One Stake’s Resource List for Struggling Members

That’s a good step forward. Of course there are things I could be critical about regarding the contents of the list, but really, props are in order for legitimizing the issues.

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The MMM essay is very good. It describes the condition of the time well, but it doesn’t avoid laying blame ultimately on the local stake presidents and the rhetoric from SLC and Pres. Young.

The book it references that is on the list is excellent.

What is MMM?

Mountain Meadows Massacre. It happened after the Saints moved to Utah. They were afraid of attacks from outsiders (with apparently good reason). There was a group of apparently peaceful outsiders headed west. Someone in the church (it’s murky as to who) thought they were going to attack Mormon settlements so they dispatched an army to stop them. The Mormon army ended up massacring all the men. Not sure about the women, but the children and survivors were then placed in Mormon homes.

The immediate, Mormon commander took the fall for it, and I think he was executed. But some believe the order to execute the innocent travelers came from higher officials in the church, perhaps even Brigham Young. History is silent on that one.

DHO apologized for what happened in the PBS.org special on the Mormons, indicating “there is no doubt that MEMBERS of our church were involved”.

This is one part of our history that has given me pause over the years. I learned about it on the steps of a non-member’s I approached about learning the gospel when i was 23. The fact that I knew nothing about it was evidence, to him, that I’d been brainwashed. It left an indelible memory on me — at the time, thinking it was an oversight that no one had ever told me about it. Now I know it was probably deliberate.

It helped that DHO apologized, or at least, expressed regret for what happened, and that members were involved. That has helped a bit. But the MMM is problematic for me…

The idea that a stake has made that list is encouraging, thanks for the info Ray.

MMM is a topic that I also have wanted to understand and have studied deeply. Two of the most troubling things about it for me are:

1) the Cedar City RS (if I remember correctly) met together as their men marched to the meadows and prayed for the safety of those who were tasked with “avenging the blood of the prophets.” (my memory places this info in the Walker, Turley, Leonard book)

2) the culture of that place and time was so fixated on obeying your leaders that one man who felt compelled to speak up against the plan to attack the emigrants feared for his life as he left the meeting (and two men had been sent to deal with him, but they missed him because he took another route home). Other sources also said that the penalty for disobedience could be anything up to and including death. One man was beaten delirious and carried the effects of it for the rest of his life because he disobeyed council/policy by aiding the emigrants or something as simple.

With this in mind I don’t think a direct order from BY was necessary, as SD points out it may seem to us that it would be from the way we view the world, but the word of local leaders was as binding. The decision was made by stake presidents Haight and Dame, they tasked John D. Lee and others to carry it out. John D. Lee was the only one officially sentenced and executed for the crime. Late in life Lee wondered why he had been abandoned by BY and the church when all he ever did was his duty.

I think that the list is very good. I was not previously aware of a good number of these resources.

From my brief perusal of the references I found them to be apologetic. I do not use that term disparagingly. This for the most part does not appear to be the realm of staw-men arguments and ad-hominem attacks. Much of what I see here is well researched and well written. Yet I perceive it (the small amount that I have looked at so far) to be written with an LDS pro-faith slant as is the stated purpose of the list in the first place.

There are often no easy answers for many of these issues, but as members feel from their local leaders a sincere, open, honest, sympathetic, and informed desire to work through their concerns, they will often overcome their anxieties and emerge with a more mature commitment to the Gospel.

I will provide just a few examples.

Steven C. Harper, “Suspicion or Trust: Reading the Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper (ed. Millet; Deseret Book, 2011).

This article had some great information and offered good arguments why it would be a mistake to assume that just because JS had conflicting story elements in different accounts that he was lying or making things up. The article repeatedly called the event a vision :thumbup: but it never addressed the assumption that vision might be code for manifestation. There was material about memory, and audience, and POV and I just felt that not mentioning that God and Jesus could have appeared to JS in his head or that JS could have remembered the vision differently when recalled through the lens of his later life experiences. I believe that this piece was a defense against critics aimed at keeping room open for the traditional vision/visitation narrative – rather than an exploration of possibilities.

Kerry Muhlestein, “Egyptian Papyri and the Book of Abraham: A Faithful, Egyptological Point of View,”

I was bothered that Kerry made repeated reference to others basing their conclusions on false assumptions and that many good willed seekers of truth had been deceived. This to me is not the language of scholarly discourse. Kerry then proceeds with her own information that some names in the BofA could correspond to actual place names in the middle east, and that the owner and producer of the book could have had access to writings about Abraham, and that Egyptians could have had some limited use of human sacrifice as described in the BofA (though not very often), and finally that the pictures from the facsimiles may have very little to do with the BofA at all but just that they may have been packaged together and the rest of the scroll has been lost to time. All that is well and good for establishing that the BofA might possibly have been truly translated from a record that we no longer have. But it appears to me that to get there several leaps of faith or assumptions were required. I do not like that her assumptions seem to be ok but the assumptions of others are called false and deceptive.

Gospel Topics Essay: “Peace and Violence among 19th Century Latter-day Saints”

I felt that this article was generally factual and helpful. However, I felt that it sometimes used vague language or implied things that I do not feel are well documented.

Aggrieved, some of the emigrants threatened to join incoming troops in fighting against the Saints.

I had always heard rumors of the wagon train being provocative and even that they were somehow related to the people that drove the saints out of Missouri or Illinous or had killed the prophet. Unfortunately I have never found any credible contemporary reports that the emigrants where threatening to the Saints. I saw that there was a footnote and thought maybe they have a reference – alas it was just to say that the emigrants may have blamed the Mormons for some cattle that had died along the trail. The referenced “threats” could have occurred but I understand it to be disputed and it given as a fact. The next sentence says that some Saints “ignored the threats.” I guess I mainly object to the definite language. I would feel better if it had said “might have threatened” or that local church leaders acting on “reports of threats.”

Isaac C. Haight, a stake president and militia leader, sent John D. Lee, a militia major, to lead an attack on the emigrant company. When the president reported the plan to his council, other leaders objected and requested that he call off the attack and instead send an express rider to Brigham Young in Salt Lake City for guidance. But the men Haight had sent to attack the emigrants carried out their plans before they received the order not to attack. The emigrants fought back, and a siege ensued.

Over the next few days, events escalated, and Mormon militiamen planned and carried out a deliberate massacre.

Supposing that the attack began before word arrived that it had been called off, why did the “siege” continue after the counter order arrived? Who made the choice to not only continue the siege but to move forward with the massacre (without having yet received back word from BY)? I am not implying anything sinister – just that this is my honest question that is not addressed in the article.

They lured the emigrants from their circled wagons with a false flag of truce and, aided by Paiute Indians they had recruited, slaughtered them. Between the first attack and the final slaughter, the massacre destroyed the lives of 120 men, women, and children in a valley known as Mountain Meadows.

I am no expert on MMM but I had thought that the Paiutes kinda lost interest after the first attack drew out into a siege. How many Paiutes stuck around and had stomach for the actual killing of unarmed men, women, and children? If only a handful of Paiutes stuck around and the slaughter was 90 or 95% perpetrated by the Saints – would it be technically true but also misleading to state that they were “aided by Paiute Indians”? Notice the passive voice in the second sentence? The “massacre” destroyed the lives. How exactly did they die? What was the ratio between men, women, and children that were murdered?

The militiamen sought to cover up the crime by placing the entire blame on local Paiutes, some of whom were also members of the Church.

Two Latter-day Saints were eventually excommunicated from the Church for their participation, and a grand jury that included Latter-day Saints indicted nine men. Only one participant, John D. Lee, was convicted and executed for the crime, which fueled false allegations that the massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young.

Almost all scholars agree that there is little to no evidence that BY ordered the massacre. What is well documented is that BY was directly involved in the cover up and in eventually scapegoating John D. Lee. Again I feel that the wording of “The militiamen sought to cover up the crime” and “false allegations that the massacre had been ordered by Brigham Young” though technically true are also misleading in what they do not say.

In summary I feel that the resources assembled in this list “lead with faith” and have a faith biased slant. That is no secret and is even the self disclosed purpose for the list. I am actually very pleased by the existance of a list like this. I hope it signals a movement to work with doubts and concerns in a more loving and contructive manner than what has sometimes been the case in times past.

Positive step forward overall. :thumbup:

The first quote is not mine, so I deleted my name from it.