Dan Vogel Responds to Lars Nielsen (Part 8) – Anti-Masonry

[dan vogel]

Was Joseph Smith a pro-Mason or anti-Mason in the late 1830s?

At 2:28:49, you take me to task without going into your hermetically-sealed sidebar: “And make sure that when it comes time to publicly oppose something against which you might have a bias, that you have educated yourself out of your ignorance before publicly condemning something that you don’t actually understand.” I could say the same to you about publishing a book and making others respond to it. The higher standard applies to those who publish books rather than those who review them. However, in this matter you are wrong and have not adequately responded to the observation I made.

I included Walter Prince’s 1917 theory that Mormon relates to Morgan to show that one can find reasonable influences in Joseph Smith’s environment. I’m not married to this theory, but Mormon/Morgan are much closer than Kishkumen/KishKeminitas and has stronger support considering the Book of Mormon’s sustained anti-Masonic rhetoric.

You apparently agree with Prince, but argue that the anti-Masonry was Spalding’s rather than Joseph Smith’s, again misattributing the Celes MS to the older Spalding. The secret combinations of Kishkumen and Gadianton began as an assassination plot and overthrow of the Nephite government and were only forced into the wilderness, where they hid in caves and became marauding robbers. It is no accident that Joseph Smith began dictating during the 1828 presidential campaign and restarted with Cowdery as scribe in April 1829 as Jackson was just taking office. Ether 8 warns America to not let “this secret combination” get above them to their overthrow and destruction. This is what made the Book of Mormon so relevant and why Masonry became the “singled greatest antagonizing force” in both the Book of Mormon and Celes MS. In this and other ways, the Book of Mormon is far removed from Spalding’s world.

by the way, anti-Masons liked to quote Washington, but not without adding “secret” to “combinations.”

None of the parallels from the Celes MS to the Book of Mormon’s Gadianton robbers is either relevant or shocking. Neither are the quotes you include that are unrelated to anti-Masonry, such as the heaps of bones and mounds in the context of the prevalent Mound Builder Myth and anti-Catholic rhetoric in a Protestant nation. Spalding may have been anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic, but the Celes MS isn’t evidence of it.

Beginning at 2:42:05, you attempt to argue that “as far as I can tell there is no evidence that Smith or anyone in his nuclear family was —in any way— anti-secret-combination, anti-Catholic, anti-Masonic, or anti-cave, for that matter.” Anti-cave? Because the Book of Mormon has the Gadianton robbers hiding out in caves, it’s anti-cave? Ether hid in the cavity of a rock, and Mormon supposedly hid the library of records in a cave in the hill Cumorah.

Attempting to mock me, your next statement is even more absurd: “Did young Joseph Smith—desperate to keep his parent’s marriage together—string together over 250,000 words as a loving way to send a secret message to his dad that he should stop hanging out in caves with Luman Walters, Samuel Lawrence, and Alvah Beaman? Mr. Vogel argues that this is the case.” What? Don’t project your wild interpretation onto me.

It’s more than ironic when you then accuse me of reading into the Book of Mormon things that aren’t there. For support, you quote John Hamer’s complaint that in my first biography of Joseph Smith that I went “way over the top” in searching out possible influences from Joseph Smith’s own life “[as if] every little thing in The Book of Mormon is in Joseph Smith’s life at the moment.” I don’t necessarily disagree with Hamer’s assessment. Some autobiographical elements are stronger than others. I did say in the introduction that I wrote an interpretive biography. If I rewrote the book now, 20 years later, I would probably be more conservative. Whatever you think of my book, it has nothing to do with my critique of your book or arguments presented here. You are merely trying to poison the well.

At 2:44:20, you state: “But the Smith family was not anti-Masonry at all; on the contrary, they were pro-Masonry.” We don’t know that, and what we do know is more complicated. All we know for sure is that Hyrum was affiliated with the Palmyra Lodge. Some have associated Joseph Sr. with the Canandaigua Lodge, but that is highly doubtful.

Following Hyrum’s flight from Manchester in October 1830 to evade creditors, his mother reported her bewilderment over his departure since “the secret combinations of his enemies were not fully developed” (see Early Mormon Documents 1:432-33). A short while later a group of men claiming to represent Dr. Alexander McIntyre ransacked the Smiths’ cabin looking for Hyrum. When Joseph Smith learned of the incident, he wrote to warn Hyrum to “beware of the freemasons, [Alexander] McIntyre heard that you were in Manchester and he got a warrant and went to your father’s to distress the family but Harrison [referring to brother Samuel Harrison Smith] overheard their talk and they said that they cared not for the debt, if they could obtain your body. They were there with carriages. Therefore beware of the Freemasons” (EMD 1:22). Masonic records indicate that the Smith family physician, Alexander McIntyre, and Levi Daggett, who sued Hyrum and issued a warrant for his arrest, were both members of Palmyra’s Masonic lodge. In his letter to Hyrum, Joseph not only revealed an anti-Masonic bias but expressed his belief that Masons were among the chief persecutors of the Mormons in New York.

Implying that Joseph Smith was pro-Masonic in Nauvoo is a mistake. The situation in America had dramatically changed by time Joseph Smith became a Freemason on 15 March 1842. But his so-called “conversion” to Masonry was not complete, for soon after joining he devalued the system by claiming it was a corrupt version of his temple endowment. On 17 June 1842, Heber C. Kimball wrote fellow apostle Parley P. Pratt in England: “There is a similarity of priesthood in Masonry. Brother Joseph [Smith] says Masonry was taken from priesthood.” Later, Benjamin F. Johnson reported that Joseph Smith “told me Freemasonry, as at present, was the apostate endowments, as sectarian religion was the apostate religion.” Non-Mormon Masons certainly would not have regarded this as pro-Masonic.

At 2:46:33, you assert: “Smith didn’t rail against secret combinations and blood oaths in The Book of Mormon (firstly because he didn’t compose it) and secondly, in contrast, because he embraced such things in his personal life from a very early age with his group of money-diggers ...” This is incorrect. Joseph Smith and the money-diggers had blood oaths? Animal sacrifice doesn’t qualify as blood oaths. What Joseph Smith did with the Danites and in Nauvoo has no bearing on the Book of Mormon, or even the book of Moses. Joseph Smith doesn’t have to be consistent, and even you have argued that what is said in literature isn’t necessarily what the author believes in his personal life.

Continuing, you assert (2:47:05): “Chances are high that Smith didn’t even conceive that the secret combinations (in the manuscript he didn’t compose) were actually anti-Masonic.” Absurd. Everyone who commented understood the anti-Masonic implications of the Book of Mormon, especially Martin Harris, the book’s financier. After Grandin declined to publish the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith went immediately to famed anti-Masonic publisher Thurlow Weed of Rochester.

You then try to support this assertion with another incredible claim (2:47:19): “He wasn’t well-read or book smart; he was opportunistic and street smart, and that’s about it. He probably barely understood what he was reading as he hastily and performatively dictated to his scribes in the spring of 1829 that which, I believe, he had previously obtained from Rigdon.” Here, you sound like a Mormon apologist. First, Joseph Smith didn’t have to read anti-Masonic literature to be exposed to it. He lived at the epicenter of anti-Masonry during the 1828 campaign. Second, according to the best evidence, Joseph Smith didn’t read to his scribes from a prepared MS. There was no curtain between Joseph Smith and his scribes, contrary to the art you chose to use in this response. Third, there is no good evidence that Joseph Smith and Rigdon knew each other before December 1830.

This is followed by several assertions regarding the Canadian copyright that you present as proof that Joseph Smith didn’t care about the Book of Mormon. It proves no such thing. What you say in this regard is fast and loose with the facts and irresponsible.