Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Postscript

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Claims made in "Chapter 18: Cover-Ups, Conspiracies, and Controversies"
A FAIR Analysis of:
Criticism of Mormonism/Books
A work by author: Richard Abanes
 Claims made in "Appendix A: Abraham's Book?"

Claims made in "Postscript" (paperback only)

Page Claim Response Author's sources

437, n2

 Quoting Whelan: "[T]here still remains within the Church a limited form of plural marriage. Those husbands who have lost a beloved spouse and are left alone in this world can still be married for time and eternity to another wife....It is clear that all marriages continued in heaven will involve participation in plural marriage."
  • It is not clear what the author hopes to demonstrate by this claim, or why Shane Whelan's view carries any weight beyond his own opinions.
  • Shane LeGrand Whelan, More Than One: Plural Marriage—A Sacred Heritage, A Promise for Tomorrow, 208.

438

 "[M]ore than a few Mormons, although they had never actually read my book, declared without hesitation that it was rife with errors."
  • FAIR can assure the author that we have read his book, and can declare without hesitation that both the hardbound and paperback version are rife with errors.
  • Author's statement.

441, n10

 Boyd K. Packer said: "I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth."
  • Roger D. Launius, Book Review, Journal of the West, reproduced online at Signature Books.

442, n14

 "Some of the harshest criticism I received from Mormons came from those who were irate over my depiction of Brigham Young....then I acquired a new book dealing with the issue—Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by independent historian and Salt Lake Tribune columnist Will Bagley....This tremendously in-depth volume not only supported my perspective, but greatly expanded on my conclusions..."
  • See Claims made in "Chapter 11: Bloody Brigham" for a list of claims and responses.
  • Bagley's work has major problems, and the author shares many of them:
    • Thomas G. Alexander, "Review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," BYU Studies (1 January 2003) off-site
    • Lawrence Coates, "Review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," BYU Studies (1 January 2003) off-site
    • Robert D. Crockett, "A Trial Lawyer Reviews Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets," FARMS Review 15/2 (2003): 199–254. off-site
    • Paul H. Peterson, "Review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," BYU Studies (1 January 2003) off-site
    • W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall, review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Will Bagley, Mormon Historical Studies 4/1 (2003): 149—57.
  • Author's statement.

442

 "Bagley...demonstrated that...LDS leaders, including Young, probably had a hand in the planning and execution of the Mountain Meadows Massacre...Young likely entreated the Indians, albeit with great subtlety, to attack the Baker-Fancher company..."
handling of th[e] sources...is problematic and at times is manipulated to fit his thesis, and both his prejudices and biases quickly become apparent. Bagley is intent upon implicating Brigham Young in the massacre. To do so, he repaints nineteenth-century Utah with blood. . . .
...the manner in which he constructs his story is designed to reinforce the notion that nineteenth-century Utah was a corrupt cauldron of blood, vice, and hypocrisy. Bagley's prejudices and unexamined assumptions permeate the narrative. In countless places, Bagley labels Mormons and anyone with a kind word for them as ridiculous or worthy of dismissal.
Perhaps the real message in Blood of the Prophets is that considering Bagley's extensive research, he could come up with no better evidence than Dimick Huntington's journal to link "Young to facilitating the murders." And to make even that unsustainable claim, he had to put a new word into Huntington's pen.
  • These authors also criticize Bagley for using "unsubstantiated gossip for evidence," "manipulation of information," and for assertions which "go well beyond his evidence."[1]
  • Not surprisingly, the author's present work suffers from these same flaws.
  • Author's conclusion based upon Bagley's conclusion.

442

 Bagley, referring to a statement made by Quinn, said "The decision to do whatever was necessary to build the kingdom 'encouraged Mormons to consider it their religious right to kill antagonistic outsiders, common criminals, LDS apostates, and even faithful Mormons who committed sins worthy of death.'"
  • Bagley, 42.

443

 "Bagley also proved the charge often dismissed by faithful LDS church members that the Saints in 1857 refused to sell provisions to the Baker-Fancher wagon train."
  • Author's opinion.

443

 "Blood of the Prophets once and for all dispelled the long-standing Mormon myth that members of the doomed company poisoned an important cattle stream, thereby almost deserving their fate."
  • Even if the immigrants had poisoned a stream, they would not deserve their fate, as the Ensign (cited below) noted: "nothing that any of the emigrants purportedly did or said, even if all of it were true, came close to justifying their deaths....Some traditional Utah histories of what occurred at Mountain Meadows have accepted the claim that poisoning also contributed to conflict—that the Arkansas emigrants deliberately poisoned a spring and an ox carcass near the central Utah town of Fillmore, causing illness and death among local Indians. According to this story, the Indians became enraged and followed the emigrants to the Mountain Meadows, where they either committed the atrocities on their own or forced fearful Latter-day Saint settlers to join them in the attack. Historical research shows that these stories are not accurate."
  • Bagley was not the first to "dispel" this myth—Juanita Brooks' account predated his, first appearing in XXX. She wrote: "[citation needed]"  [needs work]
  • Author's opinion.

443, 615n15 (PB)

 Bagley states "In their desire to exonerate Brigham Young of any guilt, official Mormon accounts of the crime laid the blame on victims and Indians, a tradition that is alive and well today."
  • Mountain Meadows Massacre
  • Use of sources: Brigham Young ordered Mountain Meadows Massacre?
  • The closest thing to an "official Mormon account" of the massacre is probably an Ensign article: Richard E. Turley, Jr., "The Mountain Meadows Massacre," Ensign (September 2007): 14.off-site: "some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows...."
  • A new book coauthored by Turley expresses similar views.[2]
  • Bagley, xvii.

443, 615n16-18

 Brigham said "[W]hen a man is found to be a thief, he will be a thief no longer, cut his throat, & thro' him in the River."
  • Quote is taken from Quinn.

 [needs work]

  • Instruction to Bishops, quoted in Thomas Bullock diary, December 13, 1846. Cited in D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 657.;
  • History of the Church, vol. 7, 597.
  • Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet, 182.
  • Thomas G. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Summer 1992), vol. 25, no. 2, 27.

444-446, n23-24

 Past LDS leaders held racist views.

446

 "Of course, when any religion or denomination is tainted by the stain of racism, it always leaves future members in a very awkward position. And to be fair, Mormonism is not alone in this predicament. A number of Christian denominations (e.g. the Southern Baptists) have had to work very hard at racial reconciliation, often using public declarations to repudiate past racist statements by leaders."
  • There is, "of course," no hint of this perspective in the chapter branding members of the Church as racists with a "white supremacist" theology.
  • ONUG's double standard on race
  • N/A

447, 616n31

 Gordon B. Hinckley "admitted in April 2002 that Mormons do not believe in the same 'Jesus' revered throughout Christendom. According to Hinckley, Christendom's concept of Christ comes not from the Bible, but from corrupt traditions of men....The LDS concept of God, instead, comes from Smith's alleged 1820 vision."

448, 616n34

 Dallin Oaks told Mormons in 1995 "that so-called Christianity sees God as an entirely different kind of being."

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Turley, Walker and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 1. This work notes: "One approach [to recounting the massacre] portrays the perpetrators as good people and the victims as evil ones who committed outrages during their travel through central and southern Utah. Some descendants of the perpetrators and several Mormon historians have adopted this approach because it seems, on the surface, to excuse or soften what happened....Readers of our book will find little sympathy for...[this] approach..." (xii-xiii).
  2. [note]  Cited in Daniel C. Peterson, "Editor's Introduction," FARMS Review 15/2 (2003): ix–lxii. off-site
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