Missionary service (probably) made “women’s work” less invisible to the Elders for (probably) two main reasons. First, missionaries had to do more domestic chores themselves than they had pre-mission, which sensitized them to the difficulty. Second, missionaries were more likely to find women at home during the day (working, of course) than men and thus spent more time observing “women’s work” than they might have pre-mission.

Five consecutive days from Elder Brooks illustrate some of the dynamics:

We started on our journey pretty early. Feet still sore, big blisters on them. … Came on… and found sister Threet. She was very pleased to see us. Hadn’t seen any of the Elders for several months. She was the only one of the family that belonged to the church. She had a husband and five boys. We were glad to get there ourselves. … Our feet were pretty badly blistered.

…We spent the day at Threet’s talking on the Gospel. Our feet were much better. Sister Threet had a pretty rowdy set of boys. She was a nice lady. …

… Elder Jensen and the boys went squirrel hunting. I stayed at the house and studied and talked with Sister Threet. …

Elder Jensen got up not feeling very well. He had a chill. Was sick all day. Had quite a high fever. I wrote a couple of letters during the day. …

… Elder Jensen had another chill today. I washed his and my clothes as Sister Threet had so much to do. It took her about all the time to cook. …” [4]

Of another woman Elder Brooks wrote, “Sister Findley…would work herself to death for the Elders.” [5] Women provided homeless, hungry Elders food, clean clothes, nursing when sick, and beds. Men sometimes directed and perhaps funded the hospitality, but the immediate preparations and ministrations almost always came from women.

Beyond the hotel-and-hospital services, the kind attention and sociality of the late-Victorian ‘angel of the house’ probably played an important role in the Elders’ morale. [6] At any rate, the Elders seem to have formed strong attachments and they framed the relationship with the idea of maternity:

“The next morning we went to the place Elder Dana called his Texas Ma’s”;

“…she had indeed been a mother to me and all of the elders that had been at her home any length of time.” [7]

What has been most fascinating, however, has been reading about their various pregnancies and labors.  Like a lot of young women who have never given birth, I find the process a bit overwhelming to think about.  In the eleventh grade, I watched a video of a live birth in Human Anatomy & Physiology.  My first thought was, “Dear Lord!  It looks like a mucousy alien is emerging from her vagina.”  My second thought was, “I am never having sex.”  Pregnancy in the nineteenth century was more dangerous and potentially disruptive than it is today, when improved sanitation and lowered infant mortality makes even the delivery of mucous-covered aliens relatively safe.  The maternal death rate in 1915, the first year for which we have reliable data, was 607.9 deaths per 100,000 births. Compare that with just 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to an understanding how dangerous childbirth can be.  Women, plagued by frequent pregnancy, turned to antiseptic douches to try to prevent conception.  These douches included mixes of water, salt, and sometimes, even Lysol.[1]

The white women who lived in Laie had similar experiences with pregnancy and labor as their non-Mormon sisters.  In her diary, Dean described being constantly tired as a result of her pregnancy and frequently in bed because of pain.  On January 22^nd, 1888, she wrote that she had taken ill with the “cholera morbus” and “hardly sleept” and had “had belly ache and diarrhea all day.”  Likewise, Julina L. Smith found herself exhausted by her pregnancy and work in the kitchen.  Most of these pregnancies ended in a child, but some could end in heartbreak.  Three days before she spent the day in bed with stomach pain and diarrhea, Dean “had such fearful pains in the top of [her] stomach that [she] could not move in bed for hours.”  That same day, her friend Rebecca delivered a ten-pound child, which died according to Dean because of carelessness.  I haven’t been able to find out whether or not Dean’s child lived.  Her diary stops a few days after her stomach pain and no child is listed in the Family Search database.  It is possible that she had a miscarriage soon after her diary ended, and that the pain of her pregnancy became too much for her to bear.  Dean had already lost children and had spent most of her diary mourning what could have been.  If she had had a miscarriage, it is possible that she could not bring herself to write any more about her life in Laie.

As we look forward to Mother’s Day, we should think about women like Dean, Gates, and Smith, and the difficulties they faced as mothers.  Although we idolize mothers now, it could be a dangerous and heartbreaking in nineteenth-century America and remains so for many women living in poverty throughout the world.  Birth control and increased medical knowledge have made motherhood something that women have control over and have decreased the maternal death rate.  As a result, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I think we should also thank the men and women who made contraception and women’s health care more readily available; thus, allowing Lysol to be something that was used to clean tables rather than prevent children.

Through a series of circumstances, I found out that BYU Professor of Religion Fred Woods had been thinking along the same lines. He formed a plan and with the support of the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation and other groups and individuals, Fred has organized what is sure to be an excellent evening event to mark the occasion. In addition, Fred has taken the lead in filming for a 30 minute documentary about the Exodus which will premier during the evening commemoration. President Henry B. Eyring, a descendant of Mormon colonists, is among the many descendants and scholars interviewed for the documentary. Finally, through the kind cooperation of the El Paso Museum of History, a small exhibit on the Colonies and the Exodus has been planned and the ribbon cutting will occur the morning of the 28th.

Not wanting to let the opportunity pass, I organized an academic conference on the same day which will draw scholars from around the country to discuss Mormonism in Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. I’m pleased with how the program is taking shape and I hope it will serve to bring attention to an area of Mormon history (just one of many) that deserves greater focus. So, here is the tentative schedule and description of everything going on July 28, 2012 in El Paso:

1) Ribbon Cutting for the museum exhibit entitled: Finding Refuge in El Paso

9:00 am

El Paso Museum of History
510 N. Santa Fe Street  El Paso, TX

2) Conference on Mormonism in Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

El Paso Public Library Auditorium (Just next door to the El Paso Museum of History)
501 N. Oregon El Paso, TX

10:00-12:00 Presentations

12:00-1:30 Break for Lunch

1:30-5:00 Presentations

Presenters and Working Paper Titles/Topics:

Fred Woods- Finding Refuge in El Paso: the 1912 Mormon Exodus from Mexico

Mike Mullen- The History of Mormons in El Paso after the Exodus

Mike Landon- Fruits of the Mormon Exodus: The History of the El Paso Douglas Street Chapel

Daniel Herman- The Mormon Legacy of Arizona’s Rim County War

John Glasier- Accommodating the Voice, Struggle, and Identity of US Latinos within Latter Day Saintism’s Larger Narrative: Exploring the Community of Christ’s Experience

Barbara Morgan- Academia Juarez and Bilingual Education in Mexico

Ed Jeter- The Central States Mission: A Transnational, Mormon Space, 1885-1915

Barbara Jones Brown- ‘A Very Pitiable Sight’: Mexican Revolution, Mormon Exodus, and the Break-up of Polygamous Families

Cathy Ellis- A Miner’s Wife: Roberta Flake Clayton in Mexico and El Paso

Mark Grover- Zion, Lamanites, Outposts, and Converts: The Image of Latin America in the Church

Leticia Alvarado- Brown Mormonisms: Empowered Ambivalent Belonging

3) Finding Refuge in El Paso: A Centennial Commemoration of the 1912 Mormon Exodus from Mexico

In 1912, in response to events of the Mexican Revolution, approximately 4,500 Mormons left their homes in several colonies in northern Chihuahua and Sonora, initially seeking refuge in El Paso. This commemorative event will focus on their journey and the role El Pasonans played in offering them assistance. El Paso mayor John Cook, Fort Bliss commander Major General Dana Pitard, and other city dignitaries will participate in the program, which will also include remarks from Richard E. Turley Jr., a descendant of Mormon colonists and the assistant historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The program will also feature the premier of a 30 minute historical documentary about the exodus, remarks by BYU professor Fred E. Woods about the making of the film, entertainment by the Fort Bliss Band and a Latter-day Saint combined choir as well as light refreshments. The event is free and open to the public.

Finally, for hotel accommodations, I recommend the Double Tree by Hilton which is across the street from both the Library and the Museum and just a few blocks from the Union Depot. This location also features a free airport shuttle. You can arrange for an airport pick up upon arrival and it runs from the hotel to the airport every hour on the hour. I strongly encourage any looking to make reservations to do so soon.

Double Tree by Hilton
600 N. El Paso Street
El Paso, Texas 79901
915-532-8733

Hotel Website

Drawing from his research conducted for Hell on the Range, Herman seeks in the most recent Common Place to historicize the political identities of not only the Romneys, but other contemporary Mormon political families with Arizona roots, including the Udalls, Pearces, and Flakes. Herman argues that from the violence of the Rim County War of the 1880s, the Udalls, Pearces, and Flakes forged their families’ political identities for the next century and beyond. David Udall, who opposed the violence and anti-Mexican racism, begat liberal descendants, whereas William Flake and James Pearce, supporters of violence and anti-Mexican racism, had conservative descendants, including Russell Pearce, author of the controversial SB 1070. Herman is careful to note that “out of the fires of frontier Arizona came Mormons liberal and Mormons conservative. Obviously the Arizona experience did not wholly determine their politics, but it made an impression. It became a testing ground, a latter-day Massachusetts Bay, a religious colony that gave issue to powerful (even militant) ideologies and voices, be they anti-communist or environmentalist, anti-immigrant or pro-civil rights.” As for the Romneys, Herman contends that it was their flight to Mexico to avoid prosecution for polygamy that produced their more moderate brand of conservatism.

Herman then gestures toward a broader argument regarding Mormon political identity(ies) being rooted in the Mormon experience with not only persecution, but also “hegira”:

Mormon history explains George and Mitt Romney as much as it explains Udalls, Flakes, Skousens [who was not an Arizonan, but who Herman includes due to Cleon's influence on the Flakes and others], and Pearces. That explanation owes less to the Arizona experience in itself than to the constant flight and mixed loyalties. Nineteenth-century Mormons loved the Constitution yet sought to separate themselves from Americans. From New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah to Arizona and California, to Mexico, even to Canada, nineteenth- century Mormons experienced one hegira after another. Add to that the perennial hegira of Mormon missionaries—young men (and sometimes women) who serve two-year stints throughout the world—and one begins to see a pattern.

Perpetual hegira did not necessarily give Mormons “tenacious drive,” as David Brooks suggests, but—in the long run—it gave them the ability to change skins, to fit in, to be liked and to be likable, even (despite Skousenoia) to be moderate. Perpetual hegira tested their loyalties. They were loyal to Deseret, to the U.S., to Canada, to Mexico, to plural wives and plural families, and above all to their church. Having so many loyalties meant disloyalty, too. One cannot be all things to all institutions. With so many loyalties, one must learn to be—to use an appropriate pun—catholic.

Perpetual hegira finally led Mormons into the mainstream. In the late nineteenth century, the church abandoned polygamy and blood atonement (the idea that some sinners so offended God that only violent death could redeem them). Leaders sought stability rather than flight. In the early twentieth century, church leaders went further: they told lay Mormons that loyalty to country was part of being a good Mormon. Though they had sidestepped the Civil War, church leaders encouraged Mormon youths to volunteer for service in World War I. In the 1930s, pollsters found that the majority of Americans viewed Mormonism positively. The church had left behind the fiery preachings of nineteenth-century prophets like Brigham Young and Erastus Snow, who made Skousen look like a mere epigone. In 1979, indeed, the church even separated itself from Skousen himself, assuring Mormons that his doctrines were not theirs. Perhaps one of the last battles in the war between the Skousenoia of old and the new moderation occurred when Mormon voters in Arizona recalled Russell Pearce from the state Senate in November 2011, and replaced him with a moderate Republican.

This is an intriguing argument for the roots of modern Mormon political identities, one that certainly calls for additional research and fleshing out beyond what is possible in an online forum. His contention that Mormons have honed “the ability to change skins” echoes Randall Balmer’s observation that Mormonism has been marked by a “constant process of reinvention.” As Kathleen Flake argues so well in The Politics of American Religious Identity, the Latter-day Saints around the turn of the century were fairly successful at surviving great changes while seemingly remaining the same.  Herman’s piece explores related questions in different contexts and is certainly deserving of attention from scholars of Mormon history.

________

[1] Jared T., the JI’s resident borderlands scholar, is planning full reviews of these works in the coming months.

Today, I am going to be attending the Community of Scholars program, sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.  Each year, the institute accepts a dozen or so students from across the university into a seminar to discuss the ways in which sexuality, gender, and race intersect in their work.  My friends and I sometimes refer to it as feminist boot camp.  The competition for acceptance into the seminar can be intense, especially for those students whose work is in fields that typically privilege gender as a category of analysis. A few months ago, Brittany Chapman and I were bemoaning the absence of a similar space for people interested in gender to discuss their work in Mormon Studies.  Although female historians like Claudia Bushman, Jill Mulvay Derr, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher began the process of unearthing a woman’s Mormon history decades ago, relatively little has been published in the field.  Knowledge about the everyday lives of Mormon women – the rituals surrounding childbirth, the difficulty in securing food and shelter during their husbands’ absences as missionaries, the development of bonds between sister wives and children, the inspection of homes through Retrenchment Societies, and the ways in which they maintained contact with their families in the East, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the Pacific – remains fragmentary at best.  In addition to the lack of female subjects, there is a corresponding lack of female models.  I have been lucky to have many female friends within Mormon history.  Rachel Cope, Brittany Chapman, Andrea Radke-Moss, and Elizabeth Pinborough, especially, have been excellent interlocutors and companions, but many women find it difficult to find female friends and mentors who can help them navigate the difficulties of being a woman in Mormon history. In order to facilitate research on gender and help women find companionship and mentoring within the field of Mormon history, Brittany and I have decided to start a reading group focused on women’s history at the Mormon History Association.  It will meet annually at the same time as the annual conference and should offer an informal, supportive space for the discussion of women and Mormon history.  To facilitate conversation, we will read a book each year – this year will it will be The Salt Lake City 14^th Ward Album Quilt, 1857 by Carol Holindrake Nielson along with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s fabulous companion article “An American Album.”  Brittany and I will also bring along herbal tea, non-caffeinated soda, and cupcakes.  Although this group will be about privileging the voices of women, especially those who are at the beginning of their careers and have yet to develop an academic voice, we would like to encourage anyone interested in gender studies and women’s history to attend, just check your patriarchal privilege at the door.   Here’s the information for this year’s reading group:

Ladies’ Tea and Book Discussion Group

Saturday, June 30^th, 2012

Location: TBD, 9 p.m.

  Book: Carol Holindrake Nielson, The Salt Lake City 14^th Ward Album Quilt, 1857 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2004)   Article: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “An American Album,” AHA Presidential Address.  Available: http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_History/ulrich.cfm If you are planning on attending, please e-mail us at mormonwomenscholars@gmail.com, so that we can make sure to have enough food for everyone.

Note: The picture is of Mary Isabella Horne (1818 – 1905), President of the Retrenchment Society, Treasurer of the Relief Society, and Counselor of the Deseret Silk Association.

Readers of FAR have been treated to a number of posts over the past few months from members of the “Gendering Mormonism” class I taught this semester at Claremont Graduate University.  I was fairly apprehensive in offering the course.  For one, I’m not a scholar of gender, gender studies, feminist theory, feminist theology, queer studies, queer theology, or anything related—I’m a historian of American religion, and most of my training to that effect was about the white guys in American religion (most of whom, you’ll be shocked to learn, weren’t exactly feminists).  I have also spent some time in international peace studies, where I got a crash course in issues of gender justice.  But I entered this course as a relative novice.  This is one of the fun things about being a member of a graduate faculty—as a professor I don’t have to pretend to be the fount of all wisdom all the time, and I learn a lot from students who are often more expert in a particular field than I am.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but from my perspective the course was an unqualified success.  The #1 reason for that:  the students (and, to be sure, our TA, FAR’s very own Caroline Kline).  Part of what I was apprehensive about was what the classroom climate would be.  It will come as no surprise to readers here that Mormonism has plenty of room for critique on gender issues, from the obvious to the more subtle, all of which I feared would be fodder for a semester-long rant against Mormon patriarchy, homophobia, and heteronormativity.  To be sure, there was plenty of that, but the conversation was richer, more nuanced, more analytical, and thus more faithful to the complexity and messiness of human experience.

The LDS students, who were all female—betokening a broader problem of male disinterest once the word “gender” is mentioned—were neither punching bags nor mere apologists, but critical examiners of their chosen tradition while also affirming through their own personal experience how Mormonism provides meaning and empowerment in their lives even as it is a source of regular frustration.  The non-LDS students, who came from a mix of other faith traditions or no tradition at all, were insatiably curious in learning about the layers and complexities of Mormon theology, history, and practice.  More importantly, they asked all the tough questions and made all the damning comments, while also recognizing and to some degree reveling in some of the distinctive (if often suppressed or sublimated) possibilities for gender equality opened up by Mormon theology and practice.

One of the primary goals of the class was to put Mormonism and gender studies in conversation with one another, allowing each one to critique and enrich the other.  Along these lines, I thought one of the best comments of the semester came in an ethnographic paper written by a student after visiting a Mormon Sunday service:  these are real people—real women!  It’s amazing what happens when our analysis leaves the abstractions of the ivory tower and becomes connected to flesh and blood—it’s so much easier to belittle or demonize the imagined other.  It was this consistent recognition of the profound humanity of our subjects that imbued the class with a sense of deep engagement rather than the superficiality of most of our public and private (and, unfortunately, too often academic) discourse about religion.  Just as they could teach the feminist and queer communities about being open to Mormon humanity, my students could also teach Mormons in the pews a thing or two about recognizing and respecting the profound humanity of feminists, homosexuals, and secularists who all too frequently simply appear as one-dimensional bogeymen.

One of the important aspects of the class was that everything was on the table, including a number of subjects that would make many LDS church members and leaders squeamish.  Over the course of fourteen weeks we discussed (and argued and joked and yelled about), among other things, historic Mormon feminism, Mother in Heaven, Mormon feminist theologies, gender identity and difference, women’s roles and experiences, Mormon women and second-wave feminism (with guest lecturer Laurel Thatcher Ulrich), masculinity, priesthood, patriarchy, polygamy, sexuality, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage (including, of course, California Prop 8).  Most weeks the conversation was so rich, so engaged, so loud, that we got to only a fraction of our assigned reading and regularly kept the next class standing impatiently outside the door waiting for us to vacate the room.  I haven’t seen the students’ research papers yet, but I look forward to essays that will push the field forward—it is a fertile field for study, and as some of the most well-read people on the planet on the topic of gender and Mormonism, my students now have the opportunity to really move the conversation forward in new and exciting directions.

Finally, what did a semester of “Gendering Mormonism” do for me?  On one level, I simply learned a lot of stuff.  I will forget many of the details in the readings or our class conversations, but what I will remember is the transformational experience of participating in an engaged, honest, safe classroom space where people could talk about tough, and often quite personal, issues at a high level of sophistication and without the fear of being misunderstood, caricatured, or ridiculed.  And most importantly, I walk away from this semester a stronger feminist, a more convinced and empowered advocate for LGTBG equality, a more informed and (hopefully) sophisticated scholar, a better Mormon, and a better human.

Not bad for a semester’s work.

Patrick Mason is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and an associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University.  His graduate degrees are from the University of Notre Dame, in history and international peace studies.  He is the author of The Mormon Menace:  Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford UP, 2011)

As someone interested in the historical development of LDS thought, especially during the first few decades, I was excited to see Lynne Hilton Wilson’s fascinating “A New Pneumatology: Comparing Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of the Spirit with His Contemporaries and the Bible” (BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 1 [2012]: 119-152). Historical theology and intellectual history can be a tricky field, particularly when contextualizing someone’s ideas with the surrounding culture, though it can be highly rewarding when done right. However, while there was much to enjoy in the article, there were some aspects that made me pause. Besides disagreements with how Wilson presents Joseph Smith’s Protestant culture in general, often in attempt to make Mormon ideas more distinct from antebellum America, as well as disagreements with how she interprets Smith’s theology in particular, often in attempt to make his 1830 beliefs more consistant with those in 1844, there were a few methodological points that I think deserve examination.

Although intellectual history may not be as archive-based as some other historical sub-fields, source-criticism is still an important task. Especially when attempting to reconstruct ideas in a particular era or decade, it is crucial to give priority to contemporary documents over later reminiscences. In early Mormon history, the seven-volume History of the Church poses a particularly difficult problem, for though it draws from historical documents and is presented as if Joseph Smith himself wrote the text, the presence of later alterations, expansions, and deletions make it a generally untrustworthy source; the Joseph Smith Papers Project’s publication of most of the primary sources upon which History of the Church relies, both in print and online formats, makes Wilson’s uncritical reliance on these books (121, 134, 145, 147, 150, 151) all the more troubling. Similarly, Wilson bases some of her discussion about the Holy Ghost on George Laub’s “notes” of a Joseph Smith sermon that took place weeks before Joseph Smith’s death (126), echoing a claim presented in Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook in their important Words of Joseph Smith (1990). But this dating has since been challenged. As Jonathan Stapley astutely pointed out, the notes for this 1844 sermon are not found in Laub’s 1845 journal, but were additions made decades later and are therefore more likely representative of the more systematized theology of Utah than of the inchoate nature of Joseph Smith’s thought.

Further, ideas have a tendency to change, progress, and develop over time, even within religious movements with authoritative truth claims like Mormonism. It is imperative, then, to be aware of changing circumstances in which words can take on different meanings. Terms like “the spirit of god” (126, fn. 19) and, more especially, “election” (138-140) meant different things throughout Joseph Smith’s life as new revelations, ecclesiastical practices, and ritual developments—the “line upon line, precept upon precept” process—introduced new frameworks and definitions for old phrases. This problem is compounded with reminiscences given long after Smith’s martyrdom. For example, Wilson quotes George A. Smith as saying “There was no point upon which the Prophet Joseph dwelt more than the discerning of Spirits,” referencing Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, which seems to imply that this was a contemporary statement (135). However, this is misleading, as the quote actually comes decades later in Utah in the midst of Mormonism’s confrontation with Spiritualism—a debate in which spiritual discernment meant something completely different.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I was troubled with how Wilson dismissed other religionists’ spiritual claims. She introduced Smith’s contemporaries as those who practiced “bizarre behaviors” (129), described manifestations “fabricated by Lorenzo Dow” as “clearly fraudulent,” and claimed “similar dubious claims of communication from the Spirit” were prevalent during the era. These are descriptions that LDS historians decry when used to describe Joseph Smith and other early Mormons, with good reason. Descriptors like “bizarre,” “fraudulent,” and “dubious” are often in the eyes of the beholder and have been fortunately denounced by the historical academy. If we wish religious scholars to take a more charitable approach to early Mormons—who at times experienced spiritual manifestations like those of Lorenzo Dow—then we should similarly show that same sympathy for Mormonism’s contemporaries. A wonderful example is found in Richard Bushman’s “The Visionary World of Joseph Smith” (BYU Studies 47, no. 1 [1997-98]: 183-204), which does not question contemporary spiritual claims but rather sympathetically uses them to shed light on the Mormon Prophet.

Historical theology is a tricky, complicated, and often messy topic, and we should thus be careful in our attempts to reconstruct the fascinating, complex, and dynamic thought of early Mormonism.

Figurative Beings

Some mentions of Satan were probably meant as “just an expression” but with an undercurrent of doctrinal seriousness. [2] For example: “after meeting was over the kind people or the Poor people that is the Poor devils all went home and went in their good beds but left us to Sleep on the Benches in the School house.” [3]

Elder Clark provides a more ambiguous usage with “had a devil in him”:

we meet one family who we could See the devil Sticking out of him before we got to the house and when we got there I told him our business and the man Said all the Preachers had ought to be killed and was very excited but when he had Said his Say then I laid the gospel of Christ before them and got them cooled down and they had to Say that was Bible then we go on again and left them feeling good. [4]

At face value the phrase suggests literal “possession” but, in context, seems to be an idiom meaning, “was very upset.” Based on Clark’s other mentions of devils, I think an acceptable gloss would be, “had his heart stirred up to anger by Satan” [5]

Literal Beings Stirring-up Hearts

Satan appears most often in the diaries as an instigator of apathy and/or conflict. [6] Again, Elder Clark:

we found the people more bitter we was ordered outside their lots 4 times about 5 times the people would Slam their doors in our faces the devil had been there while we Slept and had Sown tares among them. [7]

Sometimes the missionaries asserted a stronger connection between human and spirit: “While in the store one of Satan’s votaries came in and jumped on us for an argument.” [8] Nowhere do I find an implication of “Satanism”: to oppose Mormons was to serve Satan or fall under his sway. The Elders resisted Satan with unity and right-living, for “…it is by united action, only, that the servants of the Lord can prevail over the powers of Satan.” [9]

Literal Beings Detectable by Third-Parties

Only four entries suggest consciously detectable Satanic power. Of a 1902 meeting, Jones wrote, “It was very hard for us to sing and talk, as it seemed like there was an opposing spirit in our midst.” The next night

The same opposing spirit that was against us the night before was present again. I spoke for 55 minutes upon Authority, but it seemed like I could not branch out. After closing, Satan arose in the form of a Campbellite man and wanted to show us wherein we were wrong. Made several assertions that he could not prove. We did not answer him as enough had been said. [10]

Elder Duffin (not yet President) recorded a similar instance.

As soon as we left Hutchins today a feeling of depression took possession of us; later we saw the reason of it. When we got to the Hunter settlement, we found the powers of evil had been at work and had nearly destroyed the faith of these people in the work of the Lord. He had been circulating all manner of false reports, and had also tried to deceive the people by turning the scriptures from their rightful meaning. But by the power of God we were enabled to get control of these evil spirits, and to establish the truth and faith again where there had been doubt. [11]

Later, Duffin wrote of a Holiness manifestation, “I did not question but what she had the spirit but thought it was of the devil,” which he dealt with by getting her “out of the room” and speaking “a few words to quiet the feelings of the people.” [12]

In all four cases, the Elders resisted evil spirits by teaching and persuading. [13]

According to an 1831 revelation, when Christ returns to the earth the continents will join together and the “great deep . . . shall be driven back into the north countries.” Then, the ten lost tribes of Israel who reside in the “north countries” will “smite the rocks” like Moses, “and the ice shall flow down at their presence,” and a “highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep,” and they shall march to Zion in glory. [1] A milder version of the same idea was communicated in a vision in 1836, in which “Moses appeared before us, and committed unto us the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the Earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the North.” [2] These prophecies enlarged upon Jeremiah 31:8, which referred to a remnant of Israel being gathered from the north.

These scriptural statements led some early Latter-day Saints to conclude that the lost tribes of Israel resided at the North Pole. In a letter to Oliver Cowdery, William W. Phelps mused that “there may be a continent at the North Pole, of more than 1300 square miles, containing thousands of millions of Israelites.” [3] Benjamin F. Johnson heard something similar from the prophet Joseph Smith. “Sometimes when at my house I asked him questions relating to past, present and future,” Johnson wrote, “one of which I will relate: I asked where the nine and a half tribes of Israel were. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘you remember the old caldron or potash kettle you used to boil maple sap in for sugar, don’t you?’ I said yes. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘they are in the north pole in a concave just the shape of that kettle. And John the Revelator is with them, preparing them for their return.’” [4] (The idea of the Pole’s concavity here seems to stem from the belief that “the deep” would eventually be sequestered there.) [5]

The belief that the tribes were at the North Pole was apparently still common in the Church when explorer Frederick Cook announced that he had reached the Pole in 1909. [6] Predictably, Salt Lake Tribune editor Thomas Kearns began gloating the day after the announcement. “It isn’t at all pleasant to see a fond hope and a confident belief dashed to the earth at one fell swoop,” Kearns commiserated, “but we can’t help but know that the thing has happened. And out of the circumstance it is difficult to see where some extremely credulous persons shall be able to gather any crumbs of comfort. We speak now of the recent discovery of the north pole by Doctor Cook, and its effect upon Mormon teaching, past and future. . . . Up in the icy fastnesses the ‘proof’ for which the [Deseret] News and the polygamous brethren are always calling, was supposed to be safe. But it seems that it was not, because Doctor Cook, while being accommodating so far as to find the north pole, refused to find that lost tribe of Israel. And out of this we hope that the Mormon people may be able to gather a lesson—not to believe liars simply because they claim to be men of God.” [7]

As if that weren’t enough, Kearns continued his taunting virtually every day for the next week. When certain “savants” raised questions about the veracity of Cook’s claims, Kearns quipped that “among those who will discredit Doctor Cook are the Mormon hierarchs. It could never be that he has discovered the north pole without also having found that lost tribe of Israel.” [8] “However,” he teased the next day, “there is a feeling of relief among the Mormon elders in that there is now no danger of their being called on missions to preach to that polar lost tribe of Israel that is not.” [9]

Kearns’s most intriguing dig came on September 9: “At last! The bogus prophets now have it that the ‘lost tribe of Israel’ woke up and found itself absorbed by the Scandinavian nations, and that the gospel is gathering in its people through that agency. Thanks; we are entirely satisfied and will now let the matter drop and go to sawing wood again.” [10] This probably refers to something taught by Elders Lund and Sjodahl at the Scandinavian reunion in Richfield on September 5-6. [11] Unfortunately, I can find no summary or transcript of their remarks. In any case, the Deseret News found this apologetic persuasive enough to endorse. In a rebuttal to the Tribune’s crowing on September 11, the News observed that “Any land north of Palestine, where the prophecy [Jeremiah 31:8] was uttered, would be a ‘land of the north.’ And the prophecy is being literally fulfilled in the gathering of the Latter-day Saints in great numbers from the countries of northern Europe.” [11]

Incredibly, the topic was taken up the next day by Elder B. H. Roberts from the very pulpit of the Tabernacle. Roberts, who regularly read the Tribune and respected its power to shape public opinion, responded directly to Kearns. [12] “I have observed some criticisms in our local press,” Roberts said, “in relation to the views entertained by the Latter-day Saints about the return of the lost tribes of Israel from the land of the north. . . . There is more or less of merriment indulged in because, now that the north pole has been discovered, lo, there is no people there and no place for a people.” [13]

Roberts’s response was that while there may be Mormon folklore that placed the tribes at the Pole, he was positive that there was nothing to that effect in the revelations. There were “merely expressions in the Scriptures that would lead one to conclude that they were located in the northern lands.” His own view, he explained, was that the tribes had been scattered among the nations—particularly those of northern Europe—and God was already in the process of gathering them from those nations to Zion. As for the statements in D&C 133 about ice flowing down and highways being cast up from the deep to make way for Israel’s return, Roberts chalked such images up to poetic hyperbole. [14]

The Tribune’s coverage of this sermon? “Prominent leaders of the Mormon church have at last come to the conclusion that the lost tribes of Israel are not at the north pole. Elder Brigham H. Roberts, a member of the first seven presidents of the seventies, was the man chosen to make this known.” [15] And a few days later, “Everybody but their dupes knew that the false prophets were mistaken about the tribes of Israel; but these dupes continued to believe the nonsense until they were almost violently forced out of it. The ‘brethren’ will soon be obliged to furnish some more mysteries in order to hold their following for very much longer. The supply is running mighty low.” [16] Groan.

Tribunian antics aside, this whole episode strikes me as a fascinating window into the construction of religious folklore. By this, I don’t mean the construction of the ideas or theories themselves. I mean, rather, the ad hoc construction or construal of these ideas as folklore. At the start of the present episode, it was not at all clear (well, except to Thomas Kearns) how the North Pole theory was or should have been classified. It wasn’t canonical, but there was some evidence Joseph Smith had taught it in an implicitly authoritative way. But when a scientific challenge rendered the theory untenable, this ambiguity cleared right up. Within just two weeks of being challenged, the theory was firmly categorized as folklore.

In a fascinating interplay between apologetic motivation and secular historical reasoning, the apologist who wishes to classify an idea as folklore has to justify the move with historical evidence. In the present case, that process was relatively easy because of the scarcity and ambiguity of the scriptural texts. Other ideas, such as six-day creation or a global flood, have proven more difficult to disavow. Yet in those cases, too, complex historical, linguistic, and archaeological arguments have been marshaled to separate the problematic “folklore” from the putatively infallible “revelation”. This blend of apologetic motives with historical reasoning poses for the secular historian the sticky problem of how to classify the classifications—you know, to separate the apologetic folklore-about-folklore from the putatively infallible “facts”.

I think I’ll leave that problem for another day.

NOTES:

[1] D&C 133:26.

[2] D&C 110:11.

[3] Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, October 1835, 194.

[4] Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review (Independence, Missouri: Zion’s Printing and Publishing Co., 1947), cited from http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/BFJohnson.html. Joseph Smith claimed on several occasions to be able to see past, present, and future—a power he once referred to as an “All-Seeing Eye.” Johnson appears to have been testing this rhetoric. See Early Mormon Documents 1:463; 4:134.

[5] On other occasions, Joseph Smith apparently told inquirers that the tribes were on a piece of the earth which had separated and formed a new planet, which would eventually return to its original position. This variation on the theme of a North Pole “caldron” may have served to resolve the problem of what would happen to the tribes when the cauldron fills with water. It also literalized the apocalyptic theme of the stars falling in the last days. According to a couple of these accounts, Joseph claimed that the earth originally had “wings” or planetary spheres affixed to either pole. This literalizes the image in D&C 88:44 that “the earth rolls upon her wings,” and may also be related to the description of each of the afterlife kingdoms of D&C 76 as a “world.” For references, see http://mormonmonsters.blogspot.com/2009/09/ten-tribes-live-on-another-planet.html; http://www.newrevelations.net/wherearetentribes.html.

[6] “North Pole Is Reached at Last,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, September 2, 1909, 1.

[7] “The Pole and the Tribe,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 1909, 4. I’m sure the Church immediately began hemorrhaging millions of members over this issue.

[8] N.t., Salt Lake Tribune, September 4, 1909, 6.

[9] N.t., Salt Lake Tribune, September 5, 1909, 6. See also n.t., Salt Lake Tribune, September 8, 1909, 4.

[10] N.t., Salt Lake Tribune, September 9, 1909, 4.

[11] “At Richfield,” Deseret Evening News, September 8, 1909, 4.

[12] Roberts once referred to the Tribune as “the most commanding and powerful newspaper of the Intermountain West, capable of influencing and molding public opinion as to things anti-‘Mormon’.” Cited in O. N. Malmquist, The First 100 Years: A History of The Salt Lake Tribune, 1871-1971 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1971), 223-24.

[13] “Things of God Greater Than Man’s Conception of Them,” Deseret Evening News, September 18, 1909, 31.

[14] Ibid. Roberts based his view on Amos 9:9: “I will sift the house of Israel among all nations.”

[15] “Lost Tribes Are Not Yet Located,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 13, 1909, 12.

[16] N.t., Salt Lake Tribune, September 15, 1909, 6.

Joseph was a religion creator. He produce voluminous new scripture, created new societies (or at least really tried to), organized a new church, and supervised the creation of missions, the building of temples, and generated a new unorthodox Christian theology. What he did not do was systematize any of those things. When he died there was authority, ritual, scripture, theology, and teaching, but in no way was it organized. He just produced-and produced rapidly. It stood to the future generations of Latter-day Saints to wrestle with and organize his prolific prophetic career.

To this end we used Matthew Bowman’s brand-new The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith. We skipped the chapters on Smith and picked up immediately after his death. The students found Bowman’s book quick and easy to read and, while a little less scholarly than the others we had read, it was a great book to use for this portion of the class. I was glad Matt pointed it out to me before the class started, or we would have ended up using something like The Mormon Experience by Arrington. The one complaint I had about Matt’s book, and having listened to interviews with him it’s not something I actually blame him for, is that the last chapter focuses too much on the church in the U.S., when the future of Mormonism clearly lies outside of the states. But a few articles helped supplement him there, and it worked out really well.

Overall, the students seemed more “ho-hum” about this unit of the course. The angelic visitations and revelations definitely dropped down in frequency, and looking at how charisma (Joseph Smith) was institutionalized (prophetic office and personal testimonies) and how the theology was more systematized is more history than religion, and their response reflected that.

Also, at the beginning and end of this unit we had visits from some of the local missionaries (the sisters assigned to Georgetown) and the LDS Georgetown chaplains-in-residence, Dr. David Rowberry and his wife Janis. Dr. Rowberry is the local CES director as well as being a chaplain at Georgetown. The sisters in the DC mission are definitely the church putting it’s best foot forward, because of the DC temple visitor’s center. Their visit reflected what I thought was a very positive experience that I had while serving as a missionary in Poughkeepsie, NY, and visited a class on Mormonism at Vassar. The much more mature and experienced view of Mormonism from the Rowberrys was also a welcome addition to the class.

The final papers were quite fun this time. They could have either written a short paper on one of the LDS church presidents (discussions on them were also somewhat lacking in Bowman) which had to include some sermon of that prophet, or write a newspaper article about the LDS church, the catch being that it had to be written at least 50 years in the future.

Let’s just say that the students who took the second option were overwhelmingly positive about the prospects for LDS church growth in the future. We did read Stark’s projections, and while we are ahead of even his high ones right now, the growth rate is slowing down significantly. I pointed this out to them, several times, but I think they just remembered the big 260 million Mormons by the year 2080 projection and just ran with it.

Amusing future developments in Mormonism from the papers included:

1. An Official Declaration giving women the priesthood.
2. An Official Declaration rescinding “multiply and replenish” as a commandment, because the worldwide human population had grown too large. This was about a decade after the Word of Wisdom was expanded to ban meat due to worldwide food shortages.
3. The beginning of a BYU center on transhumanism and transhuman science.
4. The Pope releasing an encyclical declaring LDS full Christians.
5.  Local worship styles encouraged in the church by the first non-American president of the church (from Africa).
6. December 23^rd being declared a Mormon holiday to celebrate the birth of Joseph Smith.

Somewhat surprisingly, not a single one of them wrote a future article that said the LDS would be fully accepting of homosexual marriages sometime in the future. So all this on top of every student basically saying that Mormonism’s growth rate would be extremely high. (I promise I told them Stark’s predictions were showing significant signs of no longer holding true, despite the “so far so good” aspect of his article we read.) Overall, I think their reaction to this unit was mostly ho-hum because, of all the units, this was the most where what we covered was a lot of info-dumping, instead of wrestling with things like angelic visitations and new scripture.