As much as I agree with you that this review is an angry rant, you must understand it's hard for most people not to get angry and passionate when they learn about MMM. It doesn't surprise me and should be expected. What disappoints me is the lack of passion and the "get over it" attitude from the LDS side.
There is no question that MMM is an ugly stain in LDS history. I do not excuse it at all. But it has no bearing on whether the LDS Church is true or not or on what the LDS Church is today. Critics using it to beat the church over is just as wrong as the church dodging the fact that some LDS persons perpetrated this and the circumstances surrounding it were at least aggravated by strong rhetoric from top leaders.
Biut it no more makes the LDS Church what it is today then the crusades make Christianity what it is today. Histories of all organizations have ugly things in them because humans often do ugly things.
As for Bagley, he may be certian about some things. Other historians that are just as smart and knowledgable if not more so disagree. Bagly is to full of himself.
The crusades are centuries past. MMM was only one century and change in the past. How can you compare the crusades to the MMM? Did teh Catholic church go on trial and try to cover up the crusades? Your poor understanding of the differences between the two could be interpreted as poor.
And crawling on the planet's face Some insects called the human race Lost in time And lost in space...and meaning
The crusades are centuries past. MMM was only one century and change in the past. How can you compare the crusades to the MMM? Did teh Catholic church go on trial and try to cover up the crusades? Your poor understanding of the differences between the two could be interpreted as poor.
Perhaps the comparison was poor. Did the Catholics try to cover up the Crusades? No, they promoted the crusades and recruited crusaders. The point was there are all sorts of ugly things in history.
And I do not justify with the way the LDS Church has dodged the issue for years. They could do better. Yet my point is valid and still stands. The MMM was committed by a relatively hand full of members. I am not convinced that BY was behind it. Even if he was though I think the overall impact of MMM on what the LDS Church is and has become is not in proportional to the rage critics have about it. The elements in Utah that were in operation at the time also created the tinder box that ignited MMM. The fact that the people were from the area where Parley Pratt had just been murdered further contributed to the explosive situation. It is an ugly event and no excuse works for those involved. But the ultimately it has no bearing on whether the LDS Church is true or not. Also, even if the LDS Church is not the true church MMM still has little bearing on what good I think and believe the Church does for people and for the world today. I know you think it an awful evil entity so perhaps we will just have to disagree on that aspect. But even if the Church is and evil awful entity today MMM does not have the proportion of impact that the critics think it does.
The crusades are centuries past. MMM was only one century and change in the past. How can you compare the crusades to the MMM? Did teh Catholic church go on trial and try to cover up the crusades? Your poor understanding of the differences between the two could be interpreted as poor.
Perhaps the comparison was poor. Did the Catholics try to cover up the Crusades? No, they promoted the crusades and recruited crusaders. The point was there are all sorts of ugly things in history.
And I do not justify with the way the LDS Church has dodged the issue for years. They could do better. Yet my point is valid and still stands. The MMM was committed by a relatively hand full of members. I am not convinced that BY was behind it. Even if he was though I think the overall impact of MMM on what the LDS Church is and has become is not in proportional to the rage critics have about it. The elements in Utah that were in operation at the time also created the tinder box that ignited MMM. The fact that the people were from the area where Parley Pratt had just been murdered further contributed to the explosive situation. It is an ugly event and no excuse works for those involved. But the ultimately it has no bearing on whether the LDS Church is true or not. Also, even if the LDS Church is not the true church MMM still has little bearing on what good I think and believe the Church does for people and for the world today. I know you think it an awful evil entity so perhaps we will just have to disagree on that aspect. But even if the Church is and evil awful entity today MMM does not have the proportion of impact that the critics think it does.
Do you believe that in 150 years the Taliban (yes, poor comparison but you have no problem with this obviously) should be seen in a positive light? Is the Taliban an organization that should be allowed to exist? How can a radical fundie group such as the taliban be allowed to exist? Mormonism is no better than the Taliban. Whether it is presently in a fundie fervor or 150 years from now when it will, in whatever form it survives in, be included in the mainstream. Mormonism is not a mainstream religion. Its on the periphery. So is the Taliban.
And crawling on the planet's face Some insects called the human race Lost in time And lost in space...and meaning
Do you believe that in 150 years the Taliban (yes, poor comparison but you have no problem with this obviously) should be seen in a positive light? Is the Taliban an organization that should be allowed to exist? How can a radical fundie group such as the taliban be allowed to exist? Mormonism is no better than the Taliban. Whether it is presently in a fundie fervor or 150 years from now when it will, in whatever form it survives in, be included in the mainstream. Mormonism is not a mainstream religion. Its on the periphery. So is the Taliban.
I do not believe even in the refomration years and in 19th century Mormonism that it was anything like the Taliban and yes it was a poor comparison. I will note I admit my poor comparison. The LDS Church is fairly mainstream like it or not. To claim it is not is silly. And that it has been working on main streaming itself for over a hundred years is pretty clear. This was noted over and over again on the recent PBC documentary. And even more strides have been taken to make it so in the past 20 years.
Of course the MMM as an event cannot prove whether or not the COJCOLDS is or is not the 'True Church', assuming that your head has a vacancy in it for an entity so described.
However, given that the COJCOLDS tells us that it is led by a 'prophet, seer and revelator', and given that it claims a unique knowledge of the will of its god, I think we can say that its handling of the issue of the MMM now and in the past does something to make one take its claims to be the 'True Church' less seriously. And indeed it does seem another factor causing one to take religious organisations in general (of which the COJCOLDS is an example) just a bit less seriously too, at least from the moral point of view.
I find your remarks interesting Jason, and I think we agree on some things about the "way the LDS Church has dodged the issue for years." Where we may disagree is over what you describe as "the proportion of impact."
I'm interested in the way the story has been handled institutionally by LDS Inc. from the moment it happened (or even from before it happened since I think it took not a little pre-planning) up to and including the present. The way they continue to handle it is cause for concern, I think, because it says something about the uses of history. The story of the MMM has been used and is continuing to be used to create notions of "identity," "history," and "justice" that are reactionary and authoritarian and perhaps not unconnected to other ideological efforts like the mainstreaming you mention.
The story can be told many ways. What interests me most is how and for what reasons its been told the way it has been. I think there are better narratives---ones which have benefit not only for the LDS church, but for all citizens of our society---that these are not the ones currently been spun even now is astonishing. This is the "impact" that I see: that the official version promotes an arrogant, paranoid, exclusivist Mormon identity, a version of history that divorces past from present, and a notion of justice that excludes critique and transformation.
(perhaps it cannot be otherwise since a millenialist religion, I would argue, jettisons history as one of its foundational conceptual moves)
As I hope my post about Mormon heroes of the MMM shows, I don't think the event is a blanket condemnation of all Mormons. In fact, I have a great deal of respect for those on my list and would like to write them back into the story. All narrative is pedagogical. To me the most important question is "what does this story teach us?" I don't see that the LDS church has ever been either a good student or teacher of history.
Anyway, I just wanted to sketch out how I see this issue of the "proportion of impact," Jason. There is much more to say about all of this because, well, history isn't over yet...
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
I agree that a discussion of MMM must also consider other background issues. One of the most important, in my opinion, was the threat of an invasion from a federal army. It's been a while since I read the book The Mormon Conflict, by Norman F. Furniss (not LDS or exLDS, this is a very balanced explanation from an historian, I highly recommend it, although it's out of print you can find old copies), so I may get a few details wrong (later this afternoon I'll look for old posts of mine on the topic, when the book was still fresh in my memory).
Basically, Brigham Young believed that it was possible the federal government might send in the army and totally destroy the community. This seems like paranoia, but remember how little support the US gov'ts gave the Mormons in Illinois or Missouri. I don't think it was paranoia, and our government was willing to totally destroy Indian communities, too. He had to have some card to play against the feds. He considered moving to Canada or other locations, but they didn't seem like feasible plans. So, instead, he had to think of some way to make the federal gov't respect his power and leave them alone. (kind of like how nations today desperately try to get a nuclear weapon just to force the other armed countries to respect and fear them) His one card was the fact that the country was expanding, and people were moving out west right through Mormon territory. That's when the "battle axe" of the Lord, the Indian, could be useful. Immigrants could be terrified and discouraged from even trying to emigrate out west if the Indians were out of control. So BY had to make sure the feds knew that he, Brigham Young, was the force holding back the Indians. So if the feds threatened his people, he would stop holding back the Indians, and they would terrorize immigrants. I believe he wanted to make this point with the feds and to do so, encouraged the Indians to attack, but he wanted to stack the deck by looking the other way if Mormons helped the Indians (MMM wasn't the first time Mormons joined with Indians to attack, but not normally KILL, wagon trains).
I'm not sure he realized what he unleashed, and I don't know if he ordered the SPECIFIC MMM attack. But certainly the MMM attack, in my view, was a result of this boiling cauldron.
I know that BY had a theocracy out there, and that he had to be reigned in. But really, even THINKING about sending an army out there to do it was possibly one of the stupidest decisions the US gov't has made (out of too many stupid decisions to count), and it really did create a climate in which BY's fears and paranoia were justified -so he felt extreme action was justified. It was a WAR. Collateral damage and all that.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.