Painting the Mythical and the Heroic: Joseph Smith Preaches to the American Indians

By Laura Allred Hurtado, with David G. Note: This represents preliminary and ongoing research for the Armitage painting. 

In 1890, British born painter and founder of the Utah Art Association William Armitage created the massive historic painting, Joseph Smith Preaching to the Indians. The artwork, which once hung with prominence in the Salt Lake Temple, now fills the wall leading up to the 2nd floor of the Church History Museum. The scale itself means that it demands the attention of the entire room, standing almost as a sentinel within the space. The painting depicts, as the title suggests, a well-dressed Smith preaching to a crowd of nearly forty American Indians which surround the frame. Smith?s outstretched right arm gestures heavenward while his left hand holds the Book of Mormon, a book that according to historian Ronald W. Walker was ?not just a record of the ?Lamanite? or Native American people, but a highly unusual manifesto of their destiny.?[1] Smith stands triumphantly and confidently among this crowd of mostly male Indians whose expressions vary from guarded, taken aback, distrusting, perhaps even provoked but in all instances, they are engaged, looking toward Joseph and his distinct message regarding the destiny of North America?s Indigenous peoples.

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Mormons and Natives Month at the JI

For the past several months, the JI has sponsored various theme months, allowing permas and guests to ruminate on such topics as politics, the international church, and material culture. November is Native American Heritage Month, which was first promoted in the Progressive Era by reform-minded Indians to recognize the contributions of Natives to the development of the United States. As in the case of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, we at the JI believe that Natives are an intricate part of Mormon history, rather than a sub-topic only worthy of discussion once a year, but we also see the value in focusing our thoughts at this time in conjunction with Native American Heritage Month. This month’s editors, David G., Amanda, and Farina, have assembled an all-star cast of guest bloggers, who will share fascinating insights from their research, alongside contributions from permas. The editors have also put together some brief thoughts on their areas of expertise for this introductory post.

Mormonism’s Encounters with Native America in the 19th Century (David G.)

From the earliest days of Mormonism, indigenous peoples were central to Joseph Smith?s vision of the future.

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Elder George P. Lee and the New Jerusalem: A Reception History of 3 Nephi 21:22-23

?Do you think President Kimball approves of your action?? This question, asked by an unnamed general authority of the soon-to-be excommunicated Elder George P. Lee of the First Quorum of the 70, captured the lingering tensions over the rapid decline of the ?Day of the Lamanite? that had marked Mormon views of Native Americans in the second half of the twentieth century. Lee, the first general authority of Native descent, was himself the product of several of the programs instituted under the direction of Apostle Spencer W. Kimball designed to educate American Indians and aid their acculturation into the dominant society. Even at the time of Lee?s call to the 70 in 1975, the church had begun reallocating resources away from the so-called ?Lamanite programs,? but the full implications of these decisions were not apparent until the mid-1980s. Lee responded to the question posed above by laying out a distinct interpretation of 3 Nephi 21:22-23, an interpretation that he argued Kimball had shared and that the General Authorities in the 1980s had abandoned. The 1980s, known as the decade when Church President Ezra Taft Benson challenged the Saints to increase and improve their devotional usage of the Book of Mormon?a challenge that saw marked results, at least as measured by the significant increase of citations to the work in General Conference talks?was also a decade of debate over the meaning of the book?s intended audience and purpose.[1]

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Book of Mormon into Darkness

Please join us in welcoming this guest post from Edward Blum, a recognized scholar of race and religion in U.S. history who has contributed to JI previously. Ed is associate professor of history at San Diego State University. He is the author of Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007), and most recently, co-author (with Paul Harvey) of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012). He is the co-editor (with Paul Harvey) of The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (2012), (with Jason R. Young) The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (2009), and (with W. Scott Poole) Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (2005). Ed also blogs at Religion in American History and Teaching United States History, and last week attended his very first Mormon History Association conference in Layton, Utah.

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Has darkness ever overwhelmed you? Have you seen cities sink and communities set ablaze? Has a voice saved you? If you know the Book of Mormon, then you are familiar with the tale I tell. After hundreds of pages chronicling the ebbs and flows of civilizations, the narrative reaches a climax. In Palestine, Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. The world felt the reverberations. “Thick darkness” fell upon the land. Nothing could bring light, “neither candles, neither torches; neither could there be fire kindled with their fine and exceeding dry wood, so that there could not be any light at all.” The sounds of howling and weeping pieced the darkness. Sadness reigned.

It is difficult to overstate the drama and the beauty of the Book of Mormon’s rendering of these days. As one who watched silvery strands cloud the corneas of my infant son and darken his vision onto blindness, as one who takes the Christ story seriously in the depth of my soul, and as one who more and more considers the place of the sun and the moon, the land and the sea, in our religious imaginations, this scripture leaves me in tears. It also leaves me spinning about why the Book of Mormon is vital for American religious historians. It is not simply an artifact. It is also a treasure trove of ideas. To me, it should be required reading for anyone in my guild, and here are a few reasons.

First, the contents and the context feed one another. Most of us teach the context of Mormonism’s emergence. We teach about the second great awakening and the burned-over district, the dramatic tale of young Joseph Smith visited by God the Father, Jesus the Son, and Moroni the angel, and the complex and conflicted translating process. The content dramatizes the context and vice versa. When Joseph Smith translated the tale of the world going dark, he was sitting in darkness. When Smith described the various plates that had different forms of history written upon them, Smith was working from plates that held sacred histories at the same time George Bancroft was writing from paper on paper alternative histories of America. I am not suggesting that the context determined the content, not one bit. Rather, the drama of Smith’s translation seems heightened when we take seriously the text which he translated.

Second, the “wrapping” of the Book of Mormon can be stunningly interesting. There was not one Book of Mormon, but several even from the beginning. As Laurie Maffly-Kipp notes in her introduction to the Penguin edition, slight changes from the 1830 to the 1840 edition were crucial. The 1830 version used the word “white” to refer to the Lamanites. The 1840 version used “pure.” It was the 1830 version that became “the” wording for more than a century. Just as the distinction between “light” and “white” is crucial when we think of how Smith’s first vision is textually rendered versus how it is visually displayed, the difference between “white” and “pure” has been crucial too. Following the 1978 declaration to end the priesthood ban on black men, the 1981 edition inserted “pure.”

There have been other meaningful modifications as well, and not all textual. We know of the new subtitle, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ,” but there was also the inclusion of imagery. The Book of Mormon I grabbed from a hotel in 2007, which was my first introduction to the book, has eight images after an introduction and the testimonies. Heinrich Hofmann’s “The Lord Jesus Christ” looks slightly down and to our right, perhaps directing with his eyes to turn the page. (interestingly enough, it is a Hofmann painting of Jesus that “frames” Thomas S. Monson’s online biography, an image he claims to have had since the 1950s). On the next page of this Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith looks to the left, as if back at Jesus. Then there is Lehi, Alma, Samuel the Lamanite, and finally John Scott’s “Jesus Christ visits the Americas” and Tom Lovell’s “Moroni buries the Nephite record.” Bulging biceps and earnest prayer mark these paintings. The images frame the text, providing readers a narrative before the narrative. A visual arc precedes the textual arc. What is not there is fascinating too. There is no “first vision” so God the Father is not viewed in human form. Reading these images offer another layer of reading the Book of Mormon.

Finally, the arguments against reading the Book(s) of Mormon seem weak to me. It may be the case, as Terryl Givens has argued, that few Americans read the Book of Mormon in the nineteenth century. But that is true of lots of books and other texts. How many fugitive slave narratives went unread? Emily Dickinson’s poetry was kept private. Moreover, some pretty important Americans did read the book, including Brigham Young.

It is too easy to quote Mark Twain to explain away the book. To be blunt, there is a lot of nineteenth-century writing that felt like “chloroform in print.” Most of my students dislike Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin because it is too long and too detailed. Moby-Dick is so full of symbol, symbols, and symbolism that it often feels like the whale itself: too massive to comprehend. Readers can just as easily get lost searching for the white whale as they are following the Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites, and all the other “ites.”

What I love about the Book of Mormon is that Smith and the writers were willing to tarry where Moby-Dick’s “Ishmael” was not. Near the beginning of Melville’s work, the one we can call “Ishmael” stumbles into a “Negro” church. There, he hears a sermon about “the darkness of blackness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing.” Ishmael “backed out.” To him, it was a “trap.”

When we read the Book of Mormon, we willingly enter the “trap.” The darkness descends; the world weeps. But then a voice calls; a body appears; we touch it and listen to his teachings. Then, we are told to sing. Perhaps Mark Twain’s boredom (and ours) tells us a lot more about his (and our) sacred (in)sensitivities and less about Smith or the Book of Mormon.

New Article: “Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America”

Desperate times (the expected dearth of posts at the end of the semester) call for desperate measures (narcissistically posting about our own scholarship).

Parley Pratt, whose theology was as rugged as his looks.

In summer 2009, I participated in the Mormon Scholars Summer Seminar, that year led by Terryl Givens and Matt Grow, where I had the opportunity to study the writings of the Pratt brothers. While my seminar paper was on Parley Pratt’s theology of embodiment, which soon evolved into a larger article on early Mormon theologies of embodiment in general, the topic with which I became particularly transfixed was how Joseph Smith’s teachings were adapted and appropriated during the first few years after his death. At first, I was interested in the very parochial nature of the issue—the specifics of theological development, who said what and when, and what ideas were forgotten, emphasized, or even created anew. But I then became even more interested in broader questions: how were Smith’s ideas interpreted in the first place within a specific cultural environment, and how did Smith’s successors utilize that environment when molding their own theology? And further, what does that process tell us about the development of religious traditions in general, and the progression of religion in antebellum America in particular?

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?I believe in women, especially thinking women.”

– Emmeline B. Wells, Exponent,  Vol. 3 (Sept. 1874), No. 9

In his book Enlightenment Contested, Jonathan Israel argues that the first ?revolutions?  were not, in fact, political rebellions; “revolution” referred to new epistemic frameworks caused by the likes of Galilean, Copernican, Newtonian, and Cartesian paradigm shifts. These new conceptual models laid the groundwork for later political reforms; in Condorcet?s concise maxim: ?only philosophy can cause a true revolution.?  One of the reasons I have focused my research on 18th century European intersections of gender and religion is because of this very notion: that beliefs matter. And when people challenge or reinterpret the status quo, interesting things happen.

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Enoch and Zion

MARK ASHURST-MCGEE is a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, where he specializes in document analysis and documentary editing methodology. He holds a PhD in history from Arizona State University and has trained at the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents. He is a coeditor of the first volume in the Journals series and of the first volume of the Histories series of the Joseph Smith Papers. He is an author of peer-reviewed articles on Joseph Smith and early Mormon history. The following selection is taken from his 2008 dissertation: “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political Thought.” Other works growing out of his dissertation are published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Mormon History (“Zion in America: The Origins of Mormon Constitutionalism” [vol. 38, no. 3 – Summer 2012]: 90-101) and in the just recently released anthology War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives (Kofford Books, 2012). Selections from his dissertation have also appeared here at the Juvenile Instructor, here and here. Ashurst-McGee is currently working on articles on political restorationism and Zion nationalism along the path of turning the dissertation into a monograph.

Joseph Smith’s Enoch expansion built on that for Enoch’s grandfather Enos, the grandson of Adam. Due to the “secret works of darkness” that had pervaded the land, Enos led “the residue of the people of God . . . out from the land which was called Shulon and dwelt in a land of promise, which he called after his own son whom he had named Cainan.”[1] Here was the original exodus of the righteous from among the wicked. Earlier, before Shulon’s corruption, Cain and the brethren of his secret combination had left Shulon for the land of Nod. Now Enos led God’s people from corrupt Shulon to the promised land of Cainan. As in the Book of Mormon, whether the righteous emigrate from a wicked nation or the wicked emigrate from a righteous nation, Smith’s scriptural narratives tend toward the territorial separation of the two. When the people of God left Shulon, they took with them the “book of remembrance” that had been kept by the prophets since the days of Adam.[2] Here was the archetypal civic text on which to found a new civilization. Enoch grew to manhood in the “land of righteousness” established by his grandfather Enos.[3]

Joseph Smith’s dramatic expansion of Genesis 5:24: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”–is by far the longest of his many revisions–adding over 4,000 words to the biblical account. The narrative of Enoch’s walk with God was apparently one of the “plain and precious parts” removed from the Bible.[4] Enoch’s history, as restored by Smith, began with a prophetic calling. The Lord commanded Enoch to leave Cainan and cry repentance to all men. Like Moses, Enoch complained of his slow speech. The Lord encouraged him: “Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled. . . . Behold, my Spirit is upon you. Wherefore, all thy words will I justify. And the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall turn from their course.”[5] When Enoch began preaching and prophesying, people exclaimed “there is a strange thing in the land, a wild man hath come among us.” However, when Enoch testified against the evil in society, “all men were offended because of him.” Yet “no man laid his hands on him. For fear came on all them that heard him, for he walked with God.”[6] As with the Book of Mormon prophets protected from imprisonment and murder, the Lord protected Enoch. He received such divine power in preaching that no one dared to lay hands on him or pierce him.

When Enoch returned to land of Cainan, he became the leader of the people of God and infused the entire land with the same protective power by which he had preached abroad. Enoch thereby protected Cainan when enemy nations came to war against them:

And he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled and the mountains fled, even according to his command, and the rivers of water were turned out of their course, and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness. And all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch and so great was the power of the language which God had given him. There also came up a land out of the depths of the sea. And so great was the fear of the enemies of the people of God that they fled and stood afar off and went upon the land which came up out of the depths of the sea. And the giants of the land also stood afar off.

Formerly threatening nations and races feared Enoch to the point that they abandoned their own homelands in order to distance themselves from Cainan. The Lord thus protected Cainan, increasing the territorial distance between the righteous and the wicked.[7] He furthermore “blessed the land” of Cainan and sent a curse of “wars and bloodsheds” among their enemies. Finally, the Lord “came and dwelt with his people.” Now, more than ever, “the fear of the Lord was upon all nations, so great was the glory of the Lord which was upon his people.” The Lord named his people “Zion” and assumed his rightful reign as “Messiah, the King of Zion.” Zion’s borders needed no defense. The fear of God’s glory kept enemy powers at bay and his curse occupied them with wars among themselves. As Enoch exclaimed: “Surely, Zion shall dwell in safety forever.”

While enjoying this peaceful safety from the threat of invading foreign powers, Zion also abounded in domestic peace and tranquility: “they were of one heart, and of one mind, and dwelt in righteousness, and there were no poor among them.” Economic equality fostered social harmony. The communitarian economy of the primitive church found its perfection and erased all class-based enmity. Zion existed as the peaceful refuge from the contention and violence of the world.[8]

In Zion, the Lord showed Enoch a vision of the future history of the world. “And he beheld, and lo, Zion in process of time was taken up into heaven. And the Lord said unto Enoch: “Behold mine abode forever.”[9] Here was the ultimate exodus of the righteous from among the wicked. Enoch’s city left the world of man behind to live with God in heaven. Decades later, Smith’s early disciple Orson Pratt stated that when the Lord exalted Zion, he took “the whole city, the people and their habitations.”[10] Brigham Young, another early disciple of Smith and later his successor, taught that Enoch and his people were taken up with “their houses, gardens, fields, cattle, and all their possessions”–even the city’s adjoining “land, rivers, and everything pertaining to it, were taken away.”[11] Pratt agreed that “all the region of country occupied by them was translated, or taken away from the earth.”[12] Young even characterized Zion’s territory as a “portion of the earth.”[13] In his journal, early Mormon apostle Wilford Woodruff recounted “the opinion of the Prophet Joseph” that “when the City of Enoch fled & was translated it was whare the gulf of Mexico now is. It left that gulf a body of water.”[14] If these later teachings and reminiscences embellished Smith’s Enoch narrative, they only fleshed out the earthy materiality of the event already present in Smith’s bible expansion. The Lord’s removal of Enoch’s city from the earth to “mine abode” embodied the theoretically extremities of territorial separation of the righteous from the wicked. The world of men was now ready to be destroyed in the flood.

Enoch’s Zion provided the model for the Zion Joseph Smith meant to build. While the history of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon conveyed the “fullness of the gospel,” it was, in the final analysis, “a Record of a fallen people.”[15] The book began with the sack of Jerusalem. It charted the rise but also the ruin of the Nephite and Jaredite nations. Like the history of ancient Israel or even the Roman republic, the Book of Mormon served as a cautionary tale. For any ancient civilization to serve as a perfect model to emulate, it would have had to have overcome any external enemy and internal weakness. It would still be in existence. Yet no such government could be found on the earth. The “translation” of Zion from the earth opened the possibility for another kind of usable past. Enoch’s Zion–a civilization that rose and never fell–offered an ideal model for Smith’s Zion.

Joseph Smith’s next major biblical expansion would center on the character of Melchizedek, the priest-king who had blessed Israel’s grandfather Abraham.[16] Melchizedek held the same priesthood as Enoch, and therefore had power “to put at defiance the armies of nations.” As the king of Salem, a predecessor of Jerusalem, Melchizedek apparently had the power to protect his people as Enoch had. He was also “the keeper of the storehouse of God; Him whom God had appointed to receive tithes for the poor. Wherefore Abram paid unto him tithes of all that he had, of all the riches which he possessed, which God had given him more than that which he had need.”[17] As with Enoch’s classless society of one heart and one mind, Melchizedek’s program for economic redistribution fostered domestic peace. Melchizedek was “called the King of heaven by his people, or, in other words, the King of peace”–equating heaven and peace.[18]

Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 added that from the time of Enoch to that of Melchizedek, “men having this faith coming up unto this order of God, were translated and taken up into heaven”:

And now, Melchizedek was a priest of this order; therefore he obtained peace in Salem . . . . And his people wrought righteousness, and obtained heaven, and sought for the city of Enoch which God had before taken, separating it from the earth.[19]

Melchizedek’s Salem proved that Enoch’s Zion was not unique in world history. It was a model that could be followed.

In the New Testament, Jesus had taught the doctrine of rapture. He explained that the last days would be days of great wickedness as it was in the days of Noe.” In the glory of Christ’s second coming, the earth would be destroyed by a baptism of fire just as it had been destroyed by a baptism of water in the days of Noah. But, he explained, just before the great and dreadful day of his return, “there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”[20] The Lord would remove the elect from the earth before purifying it with fire. Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 recognized the possibility of individual rapture. Men having faith and priesthood like Enoch “were translated and taken up into heaven.” Yet the ideal rapture was a community, even a national, event. The trajectory of the communitarian programs in Enoch’s Zion and Melchizedek’s Salem ended in heaven with the Lord. Not only primitive Christian discipleship but salvation itself was a social affair. Smith’s theology veered away not only from the social and economic individualism of Jacksonian America but from the salvation theology of Protestantism. Smith turned away from the New Testament focus on individual and otherworldly salvation to the Old Testament notions of national salvation.

Although Melchizedek’s Salem showed that Enoch’s model could be followed, it also signaled the importance of geography. Salem, associated with the Old Jerusalem of the Old World, existed as a sister city to Enoch’s Zion, associated with the New Jerusalem in the New World. While the Jaredite and Nephite nations had faltered in the New World, Zion had not. While the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judea had met their end in the Old World, Salem had survived. These were societies that never came to ruin and therefore left no ruins behind. They no longer existed not because they had gone the way of all kingdoms but because the Lord had taken them up into heaven. While individuals could be taken up, the ultimate ideal of collective rapture therefore had occurred only in Enoch’s Zion and Melchizedek’s Salem, the primitive counterparts to end-times Jerusalem and New Jerusalem. Collective rapture did not immediately follow from community holiness, it required the right place. Smith’s narratives of Zion and Salem thus connected communitarian soteriology with sacred geography.

In his vision of the history of the world, Enoch saw not only the flood, but the life and atonement of Jesus Christ in the meridian of time and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon in the last days. The Lord explained that the Book of Mormon would serve to “gather out mine own elect from the four quarters of the earth unto a place which I shall prepare…an holy city…that my people may gird up their loins and be looking forth for the time of my coming. For there shall be my tabernacle, and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.” The Lord further explained, “Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there.”[21] Enoch’s Zion would return to earth with the Lord and join the latter-day Zion. His city therefore was much more than a model for the latter-day Zion; their destinies intertwined. Enoch had seen the rise of Smith’s Zion in the last days. Smith now foresaw the return of Enoch’s Zion at the end of the world. The two Zions were actually two halves of the same history. Smith thus grounded his utopian vision of the future in a mythological narrative of the past. In Smith’s later expansion of the Noah story, the Lord revealed that the City of Enoch would some day “come down out of heaven, and possess the earth.”[22] With the Lord, the “King of Zion,” Enoch and Joseph would reclaim the world for God’s people. This was the ultimate territorial restoration. The meek would truly inherit the earth.

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1 Moses 6:12-17, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 159.

2 Moses 6:46, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

3 Moses 6:41, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

4 1 Nephi 13:26, 32, 34.

5 Moses 6:32-39, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

6 Moses 6:37-39, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

7 Moses 7:13-15, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 164-65.

8 Moses 7:15-20; 7:53, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 164-69.

9 Moses 7:18-20, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 165.

10 Orson Pratt, Sermon, 19 July 1874, in Journal of Discourses 17 (1875):147 (145-54).

11Brigham Young, Sermon, 20 April 1856 and 3 June 1860, in Journal of Discourses 3 (1856):320 (316-27); 8 (1861):279 (277-80).

12 Orson Pratt, Sermon, 19 July 1874, in Journal of Discourses 17 (1875):147 (145-54).

13 Brigham Young, Sermon, 20 April 1856, in Journal of Discourses, 3 (1856):320 (316-27).

14 Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal 6:482, 7:129.

15 Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ, June 1830, in Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations, 62-68.

16 Genesis 14:18-20.

17 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78-79.

18 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78; compare Alma 13:17-18.

19 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78.

20 Luke 17:26-36; compare Matthew 24:37-42.

21 Moses 7:61-64, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 168-69.

22 Smith, expansion of Genesis 9, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 67; compare Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 (78).

Guest post: Edward Blum, “On Mormon Racism: A Response to John Turner”

Edward Blum is associate professor of history at San Diego State University. He is the author of Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007), and most recently, co-author (with Paul Harvey) of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012), which will be available next month. He is the co-editor (with Paul Harvey) of The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (2012), (with Jason R. Young) The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (2009), and (with W. Scott Poole) Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (2005). Ed also blogs at Religion in American History and Teaching United States History.

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In this so-called “Mormon moment,” everything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems to be getting attention. With newfound notoriety, media outlets have paid increasing attention to scholars far and wide. Jon Stewart featured Joanna Brooks and her memoir The Book of Mormon Girl on The Daily Show, while The New Yorker reviewed an assortment of books about Mormonism (from wonderful scholars, including Matthew Bowman, Spencer Fluhman, and John Turner). Businessweek ran a controversial story (and image) on how “Mormons Make Money.” In many ways, it is good to be a writer on Mormonism in these latter-days.

Amid the laughs and the groans, the thorny issue of race has started to become prominent in some of the discussions. The Daily Beast and The Atlantic ran stories on links among Mormonism, race, politics, and imagery, while the New York Times this past weekend printed John Turner’s op-ed piece “Why Race is Still a Problem for Mormons.” As a scholar of race and religion in the United States (and not as a scholar distinctly of Mormonism), I wanted to reflect on Turner’s essay and perhaps provide some twists.

On one hand, Turner’s op-ed piece builds upon his forthcoming biography of Brigham Young, a work I have read, enjoyed, recommend, and reviewed for The Christian Century (not sure when it will be out). One of the fascinating elements of his book is how and when Turner places Young and early Mormonism in the context of other trends and norms of nineteenth-century American Protestantism and evangelicalism. If Jan Shipps was dedicated to showing how Mormonism was to American Protestantism as early Christianity was to ancient Judaism, Turner wants to show how nineteenth-century Mormons were and were not a part of the broader society. This is the basic element of his New York Times essay–that Mormons have a history of racism and racial segregation, but one that is quite similar to other white Christians. As he writes, “Mormons have no reason to feel unusually ashamed of their church’s past racial restrictions, except maybe for their duration. Their church, like most white American churches, was entangled in a deeply entrenched national sin.”

There are three points about this approach that trouble me. First, it flattens American religious history and the relationships between race and religion. Second, it sounds strange when put in comparison. And third, it neglects the crucial importance of theology (and theological particularity) within Mormonism. (I want to stop here and say that I recognize Turner’s essay was an op-ed and can only be so nuanced; I also want to reiterate that I am a fan of his work and am making these points to broaden discussions, not to attack his scholarship in any way).

First, when I say that Turner’s claim flattens out history, I mean that it does not take into account that race in American churches has been wildly complex, contested, and changed over time. To simply say that white churches have been racist or parts of America’s racism is to miss so much. Nineteenth-century churches and denominations split over the problems of slavery. Many white Christians joined crusades to improve the lives of African Americans, some of which were even willing to be counted as “Negro” so that other whites did not disturb them. (I detail lots of this in my first book, Reforging the White Republic). Some white churches and colleges had study groups that read W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, while some revivalists (like Dwight Moody) agonized over what was right with regards to segregation. Blanket statements about race and religion just cannot be made.

But even more, Turner’s comparison renders Mormon history flat. As we already know from Newell Bringhurst’s exquisite work, early Mormon attacks on slavery were not necessarily pro-black statements. And changing contexts altered meanings. When LDS writers attacked education for African Americans during Reconstruction, it was not simply because of white supremacy. It was also because they (Mormons) were being legislated against. LDS leaders were appalled that the federal government was supporting rights for former slaves while hindering rights for Mormons. Then throughout the twentieth century, new Mormon art dramatically whitened and masculinized Christ at the same time some of its leaders expressed frustration  with George Romney for supporting civil rights marches. Race, even among Mormons, has never been stagnate, because the structures and cultures keep changing.

Second, for a scholar to simply claim that Mormonism’s white supremacy was just part of the broad context of nineteenth and twentieth-century America sounds strange if we put it into comparison with, say, scholarship on patriarchal sentiments among African American leaders in the early twentieth century. Over the past ten years, African American historians have gone to great lengths to study and expose the misogynistic and patriarchal elements of African American leadership (in church and outside of it). Barbara Savage and Kevin Gaines, for instance, have shown the gendered elements of black culture, society, and church lives. To my knowledge, no scholar has tried to give W. E. B. Du Bois, or Booker T. Washington, or Benjamin Mays a pass for this because patriarchy was the norm.

In large part, scholars of African American history do not give these fellows a pass because they were the ones confronting oppression. They were the ones who knew what it meant to be singled out and hated for perceived differences. They were the ones to be innovative, to think outside of the box, to question that which seemed unquestionable. So, the logic goes, they could have stood against patriarchy if they wanted. Why shouldn’t the same approach hold to studying Mormonism?

Many scholars of Mormonism have focused on the terrible experiences early Mormons had, and for good reason. They were attacked; they were forcibly exiled; they were maligned politically. They were mocked culturally. The prophet was assassinated. So why, when it comes to race, did Brigham Young advocate execution for anyone who married an African American? And what does it mean for the flagship university of a faith tradition to bear the name of that individual? Why did early Mormons not look at African Americans and say “we welcome you, downtrodden like us?” It is not because early Mormons did not have the intellectual capacity or imagination to do so–it is because sacred disclosures (to them) said not to, and “not to” in old and new ways.

Since Mormonism taught so many new customs, mores, texts, and ideas (many of which are beautiful and full of the respect for abundant life), why was anti-black white supremacy so vital? (and, of course, their positions on people of African descent different dramatically from other people groups) Instead of avoiding the question, we should look into the particularities. One particularity brings sheds light on an important distinction of Mormon theology: its emphasis on corporeality and the anthropomorphized sacred. Unlike many nineteenth-century Protestants who wanted to avoid from the body (in spiritualism, for instance), Mormonism moved the body to center stage. God has a body. Jesus had and has a body. Early Mormon doctrine dissolved the supposed separation between body and soul that many Christians had tried to make. And when they linked physical bodies to spiritual essences, they participated in the long and tangled history that Paul Harvey and I detail in The Color of Christ, which is basically a book about how race and religion get woven together in America from 1500 to the present.

This is what makes race so important to talking about Mormon history and Mormonism. Not because anyone should label Mormons as “racists” or not; not because they segregated the priesthood. Race matters, in part, because Mormonism’s conceptions of the body collided historically with American obsessions with defining and categorizing bodies, with uniting them and separating them, and with representing holy celestial bodies among moral humanity. This is why the physicality of Jesus in John Scott’s “Jesus Christ Visits the Americas” matters (and it does not just replicate other art, and its’ place in LDS Bibles is important as well) To respect Mormons and Mormon history is not to avoid any of these issues or to shoo them away. Instead, we should dive deeply into them so that we can all understand the faith and the church in the broader sweeps of time and space.

Mormonism and Suffering

By Pete Wosnik

Last fall I took a class from Dr. Philip Barlow at USU called Religion, Evil, and Human Suffering. This was really big class, not in terms of the amount of students who took it, but rather in its subject matter as well as its breadth. Mormonism was only allotted a few precious class hours, but the class gave me an added appreciation for Mormon theological contributions to the larger world. Something I quickly learned in the course was that all religious traditions have grappled with the problems of pain, suffering, and evil; indeed, most religions are born in such conditions.

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Climbing Up the Child’s Ladder: Catechism for Little Saints

I stumbled on this little gem while looking for something else in the Internet Archive?s collection of Mormon publications [1] and was both charmed and intrigued by it. The pamphlet is a 16-page tract, titled ?The Latter-day Saints? Catechism: Or, Child?s Ladder,? by Elder David Moffat. Subtitle: ?Being a Series of Questions Adapted for the Use of the Children of Latter-day Saints.?

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