Lee Davidson is talking about today’s Mormons, not Mormons in Brigham Young’s day.  Davidson even asks the question of whether anyone should be afraid of Mormon beliefs.  He quotes current Salt Lake City Mayor (a non-practicing Escopalian):

“I don’t think the rest of the world needs to be worried,” Becker said. “I don’t see in my experience that people of the Mormon faith are different from people of other faiths in their approach to making decisions about politics,” Becker said. “… all of us are affected by our values and principles in terms of how we look at the world.”

I agree that current Mormon attitudes are not to be feared, but I was curious to see what scriptural support Davidson had in his article.

• D&C 101:80 – [God] “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose”
• D&C 134:1- “We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man.”
• D&C 134:9 – “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government”

It seems to me that Davidson is not quoting verse 9 in the same context as it was intended.  The exact quote from Davidson is this:

No arm twisting >> Doctrine and Covenants 134 says “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government.”  So the church says it does not dictate policy to its members who are politicians.

Its mormon.org website says, “The church may communicate its views to them just as it would to any other elected official, but it recognizes these men and women must make their own choices based on their best judgment and with consideration of the constituencies they were elected to represent.”

While I agree with the sentiments Davidson is expressing, I think the whole verse should be quoted.  Here’s the entire verse:

We do not believe it just to ^amingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.

In a Pew Research Forum interview in 2007, Richard Bushman gives a bit better context for this scripture.  In the 1830′s an 1840′s, it was legal to discriminate against Mormons, Jews, and Muslims in some states.  Even though Joseph was advocating for a theocracy, Bushman says,

One of the first ordinances passed by the Nauvoo council was a toleration act specifying that all faiths were welcome in the city and listing a number of them: Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Latter-day Saints, Catholics, Jews and “Mohammedans,” as Muslims were called. There was probably not a Mohammedan within a thousand miles, but it was a gesture of openness to every religion.

Nauvoo, then, was to be a diverse city, indicating that Joseph Smith’s civic idealism went beyond his own people to envision a much more cosmopolitan society.

So, the scripture is really advocating an openness toward all religions so that none are discriminated against.  It is not advocating that religion and government should never mix.  Less than a decade later, Joseph would run for U.S. President, and he had no thought to abdicate his role as prophet.

So, do you agree with Davidson’s assertion that “Church doctrine says it is unjust to mix religion and civil government”, or is there a bit more nuance?

Dr Jeffrey Chadwick, BYU Jerusalem Center

In his 1915 classic entitled Jesus the Christ, Elder James E. Talmage maintained that Jesus Christ was born on April 6 in the year 1 BC.¹ Talmage was apparently the first LDS writer to propose this particular date.  Nearly a century has passed since his book appeared, and in that time it has become practically axiomatic among Latter-day Saints that Jesus was born on April 6 of 1 BC.

The above quote comes from the January 2011 issue of BYU Studies.  Jeffrey Chadwick has undertaken a study to figure out when Jesus was born, and he comes to the conclusion that December was the correct month.  Trying to precisely date the birth of Jesus is problematic, because Luke and Matthew can’t even agree on when Jesus was born.

The Gospel of Luke states that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem due to a census that was being taken when Ceasar Augustus was head of the Roman Empire and Cyrenius (also spelled Quirinius) was governor of Syria.  A footnote for the New American Bible (a Catholic study Bible) states:

Although universal registrations of Roman citizens are attested in 28 BC, 8 BC, and AD 14, and enrollments of individual provinces of those who are not Roman citizens are also attested, such a universal census of the Roman world under Ceasar Augustus is unknown outside the New Testament.  Moreover, there are notorious historical problems connected with Luke’s dating the census when Quirinius was governor of Syria and the various attempts to resolve the difficulties have proved unsuccessful.

P. Sulpicius Quirinius became a legate of the province of Syria in AD 6-7 when Judea was annexed to the province of Syria.  At that time, a provincial census of Judea was taken up.  If Quirinius had been legate of Syria previously, it would have been before 10 BC because of the various legates of Syria from 10 BC to 4 BC (the death of Herod) are known, and such a dating for an earlier census under Quirinius would create additional problems for dating the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

A previous legateship after 4 BC (and before AD 8 ) would not fit with the dating of Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod.  Luke may simply be combining Jesus’ birth in Bethelehem with his vague recollection of a census under Quirinius to underline the significance of this birth for the whole Roman world: through this child born in Bethlehem peace and salvation came to the empire.

The Gospel of Matthew states that Jesus was a decade earlier than Luke.  In Matthew, Jesus was born just before Herod’s death.  Chadwick takes considerable effort to precisely date Herod’s death.  The ancient historian Josephus recorded a lunar eclipse 10 days to 2 weeks prior to Herod’s death.  Astronomical research places this eclipse on March 13 in 4 BC, so Herod’s death must have occurred in late March or early April of 4 BC.  Most scholars generally agree that Herod died in 4 BC, placing Jesus’ birth some time before 4 BC.  (Chadwick notes another eclipse occurred in September 15 of 5 BC, but argues that

this date fell months prior to Passover and is otherwise difficult to reconcile with the known length of time Herod is recorded to have reigned, as noted by Thomas A. Wayment’s study.  Wayment–and Brown, Griggs, and Hansen before him–seem willing to at least consider the September 15 eclipse of 5 BC as the one mentioned by Josephus, but they seem more convinced by the 4 BC eclipse of March 13.³⁶ The present study argues that a September eclipse and November death date for Herod in 5 BC are not possible in view of what is known about the length of Jesus’s life.

Chadwick notes many other historical pieces to the puzzle, but I want to hit the crux of why he thinks Jesus was born on December.  Though most scholars believe that the census in Luke was not related to the birth of Jesus, Chadwick calculates that Gabriel appeared to Mary (also known as “the Anunciation of Mary”)

to announce to Mary that she would conceive and bring froth a son to be named Jesus (see Luke 1:27-31).  In the Jewish context of this account, this would mean that the month of Adar, the sixth month of the Jewish year occurred from mid-to-late February to mid-to-late March….

From the account in Luke it appears that the Annunciation actually occurred near the end of Adar (mid-to-late March) and that Mary conceived immedately or within a day or two of the angel’s visit.  This is all evident because Luke reported that after the Annunciation Mary traveled “with haste” (immediately) to Judea, where she stayed for three months with her older kinswoman Elisabeth, and that the older woman, six months pregnant with her own child, instantly recognized that Mary was also carrying a child in her womb (see Luke 2:39-43).

Of course, nine months after March would put Jesus birth in December.  Chadwick goes on to say that “it is quite possible, perhaps even probable that Jesus was born during Hanakkuh at the end of 5 BC.”

Now, I’m sure this flies in the face of conventional LDS thought.  Chadwick references other studies of the birth of Jesus and notes problems with the dates proposed.  Here is a summary.

April of 1 BC.  As mentioned earlier, this is the date proposed by Elder James E Talmage in Jesus the Christ.  However, since it has been demonstrated that Herod died in 4 BC, the year is wrong.

April of 4 BC.  Orson Pratt and Bruce R. McConkie have postulated a date of April 11 for this year.  Chadwick states

Herod died within days of the beginning of April that year, and Jesus has to have been born at least two months, and more likely three to four months, prior to Herod’s death in order for all the events described in Luke and Matthew to have taken place before Herod’s passing.  This would push the latest historically plausible date for Jesus’s birth to December of 5 BC.

April of 5 BC.  Chadwick explains why this date is unworkable as well.

Any date in April of 5 BC, whether it be April 6 or some other day, is likewise unworkable as the natal date of Jesus.  The death of Jesus must have occurred in early April of AD 30, the only other year in which Passover fell late in the week and which also allows Jesus to have lived thirty-three full years from his birth.  But April of 5 BC was thirty-four full years prior to Jesus’s death, and the language of the Book of Mormon does not allow for thirty-four full years to have passed from Jesus’s birth to his death.

Spring or Autumn of 5 BC.  Chadwick rules out Autumn as well, because the Annunciation of Mary occurred in the Jewish month of Adar, corresponding to March.  As for any other spring date, Chadwick notes that other authors have also excluded Spring or Summer dates as well.

Dates in 6 or 7 BC.  Chadwick notes that some non-LDS scholars have proposed earlier dates.  Some reference that Herod wanted all children two years and younger killed, so they have proposed an earlier date.  Such dates would put Passover on a Tuesday at the death of Christ, making him stay in the tomb longer than the requisite three days recorded in the Gospels.  Earlier dates would also conflict with John the Baptist’s ministry that occurred

“in the fifteenth year in the reign of Tiberius Ceasar” (Luke 3:1), the commencement of which can be confidently dated to autumn A.D. 27. Jesus cannot have died in the same year that John began preaching, since Jesus himself only began preaching at Passover (spring AD 28), just months after John’s advent.

Well, Reilly made out the check this week when Jimmer started a pre-season game for the Sacramento Kings.  Quoting from Reilly, “In the check’s memo line, I wrote: Crow.”

Reilly had quite a few complimentary things to say about Jimmer.

I said he wouldn’t be able to get off his shot off in the NBA. So far, in two preseason games, he’s averaged 16.5 points. He’s been pyrotechnic from the wider NBA 3-point arc (67 percent). His handle is tighter than a coffee pot’s. His rebounding and defense still have more holes than a Danielle Steele novel, but, all in all, he’s been jaw-droppingly good.

But here’s the best part:

And now it looks like he has a chance to become the Tim Tebow of the NBA.

Tim Tebow plays for the team I hate the most in the NFL: the Denver Broncos.  Yet I like Tim Tebow.  I can’t not root for the guy, even if I hate his team.  For a guy everybody said would be a bust in the NFL, and thought the Broncos were crazy to take him in the first round, Tebow has reeled off 6 consecutive wins in the closing minutes of games–all in miraculous fashion.   (Thankfully, my Patriots didn’t let Tim do any magic last week.)

Tebow expresses his religion more than anybody in recent memory.  (He’s a Southern Baptist.  Perhaps Reggie White came close.)  To top it off, Saturday Night Live did a funny bit on Tebow (and called Tom Brady “God’s nephew”.)  It’s good in it’s own right, but there was a very funny reference at the tail end of the skit, so watch it all the way to the end.

What’s your take on Jimmer or Tebow?

Daniel Peterson

Dan Wotherspoon put together a 4 hour interview with BYU Professor Daniel Peterson on a variety of topics.  It is available on the Mormon Stories Website or at iTunes.  I really enjoyed the interview, and decided to create a transcript for part 3 where Peterson talked about his (futile) experience trying to improve the church manuals.  On Part 3 at the 34:48 mark:

Dan Wotherspoon, “I sense that there has to be some level of frustration at times with for instance, FARMS has been doing all this work for 25 years.  We have the Limited Geography thing.  That message is not getting out to CES. We still have kids that are coming through seminary and then they’re going to hit this wall.  So inoculation isn’t happening.

Peterson, “Right”

Wotherspoon,”Talk more about that.”

Peterson, “Well, we’ve talked already about the fact that I wish church history were taught better than it is. I served for 8 or 9 years on the Gospel Doctrine Writing Committee for the church, and I remember when I was called (by George P. Lee by the way), I said ‘I’m not sure I’m the person you want because I don’t like the church’s manuals very much.’  [Lee said], ‘You’re just the person we want because we want to improve them.’  Well, when I got onto the committee, in fact, there wasn’t much we could do.  We were constrained within certain limits…”

Wotherspoon, “Was it Correlation Committee or was it certain personalities that had…?

Peterson, “I was never clear—I think it was Correlation, I think it was the Curriculum Committee.  They would lay out certain things about the way they wanted us to do it.  For example, we were doing the Old Testament one year and we wanted to put in some historical background.  People can’t make sense of this if they don’t know what’s going on.  I think a big aid to understanding Isaiah is to understand the politics of his day. Isaiah and Jeremiah were reacting to great power politics, and if you don’t know any of that, you can’t make any sense of it.  A lot of it is talking about their day.

We tried to put some of that in and we were rebuked by someone, some nameless bureaucrat up in Salt Lake who said, “you’re just trying to show off.’  I thought ‘How?  We’re anonymous.  Who would know?  We’re just trying to help people out there by saying, look: one paragraph.

The Assyrians were doing this, the Egyptians were doing that, Israel was caught in between.  Isaiah is warning against x, y, and z. Half the passages make sense once you know that.  It doesn’t take a lot to make sense of those passages, but we weren’t allowed to do it.  We went through a period where we were allowed only to have bullet points, scriptural references, and Life Applicational questions.

I remember some of mine I had put in jokes sometimes.  We all did.  [We would] come and discuss on Sunday morning, [and] critique each other’s proposed lessons.  Mine was Life Applicational Questions.  “Do you think it would be a good idea to be a wicked Judahite king? What steps can you take toward this?”

My favorite was one that I actually told on numerous occasions where they really wanted Life Applications and no history.  I was doing the passage in Acts where you have Uticus up in the rafters at Troas.  Paul drones on and on so long that he falls asleep, and falls out of the rafters. He’s taken up dead it says and Paul has to restore him to life.  So I thought, “Alright, have a class member read Acts–whatever the passage is.  Now, have you ever killed anyone with a Sacrament Meeting speech?  How did it make you feel?  What steps could you take in the future to avoid this?”  The funny thing is that it passed Correlation.

Wotherspoon, “That part did?” [chuckling]

Peterson, “It did, I can only assume that people chuckled at every point and it made it.  When I saw the final draft, final gallies, it was still there!”

Wotherspoon, “No way!  Wow.”

Peterson, “I went through a real crisis of conscience there.  I thought, ‘I would love to see this go into the manual! But I finally called them and said, “I’m not sure that you’d want that particular bundle of questions there.’  [and they said] ‘Oh good grief! good grief! We’ll take it out!  We’ll take it out!’  And I thought ‘it would have been great to see that in Tagalog, Chinese, German, and Spanish all around the world.”

Some of our manuals I think are not very good.  They’re not very deep. I understand the danger.  I think if you allow people to simply go wild, you’ll get some really weird Gospel Doctrine classes out there with people grinding their own axes and having little hobbies, teaching false doctrine, and so I understand the need to sort of reign people in, but on the other hand, the lessons can be really, really pablum and boring.

Wotherspoon, “And completely without any context—no link to context”

Peterson, “Yeah, and I love to give historical context and background.  I don’t care if it’s Doctrine and Covenants, Old Testament, whatever.  Right now I’m back into teaching Gospel Doctrine, which is my favorite position in the church. I mean I love it!  I just have a lot of fun with it. But I remember once, I had a letter once when I was serving on that committee that exempted me from all local callings, which was something that I treasured.

I remember being called in once by the stake presidency and they’re all sitting there and they had me and my wife come in and it was obvious they were up to something.  The stake president said, ‘I understand—I was just told that you’ve got some sort of letter from the brethren?”  I said, “YES!  I do.  Here it is!”

Wotherspoon, “In other words, we’re using up enough of his time that…”

Peterson, “Yep.  Because we met every 2 weeks for 2 or 3 hours every Sunday morning to critique each other’s lessons, and so on.  It was a lot of time involved in that, so that was my church calling for a long time, except I did teach gospel doctrine in my home ward—that I was willing to do because I love it! Now if it had been Scoutmaster, I would have said I’m sorry, I’d love to do it but I can’t.

Well then, at one point the stake Sunday School president came into my Gospel Doctrine class and he sat through the whole thing.  My lessons still is the way I teach them.  I look at the lesson to see what the passages are that I’m supposed to teach, then I put it away.  I mean I mean to read it, but I don’t.  I never do.  Then I read the passages, and then I comment on them and come up with what I think is the theme of the passage and try to give a historical background and so on.

Well this guy sat through my lesson and came up afterward and rebuked me, that I wasn’t using the Gospel Doctrine manual. Did I not realize that these were given by revelation and so on and so forth?  [I responded] Well, you should know that I’m on the committee that writes them, and I don’t like them at all.

So, that would be one of my complaints about church practice.  I would love to see better teaching.  I don’t know if we’re capable of it in a typical ward.  Maybe this is the best we can do and those manuals are necessary.  But there are some places where there are really superb teachers, and I hope they’re not constrained by the manual.

Wotherspoon, “Yeah I hate that fact that the manual mentions no outside sources and some people take that so seriously that people do feel constrained.”

Peterson, “I understand the danger. I’ve been in some pretty weird lessons where people were using it to teach some bizarre form of politics or just plain false doctrine, bizarre racial theories, and things like that so maybe without those manuals, we’d sink to a lower level.  But still, I’d like to see us do better.  I’d like to see us teach out history better.  That is a concern we’ve already mentioned.  I think it does us damage when our people grow up and hear about things that could have been conveyed to them in a faith promoting way.

Even Mountain Meadows, I think can be conveyed in a faith promoting way.  I think it’s a lesson to us about the fallen nature of human beings, and how even good people can get sucked into doing bad things.  I would love to teach a Gospel Doctrine lesson on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.“

I’d love to hear that lesson.  How about you?

In 1835  David Patten was called  to be one of the original 12 apostles.  Patten was known as “Captain FearNot”.  Just 3 years after being called to be an apostle, he was killed in the Battle of Crooked River in Missouri while trying to recover some Mormons captured by a Missouri mob.

A biography of Patten written in 1900 referenced a letter written between two apostles: Abraham Smoot and Joseph F. Smith (future president of the church).  Smith had heard that Patten claimed to have met Cain, and apparently Smith had written to Smoot asking about this experience.  As the letter states, David Patten was on his way to Smoot’s house.  Smoot relates that Patten said,

[I] met with a very remarkable personage who had represented himself as being Cain who had murdered his brother, Abel … I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me … for about two miles.  His head was even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle.  He wore no clothing but was covered with hair.  His skin was very dark … he [said] that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth … He said that he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death … but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men … I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence and he immediately departed out of my sight. [Cited in Lycurgus A. Wilson, The Life of David Patten, the First Apostolic Martyr (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1900) 45-47.  Smoot's 1893 letter was to future Church President Joseph F. Smith.]

Could Cain really be alive after a few thousand years?  Apparently, the apostles believed the tale.  Smith brought the tale to the apostles, and Elder Abraham Cannon wrote  that “he had always entertained the idea that Cain was dead.”  Eliza R. Snow wrote a poem discussing the incident in 1884.

As seen by David Patten, he was dark
When pointing at his face of glossy jet
Cain said, “You see the curse is on me yet.”
The first of murderers, now he fills his post
And reigns as king o’er all the murd’rous host.

Bowman’s essay documents several tales where Cain appeared to anonymous apostles, bishops, missionaries, and stake presidents who were seeking to destroy the church of God.  President Spencer W. Kimball discussed Patten’s account in Miracle of Forgiveness.  Following the 1978 revelation, Bowman states that there have been changes in this legend.  From page 123 of the book,

There is evidence that since the 1978 revocation of its ban on black priesthood holders, there have been social and cultural transitions in the Church that may be the very reason the monstrous image of Cain has been transformed to something else.  No longer an arche-typical racial slur, Bigfoot is more of a curiosity of nature that lacks the weight of nineteenth-century Mormon demonology.  Though the stories seldom do little to rehabilitate Cain’s image in that he is still hostile, the emphasis of the legend has shifted.  The older stories, from Patten’s own experience through the third quarter of the twentieth century….Now Cain rarely speaks.  Now his specific mission to destroy the church has dissolved into the general hostility that one would expect from a wild animal.

In 1980, Bigfoot made some appearances in Utah, documented in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.  From page 125,

On Sunday afternoon, February 3, 1980, a South Weber high school student named Pauline Markham glanced out of her kitchen window and saw what she described as “a big, black creature” climbing down a mountain ridge a half-mile away.  Markham, a Mormon, reported that she simply put her drinking glass down and “went to church”.  Early the next morning, her cousin, Ronald Smith, saw a “big dark figure” in his field.  He fled into the house, leaving an agitated horse in the pasure. The next morning, odd tracks in the show had been trampled by hoof prints.  The story was pursued by an Ogden Standard-Examiner reporter, Jay Barker, who claimed he had also personally encountered Bigfoot three years earlier.  At this point in 1980, none of the witnesses–Markham, who is clearly identified as a practicing Mormon, or Barker, who has devoted a great deal of investigation to the events–seem to have associated Bigfoot with Cain.

..

Another man, Sterling Gardner, compared what he believed to gbe the stench of Bigfoot that agitated his dogs to that of a skunk.  However, ten years after the fact, local historian Lee D. Bell noted that South Weber citizens had begun associating these local sightings of Bigfoot with Cain.  Twenty-three years later, the Deseret News pinpointed this event as the genesis of the Bigfoot/Cain idea.”

Bowman goes on to discusses other Boy Scout stories, seminary teacher stories, and even the Three Nephite legends as popular urban myths. What do you make of these stories of Cain becoming Bigfoot?

Mormons have a strange relationship with the cross.  We don’t like to show the cross. It is one of the reasons why many say that Mormons aren’t Christian.  When I attended the MHA meetings last year in Independence, I was surprised to see a cross on both the outside and inside of Independence Temple.  Most Mormons find displays of the cross to be distasteful.  On my mission, I remember being asked why Mormons don’t show the cross.  My standard response was that if Christ had been killed by a knife, gun, or electric chair, would we hang one of those weapons around our neck in remembrance.  The cross was a very gruesome, tortured way to die.

But the sign of the cross dates back thousands of years.  Constantine had a dream in which he saw a cross on the sun, and felt this was a sign that he should merge with Christianity.  He outfitted his army with the cross in a major battle, and won the empire.  Christianity became the official religion of the empire.  The cross is synonymous with traditional Christianity.  Mormons rejection of the cross causes other Christians to question our Christianity.

But since the atheists are attacking the cross, Mormons are coming down on the side of the cross.  LDS member and state Senator Carl Wimmer of Herriman, Utah plans to introduce a bill to allow the crosses to stay.  It should be noted that the Supreme Court seems to have had some conflicting opinions on whether crosses constitute a state-sponsored form of religious preference.

Quoting from the Deseret News article,

Past high court rulings on the issue have “confounded the lower courts and rendered the constitutionality of displays of religious imagery on government property anyone’s guess,” [Justice Clarence Thomas] wrote.

Thomas suggested the case would have been a good vehicle for a major review and revision of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. “It is hard to imagine an area of the law more in need of clarity,” he wrote. The court “should not now abdicate our responsibility to clean up our mess.”

[Utah Attorney General Mark] Shurtleff agrees.

“I’m upset at our Supreme Court for not taking the case,” he said. “They clearly need to resolve a question that differs depending on where you live in the country.”

The appeals court decision, he said, applies to the six states in the 10th circuit — Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah — making crosses illegal in those states, but permissible in every other state.

But Barnard [attorney representing the atheist group] said the case is limited to Utah.

“There are no similar government approved displays or memorial programs for law enforcement officers in other states,” he said. No other states allow similar large crosses with state emblems in front of the state offices.”

I know that the Community of Christ has a cross on their temple, and I know most Mormons don’t like the cross on their temple, feeling they are too cozy with Protestantism.  I also wonder if representative Wimmer’s response is more against the atheists, than it is in support of the cross.  What’s your take?

I am always a bit puzzled by statements like this one made by GBSmith: “I remember believing for years that the saints were totally innocent in the Missouri business and victims, pure and simple, of Governor Boggs and the mob. Too bad it wasn’t true.”  Well, there is plenty of blame to go around both on the Missouri side and on the Mormon side.  Cooler heads certainly did not prevail.  Kenny Ballentine put together a documentary on the Missouri problem, and I blogged about it previously when I discussed his documentary film titled, Trouble in Zion.

Mormons weren’t blameless.  Missouri mobs weren’t blameless.  Here are some key events leading to the Haun’s Mill Massacre.

1)  July 1833, WW Phelps published an article in the Evening and Morning Star that Mormons wanted to welcome people of all color.  This is the reason the Missourians were upset.

2)  July 20, 1833.  Bishop Partridge is told to leave Jackson County immediately.  He refuses and is tarred and feathered.  Mobs destroyed the Mormon printing press in retaliation of the Phelps article.  Three days later, Partridge signs an agreement to leave the county.

3)  Oct 31-Nov 7.  Missourians incite hostilities against the Mormons.  Mormons flee Jackson County for Clay County.

4) In 1836, the Missouri legislature declares that Caldwell County will be set aside for Mormon settlement.  (This is the home of Far West.)  Non-Mormon Alexander Doniphan brokers a deal in the Missouri legislature to create the county.  This is partly to make a home for Mormons in recompense for Jackson County, but Alex Baugh has referred to this as a “Mormon reservation”.  Mormons were not supposed to settle anywhere outside of this county.

5)  In 1838, Joseph leaves Kirtland under the cover of night due to the Kirtland Bank Crisis.  Upon arriving in Missouri, he finds dissent among Missouri Mormons as well.  John Whitmer, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and WW Phelps are excommunicated.  Many of these dissenters opposed living the Law of Consecration.  Non-Mormons find the excommunications another reason to dislike Mormons.

6)  June 17, 1838.  Sidney Rigdon issues the “Salt Sermon.”  In the sermon, he referenced the scripture about “salt that has lost it’s savor”, and essentially issued an ultimatum that Mormon apostates should leave the county or be forcibly removed.  Most of the dissenters move south to Ray County, and find sympathy with anti-Mormons.

7)  July 4, 1838.  Rigdon issued another fiery patriotic sermon stating that the Mormons and Missourians would wage a “war of extermination…one party or the other”.  It seems the subsequent Extermination Order by Governor Boggs wasn’t quite what Rigdon had in mind.

8|  Aug 6, 1838 – Mormons in Daviess County were prevented from voting.  The Whig candidate said Mormons were only supposed to live in Caldwell County and should be ineligible to vote.  He was concerned that Mormons would vote for the Democratic Candidate, because Mormons were overwhelming Democrats back then.  A big brawl broke out that has often been called a “battle”.  There were exaggerated rumors that Mormons were killed.

9)  Aug 19, 1838 – Following the election, Missourians decided to expel Mormons from DeWitt, in Daviess County.

10)  Oct 18, 1838 – The Mormons decide to retaliate for the first time.  Known as the Daviess Expedition, a group of Danites (a secret Mormon militia group) led an effort to expel Missourians from Gallatin, Millport and Grindstone Fork.   Mormons plundered the property and burned the stores and houses to the ground.

11)  Oct 24, 1838 – The Battle of Crooked River.  Mormons attack and scatter the Missouri Militia.  Many of the Missouri Militia erroneously believe all others are killed.  Only 1 Missourian was killed, but 2 Mormons were killed:  LDS Apostle David Patten (known as “Captain FearNot”) and Danite leader Gideon Carter; 9 other Mormons were wounded.

12)  Oct 27, 1838 – Governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order; “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace…”

13)  October 30, 1838 – The Hauns Mill Massacre; 18 Mormons are killed, ranging in age from 10-year old Sardius Smith, to 62 year old Thomas McBride.  These 2 deaths were particularly gruesome.

• After surrendering his weapon, 62 year old Thomas McBride was hacked to death with a corn knife.
• An enraged Missourian leveled his gun against the 10 year old boy’s head, and after proclaiming that ‘nits become lice” pulled the trigger, killing Sardius Smith instantly.

There is plenty of blame to go around both on the Missouri side and on the Mormon side.  Cooler heads certainly did not prevail. Previous to these terrible events of 1838, Mormons tried several times to get Governor Boggs to step in, but Boggs consistently said that he could do nothing.  When Mormons took matters into their own hands, Boggs issued the Extermination Order.  Certainly Boggs handled the situation poorly.

Obviously, Mormons have moved on from this tragedy, with no commemoration of these terrible events and Halloween.  Do you think it is wise to ignore this Halloween tragedy?

Many of us are familiar with Wilford Woodruff’s vision of the Founding Fathers in the St. George Temple.  Brian Stuy gives some interesting background on this story.  Just after the temple was dedicated in 1877, apostle and temple president Wilford Woodruff had a dream on two successive nights.  The signers of the Declaration of Independence said to Woodruff,

You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us.  We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.

Stuy notes that Woodruff had been reading a book titled Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America.  Woodruff participated in proxy work for not only these famous Americans, but also Christopher Columbus and John Wesley.  Stuy believes this book to be the source that may have inspired Woodruff to ponder on the subject.

However, Woodruff was not the first to perform proxy work for the Founding Fathers.  Stuy quotes Charlotte Haven, writing in May 1843.  She witnessed baptisms for the dead performed in the Mississippi River:

We drew a little nearer and heard several names repeated by the elders as the victims were douched [bathed], and you can imagine our surprise when the name George Washington was called.

Stuy goes on to say on pages 84-86,

In addition to the event Haven witnessed, there were at least three other occasions in Nauvoo when George Washington was baptized.⁵ Others for whom this proxy ordinance was performed in Illinois include Benjamin Franklin;⁶ Presidents John Adams, William Henry Harisson, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe;  George Washington’s wife, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington; mother Mary Ball Washington; and Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson.⁷ Later in St. George, Woodruff would arrange to have proxy baptisms perfromed for all of these individuals.

…

In 1876, most likely in response to the centennial the nation celebrated that year, [John] Bernhisel began systematically arranging for the baptism of all the Founding Fathers and other well-known U.S. leaders.  On August 9, he and his daughter Mary went to the Endowment House and were baptized for most of the deceased U.S. presidents and their wives.  Bernhisel was also baptized for Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry.¹³

Duplicate temple work is something that has long been a problem.  In fact, that is a major reason why the church has put the new program for familysearch online.  With the old PAF files, duplication was a tremendous problem.  With the new Family Search, the hope is for more collaboration and less duplication.

While the baptisms were performed multiple times, Stuy notes that the Endowment House only allowed for “live” ordinances.  The St. George Temple is the first temple in which endowments were performed for the dead.  In that case, even though baptisms were performed previously for the Founding Fathers, Woodruff wsa the first to allow the other ordinances to be performed for these men and women.  Stuy notes that in 1985, President Benson wanted to make sure these ordinances were performed.  While most had been performed, some wives and children of the signers weren’t completed, so Benson made sure these were done in time for the bicentennial celebration of the Constitutional Convention in 1987.

What do you make of Woodruff’s vision?

Tom Brokaw during a rehearsal, courtesy http://newsroom.lds.org/article/mormon-tabernacle-choir-tom-brokaw-remember-9-11

The past few days have brought a series of news stories remembering the terrible tragedy that happened 10 years ago.  I was curious to see if there would be any differences in our church services.  On the one hand, Music and the Spoken Word invited NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw to narrate a special tribute to the tragedy called Rising Above.  I watched the re-run of it Sunday night (since my church meetings were scheduled at the same time.)  I also note that President Monson wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post sharing thoughts about the tragedy.

My wife has tried to avoid watching the tributes because it brings back such terrible memories.  I’ve read elsewhere that Americans simply aren’t ready to watch movies about the tragedy (unlike things like Pearl Harbor) because it still seems too close the the tragedy.

Our ward did not do anything special to remember the day.  In sacrament meeting, we listened as a new family was invited to speak and introduce themselves to the ward.  The parents both gave excellent talks.  The wife spoke about service, and how we can all do better to serve.  Her husband followed along with the service theme, but did make a few remarks about the 9/11 tragedy.

Our stake has made a big push to start indexing records to help with genealogy.  I helped the YM/YW learn how to index records, and then did the same for priesthood meeting.  Unlike the news programs and KBYU, there was very little reminder about the tragedy.  So I”m trying to figure out if my bishop is like my wife–not wanting to remember bad memories, or if local leaders didn’t get any direction to try to remember this day.  I wonder why there isn’t more flexibility to remember special events at church, such as departing from the normal lesson schedule for 1 week.  What was your ward like?  Is this an important day to remember?

This is our “Pearl Harbor”.  While Dec 7 is known as Pearl Harbor Day, it isn’t a holiday.  I’ve wondered if 9/11 should be a holiday.  What do you think?