” it is almost certain that his god was not the same god of the people for which he spoke, then and now. A More Perfect Union, produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), evidences the ways in which Franklin has been and is used. For Mormons, Franklin’s words give weight to their belief that America is a “promised land” and that the Constitution is a sacred document. Franklin wins, in part, because he continues to help other people, with different interests, win. In other words, many people continue to use Franklin as a spokesman for their cherished ideas or beliefs.

Is the Problem of Evil a Problem? Ralph Waldo Emerson on Evil and Sin
At the start of the recently LDS-produced film, Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration, the narrator quotes relevant lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address:”

Men have come to speak of the revelation as long ago given and done, as if God were dead. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake…. The need was never greater of new revelation than now.[12]

This carefully redacted quote, or set of quotes, employs the words of a universally respected American (Emerson), to set the stage of the Mormon restoration story, and the revelation of God through Joseph Smith. Emerson, like Franklin, is quoted and cited by myriad organizations, religious and otherwise, seemingly in all and through all, a “transparent eyeball.” [13] Yet, Emerson’s usefulness today does not always directly correspond with his successful life. Mormonism, which grew and gained form in Emerson’s America, was not the new revelation Emerson spoke of, and the God Emerson revealed was not the anthropomorphic being Joseph Smith described. Thus, Emerson’s transcendent presence in Americans minds is in some ways very different from his mortal success.

Emerson’s religious views, specifically those that address human capability, provide interesting insights into his achievements in a progression-based early nineteenth-century context. Emerson believed that the various self-identified Christians failed to grasp true Christianity in their emphasis on the depravity of humankind and redemption through a perfected Christ and an inerrant Bible.[14] Emerson found salvation not in biblical texts or historic figures, but rather in the human soul.[15] As biographer Robert D. Richardson, Jr. noted, Emerson held “a belief not so much in pantheism as hypertheism, a declaration of the divinity of the human.”[16] Some have argued that early Christian heretics Arius and Pelagius, who deemphasized Christ’s oneness with God and focused on the human capability to choose good independently, were predecessors to Emerson.[17] Richardson described Emerson as an “Erasmian-Arminian,” further emphasizing Emerson’s focus on tolerance, belief in free will, reform, and love of learning.[18] Emerson’s emphasis on human possibility correlates to his denouncement of human depravity and corresponding Calvinist doctrines.

Emerson was never aligned with Calvinism and for him evil was swallowed up in possibility.[19] In F.O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance he addressed Emerson and evil.[20] In his summary of Emerson’s philosophy, Matthiessen presented Emerson’s seemingly innocent stance in the words of Henry James, Sr. who found Emerson “unconscious of evil.” This did not mean Emerson was apathetic, quite the opposite, but as a transcendentalist he could not find corruption in man. Matthiessen placed Emerson’s optimism in mankind and disenchantment with evil within the context of Jacksonian America. He believed there was too much evidence in Emerson’s writings to adopt the view that he was unconscious of evil, but his “prevailing tone” emphasized man’s grandeur, and played down sin’s terror. In analyzing Emerson’s polemic against tragedy in literature, Matthiessen wrote that “[Emerson] knew that tragedy consists in division, and he was always striving for reconciliation.”[21]

Emerson spoke of sin and evil, and at times, perhaps unwittingly, he and American Christians used the terms in similar ways. Yet, when he specifically addressed Calvinist conceptions of evil in his essay on “Spiritual Laws,” he clearly denounced evil as an independent force: “Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man, —never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them.”[22] Thus, for Emerson, human depravity and sin seem to be fables, for “The only sin,” as he wrote in “Circles,” “is [self-]limitation.”[23] While Emerson frequently mentioned the existence of good and evil, of opposites, his view was not Manichaeistic—good and evil exist independently—but evil may exist in human actions, though individuals are not inherently sinful. In his “Divinity School Address,” Emerson placed virtue, a “rapid intrinsic energy,” at the heart of human action, good or evil: “By it [inner virtue], a man is made the Providence to himself, dispensing good to his goodness, and evil to his sin. Character is always known,” and “Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell.”[24] So, while Emerson believed in types of evil, sin, heaven, hell, and Providence, his definitions and understandings of such were far different from the explanations of contemporary Christian theology. Consequently, a nation bent on progress found Emerson’s ideas on human capacity attractive and liberating, while Christian abolitionists readily accepted his denunciations of slavery as evil.

Whatever Christianity’s role in (positively or negatively) shaping the life philosophies of Franklin and Emerson, it is certainly relevant to the language they employed to promulgate their views, as well as their reception among both contemporary and descendant Americans. Franklin explored particular providence in his early comic writings, but due to metaphysical uncertainties he discarded the topic, and yet at the Constitutional Convention he firmly argued for particular providence with a keen awareness of his audience and those for whom he spoke. Emerson frequently used religious language, but he redefined key terms Christianity laid claim to, and utilized them to emphasize human capacity and divinity in an age that emphasized individual progress. When Christianity influenced their ideas and ideals, especially and perhaps only with regards their religious thought, it seems they were responding to, or reacting against, specific Calvinist doctrines.

Franklin and Emerson either grew up in religious households which emphasized God’s omnipotence and human depravity, usually tied to original sin. Consequently, it is no surprise that they reacted against or responded to these fundamental Calvinist doctrines. Franklin struggled with the notion that God was omnipotent and omnibenevolent when the world he supposedly created is full of pain. Franklin believed original sin was a fraud, while Emerson called it a disease. For Emerson, the source of human weakness is not in depravity, but in the erroneous belief that we cannot live as Christ did; the human is divine. Their views and reactions highlight the persistent role of Calvinist doctrine in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but they also illuminate Franklin and Emerson’s capacity, and even virtue, to relate with and to the American public, then and now.

These responses do not completely illuminate the legacies of these Americans, nor does this analysis fully explain their successes, but American Christianity provides a framework through which we can measure their mortal fame and staying power in American memory. It is quite probable that America is a less orthodox Christian country than in the days of Franklin and Emerson, and their continued success suggests that perhaps this religious framework is less revealing than other frameworks. Yet, as is evidenced with the LDS use of Franklin and Emerson, continued success is not always directly linked to mortal appeal, as their words are immortalized in ways they never meant. Thus, while these figures continue to prove important as American figures, religion also continues to utilize these individuals, and so a religious discussion remains relevant.

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[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), 340.

[2] Perry Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” in The Shaping of American Religion, edited by James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961), 365.

[3] Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005), xii.

[4] Weinberger, 156.

[5] Weinberger, 162.

[6] Weinberger discusses the possible reasons for Franklin’s feeling that he should not have published this work. Weinberger, 6, 21-22, 138, 157-159.

[7] Weinberger, 162.

[8] Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York, Simon & Shuster: 2004), 16.

[9] Weinberger, 172.

[10] For Franklin’s views on original sin see Weinberger, 280-281.

[11] Weinberger, 139.

[12] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson: Essays and Lectures, edited by Joel Porte (New York: Library of America, 1983), 83, 88.

[13] Emerson, 10.

[14] Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 125; Irene S.M. Makarushka, Religious Imagination and Language in Emerson and Nietzsche (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 16-17; Richard A. Grusin, Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 74-78.

[15] Richardson, 291-292.

[16] Richardson, 288.

[17] Makarushka, 21.

[18] Richardson, 291. Richardson contrasted the Erasmian-Arminian strain with the Augustinian strain and its emphasis on confession and guilt. These ideas stem further back than Calvinist doctrine, but Calvinist doctrine intimately related to Augustinian thought.

[19] Richardson, 197.

[20] F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 4.

[21] Ibid, 183-184.

[22] Emerson, 305. Similarly, in his “Lecture on the Times,” Emerson stated, “Our forefather walked in the world and went to their graves, tormented with the fear of Sin, and the terror of the Day of Judgment,” (165).

[23] Emerson, 406.

[24] Emerson, 77.

In 1846, shortly before being killed by a mob in Alton, Illinois, Joseph Smith had stood for president of the United States.[1]

This sentence is placed in a paragraph where Mark Noll outlines George Q. Cannon’s article, “Emancipation of the Slaves—The Prophet Joseph’s Plan—Results of Its Rejection.” within his recent work, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (2006).[2] Because there is no other reference in the endnotes, I thought that perhaps George Q. Cannon made the mistakes and Noll had simply repeated them.  Yet, in checking Cannon’s article, I found that he does not mention when nor where Smith was killed.  So, I am unsure where Noll found this information, perhaps someone could enlighten me.  I thought it was particularly strange given that 1846 was not an election year.

I do not think Noll’s mistake is unforgivable, and certainly much graver errors have been and are made in historical studies. Further, Noll’s work, as you know, is very good and insightful.  So, I wonder how often similar mistakes are made with regard to Mormon history. What similar errors have readers of the JI come across?  This also has led me to wonder about facts relating to events I am less informed about.  I am interested to know how frequently these errors surface in historical works generally.  To what can we attribute these errors, specifically with regard to Mormonism?

[1] Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 80.

[2] George Q. Cannon,  “Emancipation of the Slaves—The Prophet Joseph’s Plan—Results of Its Rejection,” Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star (London) 25, no. 7 (Feb. 14, 1863): 99-101.

Constance Rourke’s American Humor is an examination of American mythic figures and the folklore associated with them.  It emphasizes humorous characters such as the yankee, the backwoodsman, and the minstrel.  It examines imitations, plays, theatricals, and writings in American culture.  Rourke painted a picture of nineteenth-century America in an original and refreshing way.  In the process, she occasionally included religious movements or figures to further her study.  In some instances Rourke’s desire to evidence the ubiquity of the humorous character in America culture leads to a misinterpretation of religion or religious belief.  As Rourke became convinced that humor is related to nearly every aspect of the American character, she perhaps found humor where it was not.  Yet, at the same time, this notion informed Rourke to illuminate situations which otherwise remained dark.

At the end of the fourth chapter Rourke discussed “revivalists…millennium-seekers…believers in cults,” and their use of drama and theatre.  Included in this analysis were the Mormons.  She briefly examined their theatrical experience in Nauvoo, Illinois and later in Salt Lake City.  While discussing the “latent humor” she found in nineteenth-century cults, Rourke explained, “Brigham Young could thunder an assertion of his power one moment and the next with a twinkle declare that he was a prophet, as if he considered the title comic.”  Here, Rourke seemed to misinterpret the Mormon definition of “prophet.”  Both Young, and his predecessor Joseph Smith, both believed a prophet made thunderous assertions, indeed it was that which set Mormonism apart from many religions in nineteenth-century America.  Thus, in her attempt to place Mormonism in the theatrical culture, which is apt, she aimed too broadly in claiming that, “Even in the most ponderous of these assertions there was something lighthearted.”  Yet, when discussing Mormon theatre itself, her observations concerning its comic nature were correct.[1]

Rourke saw definite comic purpose in Mormon theatre, especially after the Latter-day Saints had traversed the plains, settling in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas.  Not long after the Saints settled, they began performing theatricals, which more often than not were comic, not tragic.  Rourke explained that Young “made a firm rule against tragedy, saying that his people had known tragedy enough.”  Mormonism, with the rest of society, found relief from “oppressive circumstances” in comedy.  Thus, Rourke’s attempt to create a potpourri of American comedy both fails and succeeds.[2]

Rourke did not propose to describe religious traditions, but instead argued that humor is crucial to an understanding of the American character, and in this sense she succeeded.  While her inclusive study, which was at times not inclusive enough,[3] led her to misrepresent certain aspects of American culture, overall Rourke’s analysis is unique and indeed important.  She created her subject, and in some sense, created her own methodology.  Rourke’s work cannot be dismissed, but it is difficult to examine and conceptualize in any meaningful way.  Perhaps her focus on the comic and her obvious exclusion of the tragic helps explain this difficulty.  As evidenced in the themes of nineteenth-century writers, religious sentiment was often based in tragedy, and thus its absence in Rourke’s discussion may have contributed to her disinterest in religion when writing American Humor.

Rourke’s analysis of Mormon theatre is interesting.  My own great-great-great grandfather was an actor in Salt Lake City, and later in Brigham City.  He helped start the Mechanic’s Dramatic Association after the Utah War.  Most of his roles were comic.  His son also became an actor, and he too played primarily comic characters.

Needless to say, somewhat obscure texts (even in such a field as American Studies) can provide interesting insight into how Mormonism is used and depicted.

[1] Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2004), 110-113.
[2] Ibid, 113-114.
[3] For example, Rourke failed to include Native Americans and African Americans in her discussion, as did other Americanists in their studies.