'Dark Watch' an above-average collection of Mormon stories

“Dark Watch, and Other Mormon-American Stories," published several years ago, is a strong fiction collection. Author William Morris is a well-known name in Mormon-themed literature and has published in “Dialogue” and other journals.

There are two genres explored in “Dark Watch.” The first takes regular, often-mundane tasks within Mormonism, such as home teaching, priesthood visits, missionary work, and delves inside the minds, reads the thoughts and conclusions that players feel during these experiences. Other stories are more science fiction, and deal with Mormonism, and religion, as a secret motivation kept under wraps, deeply hidden within adherents, some of whom can go through long stretches of existence without realizing their theological beliefs. “Dark Watch,” the titular story, is in this mode, describing a future society of various colonies, with distinct yet also faint similarities, struggling to stay in some sort of harmony.

In the stories related to home teaching and priesthood visits; there are tales, some narrated by teens, that take home teachers — ward priesthood holders — into the homes of dysfunctional families. One visit is to a father moving into political radicalism. Another to parents losing control of their children. Another to a parent who has written off his child. Morris’ prose reflects the uncomfortable situations, the struggling to find the right words to persuade, the inclination to rely on a convenient Scripture to try to sway, and the realization from most of those talking that they won’t change the minds of those listening to them. There is a story, “Invitation,” where the situation is reversed. “Brother Johnson,” the home teacher, has embraced fundamentalist Mormonism and is slowly hinting to the uncomfortable couple, Michael and Shari, he home teaches, his odd beliefs, including polygamy.

The missionary stories include a recently returned missionary finding it difficult to move smoothly from the mission life to the expected next step, a college education. Another story, “Conference,” involves Sara, a returned missionary, single and moving into a career in academia, inviting two missionaries in northern California for a night chat while she evades an academic colleague who married her roommate. The missionary-themed story I enjoyed the most was “Lost Icon,” which follows a missionary’s experiences with a European academic who regards the church as something to be studied. The professor eventually becomes obsessed with some icons that he believes parallel early Mormon history; he becomes sick, and eventually leaves his research with the missionary, who returns home to the U.S.

The story ends with the missionary following up on the academic, and learning to his surprise that the professor became a convert and is now a regular, albeit eccentric, church member. What I find interesting is that the news of the baptism surprises the narrator, who had envisioned the academic as someone too smart to become a convert. It underscores how we can see people in distinct manners than others and how discernment affects our relationships and actions. It’s telling that earlier in the stories, other missionaries see the professor differently, one chuckling condescendingly about how he likes that “little dude.”

I’m not a Mormon intellectual; I don’t do well at finding specific subtexts in literature. However, I can relate to the interactions, the awkwardness, the communications in Morris’ contemporary stories. That doesn’t make me unique; I suspect that many of my LDS peers would have the same reactions from these tales.

Other enjoyable stories, such as “Reactivator,” describe a priesthood counselor’s discomfort with his super-motivated quorum president, and “Pass Along” is an interesting tale about a lonely LDS woman who can’t stop collecting, and keeping, church pass along cards she finds in distinct locations. As mentioned, other stories deal more in science fiction, presenting a future hidden gospel; one involves a church historian who uses futuristic methods to study the faith’s history.

“Dark Watch” is published by A Motley Vision, which is the name of Morris' blog. It can be purchased for $2.99 via Kindle. These are stories with often spare, matter-of-fact prose that can produce empathy. The contemporary tales usually have sentiments or situations that Mormons can identify with, with endings that ask us to interpret honestly the routine, yet complex, tasks within our church.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardNET.

Slim book ‘Talking with Mormons’ makes a lot of sense

On page 38 of theologian Richard J. Mouw’s book, “Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals” (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.), the author recounts a telephone call from an LDS man who, 10 years after his baptism, was questioning whether he was a Christian.

Mouw asked the following questions , quoted from the book:

How many Gods are there, I asked.

Well, there is one Godhead, made up from three divine Persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he responded.

Will you ever become a god like them?

Oh no. I hope I’m becoming more Christ-like, but only the three Persons of Godhood are worthy of worship. More like God — yes. To be a God — no way!

What is the basis for your salvation? Do you earn it by your good works?

No, my good works can’t save me. I’m saved by grace, through the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. My good works — those I perform in gratitude to what He has done for me.

Mouw assured the caller he was a Christian, and he also told the man to remain a Mormon, so long as he can give those answers without reproach to his LDS leaders. That anecdote, delivered in this slim, valuable volume, shows the wisdom of the author. There is nothing untruthful in what that man told Mouw.

There are Latter-day Saints who would chastise the man for choosing to become more like God rather than deciding to be like God. And there are evangelicals who will jump all over the man’s statement that the Godhood is comprised of three divine persons. Mouw offers the rational response — why diminish that man’s beautiful testimony of Christ’s atonement?

Mouw, who has angered some evangelicals, is not an apologist for Mormon doctrines that he disagrees with. the book contains, for example, his strong defense of the Nicene Creed. Mormonism’s rejection of that, and its substitution of three separate personages, two with limited form, comprising a Godhood, is the foundation of claims that Mormons are not Christians. Mouw tosses aside this contention by quoting the 19th century scholar Charles Hodge, a prominent Calvinist. Hodge disagreed fervently with an earlier scholar, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who rejected the Bible as infallible and divine. Nevertheless, and this is the important point, Hodge was convinced that the deceased Schleiermacher, who in his lifetime had admired and adored Christ, was with the Savior. Mouw writes: And then Hodge adds this tribute to Schleiermacher: “Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomever Christ is God, St. John assures us, Christ is a Savior.”

The idea, from any religion that believes in Christ, that one persons’ faith in Christ’s atonement is invalid due to doctrinal disputes, is noxious. Mouw understands that. He’s a remarkable example of religious tolerance, willing to debate long-disputed doctrinal points with Latter-day Saints but willing to concede spiritual equanimity.

Frankly, “Talking with Mormons” should be required reading for LDS missionaries, both full-time and local.

Moux easily dismisses the LDS-is-a-cult argument by pointing out the wide variety of organizations and media that daily engage in debate over Mormon doctrine, as well as the many efforts by LDS leadership to engage in dialogues, whether with other religions or the media. The book contains an account of evangelical apologist Ravi Zacharias, and Mouw, speaking in the Salt Lake City tabernacle, the result of a 2004 invitation from LDS church leaders.

The author takes the time to find related ground between doctrines, such as a latter-day prophet and latter-day scriptures, that are usually points of dispute. This effort to look toward similarities, rather than easily leap to long-repeated, well-rehearsed attacks, is admirable and should be reciprocated by Latter-day Saints when talking with people of other faith.

On the Joseph Smith question, Mouw compares him to other prophets who have allegedly spoke to God and provided scripture. His example is Mohammed. Also, Mouw invites evangelicals to think about Mormons, and others, not as “‘How do we keep them from taking over the world?’ to one that emerges when we ask ‘What is it about their teachings that speaks to what they understand to be their deepest human needs and yearnings?”

Framing the question in that manner invites shared knowledge and increased empathy, rather than the sour faux triumph of hurling a negative. However, it must be again stressed that Mouw’s advice is as much for Mormons and others as it is for evangelicals.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Review: Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley ...

Historian Melvin C. Johnson's new book, Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West," Greg Kofford Books, 2019, is a very interesting account of a man's life through various episodes of early Mormonism. Hawley was a not a major figure in the faith's history; he was mostly limited to regional prominence. However, his life traveled through significant eras of Mormon history.

Hawley's parents were baptized in the first half of the 1830s; Hawley was baptized in the midst of the Missouri turmoil and was part of the forced exodus from the state. His family ended in Wisconsin and his father served under church leader Lyman Wight. After Joseph Smith's murder, the family followed Wight's splinter group to Texas. After a short, unsuccessful marriage, Hawley had a successful lifetime marriage with Sylvia Johnson. He also helped build the Zodiac Temple and lived and served in the Cherokee Nation.

The decline of Wight's colony prompted Hawley's family, and his brother George's family, to cross the plains to Utah and join the "Brighamites." He and his family eventually helped to start the town of Pine Valley and build the church in Southern Utah. Hawley was a major figure there, serving as presiding elder, settling disputes, leading efforts at building, road creation and other initiatives. He rubbed both ecclesiastical and social shoulders with church leaders, including Apostle Erastus Snow and even President Brigham Young.

However, after serving an LDS Church mission in the late 1860s, Hawley slowly reconsidered his faith decisions, and he and his family left the "Brighamites" to join the "Josephites," or the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (now Church of Christ). He remained a faithful member for the rest of his life.

Modern church may regard Hawley's actions as an apostasy but I'm sure he did not. Johnson's account underscores the animus between the two major LDS factions in the late middle 19th century but also notes both faiths' strong reliance on the teachings of Joseph Smith and belief in new scripture, such as the Book of Mormon. Also, Hawley reconnected with family members, most notably his mother, during his mission to the RLDS, as well as old friends. He must have felt a strong pull.

Hawley's was a hard life. He and Sylvia buried several small children during the years in Pine Valley. Johnson notes how dangerous life was for youngsters, and women, in that era, particularly when a family did not have a secure house-like living arrangement. He also notes the terrifying, adverse affects that colonization had on the Native Americans, particularly in Southern Utah. The loss of land and traditional ways of living killed many, and reduced them to a begging existence, which generally led to scorn, rather than compassion, from settlers. Johnson notes that Hawley's autobiography virtually ignores the Native Americans, despite his and others' impact on their lives.

Hawley's autobiography is very sparse on details. One manner in which Johnson beefs up his book is to provide additional research on experiences Hawley shared, such as life for pioneers on the trail, the experiences of women in early Mormonism, how colonization affected Native Americans, slavery, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc. The massacre is a central incident in Hawley's life. He claims not to have been involved; indeed, a Johnson reports, he says he nearly lost his life protesting the murderous plans. That may be true; but the possibility also exists that Hawley may have succumbed to the pressure. Many of the victims were shot by revolvers. Hawley was one of only two men in the area who possessed revolvers.

I have neglected to mention that Hawley and family were in Utah during the Mormon Reformation. In the book Johnson provides a list of questions members were asked during the Reformation. An interesting anecdote involves an alleged conversation between Hawley and future LDS Prophet Wilford Woodruff in which the latter tells Hawley that some LDS apostles had confessed to adultery.

Hawley's  work and efforts in Utah were mostly respected. It's interesting he left the faith after a generation of setting roots in Pine Valley. It's possible that his failure to be called as bishop to the Pine Valley ward hurt him. He was called to be first counselor to a relative of the Snow apostles. This may have rankled as he had ruled against the Snows' interests earlier in a timber dispute and might have felt his "demotion" was a form of payback. In any event, after his mission to the RLDS, Johnson recaps Hawley's reassessing of personal religious beliefs, including church leadership lineage, a key dispute between "Brighamites" and "Josephites." Hawley reversed his belief in apostolic succession in family of a familial succession. This was likely prompted by his visits to RLDS prophet Joseph Smith III and his brother Alexander Smith.

Just before he left Mormonism, Hawley, who had always resisted polygamy, went back on his word to take a second wife, an action Erastus Snow had urged him to do. That probably sealed his decision to leave. I suspect his short-lived proposal to a much younger woman may have been a last effort to cling to a faith he was departing. It was doomed, as Johnson makes it clear Hawley and his wife Sylvia shared a lifetime bond that had no room for plural marriage.

As Johnson notes, Hawley's commitment to the RLDS late in life included omissions and fabrications that he had displayed while faithful to his Utah-based faith. For example, in a legal case, Hawley parroted the RLDS pleasant fiction that Joseph Smith had not taught or promulgated polygamy. He clearly knew that was not true.

Although he was conditioned by biases and prejudices that dominated his times, the Hawley depicted by biographer Johnson appears a basically decent, hard-working, loyal family-based man. He was clearly an asset to the various ecclesiastical leaders he swore allegiance to during his life. In fact, as Johnson notes, he received a second endowment during his tenure in Utah, one that guaranteed his exaltation.

We benefit from books such as "Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley." They underscore the uniqueness of the Mormon historical experience, for better or worse. Johnson's commendable effort provides us a looking glass into the daily life of an individual who helped shape that experience.

David O. McKay diaries charts his life as a prophet

"Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O McKay," (Signature Books, 2019), edited by scholar Harvard S. Heath, contains endearing examples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' prophet. In one passage, McKay expresses how much he enjoyed an evening at the movies, watching "All About Eve." Throughout the diaries, McKay reveals his quiet pride in being treated graciously and with respect by U.S. presidents and other major political figures, notably presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

His personal emotions are revealed in diary entries. He hated the task of approving temple sealing cancellations. In another example, after what must have been a contentious meeting with his apostolic peers over a church personnel issue, McKay bristles that he had never been treated so harshly before in such a setting.

McKay served as LDS prophet from 1951 until his death in early 1970. His tenure was a bridge between Mormonism's foundation as a North American religion into its now global structure. A very conservative leader, fiercely anti-communist, McKay nevertheless served as a successful moderating influence to the political extremism of Apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who after serving as Agricultural Secretary to Eisenhower nursed national political ambitions. McKay also kept in check the ambitions of Brigham Young University, and church education leader, Ernest L. Wilkinson. A significant portion of the diaries include a long, back-and-forth saga over whether to retain then-named Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, or move it to Idaho Falls. McKay eventually chose to keep it in Rexburg, contrary to Wilkinson's wishes.

There are dozens of issues the diaries recall, often capturing the most private discussions in the highest councils of the LDS Church. They include concerns over the publication of Bruce R. McConkie's iconic "Mormon Doctrine," which McKay and others fretted contained more than 1,000 errors; quelling a fundamentalist rebellion among LDS missionaries in Europe; dealing with mismanagement; lobbying politicians on issues the church considered to be moral issues; trying to find a solution to several thousand black adherents in Nigeria who had already formed an unofficial church branch; dealing with Hollywood over a potential film adaptation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre; working with a financial expert -- successfully -- to improve the church's finances; debating the need for correlation in Sunday School and Priesthood lessons; planning the growth of temples, including some outside of the United States; and more.

We learn from the diaries the conversations McKay had with Utah leaders over policy, including the head of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce and the publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune. With the Deseret News, McKay enjoyed considerable editorial power, and the diaries include one instance of his anger at a Deseret News editorial piece critical of Eisenhower that apparently slipped in without knowledge of higher ups at the paper. Another early incident in McKay's tenure was helping a U.S. congressman who had lied about his record arrange his resignation. He was deferred to by Utah's most senior politicians although his dealings with iconoclastic Utah pol J. Bracken Lee was more complex.

The diaries are excellent example of transparency that has been needed and -- in recent years -- of which we have seen a commendable increase of. Also captured are moments of unity and love expressed between the members of the First Presidency, Apostles, and others in the meetings. It's a reminder that despite the many debates, the group would function as supportive team once decisions were made. McKay, for most of his tenure, retained a strong independence, which weakened in his final years.

The diaries do no shirk from the racism of the period. While McKay was pragmatic on the black exclusion policy, allowing baptisms in cases where African lineage could not be conclusively proved, he did follow a cardinal policy at that time. It is distressing to read passages in which church leaders fret over Utah State University allowing black athletes, whom the leaders fear will date white young women, or read discussions to discourage the Armed Forces from moving African-American families to the Tooele area. The best that can be gleaned from this issue are indications from McKay, and others, that the policy would eventually be overturned via a revelation. In the diaries, it is sometimes justified using the context of the early apostles denying gentiles the opportunity to hear the Gospel, until the Lord determined otherwise.

Portions of the Heath-edited diaries include observations and notes from others, including McKay's longtime secretary Clare Middlemiss. Her entries become more poignant through the latter 1960s, as McKay's health slowly but consistently declines. One strength of the diaries is we experience the passage of a prophet's life. The initial burst of enthusiasm. The consistent energy of the leader's prime years, including highs and lows. We experience the personal strengths of his life, his relationship with his wife, Emma Ray, and the quiet fortitude his home in Huntsville often provided him. And we are witnesses to his decline, the more-frequent health problems and the longer periods of rest that are needed as his end nears.

These are poignantly captured, often by Middlemiss, with McKay's -- and occasionally his secretary's frustration -- with the prophet being excused from church duties by family members understandably concerned at the toll it was taking on his life. One of the more heart-rending accounts is very late in McKay's life when the prophet, with eyes closed, clutches his secretary Middlemiss' hand, saying he wants her with him. She recalls in the diaries that it would be the last time she was in his office.

Stephen L Richards, J. Rueben Clark, Benson, Harold B Lee, N. Eldon Tanner, Hugh B. Brown, Wilkinson, Alvin R. Dyer, a young Thomas S. Monson, all and many others occupy the diaries. I haven't done justice to how important this collection is to learn more about McKay's life, his role in the continuing evolution of the Latter-day Saints, and insights into how a church is governed. The best solution -- read it. The dead-tree book is expensive, but the Kindle version is an excellent buy at under $10.

-- Review by Doug Gibson

Diaries of the ‘cowboy apostle’ Ivins include secret Mormon plural marriages, political intrigue

On Sept. 12, 1932, Mormon apostle Anthony W. Ivins, first counselor to LDS President Heber J. Grant, made this diary entry. “On this date Prest. [Heber J.] Grant, who has been unwell for some time with prostrate gland trouble went to Chicago, for the purpose of undergoing an operation. He remained there for several weeks, during which time I was again alone in the office. [D]uring this time the October General Conference was held. I directed the [blank].” … According to editor, Elizabeth O. Anderson, Ivins stopped keeping a diary at this time, and died in 1934, at the then-very old age of 82.

Most of the entries in the latest Signature Books publication of early LDS leaders’ diaries are of the home, travel and work life “mundane.” Nevertheless, like other diaries, such as the 19th century Mormon apostle Abraham H. Cannon, “Cowboy Apostle: The Diaries of Anthony W. Ivins, 1875-1932,” it is fascinating reading for history buffs as well as scholars (Link). A day-to-day glimpse into the leaders who shaped the LDS Church in the first century of its existence. Ivins, called the “Cowboy Apostle” because he was an impressive physical specimen for most of his life, was a contrast to a typical LDS leader 100 to 120 years ago. He was a monogamist who was nevertheless sent to head the church’s Mexican mission, and conduct secret polygamous marriages years after the first Manifesto was issued. He was an active liberal Democrat who mulled a run for Utah governor and also clashed with another Mormon apostle/monogamist, Sen. Reed Smoot, a Republican.

Ivins arrived in Utah as an infant and his family settled in St. George. A cousin of Heber J. Grant, Ivins married a daughter of Mormon apostle Erastus Snow. In his early years, he was both a lawman and a district attorney in Southern Utah. He also helped on church exploration trips to Arizona and New Mexico.

There are a lot of “sexy” parts (think controversial) in the diaries, and I’ll get to some, but I prefer the “mundane” duties, the experiences, a mission president or apostle conducts during his life. Even today, the LDS Church hierarchy live lives cloistered even from the most active of members. That obscurity provides them a type of celebrity status in the church. Reading Ivins’ accounts of bargaining with a Mexican general to get land for suitable mission quarters, or taking in a “cockfight,” of all things, or resolving a dispute between two subordinates in the mission, or reading, “… went to Tecalco where we held meetings, I met a number of my old converts all of who I was glad to see & they seemed to reciprocate my feelings … (1902)” This is the wheat that provides nourishment for history to be recalled and taught.

As mentioned, Ivins was involved in expeditions as a young man, often under the supervision of his father in law, the apostle Erastus Snow. This entry from January 1878 is typical of Ivins’ life at the time: “This morning Bro. [Erastus] Snow started on with our team to camp at Navajo Springs and wait for us there. There being no forge at the ferry we could not weld the broken tire. We took a piece of heavy iron an[d] riveted it on the outside and I took the wheel back to bring up the wagons while Bro. Hatch made an axle for the one he had broken.”

Ivins witnessed the execution of John D. Lee for the massacre at Mountain Meadows. “… their guns resting on the spokes, the posse fired and Lee sank back upon the coffin, without a struggle, dead.”

A fascinating part of the diaries deals with an expedition, associated with Brigham Young Academy, to try to find Book of Mormon history. The late novelist Samuel Taylor has described this unsuccessful journey, but Ivins provides first-hand diary recollections, detailing the anguish some of the missionaries felt as the expedition stalled long before it could move beyond Mexico and into South America. As Ivins relates in his diaries from 1900, LDS President Lorenzo Snow and other church leaders urged the expedition leaders to disband and return, adding the promise that they would be honorably discharged from their “mission attempt.” The leader of the expedition, Brother Benjamin Cluff Jr., at one point, writes Ivins, “… said he greatly desired to go forward,” (adding) “… if he returned now the expedition would be a failure & his reputation was worth [more] to him than his life.” Ivins relates how church leadership gently tried to reassure Cluff and others that the mission could be ceased.

An interesting tidbit from the diaries is Ivins’ recording a speech from Church President Joseph F. Smith which specifically denounced the already-old “Adam-God” doctrine that Brigham Young had preached with enthusiasm. Ivins’ writes on April 8, 1912 “… Prest. [Charles W.] Penrose spoke on tithing. Adam God theory. Prest [Joseph F.] Smith. Adam God doctrine not a doctrine of the Church. …”

In the appendix of the diaries, there is a list of marriages that Ivins performed in Mexico, including many plural marriages after the First Manifesto. However, after the Second Manifesto, from President Joseph F. Smith at the time of Smoot’s efforts to become a U.S. senator, the ban on polygamy was finally taken seriously. Ivins’ diaries record the discussions between leadership in dealing with these post 1900 marriages. He writes in 1910, “... I have been in council with my quorum. … The question of plural marriages were discussed & it was decided that cases … where plural marriages were entered into prior to 1904 the parties to such marriages should not be molested unless they be cases where the interests of the church are involved. Where men are in prominence in the Church who have taken plural wives since Prest. [Wilford] Woodruff manifesto be removed where it can be done without giving unnecessary offence.” Prominent apostles disciplined for late plural marriages were John W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley.

Ivins lived a fascinating life; the diaries support that statement. Late in his life he disagreed with a statement that political rival Senator Smoot had done more for Mormonism than “all the missionaries,” countering that “he {Smoot] was not the only man in the church.”

These Signature diaries are very expensive but a treasures for those who love delving through history. Hopefully, they are in libraries for those with smaller wallets and purses to enjoy as well. (Another excellent review of this book is from Andrew Hamilton of the Association for Mormon Letters.)

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Isaac Russell, New York Times journalist, PR specialist for the Mormon Church

(Originally published at StandardBlogs in 2012)

At this year’s Mormon History Association conference in Calgary, two contributors, Michael Harold Paulos and Kenneth L. Cannon II, continued an annual practice of producing a keepsake booklet for attendees. This year’s booklet provided an abridgement of the Reed Smoot U.S. Senate hearings from Feb. 20, 1907, as well as a short feature on essays and correspondence provided by newspaperman Isaac Russell, both a Mormon and leading journalist in the first 20 years of the 20th century. In the booklet, the authors recount how Russell used his influence to recruit former President Theodore Roosevelt to harshly criticize a much publicized “magazine crusade” against the Mormon Church.

As the authors mention, Russell, whose jobs included a stint at the New York Times, was frustrated enough to write letters to magazines such as “Pearson’s,” “McClure’s,” and “Everybody’s,” who engaged in muckraking against the Mormons. In 1911, Russell, in what proved to be a brilliant public relations stroke, recruited the still very popular former President Theodore Roosevelt to criticize the muckrakers. In a long letter to Roosevelt, Russell claimed that the attacks against Mormonism in the magazines, which largely dealt with allegations of polygamy and theological power, originated from older stories, promoted by the anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune, which had circulated the accusations that Roosevelt — while president — backed Sen. Reed Smoot’s continued tenure in the Senate in exchange for the Mormons delivering the electoral votes of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming to Republicans in 1908.

Russell’s letter, carefully crafted, was designed to strike nerves within Roosevelt that were still boiling. The former president had always been angered by the allegations that he had bartered Smoot’s tenure for votes. For Roosevelt, Smoot not being a polygamist was enough for him to stay in the Senate. He was not convinced by charges from the Salt Lake Tribune and others that Smoot would be a puppet for Mormon President Joseph F. Smith while in the Senate.

To add pepper to Roosevelt’s anger, Russell reminded the former president that the current round of muckraking against Mormons in 1911 derived largely from charges made by Frank J. Cannon, who edited the Salt Lake Tribune when the corruption charges against Roosevelt were aired. At the time, Cannon, an excommunicated Mormon from a very prominent church family, was the leading critic of Utah, Joseph F. Smith and the Mormon Church. His series of charges in “Everybody’s” magazine would become a best-selling book and later he would make a fortune as a traveling anti-Mormon lecturer.

Roosevelt was no fan of Cannon, so placement of his name worked well for Russell’s purposes. The former president penned two letters to Russell. One was eventually published, as a letter to Russell, in “Collier’s Weekly” magazine, edited by Russell’s “good friend and sometimes-mentor, Norman Hapgood,” quotes the keepsake.

In the letter, Roosevelt, fervently and with outrage denies the accusations made in the muckraking pieces, calls the writers slanderers and also writes, “The accusation is not merely false, but so ludicrous that it is difficult to discuss it seriously. Of course, it is always possible to find creatures vile enough to make accusations of this kind. The important thing to remember is that the men who give currency to this charge, whether editors of magazines or the presidents of colleges, show themselves in their turn unfit for association with decent men when they secure the repetition and encouragement of such scandals, which they perfectly well know to be false.”

In an explanatory note after Roosevelt’s letter, Russell was able to get some digs in at the Salt Lake Tribune, which he accused of being run by a small group of persons feeding defamatory information about the Mormons to muckraking magazines across the country.

It was a brilliant feat of public relations produced by Russell, a very public limited approval of the Mormons by a popular former president and a public slap in the face to major magazines as well as to Cannon and other opponents of Russell’s church. As the authors of the keepsake write, it wasn’t all true. “Although Reed Smoot worried that Colonel Roosevelt would turn on the Mormons if he knew the truth about the continuation of polygamy, almost all other church leaders embraced” the Roosevelt letter.

The reaction from the muckrakers were less cordial. In Collier’s Weekly,” Harvey J. O’Higgins, who co-wrote Cannon’s anti-Mormon book, “Under the Prophet in Utah,” wrote a response to Roosevelt. It includes, “The machinery and discipline of the Mormon Church make the most perfect and autocratic church control of which we have any exact record. Because of this perfection of control, the new polygamy has been successfully hidden for these many years,” wrote O’Higgins.

With Roosevelt as an ally, however, Russell, and the Mormons had scored a battle victory over their adversaries. Church leaders were so pleased with Russell’s contacts and influence that he became, as the authors put it, a “secret press bureau” for the LDS Church in New York City, all while a full-time reporter for the New York Times. The keepsake provides examples of Russell’s Mormon press duties, including a couple of letters to his own newspaper, the Times, that he ghosted under the names of Eastern States LDS Mission presidents Ben E. Rich and Walter P. Monson.

In 1915, Russell received a personal letter from Joseph F. Smith, where the prophet tells Russell, “It is my sincere desire that you should continue as you are doing in defense of the truth and justice and the honor of your people, and always remember from whence you came while mingling with men who know not the truth but are given to following the customs and sins of the world.”

What a fascinating bit of history. Paulos and Cannon merit credit for bringing these candid tales, warts and all, of history, theology, journalism, spin and otherwise to interested readers.

The booklet keepsake, “Mormonism and the Politics of the Progressive Era,” is privately published by DMT Publishing, Salt Lake City. Copies are being provided to university libraries in Utah and other parts of the nation as well as to the LDS Church Historical Department.

--Doug Gibson

Did an angel with a drawn sword force Joseph Smith to start polygamy?

In his biography of Joseph Smith, “Rough Stone Rolling,” author Richard Lyman Bushman relates a popular Mormon legend/history regarding the Mormon prophet and his embrace of polygamy. He writes, “By delaying plural marriage, Joseph risked provoking God’s wrath. Mary (Elizabeth) Rollins Lightner, one of his plural wives, later said Joseph told her about the pressure he was under. ‘The angel came to me three times between the year of ’34 and ’42 and said I was to obey the principle or he would [s]lay me.’ Others told the story with an additional detail: the angel held a drawn sword.”

The would-be “destroying angel” that prompted Joseph Smith to get moving on polygamy is one of those “legends” that I heard from parents and others growing up as a young Latter-day Saint. I had always assumed it was another legend, such as the White Horse Prophecy, that gets passed around so often that it achieves a false legitimacy. However, there seems to be enough persons aware of this claim that it should be placed above folklore status.

In the book, “Nauvoo Polygamy, but we called it celestial marriage,” author George D. Smith adds to Bushman’s account with one caveat. He reports that Smith’s plural wife, Rollins Lightner, also included the drawn sword in her story. From “Nauvoo Polygamy,” D. Smith repeats a statement Rollins Lightner made in 1902, claiming Joseph Smith told her he had been commanded to marry her as far back as 1834, but had resisted, until, as she related “the Angel came to him three times, the last time with a drawn Sword and threatened his life.”

Rollins Lightner, quite reasonably, relates that she asked Smith “if God told him So, why did he not come and tell me [?]” Apparently, Rollins Lightner did have what she regarded as an angelic visitation. She said, “”… and an Angel came to me, it went through me like lightning.” The pair were married in 1842.

LDS historian Brian C. Hales, who has done a lot of research into polygamy and the early Mormon Church, cites LDS Apostle Erastus Snow as a supporting source that Joseph Smith felt his life was in danger if he did not implement polygamy. Hales writes, “Erastus Snow claimed that Joseph had ‘to plead on his knees before the Angel for his Life.” (Hales’ research lists many persons who were told, either secondhand or by Smith, of the angels’ visits and displeasure. The earliest account he has is 1854.)

If, as most historians believe, Fanny Alger was Joseph Smith’s first plural wife, there was several-years time of “foot-dragging” before the Mormon prophet began to implement polygamy. As Hales and other historians note, not-surprising opposition to the practice by Smith’s lawful wife, Emma, probably was the strongest reason for Smith’s reluctance. Emma Smith had reportedly kicked servant Alger out of the Smith home. Although reports are that she attempted to understand and countenance her husband’s polygamous efforts during the Nauvoo period, she was never able to accept it. After her husband’s murder, a key reason for her refusal to follow Brigham Young with most of the Saints to the Rocky Mountains was due to polygamy.

Bushman brings up another reason that Smith may have been reluctant to embrace polygamy. It was that skeptics of new religions tended to look for dysfunctional sexual behaviors as a reason to condemn the churches or movements. Bushman writes, “From the … sixteenth century to the camp meetings of the nineteenth, critics expected sexual improprieties from religious enthusiasts. Marital experiments by contemporary radical sects increased the suspicions. … With old barriers coming down, people were on the lookout for sexual aberrations.”

Joseph Smith was certainly smart enough to realize how Mormons would be if the young church embraced polygamy. He also, it is virtually universally acknowledged by historians, loved his wife Emma deeply and was loathe to do anything that would hurt her. These conflicts must have disturbed him.

The idea that lust motivated Joseph Smith’s desire for polygamy may satisfy his most severe critics, but the historical record does not support it. A wait of several years after the failed union with Fanny Alger shows reluctance for the practice, not desire. One need not believe that Joseph Smith pleaded before an angel with a sword to acknowledge that. The doctrine of plural marriage, as Smith and other early Mormon leaders understood it, was essential to increase eternal families, and one’s glory in the after-life. It’s likely that many of Smith’s plural marriages, particularly the ones that involved plural marriages to women already married, were sexless and intended only for the afterlife.

To active Mormons, and others who read all the church’s scriptures, the God described in the Doctrine and Covenants is, at least in verbal rhetoric, similar to the God of the Old Testament. Frankly, it’s not that difficult to picture a god of that temperament sending an angel with a sword to “persuade” Joseph Smith to start polygamy.

Nevertheless, whether the angel is a part of Mormon history, or just part of Mormon lore, will always be debated. Church leaders invited that discussion in 1934, when LDS apostle Melvin J. Ballard, wrote, “The statement … concerning the angel appearing with the drawn sword is not a matter that is in our own church history. While it may be all true, the church has not pronounced it authentic nor has it contradicted it.” (Hales, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Volume 1a)

Of course, that was during a time that the LDS Church leadership was slowly pursuing a more modern, accommodating church that would assimilate well with the rest of the world. Almost 50 years earlier, a period where the church was still embracing polygamy, Hales writes, “Future apostle Orson F. Whitney, grandson of Heber C. Kimball and son of Joseph Smith’s plural wife Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, apparently believed the story genuine. His 1888 biography of Heber C. Kimball includes this statement:

‘A grand and glorious principle had been revealed, and for years had slumbered in the breast of God’s Prophet, awaiting the time when, with safety to himself and the Church, it might be confided to the sacred keeping of a chosen few. That time had now come. An angel with a flaming sword descended from the courts of glory and, confronting the Prophet, commanded him in the name of the Lord to establish the principle so long concealed from the knowledge of the Saints and of the world — that of plural knowledge.’

I don’t know how many persons today believe in, or even know of, the alleged angel that threatened Joseph Smith to marry other women, but it clearly merits inclusion as a part of LDS Church history.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs