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Criticism of Mormonism/Articles/LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904
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D. Michael Quinn
- ...writers are certainly "dishonest or bad historians" if they fail to acknowledge the existence of even one piece of evidence they know challenges or contradicts the rest of their evidence. If this omission of relevant evidence is inadvertent, the author is careless. If the omission is an intentional effort to conceal or avoid presenting the reader with evidence that contradicts the preferred view of the writer, that is fraud, whether by a scholar or non-scholar, historian or other specialist. If authors write in scholarly style, they are equally dishonest if they fail to acknowledge any significant work whose interpretations differ from their own.
— D. Michael Quinn, "Editor's Introduction," in The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past, ed. D. Michael Quinn (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), xiii, n. 5
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
- I have not checked every reference in Quinn's book, but every reference that I have checked has been inaccurate in some way. In some cases Quinn has misinterpreted the source. In some cases he proof texts the quotation, and a fuller reading of the text undermines his case. And sometimes he is just plain wrong.
- — John Gee, "Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 185–224. [{{{url}}} off-site] (footnote 23)
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| "Disorderly Persons" "all jugglers [conjurors], and all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover lost goods." (italics added, the amendation of "conjurors" is Quinn's) |
...all persons who threaten to run away and leave their wives or children to the city or town, . . . and also all persons who not having wherewith to maintain themselves, live idle without employment, and also all persons who go about from door to door, or place themselves in the streets, highways or passages, to beg in the cities or towns where they respectively dwell, and all jugglers, and all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover where lost goods may be found; and all persons who run away and leave their wives or children . . . ; and all persons wandering abroad . . . and not giving a good account of themselves, and all persons wandering abroad and begging, and all idle persons not having visible means of livelihood, and all common prostitutes shall be deemed and adjudged disorderly persons. (italics added) |
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Commentary
- *Quinn wants the reader to read "juggler" as "conjurer," i.e. as a practitioner of magic. In context, it is clear that those referred to are those who attempt to extract money from others by deceit, not the practice of 'magic.' Quinn also alters the citation as noted.
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| Quinn claims that the cost of books described in the advertisements in upstate New York in the 1820s ranged from "44 cents to a dollar each" (p. 182). |
“The total cost of all these books is $81.62, which, divided by the seventy books on the list, provides an average cost of $1.17 per book. Thus, rather than finding a real average price, Quinn attempts to use the range of prices for books ("44 cents to a dollar each"), thereby substantially underestimating the actual costs, since there are far more books costing a dollar or more than there are costing under a dollar.” Furthermore: Quinn did not provide the prices for any of the rare magic books he claims Joseph read, even though such information was readily available in at least one important case. When originally published in England in 1801, Barrett's The Magus which Quinn repeatedly cites as a source that influenced Joseph cost one pound, seven shillings for the standard edition and one pound, thirteen shillings for the leatherbound edition. In the early nineteenth century, the official rate of exchange was $4.44 to the pound, while the actual rate of exchange was closer to $4.87. Thus in contemporary American currency Barrett's book would cost from $6.57 for the inexpensive edition to $8.04 for the expensive edition, to which would be added shipping costs from Europe. Thus, far from costing between "44 cents to a dollar" (p. 182) as Quinn implies, one of the most important magic books in Quinn's argument would have cost between six and a half and eight dollars. In terms of Joseph's daily wage of fifty cents, this book would represent two to three weeks' work. At the modern minimum wage, this would equate to between $400 and $600 for a single book. Or, to put it another way, to purchase Barrett's The Magus would have cost the Smiths nearly the value of one month's mortgage on their farm and house. |
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Commentary
- Quinn grossly underestimates the cost of books in Joseph Smith's world, especially the esoteric and occult books which he claims were an influence.
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| "The British Museum's library has never had a 3-to-1 ratio of books to London's population, yet that was the book-resident ratio of a bookstore in rural New York state in 1815." |
"In 1976, when the population of London proper was 2,700,000, the British Museum Library contained approximately eight million volumes, with a ratio of 2.96-to-1. But, is Quinn seriously claiming that frontier New York had a greater book-to-person ratio than contemporary London? Or that education, book reading, and scholarship were higher in Palmyra than London? Can anyone take this assertion seriously?" |
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Commentary
- Quinn again exaggerates the availability of the occult books he insists—without evidence—were available to Joseph Smith in the early 1800s.
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| "...it is reasonable to estimate that this one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year...by the early 1800's there were thousands of peddlers." |
Quinn seriously misrepresents his sources. First, he does not inform us of the semantic shift from book peddlers to peddlers of all types. It is true that there were thousands of peddlers in the United States during the early nineteenth century, but book peddlers were only a small portion of this number...Quinn's source for the claim that "one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year" (p. 21) is an article by James Purcell. Here is what Purcell actually wrote: "During the years 1809 and 1810 he [Weems, a book peddler] sold $24,000 worth of books for him [publisher Mathew Carey] in the South." Note how the two years' worth of sales clearly described in Purcell's article is transformed by Quinn into a single year's sales: "selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year." Quinn thus magically doubles the actual book sales." |
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Commentary
- Quinn miscites his source, doubles the cited figure, and conflates book peddlers with all peddlers.
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| Quinn then asserts that Weems was selling these volumes "door-to-door in the rural areas of the South" to individual "farmers" |
“Nothing could be further from the truth. Does Quinn really think that a single peddler, working door-to-door with nineteenth-century transportation, could carry and deliver 25,000 books to backwoods farmers in a single year? This would require selling nearly 2,100 books a month, or carrying and selling almost seventy books a day by a single salesman going door-to-door in rural farm country. In reality, in modern terminology Weems was a regional sales representative for Philadelphia bookseller Mathew Carey and others. His itinerary largely focused on selling to local booksellers." |
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Commentary
- Quinn attempts to portray a wholesaler suppling multiple bookstores as representative of one of thousands of wandering book peddlers. He again seeks to bolster his absurd claim that multiple occult texts were easily available in New England in the 1800s.
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| "...some [book] peddlers also stocked clandestine works'" and therefore, "if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need." |
Is there any indication of what Gilmore (the author Quinn quotes) meant by the term clandestine? Indeed there is. He meant illegal pornography, as is made quite clear in his article. Nowhere in Gilmore's article is there a single mention of a peddler selling occult books. |
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Commentary
- Quinn again distorts his source—there was a market for pornography, which is hardly surprising. This does not mean that there was a market for expensive occult books.
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| Quinn repeatedly claims, citing Francis King, that Barrett's The Magus "played an important part in the English revival of magic." |
But what "revival of magic" is King discussing? The revival of the late, not the early, nineteenth century. This is clear from the fact that the only specific example of Barrett's influence on a magic revival that King discusses is Frederick Hockley, who reprinted Barrett's book in 1870. |
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Commentary
- Quinn cites a work referring to an occult book that was not republished in England until fifty years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, yet does not inform the reader that this citation can have absolutely nothing to do with "early Mormonism."
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| Quinn further claims that "Antoine Faivre has also emphasized Barrett's book in the general European revival of magic during the first decades of the 1800s." |
In reality, rather than emphasizing it, Faivre mentions Barrett's book in one sentence, in passing: "a compilation destined to be a great success heralds the occult literature to come: The Magus (1801) by Francis Barrett." |
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Commentary
- Quinn distorts his source, and neglects to mention that the influence of The Magus would come well after Joseph Smith's early years in New England.
Resources
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| "Moshe Idel wrote that the Zohar 'is manifestly anthropomorphic'." |
"The latter [the lower sefirot] is an obvious anthropomorphic symbol, which in the Zohar refers to the second and lower divine head, that consisting of the Sefirah of Tiferet alone or of the Sefirot between Hokhmah and Yesod, whereas in the works of R. David [ben Yehudah he-Hasid, late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries] it includes ten Sefirot or, as in the diagram, nine. In other contexts of R. David's thought, this configuration [of the diagram] is manifestly anthropomorphic; the fact that the concept appearing in the diagram differs from that of the Zohar does not obliterate its anthropomorphic character. . . . The process of [the mystical] visualization [of God] includes not only divine names, colors, and a circle or circles but also an anthropomorphic configuration symbolizing an aspect of the divine realm." |
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Commentary
- Quinn wants to attribute Joseph's idea of God having a physical human form (anthropomorphism) to the Jewish mystics who practiced Kabbalah. But, Quinn twists and distorts his source, which clearly states that the anthropomorphism of God is only allegorical in Kabbalah.
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| "Gershom Scholem wrote of the Cabala's 'almost provocatively conspicuous anthropomorphism'" |
Scholem notes that mystical descriptions of the body of God "[do] not imply that God in Himself possesses a physical form, but only that a form of this kind may be ascribed to 'the Glory.'” And: "Adam Kadmon in the form of concentric circles" that "rearranged themselves as a line, in the form of a man and his limbs, though of course this must be understood in the purely spiritual sense of the incorporeal supernal lights." |
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Commentary
- Quinn again twists his source to make it appear as if Kabbalah has a literal, rather than allegorical, conception of God in a human form.
"LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904"
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| Let not my servants who are called to the Presidency of my church, deny my word or my law, which concerns the salvation of the children of men.... Place not your selves in jeopardy to your enemies by promise.... Let my servants, who officiate as your counselors before the Courts, make their pleadings as they are moved by the Holy Spirit, without any further pledges from the Priesthood, and they shall be justified. |
Let not my servants who are called to the Presidency of my church, deny my word or my law, which concerns the salvation of the children of men. Let them pray for the Holy Spirit, which shall be given them to guide them in their acts. Place not yourselves in jeopardy to your enemies by promise.... Let my servants, who officiate as your counselors before the courts, make their pleadings as they are moved upon by the Holy spirit, without any further pledges from the Priesthood {and they shall be justified.} Let my servants call upon the Lord in mighty prayer, retain the Holy Ghost as your constant companion, and act as you are moved upon by that spirit, and all will be well with you. The wicked are fast ripening in iniquity, and they will be cut off by the judgments of God. Great events await you and this generation, and are nigh at your doors. Awake, O, Israel, and have faith in God, and His promises, and he will not forsake you. I the Lord will deliver my Saints from the dominion of the wicked, in mine own due time and way. |
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Commentary
- The excised portions clearly anticipate that further revelation will be granted on this topic, and affirm that this is not the final word. Quinn's tendency (especially since his excommunication) to minimize the revelation granted Church leaders is perhaps at play.
The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power
The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power
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| While they acknowledge that Packer previously was "less than diplomatic," "dogmatic, bigoted," "offended people," and got "agitated and lashed out" as a church administrator, his biographer and Apostle Neal A. Maxwell have recently said that Packer "has grown" out of such behavior. |
"[President Packer's] talks have been listened to and appreciated by members throughout the Church. But in the minds of some few he has been viewed as controversial, dogmatic, bigoted. |
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Commentary
- Quinn attributes such claims to the biographer and another apostle; in fact, the biographer notes that "in the minds of some few" this has been the case. Reading the entire chapter conveys nothing like Quinn's version. One wonders if Quinn's problems with the Church, which became more prominent after he publically attacked a talk given by Elder Packer, explains his current animus and willingness to distort what others have said.
Resources
- Duane Boyce, "A Betrayal of Trust (Review of: The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 9/2 (1997): 147–163. off-site
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| Quinn claims that Elder Maxwell said Elder Packer might have been "'agitated and lashed out' as a church administrator." |
Whereas Boyd formerly might have been agitated and lashed out against something that wasn't right, he has grown. With his increased spiritual composure his influence and impact are quiet, steady, and deep. He does not simply point out problems; he reconnoiters them perceptively, then in a prophetic, apostolic way he becomes a clarifier, a mover, and a resolver. In patience and meekness he uses his insights and influence to bring about what needs to be done. Boyd possesses another attribute that relates to the one just mentioned. He is quite unconcerned with self. He is anxiously engaged in good causes, and if issues require him to stand alone until others catch the vision, he'll pay the price and doesn't worry about the consequences for him. He takes the eternal view that if what you have done is right, the fact that you got bruised a bit in the process doesn't matter much; the bruises will heal and the progress will have been made. |
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Commentary
- Elder Maxwell's praise of Elder Packer is clear. Quinn omits the indication that any lashing out is against a thing, not a person. He also ignores key attributes of patience, meekness, anxious concern for the right, and willingness to suffer for the truth, since these are not the characteristics which he wishes to ascribe to Elder Packer. Text without context results in error and misrepresentation of Elder Maxwell's intent.
Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example
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| two who were vary friends indeed should lie down upon the same bed at night locked in each other['s] embrace talking of their love & should awake in the morning together. They could immediately renew their conversation of love even while rising from their bed. |
President J. Smith Addressed the assembly of the saints at the temple of the Lord upon the subject of the |
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Commentary
- Quinn butchers this quote, turning a speech about being buried near loved ones while awaiting the resurrection into advocacy of "bedtime snuggling" (Quinn, p. 87)!
Resources
- Klaus J. Hansen, "Quinnspeak (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 132–140. off-site
- George L. Mitton and Rhett S. James, "A Response to D. Michael Quinn's Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History (Review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 141–263. off-site
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| Quinn also claims that Joseph "never once mentioned husband-wife relationships . . . remarkable in a sermon on loving relationships in this life and in the resurrection during which the prophet repeatedly spoke of "brothers and friends," fathers and sons, mothers, daughters and sisters. Smith's silence concerning husbands and wives was deafening in this sermon about attachments of love . . . but I do see that as the first Mormon expression of male bonding." |
This seems unlikely, given that fathers and mothers in glory must imply heterosexual relationships. Joseph also comforted Marcellus Bates, saying "You shall soon have the company of your companion in a world of glory." |
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Commentary
- Note that this is, (contrary to Quinn's claim) in fact, "the closest allusion to the doctrine of eternal marriage the Prophet had yet made in public discourse."
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| it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation. |
I will tell you what I want. If tomorrow I shall be called to lie in yonder tomb, in the morning of the resurrection, let me strike hands with my father, and cry, "My father," and he will say "My son, my son," as soon as the rock rends and before we come out of our graves. And may we contemplate these things so? Yes, if we learn how to live and how to die. When we lie down we contemplate how we may rise in the morning; and it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation. Would you think it strange if I relate what I have seen in vision in relation to this interesting theme? Those who have died in Jesus Christ may expect to enter into all that fruition of joy when they come forth, which they possessed or anticipated here. So plain was the vision, that I actually saw men, before they had ascended from the tomb, as though they were getting up slowly. They took each other by the hand and said to each other, "My father, my son, my mother, my daughter, my brother, my sister." And when the voice calls for the dead to arise, suppose I am laid by the side of my father, what would be the first joy of my heart? To meet my father, my mother, my brother, my sister; and when they are by my side, I embrace them and they me. |
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Commentary
- Quinn again warps talk of the resurrection of families through a homosexual lens to completely distort Joseph's meaning.
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| Dan Jones reported that in Carthage Joseph came "and lay himself by my side in close embrace." |
Late, we retired to rest, Joseph and Hyrum on the only bedstead while 4 or 5 lay side by side on mattresses on the floor, Dr. Richards sitting up writing untill his last candle left him in the dark; the report of a gun, fired close by, caused Joseph whose head was by a window, to arise, leave the bed and lay himself by my side in close embrace soon after Dr. Richards retired to the bed and while I thought all but myself and heaven asleep, Joseph asked in a whisper if I was afraid to die. "Has that time come think you? Engaged in such a cause I do not think that death would have many terrors," I replied. "You will see Wales and fulfill the mission appointed you ere you die" he said. I believed his word and relied upon it through trying scenes which followed. All the conversation evinced a presentiment of an approaching crisis. |
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Commentary
- Quinn then concludes (p. 87) "the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith enjoyed bedtime snuggling with male friends throughout his life" which is nonsense, at least in the sense which Quinn intends us to take it--he implies that Joseph tolerated homosexual behavior, when these quotations in context say nothing of the sort. He is speaking about family bonds and the resurrection, not gay sex.
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
- The point is, we're trying to be accurate. We want to be straightforward, we want to have the research we put out be reliable so that people can go look it up for themselves and see that in fact is what the case is. So we're upset when we see people stretching things on either side.
- — Sandra Tanner, taped interview by Scott Faulring, 10 February 1982, in Faulring, "An Oral History of Modern Microfilm Company," Special Collections Library, Brigham Young University, 297.
Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?
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| Below are a few examples which show the confusion concerning the First Vision which existed after Joseph Smith's death..."Do you suppose that God in person called upon Joseph Smith, our Prophet? God called upon him; But God did not come himself and call..." (Journal of Discourses Vol. 6, page 29) Heber C. Kimball went on to explain that rather than God coming Himself, He sent messengers to Joseph Smith. He went on to state: Why did he not come along? Because he has agents to attend to his business, and he sits upon his throne and is established at head-quarters and tells this man, 'Go and do thi,' and it is behind the vail just as it is here. You have got ot learn that." (Journal of Discourses Vol. 6, page 29). |
Do you suppose that God in person called upon Joseph Smith, our Prophet? God called upon him; but God did not come himself and call, but he sent Peter to do it. Do you not see? He sent Peter and sent Moroni to Joseph, and told him that he had got the plates. Did God come himself? No: he sent Moroni and told him there was a record, and says he, "That record is matter that pertains to the. Lamanites, and it tells when their fathers came out of Jerusalem, and how they came, and all about it; and, says he, "If you will do as I tell you, I will confer a gift upon you." Well, he conferred it upon him, because Joseph said he would do as he told him. "I want you to go to work and take the Urim and Thummim, and translate this book, and have it published, that this nation may read it." Do you not see, by Joseph receiving the gift that was conferred upon him, you and I have that record? Well, when this took place, Peter came along to him and gave power and authority, and, says he, "You go and baptise Oliver Cowdery, and then ordain him a Priest." He did it, and do you not see his works were in exercise? Then Oliver, having authority, baptised Joseph and ordained him a Priest. Do you not see the works, how they manifest themselves? |
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Commentary
- The Tanners try to prove that Joseph changed his story about whether God and Christ appeared in the First Vision, or whether it was an 'angel.' They here completely omit the material that demonstrates that Heber was speaking of delegation of authority and mentioned Moroni bringing the Book of Mormon and Peter, James, and John restoring the Melchizedek priesthood. This passage has nothing to do with the First Vision.
| Quote used... | The rest of the story... |
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| All others, who are not classed as sons of perdition, will be "redeemed in the due time of the Lord"; that is, they will all be saved. The MEANEST SINNER will find some place in the heavenly realm... In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, THERE IS NO HELL. ALL will find a measure of salvation, ... The gospel of Jesus Christ has NO HELL in the old proverbial sense. (Joseph Smith--Seeker After Truth, Salt Lake City, 1951, pp. 177-178). The Apostle John A. Widtsoe seemed to be teaching the very thing that the Book of Mormon condemned! |
To illustrate the definite break with the Christianity of the day, [consider a doctrine] foreign to the truth of the gospel but taught almost vehemently over centuries by the priests of an apostate Christianity...that sinners will be sent to hell, there to remain in torture throughout eternity....In Joseph's day preachers still taught the proverbial hell of everlasting torture. In the text books of his day, in many nations, were pictures of devils with pitchforks pushing sinners into the flames of hells, there to suffer the agony of being burned, but never consumed. With one hand the preacher offered a fragment of God's love, and with the other, the torment of an unutterable never-ending hell provided by an angry, unforgiving God. Under such a cruel doctrine men would be frightened, so it was hoped, into a righteous manner of living. How men could devise so horrible a future for any one of God's children is a striking evidence of the apostasy from the simple loving gospel of Jesus Christ...the breaking of any law brings punishment which however may be paid for through repentance. If repentance does not follow sin, full punishment inevitably follows......In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is no hell. All will find a measure of salvation; all must pay for any infringement of the law; but the payment will be as the Lord may decide. There is graded salvation. This may be a more terrible punishment: to feel that because of sin a man is here, when by a correct life, he might be higher. The gospel of Jesus Christ has no hell in the old proverbial sense. |
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Commentary
- Note how Elder Widtsoe is trying to explain the differences between the sectarian vision of hell and the LDS one. He nowhere claims that sinners get a 'free ride' into heaven, and even opines that LDS understanding of punishment may be worse, in some ways. Note too the Tanners' tendency to distort and obscure meaning through ALL CAPS and emphasis.
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