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Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints https://www.lds.org/topics/peace-and-violence-among-19th-century-latter-day-saints?lang=eng&query=scholar ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.lds.org/topics/peace-and-violence-among-19th-century-latter-day-saints?lang=eng&query=scholar It seems to be more of a statement of history, not necessarily pointing fingers or taking blame.
Hmm new essay, but seems to be nearly exact statements I heard growing up. So no new reasoning. Very similar to many PR statements made by many businesses. I’m more interested at the moment at what Apples PR will respond to the Dr. Dre video of the beats buyout. Interesting. I think there is much good information there, …but I’m not sure all of it paints the full picture. Regarding Mountain Meadows, on the subject of emigrants speaking from frustration with threatening language:
Quote:Although some Saints ignored these threats, other local Church leaders and members in Cedar City, Utah, advocated violence. 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. 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. Only small children—those believed to be too young to be able to tell what had happened—were spared. The express rider returned two days after the massacre. He carried a letter from Brigham Young telling local leaders to “not meddle” with the emigrants and to allow them to pass through southern Utah.
Is this statement compatible with the fact that after the council met (this meeting came after the initial siege, to discuss information about the siege), Haight met privately with Lee and Dame (the other stake president), and because of additional information not disclosed to the council (the emigrant train knew that one of their men that had escaped the encampment to seek help had been killed by a Mormon) the local leaders agreed (if reluctantly) with Haight’s assertion that the massacre must be ordered? It looks to me like it is implying the militiamen out on the field took matters into their own hands, when in reality most of them did not want to participate in the order to kill the entire train.
I do agree that perhaps they could have treated each of these as separate topics and gone into some more depth. When I first encountered the reference to the reformation, I’m thinking “What reformation?” and I still think it’s very unclear what they’re referring to there. I think giving each of the main topics it’s own essay might have afforded them the opportunity to give more detail. On the other hand, maybe that’s not what they wanted because the overall theme seems to be “This is what life was like on the frontier and Mormons are people, too, so they took part in it.” DarkJedi wrote:I do agree that perhaps they could have treated each of these as separate topics and gone into some more depth. When I first encountered the reference to the reformation, I’m thinking “What reformation?” and I still think it’s very unclear what they’re referring to there. I think giving each of the main topics it’s own essay might have afforded them the opportunity to give more detail. On the other hand, maybe that’s not what they wanted because the overall theme seems to be “This is what life was like on the frontier and Mormons are people, too, so they took part in it.”
I am just curious DJ. Were you expecting a large multinational corporation to release a different statement then that or be more complete? I haven’t seen that happen yet. It would be great if it did happen, but I have yet to really see it as any information released must be sensitive to the image of the business.
Forgotten_Charity wrote:DarkJedi wrote:I do agree that perhaps they could have treated each of these as separate topics and gone into some more depth. When I first encountered the reference to the reformation, I’m thinking “What reformation?” and I still think it’s very unclear what they’re referring to there. I think giving each of the main topics it’s own essay might have afforded them the opportunity to give more detail. On the other hand, maybe that’s not what they wanted because the overall theme seems to be “This is what life was like on the frontier and Mormons are people, too, so they took part in it.”
I am just curious DJ. Were you expecting a large multinational corporation to release a different statement then that or be more complete? I haven’t seen that happen yet. It would be great if it did happen, but I have yet to really see it as any information released must be sensitive to the image of the business.
No, I wasn’t really expecting anything and had in fact wondered if the church was done releasing essays. I do think that the Race and the Priesthood essay did break some new ground though and would like to see things more along that line. This essay does assert that we are a peaceful people and does disavow the violence – but we know there’s more out there (or in the vault as the case may be) on these subjects and if the church is really trying to be more transparent on these types of issues they could have said more than they did. On the other hand, I bet the vast majority of members don’t know what a Danite is/was and at least if someone says something to them about the Danites they can go and look and get some truthful information about them from a reliable source – even if it is incomplete. (
😈 After all, if it’s on LDS.org, it’s scripture, right?)DarkJedi wrote:Forgotten_Charity wrote:DarkJedi wrote:I do agree that perhaps they could have treated each of these as separate topics and gone into some more depth. When I first encountered the reference to the reformation, I’m thinking “What reformation?” and I still think it’s very unclear what they’re referring to there. I think giving each of the main topics it’s own essay might have afforded them the opportunity to give more detail. On the other hand, maybe that’s not what they wanted because the overall theme seems to be “This is what life was like on the frontier and Mormons are people, too, so they took part in it.”
I am just curious DJ. Were you expecting a large multinational corporation to release a different statement then that or be more complete? I haven’t seen that happen yet. It would be great if it did happen, but I have yet to really see it as any information released must be sensitive to the image of the business.
No, I wasn’t really expecting anything and had in fact wondered if the church was done releasing essays. I do think that the Race and the Priesthood essay did break some new ground though and would like to see things more along that line. This essay does assert that we are a peaceful people and does disavow the violence – but we know there’s more out there (or in the vault as the case may be) on these subjects and if the church is really trying to be more transparent on these types of issues they could have said more than they did. On the other hand, I bet the vast majority of members don’t know what a Danite is/was and at least if someone says something to them about the Danites they can go and look and get some truthful information about them from a reliable source – even if it is incomplete. (
😈 After all, if it’s on LDS.org, it’s scripture, right?)I understand. I’m not immune to the optimism bias. I had hoped for something similar but my and others research lead me to believe that is expecting to much from a large multinational corp.
The good news is nearly all such orgs have seen the writing on the wall about transparency for some 10 years or so and have changed their business accordingly. This is in response to the stronger values of such in the newer generation. Typical PR wasn’t working as there is almost 0 trust there amount the newer generations.
What most haven’t realized yet but some people I talked to have is that this move in itself is just another strategy to accomplish the same thing that it started failing to do.
Research shoes that it is actually being more transparent, but only to a degree. Regardless of the new transparency movement PR campaign, it’s only partial transparency and still with heavenly filtered bias. But it actually is putting out more information then before while pretending that it’s really all there is.
With that on mind I hope for more but I don’t expect it, including from the church. Public imagine is still number 1 in all such corps. As Toyota and ford went under more then a few investigations before they came out with the “full story” and “voluntarily”. Under this new transparent canoeing among businesses, you still have the NSA debacle, the iPhone 4 “your just holding it wrong” etc.
But I understand the hope, and the good news is there is more transparency them before. But in all of it it’s still not what most think of when they think of transparency. Still it’s better news then before.
🙂 It is factually as accurate as it can be, and it says clearly that Stake President Haight sent the militia to attack the people and Brother Lee led a “deliberate massacre”. It also places all the blame on the Mormons who were involved. I really don’t see the problem with this as an explanation. It’s not written as an apology, but it’s not posted in a location where an apology would be expected or appropriate. Again, it’s an accurate description, posted on a site that is being re-focused for explanations that are as accurate as possible.
I was happy to read it, especially since it is posted at lds.org.
I also appreciated it. It doesn’t entirely absolve the leaders and also acknowledges that Brigham’s preaching (but not necessarily his instructions) may have lead to both the MMM and some blood atonement executions. The footnotes are also strong.
Having worried about the essays stopping (it has been a while), I’m really glad to see a new one.
(Book of Abraham and Joseph’s polygamy are the ones I’m holding my breath for)
For those who might plan to share this with friends, here’s the statement from the church saying the essays are approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve: Quote:Most who study our history well understand the context of these matters as far as time and place. But
some members of the Church — many, really — are surprised by some of the things they learn in our history. And we want them to be able to go to a place where they can read accurate information and be able to seek to understand those historical chapters in the context of time and place. And understand that those answers have been approved by the presiding brethren of the Church. I think that will give many of our members confidence that they can rely on these answers. We have actually retained outside the Church History Department — we have retained scholars, for the most part outside the Church History Department — known LDS scholars to do some very extensive research. And this has been groundbreaking in a way. These issues have not always had academic attention. They haven’t really been researched carefully. So we are very pleased that these scholars would agree to do this research. They then submitted a draft of their paper to a committee of historians here in the Church History Department as well as
General Authorities who have reviewed their work and adjusted some edits. Those edits are made with the permission of the original writer. And that’s then submitted to the presiding Quorums of the Church, the Twelve and the First Presidency for approval. And then it’s published in Gospel Topics under LDS.org. Much of what’s written now, these arguments and these issues, have been around for decades — 150 years. And it’s the same material repackaged. And we understandably have not spent a lot of time in the past worrying about these issues because our mission is to promote faith and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. But as the information age is now upon us? We feel with all of this information out there, we owe it — particularly to the rising generation — to provide good, reliable information about these matters.
Elder Steven E. Snow
Church Historian and Recorder and the Executive Director of the Church History Department.
https://www.lds.org/topics?lang=eng#media=11373505780672488714-eng
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