Yes, that is true.

So what’s the Church HQ reaction at this point?

Disdainfully ignore the movie and wait for it to fizzle pitifully?

Or issue press releases denying or contradicting the factual claims at the risk of giving the movie free press?

Thankfully, this looks to be a terrible movie aesthetically. The writing appears to be horrible, the filming bad and the overall feel of it seems very B-movie. There’s no way it’s going to be successful at the box office, nobody (except us) is going to even pay attention to it. It will be forgotten within the year. My fear is the good-intentioned Mormon who starts a stupid email campaign trying to get it blocked from theaters. Let’s just let this one pass quietly into sleep.

I’m ignoring it as hard as I can. In fact, I’m trying to not type this comment.
Must
not
press

sub

mit…

It’s sad if anyone’s faith is tied to any particular person, even Brigham Young, other than the Christ.

The works of Juanita Brooks and Will Bagley clearly identify who the bad guys in the MMM.

Try what one wise LDS sister said, “I admit it, we did it, we were wrong, it does not affect my faith, and let’s move on.”

Now, in terms of the quality of cinematographic art and general film appeal, let’s wait for it to come out before we opine.

a random john (8) and DKL (9): LOL!

I recently blogged on this (see over here). As I noted, it does seem stunning that some are willing to make comparisons between radical Islamic terrorism and the early Mormon Church. Weird stuff. As insidious as it is, though, I should say it presents a good opportunity to be true and faithful (if that makes any sense). Go read D&C 123 if you need a good primer for what I mean. (“…publish to all the world [our sufferings and abuses]…as the last effort which is enjoined on us by our Heavenly Father…[as] an imperative duty that we owe to God…”

Someone, somewhere, sometime said something like this, that Brigham Young’s name would be held under the same scrutiny as Joe Smith’s, for good and evil in all the world. Does anyone know who it was that said that and where? Or am I just smoking weed?

I’m guessing it will make it over here. Young Guns did, right? Besides, I am not as optimistic as Rusty is that people won’t like it just because it’s aesthetically terrible.

Interestingly D&C 123 is used as the rationale behind the Strengthening the Members Committee. Oddly when this was done (about 1992) verses 1-5 were cited and verse 6 was strangely absent. Ok, maybe it isn’t so odd when you consider taht StMC was secret up until then and verse 6 implies that it should publish to all the world what it is doing…

Not to excuse the guilty involved in MMM, but I think that the perpetrators were suffering from post-traumatic disorder. Some of the people in Cedar City had lived through the atrocities in Missouri. That certainly would have contributed to the hysteria. At least that is the excuse I give my ancestor.

Matt, I don’t think any mental illness excuses actions, except in extreme cases that most people suffering ptd or depression just don’t have. (IMO) However you had people who’ve fled to be left alone after being driven from place to place and often tarred and feathered or worse. The trek west, while perhaps exaggerated by Mormons too much, was no picnic either. To then have an army coming down in what looked like a repetition of events, only worse, certainly could lead people to behave in a way that leads to unfortunate choices. Just like an abused child often will act out sexually in an adult even if they have free will not to.

So it might have been a perfect storm, but it definitely wasn’t beyond their control. The leadership could have done more and so could the local communities. However when you look to places that have suffered long violence I think you’ll discover that the psychological weight is hard to overcome.

Clark (#20), It’s a point well taken. But we also need to be careful to keep the “persecutions” in perspective.

To use one of your examples, it is not uncommon for the sexually abused to exaggerate their abuse as a crutch or as an excuse to act out in inappropriate ways.

Or, it is not uncommon for an ex-Mormon to exaggerate their various slights and injustices to excuse all kinds of inappropriate vitriol and abuse back at Mormons, as is evidenced in much of the DAMU blog world.

At the same time, it is not uncommon for a people to exaggerate and stir up a persecution complex, to not see the big picture. It stokes up the fires of conviction, it is proof that the group is “chosen.” In retrospect it becomes a sacrament, an offering of one’s faith and loyalty.

So you read some of the rhetoric that came out of the mouths of Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith in Missouri and it is sometimes all out of proportion with reality. This is even more true of the rhetoric that came out of the mouth of Brigham Young (and some of the apostles) during the mid 1850s, totally out of touch with reality. Again, this has pretty much been admitted to by Mormon scholars. Brigham stepped over the line, got caught up in a firestorm of righteous indignity. He was insulated from the rest of the world in the SL basin, he had more power over his people than the president of the United States, he was preparing for the second coming of the Lord.

So yes, the Mormons experienced persecution. It is a valid point. I just wonder how much the Mormons and some of the leaders exaggerated or fetishized the persecution out of proportion to reality?

The movie couldn’t be much worse than any representative of the mormon genre that have aired lately. I’d venture that a couple of hours of campy gore and hype might be just as entertaining as the Bloggernacle.

‘Course, it woulda been better with Mel Gibson.

#19 Matt I am not excusing the terrible behavior on the part of the then citizens of Cedar City. I agree completely that many Missourians suffered at the hands of the early Mormons. Some even argue that Hauns Mill was in part retaliation from The Battle of Crooked River. I tend to agree. Eye for an eye and all that…frontier justice.
I agree with what Clark so eloquently said. When individuals are pushed out of Missouri in the dead of winter that cause their babies to die. Then are put out of Illinois that cause other babies to die. Then they are sent to live in a remote corner of the world where they watch as their younger children and grandchildren nearly starve because the environment is so harsh. These individuals are susceptible to the whisperings of Satan (cause that is what it was). I do not excuse my ancestor’s horrible crimes. He who lived an exemplary, very faithful Latter-day Saint life before and after MMM I want to believe that he was vulnerable to Satan’s whisperings. I am sad for him that he will have to answer to his victims, Jesus and God. I am sad that for so many good things he did; the horrible crime he committed over shadows all the rest.

Nicely said Matt Thurston #27. I live in the southeastern US. I have yet to meet a Latter-day Saint, who was not raised in Utah, who has even heard of MMM. I really have discussed this with very few people, but still it is amazing to me that few LDS in the Church are aware of this incident. That is what is so sad. We could learn so much from MMM. The big moral I take, is the danger of blind obedience. Also it is awful that some members will get their MMM education from Hollywood rather than from the Church.

As for the persecution being exaggerated, I’m not sure it is a valid point. BY and nearly all of his audience, especially in the 1850s, had lived through the persecution firsthand. To us, who have not experienced tarring and feathering, raping, murdering, and being forced out of our homes, all before one great forced migration in the dead of winter in which, as JA Benson has noted on this thread, the people watched their babies, wives, mothers, fathers, etc. die, it is easy to say that rhetoric about what these people actually experienced was exaggerated and that the Mormons deserved it because they tended to vote as a block and that pissed off the locals, etc. None of this, by the way, has much to do with MMM, unless the claim here is that by reminding people in his preaching how the Lord preserved his people despite their being forced out of their homes numerous times in the United States before the forced migration, Brigham Young was speaking code for “kill the emigrants”. Aside from that, we have BY’s sworn deposition testimony that he ordered that the emigrants should pass unmolested. Will Bagley and others argue that the “evidence” cross-examines BY’s sworn statement and pays the guilt on him; the “evidence” for these people is Mormonism’s repugnant nature rather than some kind of direct order, affirmation, support, or acceptance by BY or others in general Church leadership of violence against emigrant wagon trains.

Good heavens.

Thurston, are you sure you mean all those things you’ve said about Brigham Young? You said, for example,

I believe [Brigham Young] thought himself above the law of the land.

I mean, there may be some truth to that statement. It stands to reason. Utah was still a territory at the time, a wild frontiers land, largely unsettled. Random thoughts of the Wild West spring to mind: Butch Cassidy, the Gold Rush, marshall law, gunslingers, the Apache and Navajo Wars, Jesse James. The things you’ve been saying appear consistent with this slice or representation of the past, but they are actually inconsistent with the way things really were. Brigham Young was good to the core! The fact that there is no smoking gun, as you pointed out, is very important. But it goes so much beyond that. The context is wrong. The whole thing is misplaced. The big picture is important. No. It’s vital.

It’s just that, to my ears, you sound, frankly, more doubtful and demoralizing than you might intend to. I don’t know. Maybe you actually intend to sound demoralizing. I should say at this point that I don’t have it out for you, individually, Thurston. You’re just getting the brunt of my frustration over this one. I’ve been reading quite a bit about the film, and everything I read just leaves me discouraged. I have become thoroughly convinced the film has been conceived for evil purposes. I didn’t think I could/would feel so let down by something of this nature. I’m so accustomed to letting “anti-” material go the way of the world. Eventually, of course, it will, despite the fact that it’s already getting nods from certain corners suggesting that there may be Oscar-worthy material found in the film. But the filmmakers are beating on a door that matters to me more than many things: the world of cinema *and* religion. And I’m starting to fear that it’s going to have more clamour than I at first thought.

Mind you, I am not saying that bad things did not happen at Mountain Meadows, and that some Mormons were not to blame. To the contrary. (I’m already imagining a follow-up post to this one.) This film does paint an overtly false picture, with one lavishly huge stroke of the brush. Not only that, it goes beyond anti-Mormonism into the fevered realm of conspiracy theory.

Sigh.

I suppose my biggest disappointment is certain people’s willingness (this is a broader missive) to so willingly question Brigham Young’s intent and/or actions without being much more careful or thorough. After all, it goes to the credibility of everything we believe. Further –

I absolutely, utterly, thoroughly, agree with john f. (#29) we did not do it. That is perhaps one of the more important points I have heard brought up, since this film is not just taking aim at the past, but, more accurately, taking aim at contemporary Mormonism.

Rhapsidiomite, Brigham Young certainly did not consider that his authority came from the United States. When his commission as governor was delivered, it brought with it no special authority as far as he was concerned — it was merely a formality, the United States’ recognition of an established fact, that he was the leader of the people. He consistently showed that his loyalties were to the kingdom and his people, not to Washington and its laws. While he honored the founding principles of the United States, he repeatedly taught that its government had become so corrupt that it was deserving of no honor. In that sense, at least, he was “above the law” because his authority came from a higher source than the voice of the American people.

Acknowledging that should not be demoralizing — it doesn’t demean Brigham Young or throw doubt on his goodness. In fact, it should help explain his actions and some of the more difficult problems in territorial Utah-Mormon history. He was not only marching to the beat of a different drummer, he was reading an entirely different law book and consulting with entirely different counselors than any other governor in the U.S.

I love Brigham Young. Someday I hope to be wise enough to write the biography he deserves (all those we have, even Arrington’s, focus on single aspects of his complex character; we don’t have a well-rounded picture). One of the keys to his personality and actions is that he answered to God, not to Congress, even when he was territorial governor.

Thanks, Ardis.

Just to be clear, I think you’ve missed the gist of my post, and that’s probably my own fault. I spoke more vaguely than I’m wont to admit because the facts are a little vague to me concerning just about everything at Mountain Meadows, and what Brigham Young actually said. Most of what I know is based on second-hand sources. I haven’t delved into the actual material. Though I’m thinking now would be a good time to read the actual sources. Help, anyone, on finding those sources?

But, see, that’s just it. What I’m trying to say is that we ought to be judging Brigham Young on the bigger picture. I don’t think Thurston “has it out” for Brigham Young. But I’m frustrated that he won’t defend Brigham on his overall character. While this angle may not play out at all in a court of law (I don’t know, would it? I’m no lawyer), we judge people on a different basis when it comes to history. And lest we forget, Brigham Young was a complex man—perhaps as complex as Joseph Smith. Just to cite another example, Brigham Young had multiple wives, like Joseph, which can also be construed by sophists into various political, moral, or legal corners. Most of us have a hard time understanding polygamy. Likewise, I’m suggesting that most of us have a hard time understanding what happened—specifically with Brigham Young—at MMM. If there is no smoking gun, how are things prima facie? Or, perhaps better put, why can’t we judge Brigham Young on the bigger picture? I certainly do.

Incidentally, I actually may side with your opine that Brigham Young may have “tolerated some of the atmospheric conditions that allowed the massacre to happen.” Still, whether or not Brigham was above the law of the land seems irrelevant to me, considering the times. Somehow I didn’t get that across, which I can see, going back and rereading my last post. I didn’t quite express what I meant to about the Wild West. But most of what I said should still stand.

That we are narrowing in on this microcosmic picture where the facts seem obscure—which, don’t get me wrong, I think is a good thing—I want to hear a little more defense of Brigham Young’s character. The idea that, as you’ve said, there’s no definitive biography on Brigham Young, suggests to me that the history, including MMM, needs an overview (Dictionary.com: overview: “A broad, comprehensive view”). Like Joseph in his day, Brigham was one of the greatest men of his generation.

Rhapsidiomite,

Well, I stand by my statement that BY thought himself “above the law of the land.” So did Joseph Smith. And so did most of the early prophets, at least up through Joseph F Smith. That isn’t to say they spit on the Constitution, or were lawless, it just means that they thought their authority above and beyond that bestowed by mere mortal men. They were respectful of the laws of the land insofar as said laws did not compromise the mission of the Church. When the laws did get in the way, they were not against bending the rules and/or lying for the Lord. This can be demonstrated fairly easily and is acknowledged by both Apologists and Critics of the Church. And Brigham probably felt the “above the law of the land” sentiment stronger than Joseph, John, Wilford, et al. He may have been a good, holy, and spiritual man, but don’t think for a minute he didn’t possess a Cheshire-Cat-like ability to swat at the gnats (representatives) sent by the United States.

But Ardis summed up my thought better.

Your “wild west” ideas have nothing to do with my statement.

To be continued…

“I wonder what Ardis would recommend?”

She’d recommend that you stick with Juanita Brooks’s classic, at least for the time being. Despite Will’s superb storytelling skills, I can’t recommend _Blood of the Prophets_ as shedding any light or understanding on the massacre. The book by Turley/Leonard/Walker is being held so closely that it’s hard to get any reliable fix on its merits.

Bagley’s book is significant, as is the followup with Bigler and Bagley, “Innocent Blood.” The Turley et al work should have been an important book, but simply put — it is not. It ignores critical evidence and exculpates Young and Smith as almost innocent bystanders.