Posts Tagged ‘puritan’
Mormon Wars Part 3: Hillbilly Rednecks
In every case of bona-fide Mormon “outrage” against Christian antagonists, the actual record proves that the Mormons were the original injured parties, that they were only guilty of re-action, and in every case, this reaction became necessary only because civil protection had been denied them and they were left to fend for themselves. So they fended. Sometimes not so skillfully, sometimes not so fairly. Often not so calmly.
Sometimes not very rationally.
Still, even “neutral” historians constantly feel obligated to point out that many of these Mormon reactions to Christianity’s non-stop persecution were over-reactions, and sometimes this led to collateral damage against innocent parties. No dispute there. Valid criticism. From the perspective of a minority community being systematically tormented, and when viewed within the context of a continual struggle against an openly hostile surrounding culture possessing superior numbers and openly avowing the death and destruction of Mormonism and all its adherents, men, women, and children, it must be conceded that it would be easy for the Mormon community to “over”-react to threats, real, and imagined. For instance:
Bill for Removing of the Press of the “Nauvoo Expositor.”
Resolved by the city council of the city of Nauvoo, that the printing office from whence issues the Nauvoo Expositor is a public nuisance; and also of said Nauvoo Expositors which may be or exist in said establishment; and the mayor is instructed to cause said establishment and papers to be removed without delay, in such manner as he shall direct.
Passed June 10th, 1844. Geo. W. Harris, President pro tem.
W. Richards, Recorder.
–Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 284
Why did Mayor Smith and his city council think the Nauvoo Expositor a public nuisance? Apart from the lame serial dramas, the bad poetry features, and poor writing in general, is had been established right under the nose of Joseph Smith by several apostate Mormons who’d been excommunicated for wanting to set up their own franchise on multiple wives–only they didn’t want to actually marry any of them, and though they were claiming they had it, they certainly didn’t think they needed Smith’s approval. It was the Nauvoo Expositor’s only mission to harangue Joseph Smith particularly over the plural marriage issue, call him names, make charges of villainy and pretend he was behind the sex orgies and covert assassination squads its founders had been excommunicated for attempting to set up in the Mormon community under his name. Any other content in the rag was an exercise in vanity on the part of the contributors, and scarcely journalism anyway. And yes, they were “exposing” some sensitive doctrines about plural marriage Smith didn’t want publicly explored yet, and certainly not by a group he’d tried to rid himself of, and who now were deliberately attempting to twist a touchy doctrinal revelation before the public via the most unflattering and distorted characterizations of plural marriage a group of whore mongers, abortionists, lechers, and thugs could contrive. That sort of thing emanating from the capital of Mormonism could get a lot of Mormons killed.
O
r at least, that was obviously the essential opinion of the Nauvoo City Council.
The press was destroyed and the type was melted in a bonfire in the street. Was that an over-reaction? Perhaps. But not considering that anti-Mormon presses all around them were bringing death and persecution already, and one more from the heart of Mormonism would only add credibility to the already dangerous hyperbole being used against the church.
Was the Nauvoo Expositor’s destruction legal? As a zoning matter, yes, marginally. Was the "public nuisance" legal ploy used Constitutional? If proposed as a zoning issue, perhaps yes, in the same way you might ban whorehouses or sex shops or gun and whiskey stores near school playgrounds and so forth–in which case the Expositor’s company would simply be free to set up shop outside city limits. But, as Joseph Smith replied to this line of inquiry:
…In relation to the press, you say that you differ from me in opinion. Be it so; the thing, after all, is only a legal difficulty, and the courts, I should judge, are competent to decide on that matter. If our act was illegal, we are willing to meet it…
–Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 437
http://www.archive.org/stream/risefallofnauvoo00byu2robe#page/n3/mode/2up
The old Christian settlers and their apostate-Mormon enablers replied to this reasoned appeal to the law by shooting Joseph Smith all to hell before he could get into a courtroom. Joseph Smith had a habit of winning these sorts of legal challenges, from New York to Illinois, year after year, case after case. It was easier to just kill him than risk another loss. I’m not guessing. This is what was openly boasted by the mob before they murdered him. Then they raided, beat, pillaged, burned, tortured, shot, stabbed, and cannonaded their way through the rest of the local Mormon population, systematically, until they had all been killed or driven into the western wilderness.
So, you tell me. Who really over-reacted?
The question is, why were Mormons hated and persecuted? Was it really brought upon themselves via their overtly evil practices? Did their peaceful, God-loving neighbors spontaneously rebel against their tyranny in an attempt to liberate themselves from despotic Mormon oppression? Christian apologists will keep trying to sell you on that concept. But that’s not what history shows. History reveals a preponderance of evidence suggesting that Mormons are a very accommodating and industrious people. History however, also shows that if you heap enough crap on a Mormon he’ll eventually get fed up and kick your ass. And then he’ll want to keep kicking your ass until you aren’t a problem for him any more. All that proves is, Mormons are human beings.
The question again is, why did Mormonism’s frontier neighbors want to heap a load of poo on them in the first place, and just who was doing it?
Two simple answers: white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Christians were persecuting the early Mormons, and they were doing it for two reasons—religion and politics. In the mind of the WASP, or really most any other period Christian however, that’s only one reason. Christians have always believed that religion and politics are inseparable, and that the arm of civil law must necessarily be expressly Christian to protect and enforce their Christian faith. In more liberal, even “mainstream” Christian sects today, this notion has been all but abandoned in favor of an almost equally self-hating and suicidal sense of “political correctness” that puts dog-worshippers, Satanists, Islamo-Jihadists, or GLBT neo-Pagan druidic sodomites on the same moral level as any of the Christian sects—with the exception of course of Mormonism. In that case, Liberal and Moderate Christians still choose to hate Mormons because they dare maintain that donkey-lovers and sexually altered sodomites don’t deserve the same rights to adoption and marriage as good Christian men and women do, and hold other “intolerant” social views about “negroes,” or so they believe. But even today the bulk of the Religious Right mentally screen and edit the inspired words of the Founding Fathers, and deduce that the Constitutional authors had always intended to form a nation built upon a document designed to protect American Christians from the polluting ideas and practices of the infidel. If you want to make some equivalent charge against the Mormons, if you want to claim that Mormonism is all about forcing an exclusive LDS theocracy upon the United States and the world in general, you’re fighting a litany of canonized LDS expressions of loyalty to the US Constitution and its principles. A simple Google of Mormon patriotism will instantly produce volumes of open, pluralistic professions of respect for Jeffersonian religious liberty from Mormon leadership, spanning over two centuries of their church.
As I have said to you before, so I say again, the Constitution of the United States is a great and treasured part of my religion, and the revelations of the Lord and the words of our inspired leaders compel it to be so. The overturning, or the material changing, or the distortion of any fundamental principle of our constitutional government would thus do violence to my religion.
God grant that this people shall never give the lie to Brother Brigham, and that ever and always "the Elders of Israel will protect and sustain civil and religious liberty and every constitutional right bequeathed to us by our fathers."
–J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Stand Fast by Our Constitution, pp. 8-9
I have ranted frequently about the “Secret Constitution” of the old Christian settlers in the Mormon persecutions and expulsions from various counties in Missouri–including expulsion from one established specifically for Mormons by the state legislature, Caldwell. A “Mob Manifesto,” and an Extermination order from Missouri’s governor are hard to defend even today, even by the most apologetic Christian apologists. (They give it a good try anyway.) But it is seldom mentioned by Mormon or anti-Mormonist alike, that a similar, highly organized, Christian, Darwinian democracy-styled resolution was drafted by some nine counties around Nauvoo. These Christian patriots in southern Illinois, in the name of American liberty, drafted a compact, like their brethren had across the river in Missouri, issuing a demand for total Mormon expulsion from the state, under a bit more carefully worded threat of extermination, but a threat nonetheless. Christian mobbers had by then of course, learned to be a little craftier at the tactics and language they used, to give their “spontaneous” mob violence and predatory, pack-mentality the sweet smell of law and order. In the Illinois version of deputizing the anti-Mormon mob, the first step was to repeal the Nauvoo City charter, which they pulled off in 1845, less than a year after murdering Joseph Smith. This removed from the Mormon community any legal standing to act in their own defense. As unincorporated land, Nauvoo and environs were stripped of a police force, local courts, local government, and most importantly, the Nauvoo Legion, which was a legislatively chartered city militia. Nauvoo was at that point dependent singularly upon the good graces of the County Sheriff for their only legal protection. The State Attorney, Josiah Lamborn, commented on this maneuver in a letter to Brigham Young:
I have always considered that your enemies have been prompted by political and religious prejudices, and by a desire for plunder and blood, more than for the common good. By the repeal of your charter, and by refusing all amendments and modifications, our legislature has given a kind of sanction to the barbarous manner in which you have been treated. Your two representatives exerted themselves to the extent of their ability in your behalf, but the tide of poplar passion and frenzy was too strong to be resisted. It is truly a melancholy spectacle to witness the law-makers of a sovereign State condescending to pander to the vices, ignorance and malevolence of a class of people who are at all times ready for riot, murder, and rebellion.
–Roberts, Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 345
http://books.google.com/books?id=PMAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=the+rise+and+fall+of+nauvoo&source
Vol. ? Friday, March 20, 1840. No. ?For the Register.
THE MOBBING SPIRIT OF MISSOURI REKINDLING IN ILLINOIS.The following is a statement of facts that may be relied on:
A short time since it was ascertained that a Mr. Clark, a member of the Methodist Episcopal church in Logan county, had in his possession the Book of Mormon. For this glaring outrage he was severely reprimanded, deprived of his station as a class leader, and the book demanded of him by his preachers, a Mr. Martin and a Mr. Watt.
He (the said Clark) contended that the book was his own property, and unless they bought it, they could not have the same. Accordingly, the necessary sum was raised, and paid for the book. Shortly after the said book was taken into De Witt county, to a Quarterly Conference meeting, there to await its final trial, and it was condemned, and burnt to ashes — the judges themselves being the executioners. And what is still more appalling, Mr. Watt, a preacher, has been heard unblushingly to assert, that if burning the book would not do, they would next burn the Mormons themselves. If testimony is required on this subject, it can be had at any time. AB’MPALMER.
Springfield, Ill., Mar. 12.
The Christian mobocracy had already secured the loyalty of most state and local officials before assassinating Joseph Smith. Some of it was willing, some of it reluctant, some active and some just key conspirators looking the other way at just the right moment. But there was one frustrating
exception; the County Sheriff, JB Backenstos, who insisted in upholding his oath of office, much to the mobocracy’s consternation. The Christian mob had however, insured that their version of the “truth” of their past, present, and future violence against the Mormons would get to the federal government, by electing one of Smith’s murderers, an indicted, first-hand participant in the Mormon founder’s execution via lynch mob at Carthage, to represent their state as a US Senator. State Attorney Lamborn had a bit to say about that as well:
Your senator, Jacob C. Davis, has done much to poison the minds of members [of Congress] against anything in your favor. He walks at large in defiance of the law an indicted murderer. If a Mormon was in his position, the senate would afford no protection, but he would be dragged forth to jail or the gallows, or be shot down by a cowardly and brutal mob.
–Roberts, Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 345
The next thing the Hancock County Holy Conspirators did was rally a mass meeting of Christian crusaders at Quincy, 22 September of that year. In spite of frequent small-scale mobbing, looting, burning and other intimidations, Mormons were still hanging out in Nauvoo. They had committed to complete their first major temple before they left it to the heathen to be defiled, and in the meantime were using it to initiate and “endow” as many of the Saints as possible with covenants Mormons take upon themselves in the course of educational theatrical sketches essentially, stories told in formalized, ritual ceremonial form, which occur therein and only therein. An ad-hoc mob committee had already demanded to know the intentions of the Mormons remaining in the vicinity. The Mormons responded that their desire was to simply live in peace, but ultimately the entire body of the church had plans to relocate in the West. The Quincy committee issued a resolution on 24 September, containing a number of clauses, all of which demanded that the Mormons had to leave in the Spring, and that they were not to be allowed to prosecute criminally or civilly any accused old Christian settlers, and that these old Christian mobbers were to be allowed to return to Mormon areas, unmolested and unprosecuted for any crimes against the Mormons they admittedly may have committed. Josiah B Conyers, who wrote A Brief History of the Hancock Mob, commented on the first of these clauses:
The first one, in our opinion, is unique. They accepted and recommended to the people of the surrounding counties to accept an unconditional proposition to remove. But understand, Mr. Mormon, though we accept it and recommend the surrounding counties to do so likewise, (reprobate you, unconditionally) we do not intend to bring ourselves under any obligation to purchase your property, or to furnish purchasers; but we will be very kind and obliging, and will in no way, hinder or obstruct you in your efforts to sell, provided, nevertheless, this shall not be so construed as to prevent us from running off the purchaser. But we expect this small favor of you; viz., that you must dispose of your property, and leave at the appointed time.
–History of the Hancock Mob, Conyers, pgs 13, 14
–Roberts, Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 353
The Quincy anti-Mormonists concluded their meeting by drafting a general military strategy for the forceful removal of Mormonism from their God-given lands. They appointed the leadership of a sizeable military contingent also organized thus to meet the challenge of violently contending with any Mormons foolish enough to linger or dawdle past their deadline.
As I have implied, the Quincy committee then met with a similar group at Carthage, and together rallied an even larger convention which was held at Carthage, comprising religious, law enforcement, civil, militia, and volunteer forces from all nine surrounding counties. The Carthage assembly adopted all the principle resolutions of the Quincy gathering, adding a litany of crimes and outrages charged against most of the Mormon leadership by way of justification for said expulsion of all Mormons from the state. There was one further enablement they demanded:
Resolved, that it is expected as an indispensable condition to the pacification of the county, that the old citizens be permitted to return to their homes unmolested by the present sheriff (Backenstos,) and the Mormons, for anything alleged against them; any attempt on their part to arrest or prosecute such persons for pretended offenses will inevitably lead to a renewal of the late disorder. [Meaning wholesale riot and warfare against the Mormons.]
–Roberts, Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, pg 354
Having thus named Sheriff Backenstos personally, it was assumed he would back down from the nine-county threat. It was also moved that WN Purple, judge of the judicial circuit court be “requested” to withhold the fall session in Hancock County, on the grounds that opening the Mormon complaints against the old Christian settlers would again, result in open mob violence against the Mormons, so it was for their own protection. In this manner, Christianity had castrated the Sheriff, and if he dared arrest any of them, he now had no court and no judge to drag them to anyway. The only justice in southern Illinois was the mob.
The scene was brightly set for unfettered Christian fury to be released upon Mormondom, but that pesky sheriff, Backenstos, wouldn’t back off. And even in the regular State Militia’s ranks, the Mormons found many strong defenders. On 11 February, 1846, Brigham Young, the Twelve, and the High Council, made a show for the mobs of crossing the Mississippi on a fortuitous coating of ice, and made camp in distant Iowa. By the last of April, the main exodus had begun and the great majority of the Saints had vacated Nauvoo. Rather than easing the anticipation of the Christian defenders of liberty, and with the blessing of regional clergy, the mob saw no point in making even a token offer for what they could easily take by force, or inherit by default, simply by driving off the now greatly diminished body of Mormon stragglers.
An Illinois State Militia Major named Warren was commissioned to supervise Hancock County during this forced emigration process. He maintained peace with an even hand, but his orders had expected him to retreat from the vicinity once the main move had been completed. This news, he noted, was obviously of great anticipation amongst the old Christian settlers. He advised the governor that there was still a fair Mormon presence in the area and the wolves had begun to circle around them. His orders were changed to remain in defense of those Mormons who were attempting to pack up or sell the abandoned Mormon property. The problem was, a fair contingent of Mormons were to old or ill or broke to brave the trip immediately, and others had hoped to remain till the end of the summer to consummate their large number of pending sales and other business transactions, and protect personal, civic, church and communal property until it was sold or carted out. This short delay was too much for the old Christian mobbers. Again, they fell back into their old tricks of instigation and intimidation. Major Warren felt it necessary to put the mobs on notice by circulating a handbill:
The undersigned again deems it his duty to appear before you in a circular. It may not be known to all of you, that the day after my detachment was disbanded at Carthage, I received orders from the executive to muster them into service again, and remain in the county until further orders.
I have now been in Nauvoo with my detachment a week and can
say to you with perfect assurance that the demonstrations made by the Mormon population , are unequivocal. They are leaving the State, and preparing to leave, with every means that God and nature has placed in their hands. … The anti-Mormons desire the removal of the Mormons; this is being effected peaceably and with all possible dispatch. All aggressive movements, therefore, against them at this time, must be actuated by a wanton desire to shed blood, or to plunder. …
A man of near sixty years of age, living about seven miles from this place, was taken from his house a few nights since, stripped of his clothing, and his back cut to pieces with a whip, for no other reason than because he was a Mormon, and too old to make successful resistance. Conduct of this kind would disgrace a horde of savages. … To the Mormons I would say, go on with your preparations and leave as fast as you can. Leave the fighting to be done by my detachment. If we are overpowered, then recross the river, and defend yourselves and property.
The fighting in Nauvoo progressed rapidly to full-scale warfare with canon and ball on both sides. The State Militia split and fought itself, one faction with the Christian-sponsored mobs, one faction defending the Mormons.
The Ba
ttle of Nauvoo was the final chapter in the forceful expulsion of the Mormons from Nauvoo. The so-called Anti-Mormon Party, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the "Regulators," were bent on driving the remaining citizens out by force despite the well-known fact that most had gone and the rest were making plans to do so.
Some 600 to 1,000 strong, the Regulators were led first by Col. John Singleton and later by John Carlin of Carthage. The core of this unlawful mob was none other than the notorious Carthage Greys, who had played such a prominent role in the murders of Joseph and Hyrum two years before.
On the other side, two groups defended the city: the "Spartan Band" of heavily armed Latter-day Saints, and the "Kill Devils" made up of several of the so-called "new citizens," that is recent non-Mormon move-ins who had a vested interest in preserving property values.
Gov. Thomas Ford, sensing imminent conflict, commissioned Major James R. Parker of the 32nd Regiment of the Illinois State Militia to order all the would-be combatants to return to their homes and "preserve the peace." Parker, seeing the determination of Carlin’s force to wreak havoc on the city regardless of executive order, and sensing Ford’s reluctance to dispatch a large regiment of neutral militiamen, followed the course of political expediency by signing a treaty with Singleton which called for peace and disarmament. Singleton and Parker then quit the field and the Regulators chose Col. Thomas Brockman ("Old Tom") to finish what Singleton had refused to do.
On Sept. 10, 1846, Brockman ordered the first assault on the city comp
lete with cannon fire, driving families out of their homes and down toward the river. The first real exchange of volleys came two days later, on Sept. 12, and for the next four days the bell tower porch of the Nauvoo Temple served as an ideal perch from which to view the several forays and skirmishes across roadways, backyards and cornfields. Nauvoo’s defenders responded with cannon fire of their own. Despite a valiant resistance in which few men were killed on either side, by Sept. 16 the Nauvoo defenders had agreed to surrender the city.
The "Articles of Accommodation, Treaty and Agreement" – drawn up between the Nauvoo Trustees (John S. Fullmer, Almon W. Babbitt and Joseph L. Heywood) on the one side and Brockman and Carlin on the other and chaired by Andrew Johnson of the Quincy Committee) – stipulated the immediate surrender of the city and of all arms in return for a pledge of safety and protection for people and property. The defenders soon disbanded and about 3 p.m. on Sept. 17 the mob, numbering more than 1,500, marched into the city, down Mulholland Street to the temple, then to Main Street and down to Parley Street where Henry I. Young gave up the temple keys to Johnson.
The invaders, however, showed little respect for temple or treaty. Parties of armed men ransacked and desecrated the temple while others roamed around the city ordering families to leave within two hours or other short notice. Many of the sick were treated with cruelty and families were molested while burying their dead. Others went from house to house plundering cow yards, pigpens, hen roosts, and bee stands, tearing up floors and otherwise destroying property with impunity.
Meanwhile an unidentified preacher ascended the temple tower and proclaimed with a loud voice, "Peace, Peace, Peace to the inhabitants of the Earth, now the Mormons are driven."5
The Mormons never really had a prayer making friends anywhere in the Midwestern region. In the end, it was inevitable by sheer force of numbers, that the frontier politicians, Christian preachers, Godless capitalists out to make a buck, and their attendant, Scots-Irish, Tennessee enforcement mob would win. The entire area was ruled by hick mobs for generations afterward.
As Governor Thomas Ford, the man Mormons still claim set up their first prophet for mob execution summed it up:
I had a good opportunity to know the early settlers of Hancock county. I had attended the circuit courts there as States-attorney, form 1830, when the county was first organized, up to the year 1834; and to my certain knowledge the early settlers, with some honorable exceptions, were, in popular language, hard cases.
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wZcontent/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V04N02_43.pdf
I won’t reiterate the whole history of Christian persecution of non-Christians. I won’t rehash the Christian persecution and common extermination of its own body–those deemed by the ruling Christian faction of the day to be heretical. That history speaks for itself and is certainly exposed adequately throughout my twenty-five previous essays in this seri
es. Mormons are not only outside any historical view of Christian orthodoxy but Joseph Smith personally insulted the entire world Christian community by telling them they had lost the plot. So all of organized religion, all of American Christianity, openly sanctioned the genocide of the “Mormon Race,” as it was often called. American Christianity’s jihad against Mormonism was an openly published mission, so well documented that any Christian attempting to dispute it makes a total ass out of himself without any help from me. (But I do what I can to help them out.)
Again, it’s not as if Mormons were the first victims of Christian vigilante justice in Illinois:
…As late as 1831 a gang almost controlled Pope and Massac counties, and even built a fort which had to be taken by storm by a small army of regulators. In 1837 occurred the better-known riots at Alton. A mob threw into the river the press of the Alton Observer, an Abolition newspaper published by Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy and a member of the mob were killed in a subsequent clash, and a second press destroyed. At about the same time Ogle, Winnebago, Lee and De Kalb counties all suffered from “organized bands of rogues, engaged in murders, robberies, horse-stealing, and in making and passing counterfeit money.
In 1841 in Ogle County a family of criminals named Driscoll shot down a Captain Campbell, of the respectables of the county, before the eyes of his family. Driscoll and one of his sons were convicted of the murder by a kangaroo court. “They were placed in a kneeling position, with bandages over their eye
s, and were fired upon by the whole company present, that there might be none who could be legal witnesses of the bloody deed. About one hundred of these men were afterwards tried for the murder and acquitted.
One would think that the violence at Carthage Jail in 1844 would have sickened the people of the state, but the conflicts that followed in Hancock county were by no means the only disturbances to trouble Governor ford. Another small civil war took place in Pope and Masaac counties in 1846. The militia of Union County, called in to keep the peace, refused to protect the suspected bandits and left the counties to the government of regulators, who, as always, began by terrorizing known criminals, moved to threatening the suspected, and ended hated and feared by honest and peaceful men.
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V04N02_43.pdf
Governor Ford again gives us an example of his “hard cases”:
A party of about twenty regulators went to the house of an old man named Mathis…. He and his wife resisted the arrest. The old woman being unusually strong and active, knocked down the one or two of the party with her fists. A gun was then presented to her breast accompanied by a threat of blowing her heart out if she continued her resistance. She caught the gun and shoved it downwards, when it went off and shot her through the thigh…. The party captured old man Mathis, and carried him away with them, since which time he has not been heard of, but is supposed to have been murdered.
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V04N02_43.pdf
Who were these “regulators?” Well, it was a generation or two before the flour bags with holes cut into them, and perhaps three generations before the pointy hats and flaming crosses, but one could think of them as precursors to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—a little neo-regulator outfit that later on likewise bedeviled the LDS Church. And of course, niggers, Kikes, Papist bastards, thieving redskins, Freemasons, foreigners of all stripes, Abolitionists, and so forth. (In their own unvarnished words.)
The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a terrorist organization[11] by veterans of the Confederate Army.[16] They named it after the Greek word kuklos, which means circle. The name means "Circle of Brothers."[17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F00C11FC3859157493C0A81789D85F428584F9
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1381.html
http://www.conspirazzi.com/?p=657
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00C11FC3859157493C0A81789D85F428584F9
http://www.sjsapush.com/ch4.php
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2009_summer_fall/regulators-movement-2.html
The KKK and these later frontier regulators are not to be confused with the original Regulator Movement, which actually began in 1760-1771, just before the American Revolution, as an uprising in North Carolina against corrupt colony officials. In South Carolina, around 1767, a group of farmers likewise organized an enforcement body to “regulate” back country affairs, which in their locale meant primarily ferreting out ruffians, highwaymen, thieves, and scoundrels of all sorts. Perhaps taking up the idea from North Carolinians, Yankee “regulators” essentially pulled off the Boston Tea Party. One of their chief features at the time was disguising themselves as Indians in the course of their dastardly deeds. One very famous “regulator” outfit was known as the “Sons of Liberty.”
Following the Regulator Movement in North Carolina (1766-1771), Sandy Creek Baptists played a key role in the tremendous growth of the Baptist denomination in the South, and their political beliefs influenced the changing views regarding the common man in America throughout the late eighteenth century.
While a noble effort on many levels, it was during this original regulator era that southern rednecks, Scots-Irish, mostly poor or working-class citizens, seemed to connect with a Calvinized Southern Baptist, Fundamentalist religious orientation, which in turn combined with a political belief that America was holy land set aside by God in which to build the ultimate, pure, Christian Nation. (An exclusively white, rednecked, Fundamentalist, slave-holding, Protestant Christian Nation that is.) Baptists had been persecuted from the Old 
World through the New England Colonial era, but in the American South, variants of this sect finally found a power-base amongst an ambitiously predatory class of generally disrespected “Ulster Scots,” or Protestant Irish, who had largely emigrated from Scotland to Ireland, and then on to the American colonies. Many of these immigrants left their homeland under dubious circumstances, and in general either never amounted to much in their homeland, were fleeing or being "transported" for criminal charges, or just desperate to escape hunger and poverty. They were keen converts to a message of the "American Dream," and a promised "Manifest Destiny."
By 1771 however, both the North and South Carolinian Regulators had been forcibly disbanded, more or less in deference to the greater power of the Crown and Tidewater Aristocracy. And here we have the Appalachian, East Tennessee, Born-Again connection to Mormon persecution appearing at its root: One of these groups of Regulators fled to what is now Tennessee, and there formed the Wautaga association from land leased from the Cherokee. They brought with them their own culture and tribal, shadow government. Their religious and civic orientation centered around a Christian Vigilante motif. To be expected, they soon stole all the rest of the Cherokee land in the region, with the help of fellow Scots-Irish, Calvinist rednecks like president Andrew Jackson. Then they stole all the land from all the Indians. Then they kicked out the Indians entirely–even the "civilized" and "Christianized" ones. It’s a pattern of behavior that is unmistakable in the Christian Nation, “Manifest Destiny” community. And when they’d filled Appalachia to brimming with themselves and their friends, they began to spread their self-“regulating” culture west to Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and everywhere ol’ "Hickory"Andrew Jackson’s favorite Scots-Irish rednecks eventually migrated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Regulation
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/sons.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0851561.html
By the first few decades of the 1800’s, in the wild west of Missouri and southern Illinois, any altruistic,
patriotic notion of a “regulator” had entirely degenerated from its original ethical mission. The title had been appropriated by half-assed mobs, loosely directed by ad-hoc vigilance committees. Most of these were hangers-on to Christian Fundamentalist, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant-supremist, sometimes nativist cabals, most of them connected to pro-slavery movements, particularly pro-slavery Christian churches, intent upon dominating local politics. Until the Baptists showed up, most of these churches were Southern Presbyterian offshoots, Episcopal or Methodist/Episcopal, dissenters originally split off of the Church of England over a disagreement with the English Crown’s claim as head of the Church. Yes, and give the Southern Baptist Convention it’s due: most of the pro-slave, Fundamentalist, Biblically-justified Christian Nation rationale came from the Americanized, Southern Baptist/Redneck Regulator ideologies. They were highly motivating notions that found a wide base of approval in the New Christian World. Indeed, the Knights of the Golden Circle, America’s first genuine, nation-wide, home-grown vigilante hate group, began to organize in 1846 while the Mormons of Illinois were still bugging out. These pro-slavery, redneck mobs, became highly organized, secretive, and succeeded in infiltrating political bodies, police forces, and militias. Their tactics were most effective, and it is this secret order which is credited with spawning numerous, famous outlaw gangs both before and after the Civil War, effecting the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and later evolving into the KKK, among other things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
The Warsaw Regulators for example, were in the core of the mob that stormed Carthage Jail to kill Joseph Smith. They, like all the other “regulators,” of the era, began as vigilante squads of bored farmers, ex-militia and militia with nothing to do for excitement, backslidden rabble along for the ride, and clandestine thugs just out for a thrill. Who directed them? Originally, their often murky direction came directly from the intimations of the good townsfolk as instructed usually by their Christian ministers. What was their original purpose? To clean up the lawless and pacify the region. Initially, this gave their otherwise, miserable, mundane or pointless lives a higher sense of purpose. And what did they do when they cleaned up the lawless and pacified the region? Well, they either annoyed the locals who had created them with their new-found skills of violence, terror and intimidation, which had to be kept honed, or the locals had to point them at some other form of “lawlessness” they could be assigned to clean up.
Enter the Mormons. If the local ministers all said Mormons were villains, confidence men, murderers and thieves, well, Mormons were fair targets. Indeed, Mormons were not only fair game according to period Christian authorities, they were mandated by God for extinction. The “regulators,” Al Qaeda of the era, didn’t need any more direction than that.
Of course, when they ran out of Mormons, the “regulators” had to find somebody else to harass. And they did. IE: Bleeding Kansas. And don’t let me give you the impression that the whole “regulator” concept and its attendant brutality was the exclusive patent of Southern, slave-holding rednecks, hicks, and hillbillies. John Brown is the most heroic, admired, Yankee Abolitionist figure in American history for instance:
"Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done."
–John Brown, statement at his sentencing on Nov. 2, 1859"[John Brown is] that new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death,–the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his lecture "Courage," delivered in Boston on Nov. 8, 1859http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/johnbrown/brownhome.html
The same sort of pronouncements could have been, and indeed have been, made by Joseph Smith and other great Americans concerning Smith’s own struggles against redneck pro-slave Christianity. The difference between the heroic Abolitionist John Brown and Joseph Smith the Abolitionist Mormon heretic, is Smith was fighting both the Southern Born-Again mobs, while he was also being condemned for religious conflicts set up two generations earlier by the pious Northern Abolitionist Christians as well. The latter won the war with both of the former, and thus, Mormons and Johnny Rebs have been weighed as equal villains, equal traitors to the American cause in all official histories. But just how clean were the hands of Saint John Brown the Yankee Liberator, and his heroic, patriotic Christian crusade against slavery?
Brown and the free settlers were optimistic that they could bring Kansas into the union as a slavery-free state. But in late 1855 and early 1856 it was increasingly clear to Brown that pro-slavery forces were willing to violate the rule of law in order to force Kansas to become a slave state. Brown believed that terrorism, fraud, and eventually deadly attacks became the obvious agenda of the pro-slavery supporters, then known as "Border Ruffians." After the winter snows thawed in 1856, the pro-slavery activists began a campaign to seize Kansas on their own terms. Brown was particularly affected by the Sacking of Lawrence in May 1856, in which a sheriff-led posse destroyed newspaper offices and a hotel. Only one man, a Border Ruffian, was killed. Preston Brooks‘s caning of anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner also fueled Brown’s anger. These violent acts were accompanied by celebrations in the pro-slavery press, with writers such as Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow of the Squatter Sovereign proclaiming that pro-slavery forces "are determined to repel this Northern invasion, and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims, and the carcasses of the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose" (quoted in Reynolds, p. 162). Brown was outraged by both the violence of the pro-slavery forces, and also by what he saw as a weak and cowardly response by the antislavery partisans and the Free State settlers, who he described as "cowards, or worse" (Reynolds pp. 163–164).
Well, so far, John Brown hasn’t discovered anything the Mormons hadn’t long ago experienced first-hand from first, his old Puritan Pals back in New England, and later from the “Border Ruffians,” who later plagued Brown. These "ruffians" of course, were the selfsame hick, pro-slave, hillbilly rednecks from Missouri, who again, for the most part, emigrated originally from the Scots-Irish Tennessee “regulator” breeding stock. And how does the sainted Mr. Protestant Martyr Brown respond to this persecution?
Sometime after 10:00 pm May 24, 1856, it is suspected they [Brown and company] took five pro-slavery settlers – James Doyle, William Doyle, Drury Doyle, Allen Wilkinson, and William Sherman – from their cabins on Pottawatomie Creek and hacked them to death with broadswords. Brown later claimed he did not participate in the killings, however he did say he approved of them.
[edit]Account of the Pottawatomie Massacre by John Doyle, Son of James P. Doyle
"I, John C. Doyle, was born in Knox County, Tennessee December 19, 1838. My father, Pleasant Doyle, moved to Walker County, Ga., in 1845, moved to Chattanooga in 1848, and lived in and around Chattanooga until October 11, 1855, at which time we moved to Kansas; traveled through the country in wagons, via Nashville, Hopkinsville, Ky., St. Louis, Mo., Kansas City, Mo., then fifty miles southwest to Franklin County, Kansas, arriving there November 18, 1856. We settled on a claim of one hundred and sixty acres, built a house, and spent the winter there. In the spring of 1856 we planted a crop. Everything was quiet and peaceful until the night of May 24, when John Brown, with about twenty-five men, came to the house and demanded admittance. When refused admittance, they set fire to the house with torches made of prairie hay. To keep up all from being burned to death my father opened the door. They came in the house and handcuffed my father and my two older brothers and started to take me but my mother begged them to leave me, as I would be all the protection she would have. Brown told mother they were going to take father and the boys to the army, and left the house with them. They took them about three hundred yards from the house and murdered them. My father was shot in the head, my brothers cut to pieces. They left them all dead in a heap. They then went over two miles further to Potawatma River and killed two more men by the names of Wilkerson and Sherman. After they had killed my father and brothers, some of Brown’s men came back to our house to get our horses, but failed to find them, as we had them staked out on the prairie to graze, as that was the way we had to feed them.
In John Brown’s defense, murdering, terrorist that he is, the men he and his thugs dragged out of their homes
and chopped up at Pottowottomie, apart from their homespun agricultural activities, were also probably in the habit of riding around the countryside all night with a pack of their friends, and similarly brutalizing Abolitionists–when they weren’t lynching or horsewhipping niggers to keep them in their place. Like the Fancher Party of Mountain Meadows fame, the conception of these victims of Brown’s violence as simple, honest farmers is highly subjective. Even my characterization of them as hillbilly, rednecked hicks is something of an anachronism. In the day, mobbing Indians, perverts, and Mormons, lynching niggers, burning presses and killing Abolitionists, was a mainstream, patriotic, Christian activity. It wasn’t society’s imbeciles, the inherently violent or the idiot-cousins in the culture that were instigators of this behavior. It was rather, the very God-fearing, simple country farmers with wives and families and dreams of success in America, we keep hearing about from their defenders. That’s who the "Regulators" were at the core of it all.
Most of the politics the Mormons found themselves embroiled in during their attempted settlement of what is now the American Midwest, had less to do with Mormonism per-se, and more to do with getting them out of the way so Christianity could fight with itself. I know I’ve titled my ramblings “Religion for Mormons and other Idiots,” but even an idiot should be able to see a number of consistent themes in the way Christians abuse one-another. For all the anti-Mormon "outrages" alluded-to by the rednecked mobs, their authorizing ministers, civil officials and their lackey press, for all their bemoaning of the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor, and despite
their claims of treason and rebellion, in reality, in this era, destroying presses you disagreed with politically or religiously was a common American Christian practice. And when Christians wrecked a press historically, they nearly always killed the proprietors and authors of the writings they wanted suppressed. Just like the Inquisition did. Just like Calvin did. Just like the Church of England and nearly every other State-Church did.
Christian mob-militias didn’t just innovatively start to hack up and blow the heads off men and boys, or rape and pillage Mormon settlements like Haun’s Mill, Far West, or Nauvoo because they feared a hideous Mormon threat. This wasn’t a unique, reactive modality spawned out of some extraordinarily frightening sense of Mormon imposition upon American Christian sensibilities. Christianity has been hacking and raping and torturing and slaughtering itself up for centuries, millennia. The Quincy Committee, the Nauvoo Committee, the Mob Manifesto authors, these Christian “patriots” didn’t just put together their own “Secret Constitutions,” out of a singlular desperation to justify ignoring the law, reason, and common sense to achieve their political and social dominance. There is nothing unique at all in this pattern of Christian oppression, in the New World or the Old, in Roman Catholic circles or Protestant. Even John Brown, the "enlightened" Abolitionist, Yankee “good guy” drafted up a “Provisional Constitution” to ennoble his rebellion and butchery. That’s what Christians do. That’s a system of belief exposing its true nature for two-thousand years now.
But what do Mormons believe in this regard you may ask? And well you may. It’s almost as if I was leading you up to this:
…But if any man is authorized to take away my life because he says I am a false teacher, then upon the same principle I am authorized to take away the life of every false teacher, and where would be the end of blood? And who would not be the sufferer? But no man is authorized to take away life because of a difference of religion, which all laws and governments ought to tolerate, right or wrong….
Do not insult your own intelligence as well as mine by refusing to admit by now that apart from the claim of heresy, the whole Mormon
era from Missouri to the Civil War, was politically dominated by a rather different religious question. One faction of Christianity believed the Bible had cursed the negro to an eternity of slavery, and another faction of Christianity determined that the Bible decreed slavery to be a primitive and barbaric practice. This was not in essence a political argument, except insofar as both Christian factions declared themselves to be the exclusive interpreters of both Biblical and Constitutional dogma, and that all other religious or political views were therefore detrimental to a pure Christian State in America. This is no more or less than warring Christian factions have always done. In this argument, while Joseph Smith was clearly an Abolitionist, by also claiming to be a prophet, his social and political righteousness earned the Latter-day Saints no friends on either side of this pressing American question. Mormonism was simply in the road, the common enemy of all, so and thus both the regressive, ignorant, Bible-thumping, slave-whipping rednecks, and the pious, "enlightened" educated, Beattitudinal Yankees hit Mormonism with everything they had. The Mormon wars were essentially but a practice run for a bigger and better war these American Christian factions already had festering between themselves, already impatiently pencilled in at the back of their Manifest Destiny planning schedule.
One cannot concede that Abolitionist, Northern, American Christianity–led first by the Whigs and then the new Republican Party, was any kinder to Mormonism than Southern, pro-slavery Christianity–led by the Democrat Party. It was however, the extreme, daily, misfortune of the Latter-day Saints to find that it was the latter, coarser, less-sophisticated branch of their Christian persecutors that they constantly found themselves rubbing community elbows with. And even after finding something of a haven for themselves in Utah, eventually the worst of the Appalachian rednecks, first in the form of Baptist and Methodist reformers who followed the US invasion forces into the Territory, and then in the form of three generational incarnations of the KKK, all spun from East Tennessee’s “regulator” heritage, who likewise migrated themselves and their ideologies all the way to Utah, and again listed Mormonism as their worst enemy, and again did their best to incriminate, irritate, and hopefully eradicate Mormonism.
As a persecuted minority, it’s today far easier for Mormonism to institutionally euphemize its persecutors into
some nameless, generically evil, faceless mob. The devil made them do it. Satan hardened their hearts. That way Mormons can still pretend they’re all brothers and sisters in Christ with their contemporary “Christian” neighbors. For their part however, their Christian neighbors will only believe this if for some fluke reason they posses a shred of inherent inspiration and enlightenment from Christ Himself. Any good will and brotherhood from that source however, will vanish in a puff of dogma the second they are corrected by their “orthodox” Christian clergies. None of the essential Christian sects and doctrines have so centrally changed their core beliefs since their days of indiscriminately killing off opponents, that they don’t still count Mormons as Godless heretics and Satanic pawns—and this at a minimum. That rhetoric may be embarrassing to mainstream Christians today, but it remains essential Christian orthodoxy. In 1844 it was the common language of the pulpit and press. The day after the Expositor was destroyed by Nauvoo’s city council, this is the Christian response, drafted at the very first preliminary meeting of Christian civic leadership on the news, before any clear facts had been established:
Resolved…that we hold ourselves at all times in readiness to cooperate with our fellow citizens in this state, Missouri, and Iowa, to exterminate – UTTERLY EXTERMINATE, the wicked and abominable Mormon leaders, the authors of our troubles.
Resolved…that the time, in our opinion, has arrived when the adherents of Smith as a body, shall be driven from the surrounding settlements into Nauvoo; that the Prophet and his miscreant adherents should be demanded at their hands, and if not surrendered, A WAR OF EXTERMINATION SHOULD BE WAGED, To the entire destruction if necessary for our protection, of his adherents.
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V04N02_43.pdf
This is an honest, heartfelt, unapologetic, naked and untempered Christian demand for immediate, heretical Mormon blood–through any means and at any cost to law and society. This is the Christian mission statement that anti-Mormonists will never show you. This is the Christian charter that killed Joseph Smith. And for what? Was it prompted by some overt, impending, even if reciprocal Mormon threat? Was it because Joseph Smith, like the heroic, famed crusader for human liberty, the Christian Yankee Abolitionist John Brown, 
took a few "regulators" to the homes of his nearest political antagonists, dragged them off, shot them in the head, hacked them to pieces, and then left the bodies piled in a heap at the end of the driveway for their victims’ surviving wives and children to deal with? Or, if Christianity now declares Joseph Smith devilish and evil for discretely taking more than one woman to bed–as if this was ever anyone’s business but his own and that of the women who willingly shared his nocturnal companionship–was even this the excuse raised for his assassination? No, by their own admission, the Christian lynch mob that killed Joseph Smith did so as a reply to a disputed Nauvoo City Council decision concerning the operation of a printing press.
Those with any insight at all will immediately recognize in anti-Mormonism, all the key historically Christian rhetoric and stereotypical charges hurled against the Jews throughout their history of persecution: wicked, bloodthirsty, monopolizing all the goodies, keep to themselves, cheat the Gentiles, out to kill Christians and take their stuff, out to steal women, drink the blood of infants and virgins in Satanic secret rituals, bla bla bla…
The “orthodox” or “Historical” Christian political agenda screams from the media still today, even if largely muzzled and tamed out of necessity in "mainstream" congregations by a higher level of public enlightenment than in Joseph Smith’s day. But at the end of the day, it was the victorious, Yankee Calvinists who won their last bloody laugh, first at the Southern redneck slave-holders, and when those Godless Rebel bastards had been put in their place, they turned finally back to the Mormons they rediscovered hiding from their pious wrath out in Utah. The Rebel hillbillies we all know, got their comeuppance at the end of a massive national military battle the Yankee victors now call the "Civil War." The Mormons, well, the forces of "enlightened" Christianity finally found a way to beat them into humility as well. It took patience and finesse, but eventually they did with the stroke of a pen what they had failed to do from Palmyra to Salt Lake City by fire and sword.
And now the game is well afoot. On to Utah. in the words of the late-great Irish Republican Army: Do and say nothing ‘till you hear more.
Mormon Doctrine Part 2: The “R” is for “Rant”
The convoluted process for determining Mormon doctrine on this or that score today, is nowhere near as
simple and direct as showing up at Newell Whitney’s store, buying a plug of chaw, a quart of whiskey, and going upstairs to the School of Prophets to ask Joseph Smith. Indeed, the “process” of determining Mormon doctrine currently isn’t even a “process.” It just sort of happens. “Mormon” doctrine mutates daily and continues to just slop out of the pulpits and quorums and other organizations in the church, extrapolated from raw journals and personal, pet writings of Mormon authorities over the years.
A good example of some of these sorts of apocryphal sources is the a decades-after-the-fact interview with Zebedee Coltrin about his attendance in the previously mentioned School of the Prophets that originally met above Whtiney’s store. And while helpful on one level, Zebedee could pretty much say anything he wanted to about what was taught or performed there and assign any doctrine or practice to anyone he felt like. But whether coming from Zebedee Coltrin or Brigham Young, this is the sort of informational source the LDS church has relied upon for its “doctrine” since Joseph Smith was assassinated. And it’s not a good thing.
http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/ZebC.html
Don’t take my word for it. Bruce R “McConcrete,” the late apostle who wrote in stone, will make the case for me:
The following is a letter written by LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie and sent to a BYU Professor by the name of Eugene England. The purpose of McConkie’s letter was to let Dr. England know that he was very displeased with certain ideas he was espousing publicly. These included teachings taught in the past by leaders such as Brigham Young….
The letter itself is quite lengthy so I have condensed it. It deals with a number of LDS “doctrines” and doctrinal camps that Brother England was attempting to reconcile through the examination of the historical teachings primarily of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. The “King Follet Discourse,” is one of Joseph Smith’s most popular apocryphal writings, and is at the center of England’s postulations:
THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
The Council of Twelve
47 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84150
February 19, 1981Mr. Eugene England
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx, xx xxxxxxxDear Brother England:
This may well be the most important letter you have or will receive. It is written in reply to an undated letter from you which came in an envelope postmarked, September 4, 1980. Your letter enclosed a 19-page document which you had prepared under the title, “The Perfection and Progression of God: Two Spheres of Existence and Two Modes of Discourse.”
In your letter and the article enclosed with it, you set forth the thesis that although God knows all things as pertaining to our sphere of existence, there are nonetheless other spheres beyond ours in which Deity continues to advance and progress in knowledge and truth. In espousing and explaining this philosophy you suppose you are harmonizing quotations from various of the early Brethren. Some of these statements emphatically say that God knows all things and has all power and others of them say that he is advancing in knowledge and understanding and is gaining new truths.
…
On Sunday, June 1, 1980, I spoke at one of the multi-stake firesides in the Marriott Center on the subject, “The Seven Deadly Heresies.” In that talk I said:
“There are those who say that God is progressing in knowledge and is learning new truths.
“This is false — utterly, totally, and completely. There is not one sliver of truth in it. It grows out of a wholly twisted and incorrect view of the King Follet Sermon and of what is meant by eternal progression.
…
“Eternal progression consists of living the kind of life God lives and of increasing in kingdoms and dominions everlastingly. Why anyone should suppose that an infinite and eternal being, who has presided in our universe for almost 2,555,000,000 years, who made the sidereal heavens, whose creations are more numerous than the particles of the earth, and who is aware of the fall of every sparrow — why anyone would suppose that such a being has more to learn and new truths to discover in the laboratories of eternity is totally beyond my comprehension.
…
He [Brigham Young] was guided by the Holy Spirit in his teachings in general. He was a mighty prophet. He led Israel the way the Lord wanted his people led. He built on the foundation laid by the Prophet Joseph. He completed his work and has come on to eternal exaltation.
Nonetheless, as Joseph Smith so pointedly taught, a prophet is not always a prophet, only when he is acting as such. Prophets are men and they make mistakes. Sometimes they err in doctrine. This is one of the reasons the Lord has given us the Standard Works. They become the standards and rules that govern where doctrine and philosophy are concerned. If this were not so, we would believe one thing when one man was president of the Church and another thing in the days of his successors. Truth is eternal and does not vary. Sometimes even wise and good men fall short in the accurate presentation of what is truth. Sometimes a prophet gives personal views which are not endorsed and approved by the Lord.
Yes, President Young did teach that Adam was the father of our spirits, and all the related things that the cultists ascribe to him. This, however, is not true. He expressed views that are out of harmony with the gospel. But, be it known, Brigham Young also taught accurately and correctly, the status and position of Adam in the eternal scheme of things. What I am saying is that Brigham Young, contradicted Brigham Young, and the issue becomes one of which Brigham Young we will believe. The answer is we will believe the expressions that accord with the teachings in the Standard Works.
Yes, Brigham Young did say some things about God progressing in knowledge and understanding, but again, be it known, that Brigham Young taught, emphatically and plainly, that God knows all things and has all power meaning in the infinite, eternal and ultimate and absolute sense of the word. Again, the issue is, which Brigham Young shall we believe and the answer is: We will take the one whose statements accord with what God has revealed in the Standard Works.
I think you can give me credit for having a knowledge of the quotations from Brigham Young relative to Adam, and of knowing what he taught under the subject that has become known as the Adam God Theory. President Joseph Fielding Smith said that Brigham Young will have to make his own explanations on the points there involved. I think you can also give me credit for knowing what Brigham Young said about God progressing. And again, that is something he will have to account for. As for me and my house, we will have the good sense to choose between the divergent teachings of the same man and come up with those that accord with what God has set forth in his eternal plan of salvation.
This puts me in mind of Paul’s statement: “There must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” (1 Cor. 11:19.) I do not know all of the providences of the Lord, but I do know that he permits false doctrine to be taught in and out of the Church and that such teaching is part of the sifting process of mortality. We will be judged by what we believe among other things. If we believe false doctrine, we will be condemned. If that belief is on basic and fundamental things, it will lead us astray and we will lose our souls. This is why Nephi said: “And all those who preach false doctrines, . . . wo, wo, wo be unto them, saith the Lord God Almighty, for they shall be thrust down to hell!: (2 Ne. 28:15.) This clearly means that people who teach false doctrine in the fundamental and basic things will lose their souls. The nature and kind of being that God is, is one of these fundamentals. I repeat: Brigham Young erred in some of his statements on the nature and kind of being that God is and as to the position of Adam in the plan of salvation, but Brigham Young also taught the truth in these fields on other occasions. And I repeat, that in his instance, he was a great prophet and has gone on to eternal reward. What he did is not a pattern for any of us. If we choose to believe and teach the false portions of his doctrines, we are making an election that will damn us.
It should be perfectly evident that under our system of church discipline, it would be anticipated that some others besides Brigham Young would pick up some of his statements and echo them. Those who did this, also on other occasions, taught accurately and properly what the true doctrines of the gospel are. I do not get concerned when a good and sound person who. On the over-all, is teaching the truth happens to err on a particular point and say something in conflict with what he has said himself on a previous occasion. We are all mortal. We are all fallible. We all make mistakes. No single individual all the time is in tune with the Holy Spirit, but I do get concerned when some person or group picks out false statements and makes them the basis of their presentation and theology and thus ends up having a false concept of the doctrine, which in reality, was not in the mind of the person whose quotations they are using.
Wise gospel students do not build their philosophies of life on quotations of individuals, even though those quotations come from presidents of the Church. Wise people anchor their doctrine on the Standard Works. When Section 20 says that God is infinite and eternal, it means just that and so on through all of the revelations. There is no need to attempt to harmonize conflicting views when some of the views are out of harmony with the Standard Works. This is what life is all about. The Lord is finding out what we will believe in spite of the allurements of the world or the philosophies of men or the seemingly rational and logical explanations that astute people make.
We do not solve our problems by getting a statement from the president of the Church or from someone else on a subject. We have been introduced to the gospel; we have the gift of the Holy Ghost; we have the Standards Works and it is our responsibility to get in tune and understand properly what the Lord has revealed and has had us canonize. The end result of this course of personally and individually pursuing light and truth is to reach that millennial state of which the scriptures say it will no longer be necessary for every man to say to his neighbor “know the Lord,” for all shall know him from the greatest to the least. Joseph Smith says this will be by the spirit of revelation.
…It is not in your province to set in order the Church or to determine what is doctrines shall be. It is axiomatic among us to know that God has given apostles and prophets “for the edifying of the body of Christ,” and that their ministry is to see that “we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” (Eph. 4:11-16.) This means, among other things, that it is my province to teach to the Church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent. You do not have a divine commission to correct me or any of the Brethren. The Lord does not operate that way. If I lead the Church astray, that is my responsibility, but the fact still remains that I am the one appointed with all the rest involved so to do. The appointment is not given to the faculty at Brigham Young University or to any of the members of the Church. The Lord’s house is a house of order and those who hold the keys are appointed to proclaim the doctrines.
Now you know that this does not mean that individuals should not do research and make discoveries and write articles. What it does mean is that what they write should be faith promoting and where doctrines are concerned, should be in harmony with that which comes from the head of the Church. And those at the head of the Church have the obligation to teach that which is in harmony with the Standard Works. If they err then be silent on the point and leave the event in the hands of the Lord. Some day all of us will stand before the judgment bar and be accountable for our teachings. And where there have been disagreements the Lord will judge between us. In the meantime if we want to save our own souls we need to strive with all the power we have to be in harmony with the revelations and not to be teaching or promulgating doctrines that suit our fancy.
I advise you to take my counsel on the matters here involved. If I err, that is my problem; but in your case if you single out some of these things and make them the center of your philosophy, and end up being wrong, you will lose your soul. One of the side effects of preaching contrary to what the Brethren preach is to get a spirit of rebellion growing up in your heart. This sort of thing cankers the soul spiritually. It drives people out of the Church. It weakens their faith. All of us need all of the faith and strength and spiritual stability we can get to maintain our positions in the Church and to work out our salvation.
Now, I think I have said enough in this letter so that if you are receptive and pliable, you will get the message. If you are not, rebellion will well up in your heart. I pray for your well-being. I repeat: the door to my office is open. Perhaps I should tell you what one of the very astute and alert General Authorities said to me when I chanced to mention to him the subject of your letter to me. He said: “Oh dear, haven’t we rescued him enough times already.”
Now I hope you will ponder and pray and come to a basic understanding of fundamental things and that unless and until you can on all points, you will remain silent on those where differences exist between you and the Brethren. This is the course of safety. I advise you to pursue it. If you do not, perils lie ahead. It is not too often in this day that any of us are told plainly and bluntly what ought to be. I am taking the liberty of so speaking to you at this time, and become thus a witness against you if you do not take the counsel.
I repeat: I have every good wish for you, pray that the Lord will bless you and hope that things will work out properly and well in your life.
Sincerely,
Bruce R. McConkie
BRM:vh
P.S. I am taking the liberty of sending copies of this response to those to whom you sent your communication.
It turns out Bruce R
McConkie is more cynical than I have ever been. And I grew up believing him to be the most obnoxiously pious of the pious. The most nose-rubbingly enlightened of the enlightened. I will also tell you that Brother McConkie was so enthusiastic about his unique calling in this matter that he mailed out so many copies that they instantly became common currency in anti-Mormon camps. What actually came of this screed is nothing but fodder for anti-Mormonism. In terms of its doctrinal merits, It vanished into a very quiet oblivion. It went to the same theological wastebasket that his Seven Deadly Heresies talk went to—except of course this too became great fodder for the anti-Mormon efforts around the globe, because in that little jewel of a discourse, he said things like, having a personal relationship with Christ is heretical. You’d think the “greatest theologian of our times” would have the discernment to see how raving, anti-Christian sound-bites could be used against us, wouldn’t you?
Then again, McConkie has also been on the other end of the theological power structure. Bruce R knows well how it feels on the other side of the lecture about following what the Brethren want taught:
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
47 E. South Temple Street
Salt Lake City, UtahDavid O. McKay, President
February 3, 1959Dr. A. Kent Christensen
Department of Anatomy
Cornell University Medical College
1300 York Avenue
New York 21, New YorkDear Brother Christensen:
I have your letter of January 23, 1959 in which you ask for a statement of the Church’s position on the subject of evolution.
The Church has issued not official statement on the subject of the theory of evolution.
Neither ‘Man, His Origin and Destiny’ by Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, nor ‘Mormon Doctrine’ by Elder Bruce R. McConkie, is an official publication of the Church. . . .[Emphasis added]
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
In the context of his own censure and the Brethren’s repeated disavowment of his most popular book, McConkie’s letter to England is truly an amazing document. Imagine the sheer ego it would take to just casually quote yourself from a talk you gave recently rather than type out a new paragraph like a mere mortal having a normal conversation. But that’s the psychological profile of an academic. If it’s published, it’s authoritative. Even if you’re publishing yourself it’s still authoritative.
Here also, is Bruce R McConkie as the pot calling the kettle black. He says to teach what the “Brethren” teach. That takes a lot of hutzpah from a guy who’s own seminal work, Mormon Doctrine, got him spanked and spanked hard by the “Brethren” for publishing unauthorized and offensive doctrinal errors from cover to cover. Then he has the gall to say Brigham Young taught false doctrine. Worse than that, to paraphrase David O McKay, McConkie’s whole tone and demeanor in Mormon Doctrine seemed deliberately designed to tell the entire orthodox Christian world to feck off. Frankly, that message still comes through loud and clear even after Brethren-enforced “corrections.”
Oddly enough, Brigham Young, who McConkie found guilty of teaching doctrine not approved by the “Brethren,” was the first “Brethren.” Brother Brigham is why we now just call them “The Brethren.” McConkie however, is the guy who made “The Brethren” sound like a mafia hit squad, who’d be talking to you later if you didn’t take his advice right now.
Apparently a live Bruce trumps a dead Brigham. And yes Bruce, if you’re reading along up there, the LDS church has in fact believed one thing under one president, and another thing under another president. Ironically, you yourself point out that Brigham Young taught that Adam was God as president of the church, and then say this is damnably false doctrine according to you and then current leadership.
David O McKay, another case in point, firmly stated that there was no doctrine at all demanding that negroes be denied the priesthood, that it was a policy matter that could be reversed. He even led a council of the combined quorums in 1969, and achieved an affirmative vote to do so, until Harold B Lee, out of town on business, came back and made such a stink that they had a losing re-vote, based upon his insistence that it was a canon doctrine matter that would require a revelation to change. Joseph Fielding Smith then succeeded McKay as president and further imposed this negro-anti-priesthood doctrine upon the church. Others, like McConkie, went on writing books and essays explaining in great detail the logic and reason of how negroes would never receive the priesthood in this lifetime. Smith died in 1972 and Harold B Lee sat in for a year succeeding Smith. He even more emphatically bolstered enforcement of the doctrine of the negro being denied priesthood authority, claiming it would not happen until some distant future eternity. Then he died in 1973, and under Spencer W Kimball a few years later, that promised, priesthood-bearing eternity arrived upon the Mormon negro rather suddenly. So suddenly, that McConkie had no defense for his vehement Mormon Doctrine commentaries paraphrasing Fielding Smith’s theology about it other than “I was wrong.”
The point is Bruce, you were merely parroting your father-in-law, a president of the church, and he was wrong. So was Harold B Lee, also a president of the church. So was Brigham Young on the matter. So was John Taylor, his successor, and I could name many more LDS presidents and “Prophets” who were wrong on the matter as it turns out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints
McConkie says Brigham Young contradicted Brigham Young. Then he says a prophet is not always a prophet. He then quotes Joseph Smith debunking himself and half of what he ever said or wrote by implication. Then McConkie says (and even I shudder at this) that God allows even Brigham Young to teach false doctrine. God allows false doctrine to be taught in the church—even if from its president and Prophet.
See, good ol’ Bruce couldn’t just correct Gene England and let it lie. And McConkie doesn’t even think to question the reliability of the records which supply us with these crazy Brigham Young “doctrines,” the most obvious weak link. And then he really crosses the line into full hypocrisy: He doesn’t claim the “Brethren” to be infallible, just omnipotent.
If Brigham Young leads me to hell, argues McConkie, well, I guess I’m in hell but Brigham gets off because he’s a great prophet and did all those other good things that insures his reward anyway. I also presume that if Bruce R McConkie leads me to hell, I’m again the one stuck in hell, not The Conk. McConkie say it’s on his head for teaching me the false doctrine that sent me there, but what I guess that really means is that old Bruce will feel really bad about my plight as I eternally splash in the Lake of Fire, while he’s up there writing pompous letters on his Celestial letterhead to underlings in the lower Kingdoms of Glory.
The solution Bruce McConkie demands of you, is that you should not explore Brigham Young’s teachings, a man who saved the religion and was hand-picked by Joseph Smith to take over, but rather you should embrace the superior teaching and enlightenment of Bruce Redd McConkie instead. McConkie doesn’t make any promises though. He admits he might not be right either, but compared to Brigham Young, the odds of correctness improve greatly, he clearly implies. Still not much comfort in that Bruce.
Now, I called Bruce R McConkie a hypocrite back there a bit. I mean that in a very classical sense. McConkie in this letter to England, did just what he faulted Brigham Young for doing back in the day. He pulled a great big handful of doctrinal turds out of his arse just to make a point and win an argument. He used this arsenal of stinky theology just to fling poo at England for effect, acting like the King Monkey of the primate house at the zoo. McConkie was intellectually crafting talking points, not, divining rounded statements of universal truth.
And you see, when you check this little McConkie rant against Mormon canon as he suggests, he only condemns himself. Wilford Woodruff I think would disagree with the notion that God allows false doctrine to be taught by the LDS president. Woodruff seemed to think it wasn’t in the Lord’s mind, not in the Lord’s program to let the “Brethren” lead the church astray with false doctrine. And that’s canon. Bruce.
http://lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1?lang=eng
Yes, the Twelve or other general authorities serve as a representative body who are authorized to call out the “Brethren” on false doctrine—whoever that “Brother” might be. That’s not necessarily all that mystical. Church government is inspired by God to do this job. The problem is, until recently it hasn’t been doing the job at all, it’s been doing the same schizophrenic waffling McConkie is doing, running for dogmatic cover between urging the faithful to continue lapping up every silly babble from the mouth of the current “Prophet,” telling the rank and file to shut up 
about any confusion or doctrinal uncertainty, while at the same time claiming the liberty to fight amongst themselves over just who’s twist on what doctrine is going to be binding for this next generation or so—but behind closed doors and very quietly.
Keep in mind now, that McConkie was not assigned to write this letter. It is sent on Council of Twelve letterhead and he makes an anonymous allusion to some other “general authority” he suggests he had discussed the matter with, but there is no official assignment here to do or say anything from the “Brethren.” And as McConkie points out himself, no single apostle has any inherent authority to define doctrine at all. Witness for Christ, yes, preach doctrine as defined by the First Presidency, yes, but apart from some special assignment not even the apostles are authorized to preach or doctrinally define anything they want. That would be Protestantism.
That Mormon apostles and general authorities have felt they are freely entitled to explore, ad-lib, publish, and promulgate their own doctrinal, literary and presentational works over the ages without permission, editorial input, or approval from the First Presidency is the problem. Bruce McConkie makes this clear in his letter to England, yet McConkie had this problem pointedly spelled out for him by the Brethren with his own first doctrinal effort, Mormon Doctrine, and McConkie pressed ahead anyway in direct defiance of the wishes of then president David O McKay. So, as I say, McConkie is a hypocrite of the first order in this matter.
The key to understanding Bruce R McConkie, is to know that he is merely the sum of all he’s read. He’s a consumer and regurgitator theologically, not a producer and refiner. Bruce R McConkie’s sole source of theological insight and authority was his ability to recall and vehemently quote a lot of things written by a lot of actual authorities scattered around in a lot of places. Naturally, he centers onto the canon, the standard Works. No problem there, except that he neglects to see that a huge chunk of these were delivered by Joseph Smith in modern times. I guess we’ll “prove” Joseph Smith’s uncanonized teachings by checking them against his canonical teachings. That’s the same way Bruce R footnotes Bruce R to prove Bruce R is correct.
McConkie’s main thesis is entirely sound. Essentially, the difference between Joseph Smith or Brigham Young telling fireside stories and Joseph Smith or Brigham Young speaking modern Holy Scripture, is a formal vote of the “Brethren” in the various quorums sanctioning some of his writings as canon, and others as unreliable. Full canonization naturally, would also require the sustaining vote of the general body of the church. But McConkie’s fallacious logic myopically ignores the fact that we use Biblical texts as canon as well. Joseph Smith himself said that these were not entirely reliable. Joseph Smith in fact started rewriting the whole Bible, because Joseph Smith thought the Bible was pretty messed up in some very important places.
God did not give us the Standard Works as McConkie pretends. A collection of “prophets” gave us the canon–every scrap of it. The “canon” we use has been authored, processed, edited, proven and finally sanctioned by the very “Brethren” McConkie claims are “allowed” by God to be flawed and false. They are therefore also freely entitled to falsely canonize their falseness.
Bruce R McConkie really wants to be a foaming fundamentalist. Bruce wants to be able to send you to hell if you don’t sign up. Bruce wants to send you to hell if you don’t swear an oath to the official dogma he’s 
appointed himself to define out of an inerrant canon like a Latter-day Calvin. He just doesn’t quite know how to get there from here so his connective logic is a bit silly.
Mormons do not believe the Bible to be inerrant. What hasn’t been dealt with clearly however, is whether or not any of the modern canon is inerrant. By implication you co go either way with the 
argument. It’s either been recorded by mortal, fallible man and subject to error, or it’s been controlled directly by the guiding hand of God, written, translated, and preserved by a string of Prophets, and therefore exactly the message God intended to deliver.
Likewise, McConkie in one breath declares the “Brethren” to be modern prophets, to be treated for all intents and purposes as inerrant, while in the next breath 
he censures Brigham Young, the second most sanctified Mormon Prophet in history, like he’s some hick preacher who showed up to the tabernacle drunk regularly, took the pulpit with no preparation whatsoever, and commenced to spout off any random old rubbish on his mind at the moment. (Probably too close to the truth there…)
McConkie would just love to play the Grand Inquisitor, but Mormonism isn’t dogmatically precise enough to give him the tools he needs to torture a confession out of you and set you on fire. And the fact is, he never got the job of Big Boss so he could actually authorize himself to do it.
Our poor Bruce in his day, was painfully twisted in his understanding of a number of basic LDS doctrinal concepts. He railed one day in a grand assembly at BYU, against Salvation by Grace Alone, and slapped around yet another BYU religion professor, and author of a book, who had the audacity to promote developing a “personal relationship with Christ.”
On occasion, his honesty caused him to use the bully pulpit to expose teachings—both within as
well as outside the church—with which he did not agree. One issue that caught my attention was his public rebuke of George Pace, an associate professor at BYU. Pace had been advocating that members should strive to have a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” a popular theme in evangelical circles but anathema in Mormonism. In March 1982, McConkie gave a devotional address titled “Our Relationship with the Lord” that branded Pace’s book as “unwise” because it contained “plain sectarian nonsense.”
…
On another occasion he publicly condemned the concept of salvation by grace alone, dubbing it the “second greatest heresy” of Christendom. (The idea of God as a spirit won top heretical honors as McConkie called it the“father of all heresies.”) In this speech he recalled an experience he had while driving his car and listening to an“evangelist who was preaching salvation by grace alone.” When this radio evangelist offered his listeners an invitation to be saved simply by believing in Jesus, McConkie commented, “Unfortunately I did not accept his generous invitation to gain instant salvation; and so I suppose my opportunity is lost forever.” The crowd laughed. (“What Think Ye of Salvation by Grace?” BYU devotional address, 10 January 1984).
Mormonism teaches that Jesus is literally and spiritually our big brother. We grew up together. We have the same mother and father. He took human form as we did and lived His life with us. There isn’t a much more
personal relationship than that. That isn’t sectarian nonsense and it isn’t evangelical Christianity. It’s a far more intimate and personal fundamental relationship than anything in “orthodox” Christianity. Bruce McConkie doesn’t know that, which makes him ignorant, not a great theologian.
Likewise, the truth is, fundamental Mormon doctrine states that anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as their Savior is “saved” and goes to a reward greater than our imagination can illustrate. Not only that, Joseph Smith taught that you will have a chance to accept Christ here or in the next life and it’s all good. Bruce and his Utah cult of personality, and I mean that this time, have no understanding of the difference between the word “salvation,” and “reward.” The simple fact is that Mormons have always believed in a universal salvation based upon “Grace” alone. The problem is, Utah-product McConkie and his fellow intellectual and theological refugees in the Valley-0, have redefined anything short of the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom as damnation and hell, and anyone not clearly a candidate for the highest reward of the highest heaven, as the damned. If you want to talk about false doctrine and heresy Bruce, there you go. I’ll just say it. Bruce R McConkie was a heretic.
What’s wrong with Mormonism? I asked that question in this series long long ago. The answer is right here: You can’t blame Bruce R McConkie for believing what he did, because his brain struggles for logic and inspiration from the isolated confines of an entirely self-contained Utah Mormon culture. His beliefs arise out of the collective “common sense” of a people self-removed into an environment of cultural inbreeding within a complete shelter from criticism. The Utah Mormon culture has actively promoted for generations, an unnatural lack of intellectual or religious insight or intuition. The Utah church has for generations deliberately eliminated, by the usual estimations, some 2/3 of the human race as candidates for their private, closed, extreme, ultra-pious society, because they do not lower themselves to minister to or associate with those who have not demonstrated a high predisposition toward Celestial Glory—as they self-define these characteristics. Furthermore, the Utah culture has officially incorporated into its church dogma the notion that even Celestial Glory is damnation unless the highest degree of Celestial Glory is achieved, and therefore even the very elect may not be elect enough to be worth wasting any time on.
In short: Bruce McConkie believes that if all you’re doing is keeping souls from the fires of hell and teaching people to live good lives, it’s not worth the church’s time and effort. Bruce R McConkie demands performance. Bruce R McConkie demands statistics and measurable, demonstrable piety and an absolute surrender of every aspect of your life to the “program.” The Mormon “program” will get you to the Celestial Kingdom. Mormons think this attitude is the epitome of wisdom and enlightenment. And so, naturally, in his day, still locked in that dusty Zion gestalt, Bruce McConkie easily found a vast and deep following in Mormonism who’s instinct was to simply defer to his greater intellect and wisdom due to his “calling,” rank, and position in the church.
Indeed, Bruce McConkie, was regarded by most of his era’s Latter-day Saints as a spiritual genius with a direct phone line to God, and was hailed by church president, Joseph Fielding Smith, as, “The greatest theologian of his generation in the church.” This might be expected from Smith, inasmuch as he was McConkie’s father-in-law and McConkie was his theological lackey. Smith was not coincidentally the first major Mormon theological organizer in the Mormon leadership chain, to clean and compile LDS doctrine into a coherent guide to Mormon orthodoxy. In this regard, while McConkie was an excellent scholar and had something of a photographic memory for chapter and verse, all he really did in actual practice was serve as his father-in-law’s chief editor and theological promoter. Most of what Bruce R McConkie wrote comes down to a paraphrase of doctrines promoted by Joseph Fielding Smith.
McConkie’s entire body of work is almost exclusively based on the teachings of his father-in-law. Mormon Doctrine is simply an organized collection of doctrinal issues paraphrased from his father-in-law’s previous efforts such as Fielding Smith’s articles from the Ensign, ultimately published as a series of books called Answers to Gospel Questions. McConkie’s second most famous work, Doctrines of Salvation, is, as I say, merely a direct and credited collection of Fielding Smith’s lectures and essays with McConkie commentary bridging and supporting them. McConkie’s Doctrinal New Testament Commentary is again based primarily upon Fielding Smith’s take on Mormon theology. Where McConkie cites previous Mormon authorities, like Brigham Young or Joseph Smith, these references are again chosen as a reflection of Fielding Smith’s use of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fielding_Smith
Those who think me harsh should consider McConkie’s own confession in his last talk before his death:
“I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears. But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way.” (Ensign, May 1985, p. 11.)
What McConkie clearly admits here, contrary to the belief of most of his fans, is that at the moment of his death he still had not personally seen Jesus the Christ much less had lengthy interrogatives with Him. McConkie’s “inspiration” clearly came through the very conventional means of a “still, small voice” and the same sorts of highly subjective, highly emotional, extremely personal “impressions” anyone else gets. One could easily concede and admire the semantics of McConkie’s faith-based argument that he could not be more sure about Christ’s Divinity, but this leaves neither he nor his fan base with any particularly deep, detailed, or even “new” insight into Mormon “doctrine.”
Bruce R McConkie tells us nothing you could not have read thousands of years ago from better writers and bigger authorities in Proverbs or Psalms or any of the Gospels. Unlike Brother Bruce, all of these ancient authors actually saw, heard, and were taught directly by Jesus Christ. If you follow Elder McConkie’s strongly worded warning to Brother England, go read them instead of checking out what Mo
rmon Doctrine has to say about it.
McConkie’s works in general are characterized by their authoritative tone. McConkie once wrote to a Mormon scholar in 1980, “It is my province to teach to the Church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent.”[10] In his best selling Doctrinal New Testament Commentaries and Messiah series, the sources that are most frequently cited as authority for his interpretational positions are other works authored by himself.[11] He explained, “I would never quote another man unless I could first square what he said with the scriptures and unless he said what was involved better than I could.”[1]
What McConkie’s father-in-law did, as president of the church mind you, was something fundamentally different than what McConkie spent his life doing. Joseph Fielding Smith was academically sifting through the thousands upon thousands of LDS commentaries, journals, conference notations and whatnot, trying to validate what he considered to be “correct” doctrines as he understood them, and debunk “false” doctrines as he found them circulating amongst his flock. He did so from a position in the end, of ultimate church authority, as its “prophet” and president. Before that he worked on assignment by the First Presidency. Joseph Fielding Smith also naturally relied upon his own father’s prophetic disposition in these matters—church president Joseph F Smith. Joseph F Smith was the first church president to seriously scrutinize Mormon folklore and even the previously sacrosanct ramblings of Brigham Young, and take an open stance of “correction” regarding the promulgation of many popular Utah Mormon doctrinal myths like Joseph Smith’s alleged “White Horse Prophecy.”
During his administration as President of the Church, President Smith made significant official statements of Latter-day Saint doctrine:
- “The Origin of Man“: In November 1909, in the midst of public i
nterest in theories of evolution, the First Presidency issued a statement concerning the Latter-Day Saint doctrine. It affirms that God created man in his own image. The document also succinctly reiterates the doctrine of twofold creation (spiritual followed by temporal), the premortal existence of man, and ends noting that man, as a child of God, is capable of evolving into a God.
- “The Father and the Son“: On June 20, 1916, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued a statement examining the LDS use of the term “Father” in scripture, clarifying times when the word referred to God the Father and when the word referred to Jesus Christ. The statement identified four different uses of the word “Father.” God the Father is the literal parent of the spirits of mankind and the earthly father of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is referred to as “the Father” when discussing his role as creator of the earth, when he acts as “the Father” of those who abide in his gospel, and when he acts with the authority of his Heavenly Father while on earth.
- “Vision of the Redemption of the Dead“: On October 3, 1918, Smith received a revelation on the nature of the spirit world and on Jesus Christ’s role in ensuring that the gospel is taught to all men, living and dead. A written account of the revelation was submitted to the general authorities of the church on October 31, 1918 and was unanimously accepted. The revelation was initially published in December 1918, and was added to the Pearl of Great Price, an LDS scripture, in April 1976; it has since been removed from the Pearl of Great Price and added to the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 138. This revelation complemented an 1894 statement on the eternal nature of the family and appropriate work for the dead issued by Wilford Woodruff. Genealogy work by members of the LDS Church increased after both of these statements.
Building on F Smith’s doctrinal bent toward unifying historical and contemporary doctrinal issues, his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, took up the cause of a church-wide debunking, clarification, and correction of LDS “doctrine” and put it to the pen. For years, as apostle and president, he published question and answer sessions in church publications and carried this information over into talks, lectures, books, instructional 
manuals and other published media. He was probably the most prolific and most authoritative LDS theological author of all time. He was certainly one of the most coherent. Like his father before him, he wrote in official LDS volumes published by official LDS institutions, and he spoke from apostolic, prophetic, and presidential authority. His son-in-law, Bruce R McConkie, simply out of self-assertion became the last in this particular generation of LDS doctrinal weeding.
Note again however, that McConkie only ever did body-and-fender work. He never built a car. He never designed so much as a hubcap. He had apostolic title, and occasionally published his opinions in LDS official media. Personally however, he added almost nothing to LDS doctrinal knowledge. His work rather, concerns almost purely the rote parroting of other “prophets” and authorities, to which, he adds primarily his own verification of “correctness.” Bruce R McConkie
McConkie had obviously intended to die leaving us his gift of what he considered to be the definitive work on “Mormon doctrine.” But as we see, in a church based on ongoing revelation, “official”doctrine at best can be rather flexible and dynamically gravitate toward greater and greater enlightenment, and at worst, become so diverse and prolific, that it becomes confused and nebulous.
David O McKay, Harold B Lee and others also attempted to thin out the rural Mormon folklore that had long become intertwined with hard-core LDS doctrine, through the Correlation Movement that began in earnest during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Most of this effort was good obviously. But the central, almost egomaniacal assertion hanging like a pall of stupidity over the entire effort to establish a rational, authoritative Mormon “orthodoxy,” is the contention so often boasted from Joseph Smith’s day to the present, that Mormonism has “restored the fullness of the gospel.” While this braggadocio promises a lot in one sentence, it remains a pretty hollow boast. Mormons can’t in fact even agree upon what “gospel” means nor content themselves that they’ve gotten just as full of it as they can get.
Mormon generation after generation keeps prying and poking around vague, disconnected little mental ramblings of the early church authorities, preserved with varied historical legitimacy as if every member of the church was constantly and desperately trying to reassure themselves that they really are in on the secrets of the universe. And the problem is, the nature of that boast and the culture of Mormonism itself, actually encourages the faithful to read, pray, ponder, and have their own “revelation.” Bruce McConkie’s assertions to Eugene England aside, even sticking to the Standard Works, when millions of people take up their right to personal revelation, sometimes they come up with all sorts of queer ideas. This is just as true of LDS leadership over the ages as it is with the general membership. As McConkie said however, when Brigham Young gets a queer idea here and there, I guess it’s just God’s test to see if we’re spiritually stupid enough to fall for it.
So don’t fall for it.
Glenn Beck Part 4: My Favorite Klingon
By 1963 there wasn’t a mainstream corporate sponsor or conservative organization that would have anything to do with Willard Cleon Skousen. The American Security Council kicked his arse out saying he’d gone off the deep end. William C. Mott, judge advocate general of the US Navy and ASC member said Skousen was “money mad…totally unqualified and interested solely in furthering his own personal ends.”
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/16/beck_skousen
That year, Robert Welch, John Birch Society founder, claimed that president Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and Skousen jumped on it with both feet. Skousen’s clients threw him to the curb. The National Association of Manufacturers, formely gracious anti-Communist sponsors of Skousen’s speaking tours, released an official condemnation of both Skousen and the John Birch Society, expressing its intent to disassociate itself from any individual or party who subscribed to their views. Skousen just wrapped his critics into the conspiracy and authored a pamphlet titled “The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society,”
Except for every High Priest Group in Mormondom, Klingon Skousen laid low for a lot of the ’60s. When he resurfaced at the end of the decade he was promulgating a new family of conspiracies that bundled all the world’s problems into the doings of the capitalist “dynastic rich,” as he called them. Specifically, Families like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. These culprits Skousen now claimed, were using communist and leftist agents like Ho Chi Minh and the American civil rights movement to accomplish their evil goals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUvNP4C_rDo&feature=related
In 1969, a 1,300-page book started appearing in faculty mailboxes at Brigham Young, where Skousen was back teaching part-time. The book, written by a Georgetown University historian named Carroll Quigley, was called “Tragedy and Hope.” Inside each copy, Skousen inserted handwritten notes urging his colleagues to read the book and embrace its truth. “Tragedy and Hope,” Skousen believed, exposed the details of what would come to be known as the New World Order (NWO). Quigley’s book so moved Skousen that in 1970 he self-published a breathless 144-page review essay called “The Naked Capitalist.” Nearly 40 years later, it remains a foundational document of America’s NWO conspiracy and survivalist scene (which includes Skousen’s nephew Joel).
Skousen claimed in The Naked Communist that Commies were out to take over the world because they were evil dominators of the human soul.
In “The Naked Communist,” a lengthy primer published in 1958, he enlivened a survey of the worldwide leftist threat with outlandish claims, writing that F.D.R.’s adviser Harry Hopkins had treasonously delivered to the Soviets a large supply of uranium, and that the Russians built the first Sputnik with plans stolen from the United States. A year before Richard Condon’s novel “The Manchurian Candidate” appeared, Skousen announced that the Communists were creating “a regimented breed of Pavlovian men whose minds could be triggered into immediate action by signals from their masters.”
…Among the theories Skousen charged a healthy fee to discuss was the alleged treason of FDR advisor Harry Hopkins. According to Skousen, Hopkins gave the Soviets “50 suitcases” worth of info on the Manhattan Project, along with nearly half of the nation’s supply of enriched uranium.
Skousen warns readers to be on the alert against a worldwide Marxist revolution dedicated to:
. . . “the total annihilation of all opposition, the downfall of all existing governments, all economies and all societies,” through the creation of “a regimented breed of Pavlovian men whose minds could be triggered into immediate action by signals from their masters.”
To fight the international Red menace, Skousen extolled Brigham Young University as a pre-eminent religious training ground in the “war of ideologies” and urged concerned parents:
“We should not sit back and wait for our boys and girls to be indoctrinated with materialistic dogma and thereby make themselves vulnerable to a Communist conversion when they are approached by the agents of force and fear who come from across the sea.”
(W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist [Salt Lake City, Utah: Ensign Publishing Company, 1958], pp. 2, 377-378)
Richard Dudam, author of the book, Men of the Far Right, wrote:
“Skousen’s book, The Naked Communist, is a Bible of the right-wing movement and is promoted heavily by many of the extremist groups. In it, he asserts that the first Russian sputnik was built with plans stolen from the United States after World War II and that President Batista, the former Cuban dictator, was really a sincere, pro-labor, popular ruler.
“Skousen advises legislators to overthrow Supreme Court restrictions on actions against persons suspected of being communists. He urges businessmen . . . to seek help from the American Security Council [a Chicago-based group of ‘right-wing military men and businessmen’ that operated ‘a private loyalty-security blacklist where employers could check their employees and job applicants for indications of left-wing connections.’]”
The Naked Capitalist on the other hand, now claimed that Communists were only puppets of the dynastic rich. The Council of Foreign Relations and other Liberal internationalist groups were really the minions of these ultra-rich, who wanted to manipulate world events and nations into a single One World Government, or a New World Order.
Skousen claimed the Anglo-American banking establishment had a long history of such activity going back to the Bolshevik Revolution. He substantiated this claim by citing the work of a former Czarist army officer named Arsene de Goulevitch. Among Goulevitch’s own sources is Boris Brasol, a pro-Nazi Russian émigré who provided Henry Ford with the first English translation of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
…”The Naked Capitalist,” decried the Ivy League Establishment, who, through the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Rockefeller Foundation, formed “the world’s secret power structure.” The conspiracy had begun, Skousen wrote, when reformers like the wealthy banker Edward M. (Colonel) House, a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, helped put into place the Federal Reserve and the graduated income tax.
At this point Skousen became the Godfather of countless offshoots and Skousen cells in every conspiratorially oriented organization on the face of the planet. He boasted before he was done, of authoring 44 books and pamphlets, but in my father’s words, he actually just wrote the same book 44 times. His diatribes, particularly corrupted every priesthood quorum in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You could also say he infiltrated the Boy Scouts as well, because in the LDS church they are one and the same. The LDS church is the single largest affiliate of Scouting USA. Entering the 1970’s Skousen led the charge against the American Civil Rights Movement. ET Benson’s grandson Steve writes:
Skousen published a tabloid featuring the screaming headline, “The Communist Attack on the Mormons.” The article asserted that:
” . . . [Professional] Communist-oriented revolutionary groups have been spearheading the wave of protests and violence directed toward Brigham Young University and the Mormon Church,” [employing] “Marxism and Maoism as their ideological base and terror tactics as their method . . .”
Skousen warned that Communists were plotting to manipulate press reports into depicting the Mormon Church as being “rich, priest-ridden, racist, super-authoritarian and conservative to the point of being archaically reactionary.”
He claimed that, in fact, the Mormon Church was one of the Communists’ “prime TARGETS FOR ATTACK” because it is “STRONGLY PRO-AMERICAN” and that the ‘Negro-priesthood issue” was being used as a “SMOKESREEN” to “further their ulterior motives.”
Citing Ezra Taft Benson’s speech, “Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception,” he warned that Communist-inspired assaults on the Mormon Church were designed to:
” . . . create resentment and hatred between the races by distorting the religious tenet of the Church regarding the Negro and blowing it up to ridiculous proportions.”
In a letter sent to my grandfather (which, despite its form fundraising format, my grandfather marked in red pen with a handwritten notation, “Confidential”), Skousen warned:
“. . . [The] so-called ‘Council on Foreign Relations’ [has been] “set up . . . to groom ambitious one-world political personalities for leadership in all major departments of the American government from the President on down. . . . Their latest triumph was the election of Jimmy Carter. . . .” [1976]
Skousen ominously claimed that “members of the Establishment have directed foreign policy from Wall Street in the past.” He told my grandfather that because of President Gerald R. Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and other “master-planners,” the “foreign-policy establishment of Wall Street bankers and lawyers . . . moved into the very heart of the Establishment and took over.”
Skousen further declared:“I wonder how people who say there is ‘no such thing as a conspiracy’ will deal with this one?”
He also forewarned Ezra Taft Benson that the one-world planners intended to celebrate the upcoming “200 anniversary of the United States Constitution by scrapping it.” [1987]
[Skousen had also previously claimed that the US would fall to Communism by 1973.]
In an apocalyptic conclusion to his letter, Skousen, under the sub-heading “We Need Millions of Freeman,” told my grandfather:
“I don’t know how all this affects you, but it puts a fire in my veins. I hope that in this coming year we can double or triple the number of Freeman and eventually we can challenge these advocates of world serfdom and drive them out of power. . . . I pray it will happen soon. And we must do everything we can to help make it happen. That’s what you are helping to accomplish, and I am grateful to you for your support.
(W. Cleon Skousen, letter to “Elder Benson,” January 1977, copy in my possession)
http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_stevebenson_section3.html#pub_28950431
Unable to content himself with any single paranoid theory, Skousen moved from frantic brainfart of idiocy to frantic brainfart of idiocy, as one world-ending conspiracy and one set of heinous traitors after another failed to bring America down into Satanic bondage. In 1971, Skousen founded The Freeman Institute, which claimed it intended to provide BYU students a place to read both sides of any political issue from original sources. The truth is, it got weirder and weirder until was thrown off campus In 1982. It was probably no coincidence that church president Spencer W Kimball was announcing the construction of a temple behind the Iron Curtain in Freiberg Germany, and BYU president Dallin Oaks was battling with world academia to maintain the university’s scholarly credibility in light of Skousen’s wild-arsed political and “historical” hackings, and the spawn of similarly eccentric BYU “scholars” like Hugh Nibley and others, who were inventing the pretend science of “Book of Mormon Archeology,” linking Joseph Smith to ancient Egyptian texts, and delving into Masonic, folk-magic and mystical connections to all of the above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Nibley
By 1983, Skousen’s Freeman Institute had re-branded itself the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS), and headquartered itself in a survivalist compound in Malta, Idaho. Most importantly, it would be dead as a doornail right now if not for Glenn frigging Beck…
In 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan‘s presidency, Skousen was asked to be a charter member of the conservative think tank the Council for National Policy, founded by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants included Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with theConstitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.[19][20] Skousen’s proposals with the group included a plan to convert the Social Security system to private retirement accounts, as well as a plan that he claimed would completely wipe out the national debt.
Although Skousen was not a tax protester, he did campaign for several proposals to eliminate the federal income tax. One proposal, the Liberty Amendment, precluded the federal government from involvement in any activities that competed with private enterprise and returned federally-owned land to the states.
In 1987, controversy erupted in California when the state briefly considered using Skousen’s book, The Making of America, as a textbook for California schools. Statements in the book regarding slavery, and its use of the term “pickaninny” as a label for slave children engendered a heated debate as to whether the book was appropriate.
…In one instance, the constitutional scholar Jack Rakove, of Stanford University, inspected Skousen’s books and seminars and pronounced them “a joke that no self-respecting scholar would think is worth a warm pitcher of spit.”[18]
Now, some of Skousen’s political proposals admittedly sound fine to me. His history however, is rubbish. His obsession with finding a Commie or “Insider” under every bed is embarassingly naïve. In fairness, scholars would likely say the same thing about my scribblings. But I don’t care what “scholars” think any more than Cleon Skousen did, so here’s my main point for you Glenn Beck: Skousen’s fairly rapid demise had been set in motion in his affiliation particularly with Tim LaHaye and their Born Again, evangelical dynasty. What had begun to happen was a homogenization of Mormon loony conspiracy freaks with more mainstream Christian Republican Conservative political organizations. That’s a lot like your ministry Glenn. And by no accident I’m sure, as a Skousen acolyte. The Christian Right however, is Christian. Even if they liked Skousen’s patriotic, conspiratorial lippping-off to the Powers-That-Be, Klingon Skousen and his Mormon zealots already figured into the very center of most of the era’s expanding Apocalyptic Christian conspiracy theories. The more Mormon folklore Skousen worked into the conversations in his primarily Christian Conservative think-tanks, the more his Christian “friends” began to think that they didn’t want Mormons coming to the rescue of the Constitution.
There is no “Nephite Cycle” in the Bible. There is no “White Horse Prophecy” in Christendom. Skousen was just too weird, too insanely desperate to save America, too embarrassingly obvious in his belief that Mormons were Christians, too clearly earnest in his professions that Mormons are going to save the world for Christ, and that Mormonism would be the Constitutional Army of Liberation in America, not the Christian Right.
The bottom line is, Christians have no respect whatsoever for the Constitution. The Constitution is an enlightened document. It arose out of Deism, Masonry, and the European Enlightenment, not the Bible. For God’s sake, for the sake of all mankind, for the benefit of all that is holy, you cannot look at the concepts in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution itself, and connect them with the oppressive tenets of “Historic Christianity.”
Even ignoring all his other lunacy, Skousen was fundamentally suicidal in falling into lock-step with Christian Nation theories. Declaring America a Christian Nation leads to Carthage Jail, Liberty Jail, the Haun’s Mill Massacre, Johnson’s Army and an American Geneva based upon Calvin’s oppressive “Christian” model.
That’s Satan’s Plan.
Which brings me again brother Beck, to your personal political pornography, throughwhich you must enjoy yourself immensely and repeatedly if your gushing commentaries are any indication: The Five Thousand Year Leap. This is Klingon Skousen’s “inspired” masterpiece:
Since this book was all over the New York Times bestseller list in 2009, and generated an unprecedented interest in this until-now obscure author, it deserves an extended discussion. The book is an analysis of the Founding Fathers of the United States and their political and economic beliefs, written from a decidedly conservative (in the modern American sense) point of view, but the content is not particularly explicitly Mormon to the degree that would alienate readers of other faiths. The title of the book refers to both the author’s belief that the earth was about 5000 years old at the time of the founding of the United States, and also that social and economic progress took a great 5000 year leap forward nearly instantaneously upon the founding of the United States after centuries of slow progress and stagnation. The book was originally published in the wake of a conservative shift in American politics around the time of the election of Ronald Reagan, and more specifically in the context of a western U.S. protest movement against federal land policies circa 1981 known as the “Sagebrush Rebellion” which was especially strong in the “Mormon belt” of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming.
The book begins with a discussion of the political spectrum. Skousen asserts that the view of the “far right” as Fascism and the “far left” as Communism is erroneous and that Fascism and Communism are really the same thing: “ruler’s law” (or, law dictated by a single ruler or party). He proposes that a more accurate political spectrum would be: “far right” is anarchy or no government, “far left” is any form of “ruler’s law” or
totalitarianism, and the political center is a limited representative government of, by and for the people. The first section moves on to a discussion of the Founding Fathers and places both the Jeffersonian Democrats and the Hamiltonian Federalists in the political center of their day. He draws parallels between the laws and government of the ancient Israelites and Anglo-Saxon common law (and, although Skousen shows no sign of believing in British Israelism himself, cites a British Israelist writer – Howard B. Rand – as his source on this) and asserts that both were the basis of the U.S. Constitution. He believes the first attempt at forming a United States government in the Articles of Confederation failed because they erred too far toward his definition of the right (anarchy), while the strong-central-government faction of the Federalists and most European monarchieserred too far to the left (ruler’s law). The United States Constitution, on the other hand, was right in the center where it should have been. He attributes this to “28 principles” which he believes the Founders held to, and make up the second portion of the book:
- Natural law as the legitimate basis of government (he defines natural law here as divine law derived from God)
- A virtuous and moral people
- Virtuous and moral leaders
- Without religion a government of free people cannot be maintained
- All things were created by God
- All men are created equal
- Equal rights, not equal things
- Unalienable rights
- To protect man’s rights, God has revealed divine law
- Sovereignty of the people
- The majority of the people may alter or abolish a tyrannical government
- Republican form of government (“a republic, not a democracy”)
- Protection of the people against the human frailty of their rulers
- Property rights
- Free-market economics
- Separation of powers
- Checks and balances
- Importance of a written Constitution
- Limited powers of government
- Majority rule, minority rights
- Strong local self-government
- Government by law, not by men
- An educated electorate
- Peace through strength
- Avoid entangling alliances
- Protecting the role of the family
- Avoiding the burden of debt
- The United States has a “manifest destiny” to be a blessing to the entire human race
A fascinating mix, that. Many of these principles nobody would argue with; they are foundational to liberal democracy and representative government. Many of them however
try to make the case that liberal democracy (Skousen prefers them term “republic” over “democracy”) and representative government can only exist when they are rooted in religion, specificallyChristianity; and that the Founders were God-fearing Christians and this (rather than, say, the values of the European Enlightenment, freethought, and liberal views on religion such asDeism) were what guided the Founders. This attempt at shoehorning liberal representative government together with essentially theocratic views makes this book an early example of a genre of historical revisionism that has since become a staple within the religious right, such as the books by David Barton. Glenn Beck is a Mormon convert and it is likely that this is the reason that out of all the thousands of possible books he could have picked, he chose to bring Skousen’s book out of obscurity as a sort of manifesto; much of the religious right has instead been promoting the more recent books by David Barton. Beck seems to have picked up on the cue and now frequently has Barton on his television and radio shows to promote his
nonsenseviews. Beck’s promotion of Skousen’s work has led many ultraright conservatives to embrace Skousen’s distortion of the political spectrum, mainly for the purposes of blaming both Communism and Nazism on the left.
For you Gentiles out there, I’m not going to beat this White Horse to death. I’ll just summarize my thoughts by saying The 5000 Year Creep doesn’t give me either religious or political orgasms in the way Glenn Beck seems to experience the book. I’d simply say it’s his least asinine work.
Highlighted by Skousen’s self-damning ignorance of basic Christian theology, there are a number of elements in Glenn Beck’s confused potpourri of populist paranoia that are simply suicidal to Mormonism or any other non-Christian belief system. The first of these is buying into any suggestion that the Constitution of the United States of America is born of “Christian” roots. Anyone who knows anything about Christian history would not find that very enticing, even if he were a Christian.
Christians simply don’t know what’s good for them, and a Christian Nation isn’t good for anyone, not even them. If the nation is Christian, the State defines Christianity and stifles any competing theology. That’s not a good thing. To the average Christian idiot, it sounds great. The Founding Fathers weren’t however, the average Christian idiots.
Make the State Christian, and there’s always the chance you wouldn’t be the right sort of Christian, and end up on the rack or being publicly roasted. Facts are facts, and that’s exactly what every “Christian” society has done—when it was not engaged in the wholesale extermination of non-Christians or “heretical” Christians as it re-defined itself from time to time or its subjects found inspiration in other ideas. And Mormons are not Christians. Mormons would not only be seriously screwed-over in a “Christian Nation,” they already have been. Constantly and repeatedly from day-one. To believe otherwise makes you a lackey pawn, a dupe of what Christian Nation Crusader James Kennedy called “The Holy Conpiracy.”
And how did the Holy Conspiracy work its way around the Contitutional protection of Mormonism Glenn? Do you remember? Do you even know?
In a letter to William Short Thomas Jefferson wrote:
The Presbyterian clergy are loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three, nor subscribe to that of Calvin that magistrates have a right to exterminate all heretics to Calvinistic creed. [13 April, 1820.]
Perhaps it’s Thomas Jefferson who should be called a prophet here? What else was going on in April of 1820 or thereabouts by the way…say in rural New York? And does this quote from Finis Ewing, pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian church, the most famous Presbyterian in the history of Morm
onism ring a bell?
The Mormons are the common enemy of mankind and ought to be destroyed.
Well Glenn, at first Christianity tried to just charge Joseph Smith with plain old heresy—again and again, from New York to Missouri, and when the charges never stuck they tried wrapping heresy around fraud or some other actual legal claim and they still never got Joseph nailed properly after scores of hearings and trials. Then the good Christian ministers of Daviess County Missouri held a little meeting of all the prominent clergy, civil officials, and leading citizens in the fellowship hall. Over coffee and treats they agreed that the Constitution didn’t offer sufficient protection from Mormonism, and if they didn’t do something about it they’d be overrun with Mormon and quickly be the minority vote in the region. So they penned out their own “Secret Constitution,” which the Mormons called the “Mob Manifesto,” in which the swore their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to eradicate Mormonism through any means necessary.
The Holy Conspiracy initially discovered that if you bully Mormons away from a public polling place during an election, they beat the crap out of you. They next discovered that if you shoot at Mormons trying to vote they shoot back. Then they learned that if they shot back they could call the governor, who was part of the conspiracy to negate the Mormon vote in the first place, and he’ll gratefully issue an order of extermination for you on the grounds of treason and insurrection. Only the fact that Mormons are pretty damned good with a rifle slowed this genocidal effort down enough that God eventually reached enough still-functionally “Christian” hearts that the regional population, the national population in general, began to ask, hey, isn’t burning, beating, raping, pillaging, slaughtering and tormenting plain dumb white men women and children sort of er, evil or something? (Injins, niggers–yeah. No problem. But white folks?)
When the local Christian clergy tried to get the Mormons eradicated again in Illinois, the Holy Conspiracy had learned its lesson well from Missouri. You didn’t need secret meetings and blood oaths. You didn’t need to try to construct a treatise of your legal or moral apologetics to justify your actions. All you had to do was publish abroad Christ’s permission to exterminate the Mormon heretics and take anything you want of them for plunder, and either just out of greed, bloodlust or even missplaced “Christian” zeal, via the “will no one rid me 
of this troublesome priest?” principle, a mob will cheerfully arise to oblige. You don’t need to control the whole state militia, all you need is a key officer or two, a mob-friendly detatchment or so, and once they start hollering and shooting and point at the “enemy,” the rest of the regiment will just join in out of reflex. Once you have the Mormons shooting back to defend themselves, well, the game is on, no more explanations necessary. Look at the Mormons. They’re shooting at us. Better kill them all before they do the same to us.
But even the Illinois tactics were transparent enough that “Christians” throughout the nation looked at the “mob” violence of Nauvoo and Carthage, and while nobody could directly claim this time that actual ministers of God were leading the charge under the Christian flag, it was still condemned as inexcusably uncivilized, whether Joe Smith and the Mormons had it coming or not. Sure, in Missouri they tried to trans-substantiate “heresy” into “insurrection” or “treason” but never got it to stick. So again, after a lot of manoevering and legal bullshite, Joseph Smith’s critics in Nauvoo managed to hang “treason” on his “heresy” for acting as chair of the city council and condemning an anti-Mormon printing press. That’s what actually got him killed mind you. But like Missouri, Smith never ended up in court. In Missouri he was allowed to escape to save the state the embarassment of trying to explain their extermination order and resulting attempted genocide. In Carthage Illinois, the militia “guards” protecting Smith just parted one night and let a barely disguised mob of their fellows up the stairs to shoot the hell out of him. Again, it saved the Holy Conspiracy from all the Constitutional bickering and Christianity as usual got what it wanted without the incumberance of due process.
In Utah, the Holy Conspiracy first denied Mormonism admittance to the union as its own State of Deseret,
despite more than meeting all requirements. As a state Mormons would be free to be the majority, grow, populate, civilize, and vote their own conscience and cultural or regional interests like any other citizen other of the United States. Congress however, amid much debate, admitted Utah only as a territory, where it could be administered directly by the Christian Congress.
When Brigham Young got tired of the cronies, whores, and carpetbaggers Washington kept sending out to profiteer off the blood and sweat of the Saints, as Governor, he fired an apparently unreliable guy named Magraw from the mail service, because Mormons had long been maintaining supply trails and outposts from coast-to-coast and simply tagging mail service onto the regular Mormon cargo contracts was faster and cheaper. Magraw turned out not surprizingly to have been awarded his 
mail contract via his well-placed Washington cronies, and like a good little Holy Conspirator, once again cried that the whole territory was in bondage of Brigham Young and disloyal to the United States. This resulted in Congress appointing a Christian governor, and sending him to usurp Brigham Young with an army of occupation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War
After a little drama, the Mormons let the new governor come right on in. The army, well, just so they got the message, that they starved out for a year, cut off and surrounded, vulnerable in the canyon. Cummings, the new guy, negotiated entry of the army, and basically nothing much happened. He reported back that nothing much seemed to be going on in the territory worth mentioning and wondered what all the fuss was about. But, the Christian camel having poked its nose into the Mormon tent, eventually the whole beast forced its way inside. And again, Christianity found it could do nothing much about Mormonism. Until it discovered polygamy.
And here’s where the Holy Conspiracy learned it could do with a stroke of the pen what it had been trying to do for decades through all the combined violence of modern warfare: they made polygamy illegal. No, it wasn’t already illegal. Nobody had thought to make it illegal. But this was Calvin’s America, and The Holy Conspiracy forged the polygamy issue into a sword it then aimed at the heart of Mormonism:
Reynolds v. United States (1878)
This was the first of the Mormon cases. Congress had passed a law making it a criminal offense to
commit bigamy in any of the territories under control of the Federal government. The defendant, charged with violating this law, asserted as a defense that he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, and that its doctrines required him to practice polygamy or plural marriage. He claimed further that enforcement of the law against him would violate his religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court rejected this contention and affirmed the conviction….
Marriage, the Court held, is a relationship created, regulated, and protected by civil authority. The monogamous family is the basis of Western societal life, and it was never doubted that government had the power to preserve it by prohibiting polygamy. The fact that the defendant’s religious convictions require him to practice polygamy no more immunizes him from the operation of the law than would a person’s religious belief in human sacrifice immunize him from the operation of the laws against homicide. To permit religious beliefs to justify polygamy would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land and would in effect permit every citizen to become a law unto himself….
Page 109, Church and State in the United States , Anson Phelps Stokes and Leo Pfeffer, 1964, Harper & Row Publishers, New York.
The Court’s reasoning isn’t even out of the Bible. It just pays lip-service to Christian tradition using the code-word “Western societal life” without any Biblical or Constitutional justification at all. Ignoring the spurious human sacrifice analogy, what this ruling actually does it wrest from the hands of God, the formerly Holy Bonds of Matrimony, and surrendered the institution of marriage to the authority of civil officers, who are now, by this precedent, free to administer it according to any currently popular social conventions. Like Gay marriage. Or at this point, polygamy.
Well Christianity, be careful what you wish for—you might get it. You put marriage under civil jurisdiction to feck over the Mormons, and now it’s your turn. You made marriage a strictly social and political issue, and now you’re on the losing side of the social argument, aren’t you? Payback’s a bitch isn’t she? And she doesn’t even make you breakfast in the morning.
Here, anyone wondering why Harry Reid might be a Democrat and a Mormon too ought to have a little look at this:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jishs/101.3-4/vitale.html
It’s a historical overview explaining how Joseph Smith voted Democrat as well, and more importantly why. As a matter of fact Glenn, in spite of self-righteous Far-Right elitists like yourself and Skousen, rather a helluva lot of Mormons are Democrats. A bunch of them are actually socialists. Probably a lot of actual Communist Party members of the church by now. It’s a big wide world.. It’s not all about Chief Skousen brown-nosing General Authorities and scaring the hell out of them with tales of world-shaking evil headed their way: Howdy brethren–what’s shakin’ on temple square today brother this and elder that. Have you heard the one about the Commie who snuck the tape recorder into the Endowment session and played it all on CCCP1?
OK, I’ll condense it: Joseph Smith was a Democrat because the Democrats like president James Buchannan initially argued that Mormons should be able to have their own state and make their own laws as they saw fit. Because the Democrats, not the Republicans, argued that the Consitution protected religious practices like plural marriages. Because the Democrats argued that specifically in polygamy there is no crime or peril to the greater good from what consenting adults want to get up to in the private sovereignty of their own homes and their own beds. Democrats argued that the citizens of a state or territory ought to be able to rule on the matter themselves according to their own social norms.
The Republicans, like party founder Justin Smith Morrill on the other hand, were arguing that Mormons were heretics and polygamy was as barbarous as slavery, and Mormons had no right to self-government in a “civilized” read: Christian, society:
Under the guise of religion, this people has established, and seek to maintain and perpetuate, a Mohammedan barbarism revolting to the civilized world…. As well might religion be invoked to protect cannibalism or infanticide. Yet we are told, because our Constitution declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ that we must tamely submit to any burlesque, outrage, or indecency that artful men may seek to hide, under the name of religion! However, it is impossible to twist the Constitution into the service of polygamy by any fair construction…. Could a man, charged with burglary or rape, find privilege and excuse before any of our courts on a plea that it was an act in accordance with the religion of the prophet Mercury or the prophet Priapus, and that our Constitution permits the free exercise of religion?
Sounds a bit like the Glenn Beck show. Or old recordings of Cleon Skousen.
Once Christianity finally had something with which to “legally” skewer the Mormons, once they’d essentially made at least one purely Biblical doctrine unique to Mormonism illegal on purely “Christian” grounds, they sharpened their anti-polygamy blades keener with every passing year. They wrote into laws test oaths that denied Mormons the right to vote. They defined as “treason,” not the practice of, but the mere belief in
polygamy as a Biblically correct principle. Then they made even being a member of an organization that believed plural marriage to be Biblically correct, a confession of “treason.” Then they declared all the lands, funds and properties of any “treasonous” organization should be forfeit to the territorial civil authorities. They banned Mormons from running for office, so soon all civil officers in the territory were appointed by Christians in Congress, or were fellow Christians elected by a tiny Christian minority who ruled the vast Mormon majority of the region.
I want to make this clear, and not just for you Glenn Beckers, neo-Skousenites, or other religious types reading this: The Holy Conspiracy, the “Christian Nation” and its “Christian” Supreme Court, ruled in 1878, that it was perfectly legal and Constitutional to deny anyone who disagrees with “Historic Christianity’s” system of beliefs the right to participate in American politics as either voter or candidate, to own land, property, or associate with like-minded Americans. Mormons were the first official victims of actual “thought crime” legislation. Christians used this one doctrinal tool, this one almost universally agreed-to but utterly harmless Mormon Biblical oddity, to systematically strip the Mormons of every scrap of property they had. They literally stole all Mormon edifices and meetinghouses and rented them back to the church under State supervision at great profit. They made every wife a Mormon husband could be proved to have cohabitated with, a crime punishable by five years in prison. They broke up families, threw old men in jail to rot and die and left the destitute, breadwinnerless wives and children to fend for themselves.
(And of course, they carefully wrote their anti-polygamy laws so the Army and teams of Washington carpetbaggers infesting the state could continue to hump and whore around as much as they liked, as long as they didn’t set up housekeeping or make their multiple-partnered sex a legitimate, permanent arrangement.)
Glenn. That’s how a “Christan Nation” works bub. Sorry. Just is. I’m not guessing here. You’re the guy who keeps telling us to learn from history before it’s too late.
Physician heal thyself.
Christians own their own damned label. I don’t want to fight over it. In any case, Mormons can’t simply steal it and redefine the word as they see fit. That may play well in Provo, but one Mormon backwater town in the desert doesn’t amount to diddly squat in the world of politics and religion—or even the world of dictionaries. The last thing in the universe a Mormon would want to do is hand over Constitutional sovereignty to a bunch of hard-core, Bible-thumping Christians. The Founding Fathers defeated these “Historical” Christians in writing the Constitution. They pulled one over on them–Joke’s on you Calvin, Wesley, Arminius, Augustine, Luther, Pope One and Pope Two. The Great Architect of the Universe faked-out all of history’s so-called “Christians” who had been thus far perpetually claiming to worship Him via beating the hell out of anyone who disagreed with them. The religious and intellectual rebels on the Constitutional panel with free and truly inspired hearts and minds wrote God’s true will into the Constitution instead.
That’s the Mormon position Glenn. That’s Joseph Smith’s “Original Argument.” If you believe Joseph Smith that is, rather than Klingon Skousen. I know who I’ll go with. How about you?
America is not a Christian Nation and I and grateful for that. America is a pluralistic, free republic, and open
religious society. We should all thank God, or the Deity of choice for it. Or no Deity at all. Thank the Founding Fathers. You may think me a weird-arse bigot and pinhead for believing anything in Mormonism, but the Constitution allows me to be a pinhead and bigot, and believe anything I want. I just don’t get to exercise my bigotry. That would infringe upon the rights of other citizens who are mutually protected by the Constitution. I can talk about it all I want though. And Glenn, one more time: That sort of religious liberty is not a Christian concept. Period.
Everybody gets their say, and nobody gets to hurt the other guy for saying it. God Bless America. Nature’s God.
Glenn Beck, you and your new “ghost” writing partner, the specter of Klingon Skousen, want to destroy America. You want to destroy the Constitution in order to save the Constitution. You want to put sinners who play cards or curse or skip church in stocks. You want to imprison or drive out homosexuals and free thinkers and scholars and anyone who would care to argue with the clergy to die alone in the wilderness. You want to burn witches and heretics–you just call them Communists and Progressives and Liberals. Glenn, you and no doubt Wee Willy Skousen would contend: that’s not what we want at all. But that’s certainly the way Police Chief Willard Cleon Skousen ran Salt Lake City when he had his crack at a theocracy. Of course you don’t want a Christian Police State Glenn. You preach about the dangers of incrementalism but you and Skousen’s ghost are both apparently too stupid to realize that’s what every single Christian Nation in the history of the world has led to.
The US Constitution is not the product of a Right Wing think tank. It’s the result of hard-fighting, enlightened,
classical Liberals. Skousen’s analysis of the world’s political spectrum is the infantile, ethnocentric groaning of a myopic, egocentric, provincial paranoid who’s only ever looked as far as the next church spaghetti dinner for his understanding of either politics or religion. Right, Left, Conservative, Liberal, these are entirely subjective and conditional terms. A Conservative Russian is a flaming Marxist. This terminology has never been either precise or absolute. Without a context and a comprehensive, overlooking frame of reference they are as useless as anything else Cleon Skousen doesn’t quite get. Which is rather a lot. Really Glenn, don’t you have an inkling of discernment in you? What’s “Liberal” in Provo is “Conservative” in Minneapolis. What’s “Conservative” in Austin Texas is Leftist Propaganda in Orem Utah.
I’ve got news for you Glenn Beck, the louts who looted and trashed the 1999 WTO convention in Seattle weren’t from the Right. They were raving Lefties. They were self-professed Anarchists. Anarchy does not come from the Right by any known definition of Right. Police Chief Cleon Skousen was a Right Wing Zealot and he did not represent the face of Anarchy. It’s inane. Skousen argues in effect, that since the Right is always for law and order, as he clearly is, that at some point the absolute most law and order you can have is Anarchy.
Because he’s an ass.
More blatantly Glenn, you and Skousen argue that all the violence today, all the totalitarian, Nanny-State, repressive governmental stifling of basic human rights, religious and intellectual freedom, comes from the Left. In quaint, Hannity or Limbaugh-era terms: The Problem is Liberals you say. You point out example after example and grin smugly, laughing at anyone who doesn’t catch your brilliance—daring the world to challenge your empirical masterwork. But you’ve missed a pretty obvious point Glenn.
Those officious shitebites you keep indicting aren’t Liberals. There aren’t any Liberals any more. Chairman Mao said: sooner or later every revolution goes conservative. Well, it has. They fought the Establishment, they beat the Establishment, and now they ARE the Establishment. They rocked the vote, and now they’re not going to rock the boat, and they won’t let you rock it either. What was radical, revolutionary, and represented the product of allowing period “Liberals” to think freely and explore alternatives to the existing political and social structure, has now been codified, canonized, carved in stone and will be just as vigorously beaten into the captive citizenry as any other retrograde, reactionary, Conservative movement. Opposing ideologies will be eliminated with extreme prejudice.
The guys who politically rescued Mormonism in spite of itself in the early days were Liberal Democrats. The Conservative Whigs and Republicans just wanted to wipe Mormons out. The only totalitarian regime ever to infiltrate and rule in this great land was the Puritan government at Plymouth Colony. America’s Children of the archetypal ruling Christian bastard, John Calvin, made the Taliban look like amateurs.
Willard Cleon Skousen had it all arse-backwards. Don’t follow this buffoon’s intellectual dyslexia ‘round and ‘round until your powers of reason disappear into your own arsehole as well.
If you won’t believe me, if you won’t believe Joseph Smith, perhaps you’ll believe James Madison:
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. [James Madison, 1803 Letter objecting to use of state land for churches.]
Now, I led with that statement because it sums up my point so well. However, it’s become fashionable these days by “Christian Nation” zealots to claim this quote is not actually one of Madison’s. It has been long attributed to him but its provenance is a bit murky or so they now claim. Whoever said it, it is perfectly phrased to express what Madison would no doubt have said himself. I imagine that because it so perfectly also discredits the Holy Conspiracy’s claim that the Founding Fathers never really meant to build what Jefferson called a wall of separation between Church and State, it would be handy for them if he hadn’t said it. I wonder however, why the Holy Conspiracy is so exercised to disprove the validity of this sentiment, when Madison clearly says essentially the same thing repeatedly in a host of other absolutely unquestionable documents:
During almost fifteen centuries, has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution….
–Page 106, Christianity and the Constitution.
Nothwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment
of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov’ & Religion neither can be duly supported…. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov’ will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together; [James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822, The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt]
The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity. [James Madison, Letter to F.L. Schaeffer, Dec 3, 1821]
We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and that it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. [James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance to the Assemby of Virginia]
The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state. [James Madison, 1819, in Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong about the Separation of Church and State]
Or as George Washington said in 1796 in signing the Treaty of Tripoli:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or
tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” [Emphasis mine.]
Every single Christian Nation eventually rises from it’s own repeatedly brutal self-extermination attempts saying, well, that’s all behind us now, we’ve finally fixed the religion—and then evolves into the same violently repressive culture yet again. Over and over. That is not Our Father in Heaven’s plan for America.
What Cleon Skousen missed, what you’re missing now Glenn Beck, is that the 5000 Year Leap made by the Founding Fathers in 1776, was deliberately and carefully aimed as far from the direction of a Christian Nation as they could launch themselves. Now you and your Holy Conspirators want to jump back into the Christian historical pit of darkness. Enlightenment came to America in spite of Christianity, not because of it.
That’s the great Bait-and-Switch ploy you aren’t seeing Brother Beck.
That’s the Christian Cycle Glenn.
That’s Satan’s Plan.
Satan’s Plan.
Glenn.
All Hail the Protestants Part 7: One Nation Under God
Most serious Christian historians today, even many Calvinist apologists, concede that Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva was an example of totalitarian repression, not a model of God’s Divine Government. In Joseph Smith’s time however, many Christians still felt that Calvin’s Church/Police-State in Geneva was a great example for America’s future organization. Even today Calvin’s sympathizers talk about America being a “Christian Nation,” and claim the Bible supersedes the Constitution.
When America’s Calvinist legacy first came upon Joseph Smith, his religious assertions were indeed deviant and unorthodox according to their understanding of Christianity. Likewise, under a Calvinist mandate, so were the Deists and Congregationalists, the Universalists, the Methodists and Baptists that America’s original Puritan stock had sought so earnestly to subdue in their colonies, but could not stifle nationwide in the long run. But Calvin’s disciples weren’t the only sort or “Christians” throwing their formative political weight around in the American Revolution. Under the Calvinist social/governmental model, the very man most credited with insuring religious freedom in America, Thomas Jefferson, was a heretic to be burned even more vehemently than Calvin’s Servetus, and many would have eagerly done so had they been able to get away with it. It is no wonder then, that the Founding Fathers went far out of their way to insure that they had cut Calvin and his thuggish, intolerant legacy off from their openly espoused goal
of an American theocracy.
James Madison for one, grew up watching Baptists being imprisoned and persecuted in Maryland as a British Colony under a State religion. Madison was as mainstream a Christian as they came, yet when prompted by a fellow Christian named George Mason, he joined with the radical free-thinking Jefferson and others, and specifically enacted Constitutional provisions to insure that the Calvinist vision of an American theocracy built along the Geneva model would never be possible in their new United States of America.
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
— Thomas Jeffersonhttp://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1673.Thomas_Jefferson
Jefferson was accused of being a “Deist,” which in reality is only one of a dozen or so offensive designations you could fling at his personal Christian faith. “Heretic” is the designation his opponents used against him as a candidate for the US Presidency. There were quite a few Deists, Universalists, Congregationalists, and other non-standard “Christians” in the core of American revolutionaries we now call our Founding Fathers. But they didn’t usually advertise it for political reasons—politics driven mostly by Calvinists and other “orthodox” Christians who never doubted that their new United States would be built into another Puritan Paradise like Geneva had been under Himself. (Calvin that is.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
Oddly enough, today, the same Methodists and Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, even good old Roman Catholics and Lutherans, who called Jefferson and his Deist, Universalist, Unitarian or Congregationalist friends heretics, who likewise immediately categorized Mormonism as deviant from their own negotiated American orthodoxy and therefore outside the protection of America’s Christian law, now find themselves compelled to cling desperately to whatever sort of connection these Founding Fathers might have to Jesus Christ. When it’s in their best political interest we see that many of the most fanatically “orthodox” Christians are quite willing to lower their Christian bar of admittance in a most forgiving and inclusive manner, if it means they can thereby secure a firmer historical binding of their “Christian America” argument to those Founding Fathers who were most involved in the actual authoring of the American Constitution.
http://www.creationists.org/myth-of-the-seperation-of-church-and-state.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-palin-sparks-church-state-separation-debate/story?id=10419289
http://bmccreations.com/one_nation/nation.html
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html
It wasn’t just a handful of aberrant, quasi-Christian patriots coming along some hundred and more years into the experiment who thwarted Christianity’s desire to build a New Geneva on the American continent. God was the first anti-Calvinist, anti-Puritan force in the new American wilderness. The first limiting condition placed on Calvinism’s desire to unilaterally rule America came simply as an intrinsic function of America being a huge, wide-open country. God made this wide and wealthy landscape an attraction not only to Puritans and other Christian purists, but soon these zeal-driven pilgrims were being rapidly diluted by multitudes of more mainstream English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and other settlers just looking for a chance to own property and make a good living. Populations spread out into separate, independent towns, homes and farms. American families became independent homesteads, instead of being communally confined to tightly run, desperately dependent walled villages and outposts.
Mormons and Christians alike claim America as God’s choice land—but for opposite reasons. The Christians still think it’s theirs and the Constitution only forces them to be nice to non-Christians and let them come along for the ride as long as they don’t stick their noses into actually governing the nation. The Christians of Joseph Smith’s day in fact, felt they had the right not only to define what a Christian was or wasn’t, but that they had the right to punish those who weren’t, and deny basic rights of US citizenship to those they excluded from the Christian fold. We still see this today particularly on the Islamic front.
Mormons, from Joseph Smith’s day to today, like the Founding Fathers, believe that the US Constitution was inspired to insure that no church could enforce
its faith everywhere at all times in the New World. The Mormons of frontier American believed they had as much right as anyone to worship God how they pleased, appoint ministers and church authorities as they felt moved, and most importantly, had every right to form fellowships, communities, and prosper in the new land like anyone else. And even more specifically: vote their conscience unhindered in American politics.
Christian America had other ideas for Mormons, Quakers, Baptists, Catholics, and God help them, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or whatever other religious and social deviants might try to come along and invade their Christian Nation. Unfortunately for the Pilgrim’s aspiring Puritan theocracy, while the vast majority of initial American settlers came from Puritan or Church of England roots, the Anglican influence in particular faded rapidly and decisively away over their first century in the colonies. The later English settlers carried with them the new King James “Authorized” Bible and a lot of initial loyalty to Church and King, but the good Americans of the Church of England soon found that submitting to a religious franchise held by a King or Queen some several thousand miles away across the sea seemed rather pointless after a while, and there was nothing to compel them to remain faithful to this commitment in the new country. As the nation grew, what really happened is that more and more American settlers came across the Atlantic specifically to get away from the constant supervision of God and King.
The Church of England ultimately could not prevent all manner of American-Anglican offshoots from having their own meetings, conducting their own Bible study, forming their own congregations, choosing their own ministers, and forming their own religious conclusions. These Anglo-American offshoots began calling themselves, like the Scots had done, things like the “Episcopalian” Church. “Episcopal” simply refers to being governed by a council of bishops. A lot of the Scots Presbyterians had already spilt out into Episcopal congregations because they refused to conform to the Church of England’s contention that the King of England was the God-chosen supreme head of the Church, among other issues. Many of these fled Scotland during the Highland purges under George III or otherwise emigrated to America to run their own church and civil affairs as they saw fit.
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/timeline/11ecusa.html
Anglican of course means “English,” so in places like Scotland, even in the Lowlands where Scottish nobles had sworn oaths of loyalty to the English Crown, Protestant Scots wanted the English connection diluted as much as it could be from their political and religious institutions. The Presbyterian Church was first founded
in Scotland in the mid-1500’s through the leadership of John Knox, who spearheaded the Reformation in Scotland. He was vehemently anti-Roman Catholic and highly influenced by the teachings of, yes, there he is again, John Calvin. The “Presbytery” refers to being governed by a high council of priests, even taking a step back from the notion perhaps of being ruled by central bishops and dropping any direct connection to England or the English Church, and very certainly dismissing any authority of the Roman Church. Even so, the Anglicans originally counted most Scottish Presbyterian flocks as “conforming” essentially to the Anglican Communion. This was something James I earnestly tried to enforce. As the generations passed however, Anglo-Scottish relations became less and less cozy. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746 many Protestant Scots could no longer tolerate any English franchise on God on either side of the pond. The largely Scottish Presbyterians who moved progressively into the American south, either went to calling themselves Episcopalian or otherwise explored their own theological ideas and began to be counted by the Church of England as “non-conforming.”
http://christianity.about.com/od/presbyteriandenomination/a/presbyhistory.htm http://www.pcahistory.org/ebooks/pcus/ch1.pdf
This work I must remind the reader, is an entirely myopic exploration of religion in the United States of America with an utterly narrow field of view limited to those Christian forces that directly affected Joseph Smith and the development of Mormonism. It also examines how the rise of Mormonism exposed, and continues to expose, the inherent incompatibility of so-called “Christian” culture with Constitutional Democracy in an American Republic that guarantees freedom of religion. It is not intentionally a one-sided presentation, it is intentionally selective. For you Christians, I assure you I have pissed off far more Mormons than Christians by taking a neutral line through this history. Or should I say, having taken a moral line, a Christ-like line that seeks to examine right and wrong from the standpoint of pointing out guilt where it lies and merit where it is deserved. Having said this plainly, and admitting that it may seem pointless and tangential, my exploration would not be complete without examining Joseph Smith’s exposure to American Lutheranism.
This is a remarkably short encounter.
Martin Luther may have started the whole Reformation movement, and modern Mormons may pay him homage now and again for doing so, but Luther and his followers were one of the last and the least of the influences on Mormonism. All of Protestantism knows and honors Martin Luther as the father of the Reformation. All of Protestantism, all of the Reformationists just plain copied, ripped-off, riffed-on, duplicated, emulated, outdid or otherwise rode Martin Luther’s back into this new Christian age. But Mormons are not Protestants. Mormons are not Reformers. Mormons don’t even know for the most part what a “Reformation” is. Most Mormons think Martin Luther was a black civil rights crusader who got shot in the sixties, and now get yet another day off work in honor of his assassination. Or birth. One of those two. Joseph Smith’s early Christian education included plenty of exposure to Calvinism, Arminianism, some brief skirtings perhaps with Roman Catholicism, but not much actual Lutheran contact at all.
Some say Calvin’s ideas are very similar to those of Martin Luther. The LCMS, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, probably agrees wholeheartedly because out of all the American Synods, it’s the only one left with its heart still firmly residing in the Dark Ages.
Lutheranism of any sort was as theologically irrelevant as Roman Catholicism to the Joseph Smith experience until late in his Mormon journey when he moved his church from the eastern states to Missouri, which was newly opened territory. At that time, Smith was trying to escape the mobs led mainly by Presbyterians and Methodists in his homeland of New York, and his first place of flight from same in Ohio. He thought farther West would be a place of freedom. As it turned out, the farther West he went, the farther away he got from any sort of Constitutional protection for his right to worship God as he pleased.
The first Lutheran incursions into what was then the “West,” came when a handful of Saxons got fed up with all the rationalism going on in the 19th century German synods, where the Church was spending too much time trying to make sense out of their religion. In 1838 these Lutheran Puritans left Germany and landed in New Orleans, recently French territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, and steamed up the Mississippi to Saint Louis Missouri. They formed the Concordia Seminary in 1839 out of a log cabin. The Mormons were in the process of getting invited out of the state the whole time the Saxon Lutherans were moving in, and by the time they founded Concordia, Mormonism had been booted out of the state at point-of-sword, and driven off through musket and ball by then.
Missouri’s Lutheran contingent was fresh off the boat, had problems with English, but were very keen on American religious liberty, and unlike the Mormons they found themselves permanently welcome in Missouri by sidestepping a few local social and political issues, like slavery. The Lutherans were also not very ambitious and kept a low profile so they didn’t frighten the locals into thinking they were all going to be speaking German in a few years if they didn’t put these newcomers down right away. But any Lutheran involvement in persecuting Mormonism in Missouri could have only ever amounted to very little. The Missouri Synod did however vote in the Roman Pope as their official nomination for the actual anti-Christ.
(Perhaps that’s where Mormons picked it up.)
The Missouri Synod might have been a problem for Joseph Smith perhaps, but it wasn’t actually formed until 1847, which is years after Mormonism had been burned and massacred out of the state by the general Christian population. By the time the Saxons had built themselves up and formed an actual synod, Joseph Smith had been murdered by the henchmen of Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and other Protestant Christian clergies and politicians across the Mississippi River in Illinois.
As a quick historical orientation then: a year after the Lutherans arrived in Missouri, in 1839, the Latter-day Saints fled the state under a gubernatorially issued extermination order. They crossed the river to Illinois. As usual, they were ultimately again burned and shot and raped and pillaged out of the city they founded there, Nauvoo. They were then forced to flee farther West. So of all the Christian sects hammering Joseph Smith and 
his friends either with actual hammers or in doctrinal debate, it would be hardest to determine just how involved any Lutherans may have been. Other Christian sects mind you, proudly rallied mobs and printed their calls for Mormon extermination in the newspapers and openly preached sermons calling for the imprisonment and hanging of Joe Smith, the Great Imposter. Famous Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Christian ministers, priests and pastors published broadsheets and handbills urging violent action against the Mormons. Not so, apparently with the Lutherans. Not even the really really pious ones.
In summation, you might think that Lutheranism was almost a non-factor in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. American Lutherans and American Mormons never even had the chance to swing a Bible and each other in the early formative days. However, Brigham Young had no sooner stumbled out of his wagon (since he was sick as a dog when they pulled into the valley) into the dust and sweltering freedom of Mexican Territory–what is now Utah–than he sent out missionaries into Scandinavia, Germany, and Lutheran Europe, where Mormonism converted thousands upon thousands of them–thousands of the most pious and Puritanical of the Lutheran hoards over there. These they shipped, carted and hiked into the Great Salt Lake Valley as fast as they could manage it for about a hundred years. But again, no sooner had these immigrants been gathered into “Zion” as Young called it, than they ceased to be Lutherans or Protestants or Scandinavians or Germans or English or Dutch. They almost instantly became “Mormons.” One of them is the current LDS Church president. I doubt if he even knows what lefse or lutefisk is.
If Brigham Young had one talent, it was Nation Building. You can’t fault him for that.
http://www.valpo.edu/cresset/2008/2008_Trinity_Chapman.pdf
http://www.guidedbiblestudies.com/library/lutheran_missouri_synod.htm
I
n Missouri, Mormonism also ran smack into the black heartland of the Southern Baptists. The Missouri Lutherans were as Puritanical as Calvin Himself, but the Southern Baptists made it a contest to see just how retrograde Protestantism could be. Luther, most theologians say, was not very different from Calvin in most of his views. But unlike Luther, we’ve seen the despotism that resulted when Calvin controlled a city. The Southern Baptists, even though they ostensibly sprung from Arminian roots, had evolved over the years of their American isolation into a very Calvinistic sect. They clung to the King James Bible as the sole and inerrant source of God’s religious instruction. Since Baptist congregations are inherently independent, any given ministry could go entirely medieval if they so chose.
http://drjamesgalyon.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/what-should-southern-baptists-do-with-calvinists/
Both the southern Lutherans and the Baptists split company with their northern congregations over the issue of whether or not negroes had a soul and any capability of being saved. (Though both agreed that Jews were Satan’s spawn.) The Missouri Lutherans supported slavery as a tool to convert the heathen and claimed God tolerated it on that basis—God even considered it a benefit to the heathen to be enslaved if it resulted in being saved as a Christian. Northeastern Lutherans and American Lutherans in general had also admitted Negros into their congregations, but only under the assurance that said negroes would not use their Christianity as an excuse to disobey the law of the land and try to escape their obligations as a slave.
Except for the Scandinavian Lutherans who immediately gravitated to the Upper Midwest, American Lutherans were slow to deal with the slavery issue at all. When it became a roaring national and international disgrace around the time of the American Civil War, the Northern Synods took up the Abolitionist’s call. (This was well after the Mormon era in Missouri though.) The Missouri Synod, like the Southern Baptists, being an independent congregational structure, just said, “No Thanks” to Abolition.
The Southern Baptists went so far as to claim that Negros didn’t even have souls anyway so would be pointless converting them. They let their slaves dress up and pretend they had their own Black Baptists churches just to dangle the juicy Salvation Carrot they knew they weren’t eligible for but would work mighty hard to get anyway. Negros in Southern Baptist theology were just going to cease to exist or burn in hell or something when they died. That’s why God created them. God created Negros to be slaves. It was obvious. The Southern Presbyterians would eventually follow the Southern Baptists in this declaration as well.
http://www.americanpresbyterianchurch.org/the_north-south_schism_of_1861.htm
http://www.baptisthistory.org/sbaptistbeginnings.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NXG/is_1_37/ai_94160891/
The Southern Baptist Convention didn’t renounce their racist views on Negros until 1995. The State of Missouri for that matter, didn’t apologize for issuing an extermination order authorizing its good Christian Defenders of the Faith to shoot any Mormons they found in the state on sight, until 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
http://sbcvoices.com/southern-baptist-convention-resolutions-racism/
http://www.suite101.com/content/lilbrun-boggs-extermination-order-a62267
The local Missouri “Christian” views on slavery did have tremendous impact upon Joseph Smith’s new church as well as a campaign for the US presidency he was beginning to mount in his last days. Smith’s position on slavery was that he wanted to abolish it but have the US government buy slaves up and free them, thus compensating “property” owners while solving the problem of slavery at the same time. He did allow free Negros to move to Missouri while he was there, and settle, work and worship with his “white” Mormon congregations. This practice of giving any Negros, free or not, houses and paid work and a place in church with white folks was extremely offensive to Joseph’s Christian neighbors. Amongst their many paranoid fears of Mormons was their habit of voting as a block and buying up all the land in the area so Christian “Old Settlers” wouldn’t have a chance to build rich slave-driven plantations and prosper like their forefathers had done in Virginia and the East. The Old Settlers were in the constant fear that Mormons we![Slavery20handbill20offering20cash20f[2]](http://lrwhitney.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/slavery20handbill20offering20cash20f2.jpg "Slavery20handbill20offering20cash20f[2]")
re educating Negros and treating them like human beings, and this could only result in a slave rebellion led by uppity Mormon Negro agitators.
All of these fears were founded upon the proposition that if the Mormons voted the way they wanted to vote, and kept bringing in the people they wanted to bring into the state, the Mormons would effectively out-populate the older inhabitants, and vote their way into running the place. Unfortunately for the Old Settlers, that’s how America works. That’s how state and federal constitutions are set up. There was nothing legally the Old Christians and their complaining clergies could do about it if Mormons wanted to call Joseph Smith a “prophet” and claim they were going to build “Zion” in the middle of their dreams of plantation paradise.
Baptists were a particular problem for the Mormons in Missouri and Southern Illinois. The Baptists had themselves been driven out of the Northeast early on and made their way south to try to take over what is now called the “Bible Belt.” One Baptist Reverend named Benton Pixley is famous for two things, one he was sent by the Missionary Society to hound Indians from Florida to Missouri into the waters of baptism which most of the Indians resented, and two, he made it his personal mission to dog Mormons to death if he could manage it, partly because they got along so well with the Indians. While Pixley was busy trying to convince Native Americans they were Godless savages and heathens doomed to burn in hell, Joseph Smith was running around showing them a Gold Bible he said was a record made by their ancestors that proves they were the noble descendants of God’s Chosen people. Most of the Indians knew this already in one legendary story or another, and didn’t mind hearing it again, even if it was from some peculiar white guy who was inordinately zealous about showing his admiration for them.
Pixley’s Baptist spiel about hellfire, damnation and a vengeful, white Jesus-God that was going to punish them for all eternity if they didn’t sign up, didn’t play well with the Native population for the most part. Pixley of course, was compelled to try to sell this line of BS anyway, and the Mormons weren’t helping him any with their “Great American Indian Civilization” pitch out of their Book of Mormon. In retaliation, Pixley appointed himself the permanent anti-Mormon correspondent for any newspaper or journal that would publish his diatribes against Joseph Smith. Another local minister, a Presbyterian, Finis Ewing, also published another famous article in the local papers in 1833 in which he pronounced, “The Mormons are the common enemy of mankind, and ought to be destroyed.” But it was Benton Pixley who actually called the meeting that led to the open slaughter of Mormon men, women and children at Haun’s Mill, and the Missouri extermination order of 1838.
With the go-ahead of these “respected” clergymen and many others like them, persecution of Mormons in Missouri commenced immediately upon their arrival in 1833. It came to a head in 1838 after a mob of Christian “Old Settlers” decided Mormons had no right to vote and established a human blockade around the polling place in newly formed Davis County to drive Mormons away. The Mormons slugged their way in to vote anyway, and the Old Settlers ran home crying that they were coming back with guns. This led to the Mormons returning with more Mormon voters carrying their own arms to defend their Constitutional right to franchise. The Christians shot at the Mormons, and unlike the Quakers the Old Settlers apparently imagined them to be, the Mormons shot back. The Christian instigators cried rebellion like stuck pigs to the Governor, and he eagerly issued an extermination order just in time to insure his re-election.
In fact, Smith wasn’t exterminated in Missouri, but one Mormon settlement at Haun’s Mill was brutally wiped out by anti-Mormon militias in response to the governor’s authorization, and the Mormons organized themselves in response. They fought off these roving mobs and rogue militias to a temporary truce, based upon a surrender of Mormon leadership. The rest of the Mormons were promised free passage out of the state. What actually happened is they had to abandon their lands and property for pennies-on-the-dollar, or more commonly, most lost all they had to looters and mobs as they went. Smith was imprisoned in Liberty Missouri for five months on no clear charge other than a general claim of insurrection.
Liberty Jail was a dank hellhole. It was a dungeon-like potato-cellar of a “jail,” mostly underground and with no light to speak of. Smith was routinely poisoned or fed tainted food by his Christian jailors and they also teased their prisoners that they had killed either a Negro or a fellow Mormon and fed this “Mormon Beef,” to Smith and his companions.
It is generally believed Smith was allowed to escape Liberty Jail because the entire chain of civil authorities from the governor on down believed Missouri’s charges were going to look foolish if Smith were allowed to carry his defense through the court system, up to and including the US Supreme Court. Smith had in the past humiliated scores of complainants against him, both private and governmental by repeatedly being found innocent of any actual crimes or misdemeanors once charges against him were finally examined under the law. The problem again, is Joe Smith may have been a quack, but he was a religious quack, and if his only “crime” was conning people into believing he was God’s Messenger, then it was no crime at all.
It is also believed that Smith’s Missouri persecutors considered it far easier just to track him down as he fled their captivity and shoot him, than to quibble about why they just weren’t going to put up with Joe and his Mormons, law or no law, in front of a judge in court.
http://www.mormonwiki.com/Liberty_Jail
The truth about Christianity’s persecution of Mormonism, is that it starts with a “Gold Bible” in New York, with folks apparently quite convinced that he had one—they just wanted to steal it from him. And then he started printing these boring “Mormon” books. To finance all of this he started organizing into a regular “church” and raising funds from members of same. At this point, his professional Christian clergy rivals kicked into full drive and began to lecture and encourage public scorn and condemnation, which moved into virulent hellfire death and condemnation sermons, the more Smith’s enterprise prospered in spite of their official warnings against him.
By the time Joseph Smith and his merry band of heretics had been driven into Missouri, they’d been getting mobbed and robbed and arrested and tarred and feathered and beaten up and whipped for decades simply for being unorthodox. The worst “crime” charged against Smith for all of this was that he was a fake. Which again, isn’t illegal in a religious context. It’s not only not illegal, it’s specifically protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Joseph Smith had a perfect right to be a false prophet, a heretic, or a plain-old crank if he felt good about being one and wasn’t physically compelling anyone to join or give him money.
Most Christian apologists go right to polygamy or secret societies of Mormon vigilantes when they try to 
justify Missouri’s extermination order and related persecution. What actual Mormon historians have to concede is that there really isn’t a single instance of an actual Mormon Death Squad you can nail down for sure, and those with any factual provenance are directly connected with efforts by sometimes very well-meaning Mormons to protect themselves from this ongoing and longstanding onslaught of violence from their Christian clergy-assigned mobbers, rapists, murderers and sadists. And in reality, the polygamy issue was scarcely even known within the upper ranks of the LDS leadership at the time of Smith’s murder in 1844, some six years after the Christian-ordered slaughter of defenseless women and children at Haun’s Mill Missouri, and 24 years after the first round of Christian-clergy authorized threats to brutalize, repress, or kill Joseph Smith. Even assuming Joseph Smith was taking extra wives in his last days in Nauvoo, his attentions to these women was being characterized by his Nauvoo opponents as “infidelity” because the doctrinal connection to plural marriage wasn’t yet being made.
Now, huge mobs led by Christian ministers aren’t the typical response to “infidelity.” The bride’s old man or big brothers might come gunning for you maybe, but never half the state militia on orders from the governor to wipe out your whole village, men, women and children. Or as Christian crusader William Reynolds said at Haun’s Mill just before he put his musket to the head of ten-year-old Sardius Smith, and blew his brains out all over the blacksmith’s shop in which he was found cowering, “Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon.” Another great example of Christianity, Jacob Rogers, riding down fleeing Mormons in the same raid accepted the surrender of an aged man named Thomas McBride. On horseback, Rogers took the surrendered musket, saw it was loaded, then smiled and shot McBride in the chest with the man’s own weapon. McBride fell to his knees with a hand raised in pleading. Rogers took a large bladed corn knife and whacked off his hand in response, then got off his horse and hacked McBride apart bit by bit as he lay there dying. Numerous other fallen Mormons were hacked to pieces as an example to those who would eventually come reclaim their bodies.
http://www.heartslinked.com/peterson_families/ancestors/thomas_mcbride_and_catherine_john.htm
The Christian apologists will try to tell you that men like Reynolds and Rogers were just thugs and scoundrels and freelance ruffians. They were out of control. These sorts of villains were acting on their own the professional Christian excuse-makers say. But no, they weren’t. They were the Missouri State Militia. They were acting upon orders of their governor, at the express demand of Christian clergymen like Pixley and Ewing, with the full support of much of the local press and civic authorities. The same pattern had been repeated all across the US, the mobbery getting worse with every more and more successful anti-Mormon attempt at genocide. The same arrangement was subsequently repeated in Illinois, where the state militia joined forces with an inter-state mob to kill Joseph Smith once-and-for-all. And when Mormonism fled the United States for what is now Utah, Christianity’s mobocracy had gained so much anti-Mormon boldness that it sent an entire uniformed mob army out into disputed Mexican Territory to exterminate them–and of course lay claim to the Intermountain West that the Mormons had just tamed at great cost of life and labor–in the same way that Christian America’s forces of “civilization” stole every scrap of land and property from Mormonism systematically, from New York to Utah, waiting only long enough for the Mormons to produce lands, goods, and property of value, and settlements in productive order enough to be worth stealing.
Joseph Smith’s Christian enemies from the government to the clergy did not scream for his blood because he wasn’t being faithful to his wife. If that were true, he’d only be doing what most of them were doing on the side anyway. In fact, when Smith’s good Christian enemies eventually wrote legislation to outlaw plural marriage (which incidentally wasn’t illegal) they made sure you could sleep with as many women as you wanted as long as you didn’t “cohabitate,” meaning, if you married them and made a respectable arrangement out of it, you went to prison and got heavily fined, but if you took your hat and coat back home with you when you staggered drunk and debauched out of her bed later that night, back home to your wife, you were fine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun’s_Mill_massacre
The Reverend Pixley for one, makes his complaints against Mormonism very plain, and they have to do mostly with Mormons not participating in his ecumenical councils in the region, and this due to their “un-Christian theology.” He spends a lot of time claiming that Mormons were clannish, pro-Negro, pro-Indian, and in general, a bunch of high-toned Northerners who put on airs and wore shoes even on hot days. Most central to these arguments was his conviction that Joseph Smith’s claiming to talk to God was a heretical fake. And on a personal note, Baptists had been the idiot, bastard cousins of American Christianity for generations. Now that Pixley and his fellows had finally become respectable and competitive at least in the south and western frontiers, even if it was mostly with savages and barbarians, you can be certain Pixley wasn’t going to let a bunch of Johnny-come-lately Mormon heretics thwart the long-awaited Baptist conquest of the United States.
Both the mobs in Missouri, the respected citizens and clergy who supported them, and those in Illinois actually swore oaths to slaughter all Mormons, including many of them signing formal documents and oaths spelling out exactly why they wanted to kill all the Mormons, confessing in writing that the law was on the Mormons’ side but swearing their lives, property, and sacred honor to exterminate them anyway in God’s name, because as they claimed, Mormonism wasn’t loyal to the white race enough, or to Jesus Christ enough, to have been what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set about protecting religious observance. Personally, these sorts of claims really just come down to enjoying your own personal religion and politics, and seem hardly meriting an extermination order. But then, I’m not as “enlightened” as Reverend Pixley and his good Christian fellows.
In Missouri, the written oath the Christian “patriots” took was called the “Secret Constitution.” The Mormons called this document the “Mob Manifesto.” In this sacred covenant, the “Old Christian Settlers” essentially maintained that America was a Christian Nation, that Missouri was a Christian State, and by God no Mormons were going to move in, out-populate and out-vote Christianity as the legally binding religion of the land. The Bible clearly authorized slavery and they weren’t going to mess with that either.
Missouri eventually apologized for its actions in the so-called “Mormon War” of 1838. That’s because the war undeniably started when Missouri Christians formed a mob and tried to prevent Mormons from voting in Davis County. That much just isn’t in question on any side of the debate. They put it down in writing. It wasn’t much of a secret. Likewise, undeniably, anti-Mormon mobs took to the whole countryside raiding and raping and pillaging and burning Mormon property when the Mormons tried to defend their right to vote. That much is also very clear. The rest is history, a history not even the victorious Christians could successfully rewrite or stifle. Though, like Calvin’s defenders, the State of Missouri does a pretty good whitewashing their guilt on their website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Danites.shtml#danites
http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/mormon.asp
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~livcomo/letters/mormon.html
Originally welcomed as refugees into Illinois, the good Christian elements of that state would not rest until they’d outdone their Missouri Christian cohorts in the high level and low nature of their anti-Mormon persecution and violence. As far as the “Mormon War of 1844” in Illinois goes, this heightened episode of Christian-instigated anti-Mormon brutality culminated with Smith’s murder and the Mormon expulsion from the city they’d just built, Nauvoo, and the State of Illinois. The tenuous “treason” charge Joseph Smith finally got slaughtered for, after surrendering to the governor’s protective custody in Carthage Jail, comes down to the recipient of the bad-end of a city council decision running about the countryside, whining from magistrate to magistrate who repeatedly acquitted Smith, until he got the ear of governor. Seems the little whiner, Francis Higbee, had fired up an anti-Mormon press in the heart of Mormondom and got condemned as a “public nuisance.”
In attempting to get his revenge on Joseph, Smith’s Nauvoo publishing nemesis enlisted his friends in all the regional anti-Mormon newspapers to conduct a unified campaign of editorial haranguings, which prompted a coordinated campaign of over-the-pulpit church sermonizing urging the immediate use of force against the Mormon menace. In this atmosphere of fear and free-license to persecute, roving anti-Mormon mobs began to form, most of whom were indistinguishable from certain regiments of the Illinois State Militia. When Joseph called out the city’s own militia to defend Nauvoo from growing anti-Mormon Christian attacks, Smith’s critics claimed that he had taken over the county and called out the Nauvoo Legion to stifle their American rights. (Apparently meaning their right to mob Mormons at will.) It was “treason” they said. It was essentially the same ploy anti-Mormon activists had pulled off in Missouri. In Illinois however, rather than issue an order of extermination, the governor thought he’d have to calm this uproar down somehow, and decided he’d have Smith sit through a trial at least to sort out the whole treason issue. Smith would probably get off as usual, or so the governor he seems to have figured, but a trial he thought would mellow out the mobs, justice would have been seen to have been fully served by everyone, and that would be it.
Smith’s old Missouri enemies also swarmed over the border however, and joined forces with the Illinois mobs. Joseph did indeed surrender to the governor as requested, and also disarmed the Nauvoo Legion to reassure the good Christians in the area there would be no Mormon anti-Christian holocaust executed against them, placing the protection of Nauvoo in the hands of the small portions of the Illinois State Militia they considered more-or-less reliable. The units assigned to “guard” Smith in Carthage however, had openly sworn to kill him.
Apparently learning their lesson from Smith’s escape from Liberty Jail, the mob-militia “guarding” Joseph Smith at Carthage Jail just waited till the governor and his main force was gone, stormed the jail and shot him all to hell. They took a moment in the woods to dress like Indians and paint their faces black, returned armed to the teeth, passed undisturbed through the ranks of his “guards” outside the jail, up the stairs to the second floor, and fought their way through the unlocked door of a waiting room where Smith and his fellows were voluntarily holding themselves under arrest. They drove Smith out the window in a hail of bullets. His “guards” outside, shot him on the way down to the paving stones outside the jail. They sat him up against the well he’d landed by, and shot him a few more times just for fun. This got the job of “Christianizing” Joe Smith done with no pretense of a trial or attendant encumbering Constitutional arguments. This avoided the likely chance that the law might let Smith off of this charge like he’d gotten off of every single one of the scores of other legal charges Christian persecutors had tried to pin on him to that date.
http://mrm.org/death-of-joseph-smith
http://historyofmormonism.com/joseph_smith/joseph_smith_life/martyrdom_joseph_smith/
It just makes you wonder then, why would God choose Joe Smith from some hick town in the American frontier? What chance did Mormonism have to grow and prosper in frontier America’s self-igniting Christian revivalist environment? What chance did a seat-of-the-pants startup utopian society have in a wilderness run by political wolves, capitalist barons, religious opportunists and mobocrats? What chance did an unschooled farm boy have against America’s professionally trained, stump-preaching stormfront of Calvinism and Arminianism? What was God thinking when He came to this young American idiot at this inopportune time and told him to buck the entire social, political, and religious system and “Restore” anything, much less the True Church of Christ? That’s just a crazy idea. The whole notion is preposterous. It could never work. A kid like that wouldn’t last five minutes in that environment, peddling that load of crap!
Right?
You can’t knock success. It’s a mystery. Must be Divine Providence.
All Hail the Protestants Part 6: Born in the USA
American religion evolved primarily out of various Anglified variants of Calvinism. Calvin had almost nothing in common with Joseph Smith theologically, though Smith had been brought up on huge doses of Calvinism. Not much of it seemed to have rubbed off however. Calvin’s offshoot sects like the Presbyterians, came to be be Smith’s political and theological arch-enemies.
Calvin was no stranger to persecution of course, but unlike Joseph Smith he quickly learned how to politic himself into a position of power through stirring up the masses and local clergy to support him. He could also argue his way out of the noose when called upon and barely escaped being branded a heretic himself early on. Like Joseph Smith, he was a self-made “Prophet,” only he didn’t believe in those, or a self-declared “Pope” except he didn’t believe in those either. He had no easy credentials, no “Old School Tie” connections to speak of, no inherent money, lands, titles, legal, political or social power base. Everything he built in his Geneva Empire he pulled out of his own arse and had to create on the spot. Calvin literally created his own theocracy and assumed the role of its Protector for Life. To do this he took an urban wilderness apart at the seams and rebuilt it in his own image. With little more than his own big mouth and clever pen, he ousted political, social, and religious authorities who had ruled the “civilized” world for centuries. You can’t knock success.
But John Calvin beat Joe Smith to the New World, and because Calvin’s theocratic descendants knew exactly what Calvin would be doing if he had been the one founding America, American Christians for the most part just presumed from the start that Old Joe Smith would be attempting to pull off the same sort of theocratic dictatorship. Quite apart from doctrinal differences, this political reality in an American system meant that Christians could not let Mormons participate on an even playing field or they could simply recruit and reproduce themselves into political orthodoxy anywhere they established a social power base. That’s far easier to do in America than it is with an official State religion where Christians could easily define Mormonism out of the entire political and social process. That’s what Constantine did. That’s what Calvin did. That’s what virtually every one of the Protestant Reformers did. How even a hugely Christian majority could do the same thing in a Constitutional Republic with specific Constitutional protections for freedom of worship, became a serious frustration for anti-Mormon Christian crusaders.
Christian America’s reaction to Revolutionary Joe Smith has been from the start, primarily a territorial dispute rather than strictly a doctrinal or authoritarian one. Smith was threatening Protestant America’s ownership of the hearts, minds, and bodies of the New World simply by being allowed to exist. The specifics of his doctrines were only relevant insofar as they could be firmly defined as heretical, and that could have come down to anything from denouncing infant baptism, the Triune God, the Inerrancy of the King James Bible, or any number of pet, historically hot Christian controversies, depending upon which Christian clergy was looking to put down Mormonism.
Joseph Smith’s most offensive heresy however, in the minds of the professional Christians offended by it, was the very notion that some rural hick in his pre-teen years could turn whole populations against thousands of years of conventional Christianity based entirely upon a claim to personal revelation. If the general population was somehow willing to accept that premise, then anyone could worship God however they wanted and could establish by public acclaim any new creed or clergy they felt most comfortable with. The professional American Christian clergy would no longer have a captive audience. America’s up-and-coming Christian ministries certainly couldn’t have that sort of competition going on in their expansive, newly planted American fields of self-imagined glory.
America in Joseph Smith’s day represented the largest wide-open potential Christian harvest in the history of the planet. Those who owned the Christian brand at the time saw that if they did not vigorously–even violently–guard its use, it meant that America would become a place where anyone could come up with a more popular twist on the Bible or religion in general, and freely steal their sheep away. They saw that if they were forced by their own Church traditions to insist upon preaching doctrines to, and haranguing their congregations with dogma that generations of thinking Christians have known to be irrational, illogical, and often just plain asinine, they would never be able to compete against somebody free to deliver a gospel that made sense for a change. (Or at least, made more sense.) If Joe Smith were allowed by “inspiration” to say, no, there’s no such thing as immaterial matter, or that God just exists as a finer form of matter, but neither matter nor intelligence can be created nor destroyed, the fact is, unlike the Platonic, Athanasian, non-God that Christians are compelled to defend, an intangible being who is made of nothing and yet fills an infinitely huge universe, which He incidentally created out of nothing, Smith’s version is going to leave the professional Christian with merely a few obtuse apologies centered around murky mysticism, to try to cover up the clear impression most intelligent listeners would get, that Joe Smith makes absolute sense and his notion of God and physics are apparently scientifically valid.
In frontier America, if anyone was going to be fleecing America’s thriving flocks, it was going to be Christians. Professional, properly trained Christians. Even though the professional Christians in America’s revivalist-driven frenzies at the start of the 19th century fought fervently amongst themselves to define what exactly a Christian actually was, or what the word even meant, they were all pretty certain it didn’t include Joe Smith and his Mormons. Ultimately however, Christianity could not find a Constitutional relief from Mormonism. So Christianity went outside the Constitution and invented a form of Holy Retribution that became known as “mobocracy.” Where Calvin would have simply had the lawmen he owned haul Joseph Smith into the courts he owned, and torture a confession out of him after the Church thugs he owned had beaten him senseless enough, and then Calvin could have executed Joe Smith in a public square that he also owned, Calvin’s American children could only effect the same arrangement by assembling masses of Christian clergy and congregational supporters, declaring Joe Smith a heretic in absentia, and then execute their verdict through an embrace of violence and encouragement to the reprobates, low-lifes and back-sliders within their own congregations, or even unfocussed n’er-do-wells loafing around within earshot, to go enjoy whatever wicked pleasure they might gain from tormenting, sacking, pillaging, raping and murdering the Mormons with the blessing of God, and with full assurance that as non-Christian blasphemers and heretics, Mormons are beyond the protection of American justice. (Like Negros and Indians.)
Where Calvin would have had his own lawmen and politicians openly enact and enforce anti-Mormon statutes by force of arms, America’s career Christian religionists generally had to settle for an agreement from their civil officials and officers of the law to look the other way, or just be out of town that day, as the mobs did the dirty work of insuring Christian control over all civic affairs.
Like Joseph Smith, Calvin made beginner’s mistakes that could have ruined him. For instance, because John Calvin was throughout his religious career essentially making it up as he went, claiming the Bible as his and God’s only authority on this earth, one of his first major religious scuffles before coming to undisputable power in Geneva was with a French refugee, Pierre Caroli, a pastor who was a stickler for “orthodoxy.” In his many lectures and tours, Calvin was always imprecise in his Trinitarian and other “orthodox” terminology. The peculiar Calvinist vernacular he invented became a target for detractors who saw that he didn’t have the Latin Church creeds and related jargon down well enough in their minds to be considered reliably schooled in Christianity. In fairness to Calvin, this is because none of it is actually in the Bible.
Caroli accused Calvin of Arianism and Sabellianism, a couple of old anti-Trinitarian “heresies” supposedly long settled in both Roman, Eastern, Lutheran and most other Protestant circles. Caroli’s charges centered around the notion that Calvin never used the word “Trinity,” he used “Godhead,” and his Geneva Church did not formally subscribe to the Athanasian Creed. The Confession of Faith he forced his entire city to swear to didn’t specifically contain any Trinitarian language either. In 1537 Calvin and his cloister of religious consultants were therefore called before the synod in Bern and back-pedaled their way out of the charge of heresy with some effort and then kicked Caroli out of town and permanently banished him.
I’ve always found this brush with heresy on Calvin’s part amusingly hypocritical in light of the fact that some few years later, after ascending to his throne in Geneva, he would be condemning Michael Servetus to the fire for being anti-Trinitarian, the same charge Caroli used to almost get Calvin burned to a crisp. And if I can compare Joseph Smith just once more with John Calvin, we see that Smith’s biggest sin from the professional Christian’s perspective seemed to be that he just didn’t ever seem to play the Christian game by the established rules. Some rules were just not to be questioned, and Trinitarianism was probably the most sacrosanct of them all in either the Roman or mainstream Protestant traditions. If you could prove your critics and opponents were anti-Trinitarian, it was sure-fire trip to the gallows or the stake—or if you were under Calvin’s rule, he seemed to prefer decapitation with a pretty, ceremonial sword he kept around for the purpose. So, just in example, when Calvin recognized his Trinitarian error, he did not say, no Bishop, it’s just not in the Bible so it isn’t true. He said, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and moved on. (He did not however, go back and amend any of his confessions of faith to include Trinitarian language, nor did he append to any of his theological dogma either the Nicene or Athanasian Creeds.)
Unlike Luther and most other Reformers, Calvin skipped out on his Catholic education and was not at all well versed in the traditions of the Church Fathers and their various creeds. In fact when confronted with the writings of the Church Fathers or Apostolic Fathers by opponents or debaters, Calvin would just say he had the “original” Greek manuscripts, he had the Latin and the Hebrew and could read from the original Biblical authors themselves. Sola Scriptura or the Bible Only was his motto. He didn’t care what some minor African bishop like Augustine of Hippo or some Roman Catholic council had to say about the metaphysical character of Deity back in 326 AD. (I 
won’t go again into the fundamental stupidity of his assumption that he had the “original” Biblical texts at his disposal.) He did however have the oldest Greek and Latin texts then in existence, and it could be argued that he would therefore be more reliable in his resources than say, the King James “Authorized Version” is then or now. In fact there is an ongoing battle between modern sects who are essentially Calvinist most of them, who view the King James Version to be absolutely inerrant, and a modern class of scholars who in fact take Calvin’s argument and make it a point to catalogue every single error in this inerrant work, based strictly upon how it differs from the Latin and Greek texts it was allegedly taken from.
http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/what-are-the-errors-in-king-james-version-bible.html
http://www.bible.ca/b-kjv-only.htm
http://bible.org/article/why-i-do-not-think-king-james-bible-best-translation-available-today
http://www.raptureready.com/rr-kjvo.html
http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume1/tr.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_bibl.htm
http://www.av1611.org/kjv/fight.html
The King James inerrancy battle should keep you occupied for a day or so browsing the net for links, if you really want to understand the base stupidity of Calvin’s claim that God’s Church and the laws of God can be reliably extracted from what we have left of Canonical scripture whatever the manuscript. And when Joseph Smith came up all non-Trinitarian-ish after his First Vision, it wasn’t anything Calvin hadn’t been accused of long before. When Joseph Smith said the American standard, the King James Bible, wasn’t a perfect representation of the original texts, well, Calvin had already been there and done that. The same group of people bashing Joseph Smith on the head with the King James Version back in the frontier era, today now find that Joseph has rather a lot of support coming from scholars and doctors of divinity, and the intellectual giants of Christianity—just the sort of people his detractors claimed Joseph Smith was not and therefore everyone of letters surely knew with absolute certainty that Smith’ opinions about the King James Version were obviously idiotic.
As it happens, the translator of the first Bible in English, John Wycliffe, never fully documented his texts or processes. Because of this lack of scholarly surety, and the fact that Wycliffe was considered a heretic back when the Roman Church ruled England, and thus the Roman Church had put down his pre-Reformation Reformation, his manuscript and most of his copies were destroyed. After that they were too poisoned to be used by any English scholar as a basis for a new Bible anyway. Wycliffe’s English style was obsolete as well. So, the King James Version draws very heavily upon the work of William Tyndale, who’s Reformational zeal to have the scriptures in the common language drew only inspirationally from Wycliffe. Tyndale is claimed to have used only the Latin Vulgate for reverence, and is claimed to have not had access to older Greek text. The “inerrant” King James Version is therefore actually about three translations into it, Hebrew or Aramaic to Greek, Greek to Latin, and then Latin to English, before the King James scribes start their job.
It might be noted that although excommunicated by and politically severed from Rome at the time, Henry VIII wasn’t very keen on
Tyndale for his efforts at making an English Bible for the masses. Henry also felt Tyndale was cheating the texts into a far more radically Protestant context than Henry felt comfortable with. Like most people who argued with Henry VIII, Tyndale was executed shortly after finishing his work. But then, Kings change and so does the Church. By James Ist’s go at the Bible, Tyndale had already done most of the hard work, thus his being inconveniently dead didn’t slow James I down at all. James I and Parliament were all all by then very happily Protestant as hell, so James didn’t mind any of Tyndale’s anti-Roman colorations. He had his team lose any Calvinistic calls to rebel from the king or Church that Tyndale may have put in the margins or allowed to be translated correctly rather than spun to favor the English Crown. Then James had his team more eloquently paraphrase Tyndale’s translation, while cross-referencing it with the ancient texts. They had a go at some Greek or Latin or even Hebrew in emergencies, compared texts back and forth, polished it all up for king and clergy, and James I quickly had himself an excellent version of the Bible in the modern, educated, “King’s English.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wycliffe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
When John Calvin went at the Bible, he of course had older–and so he maintained a bit erroneously–more reliable texts. He wasn’t even dependent upon a translation. He had access to the oldest texts known in his day. If we concede this is true, then, one must ask, why did he miss the alleged importance of Trinitarian dogma? Calvin’s Humanist education made him quite familiar with the classical Greek logic of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates upon which the Nicene and Athanasian creeds were based. And in fairness to Calvin, when ultimately schooled by Caroli’s little Inquisition he found no intellectual reservations about Trinitarian theology. It’s just that nothing in the Biblical texts ever screamed “Trinity” at Calvin.
To Calvin, Trinitarianism was an extra-Biblical concept upon which he apparently had little or no opinion. Calvin deemed God’s nature of existence or the exact substance of His various manifestations to be fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind, and irrelevant to the will of God in any case.
Calvin wasn’t preoccupied with knowing the nature of God, just in organizing what His rules were and making people obey them. (Mormons will tell you this is Satan’s plan, but that’s another matter.) Calvin looked at the Bible and Church tradition as a lawyer would, and systematically drew conclusions based entirely upon what he considered to be the most reliable evidence available to him in the Holy Canon.
There is only one other historical document that Calvin claims to have drawn upon in his deliberations of God’s True Will. This is known traditionally as the “Apostle’s Creed.” According to legend, the original of this document was drafted sometime in the vicinity of Christ’s passing from this earth by the Original Apostles. The story goes that they gathered together and each one contributed a portion of their personal gospel knowledge to compile its several statements, or “confessions” of Christian faith.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01629a.htm
Reliable references to the Apostle’s Creed however, only date back to the time of the Apostolic Fathers, many many years after the death of the Original Apostles. The Apostolic Fathers knew the Original Apostles or close associates of them, and it is possible that it was the Apostolic Fathers who drafted this creed based upon what is now Holy Canon and even from personal memory. Even assuming that it was the Apostolic Fathers and not the Original Apostles who kicked this document off, the Apostle’s Creed, like the Bible, was still clearly never written and published in one complete and “inerrant” edition, because the many well-documented examples of it through the centuries show that it originated as a much simpler document and gradually generated into the form we find it today:
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
5. The third day he rose again from the dead:
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
10. The forgiveness of sins:
1l. The resurrection of the body:
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.
If we concede that this is the oldest and most reliable confession of Christian faith, then Mormons are obviously Christian. No Mormon would have any problem with making any one of these confessions except for a little leeway in what “conceived by the Holy Ghost,” means in actual practice. This Holy Ghost issue mind you, is something the Eastern and Western Church are still arguing about so the murky relationship between the “immaculate” conception of Mary and this Biblical allusion to the Holy Ghost and Mary “hooking up” in some fashion with one manifestation of God or another to effect her virgin impregnation is hardly a settled matter even in the historically “orthodox” Churches. Indeed, there are whole new schools of Protestant Christian scholars who are even comfortable dropping the entire “virgin birth” scenario based upon obvious errors or manipulations of Biblical texts over the ages designed to bolster this theory rather than just translate the actual record.
The truth of the matter is, the important “virgin shall conceive” Biblical prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 actually read, “a young woman shall conceive,” in literal translation from the much older Hebrew texts. The Greek Septuagint version Calvin claimed to be his “original” texts (not!) substituted “virgin” for “young woman.” It’s no great leap to assume then that the Greek scribes who “translated” what we now use as a New Testament likewise beefed up this “virgin birth” claim whenever they came across the New Testament authors’ allusions to Mary’s conception or Christ’s birth–whether it existed in the original Hebrew or Aramaic texts they copied from or not. If for no other reason they would have tended to try to keep this theme consistent by revising the thousands of years of records to plug it in where needed—whether they were just promoting this theory on a personal whim or whether it actually was true. (And I remind the reader that the original “original” texts, the so-called “Original Autographs” do not exist today. We have only the alleged copies of these allegedly original documents, made generations later by Christian scholars and historians in Greek etc.)
This is not my main point here, but I can’t resist the urge to point out that the Biblical “virgin birth” scenario also calls into question other Biblical assertions that Christ came through the line of David, which would have to mean his biological father was Joseph, not the “Holy Ghost,” or any possible “orthodox” variant of some cosmic, transcendent, Triune God-Being. The New Testament authors, as good Jews, obviously felt compelled to give us the paternal family tree of Jesus of Nazareth to fulfill the several ancient Messianic prophecies about the House of David. But in the process they blew a rather large hole in the whole “virgin birth” theory.
Some very clever Mormons out there are now chasing their tails around very self-importantly in a testimony-shaking panic, reassuring themselves from their position of higher knowledge, about “clones” and “supernatural genetic transfers” through the priesthood power of the Holy Ghost as God’s Eternal Agent, which they assume would easily explain the whole virgin birth process. A clone however, would be Mary-plus-Mary, clearly excluding Joseph’s patriarchal and priesthood lineage. Supernaturally transferred genetic material through whatever means, Whomever its Agent, would likewise bypass genetic input from Joseph’s patriarchal line. So you High Priest Groups out there in Orem, Springville and Provo just keep working on it. Personally, I’m not sure it matters much to God but if it makes you happy to speculate upon the practical application of Godly reproduction, knock yourselves out. This is the sort of rabidly marginal inbred Utah doctrinal fixations Mormon detractors embrace as a gift.
Clearly I have gone into a serious digression so I’ll just move on…
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/virginprophecy.html
http://www.city-data.com/forum/religion-philosophy/510316-line-david-contradicts-virgin-birth.html
http://www.gotquestions.org/virgin-or-young-woman.html
http://www.harrington-sites.com/terms.htm
Once again I’m only trying to point out the folly of claiming you can use the Bible and the Bible alone to “prove” what is or isn’t the “truth” with any sort of certainty. If it were that clear, we wouldn’t have hundreds of Christian sects killing themselves off back and forth over basic questions of Christian doctrine for two thousand years, beginning with the question of what is or isn’t “Canon,” what belongs, and what doesn’t belong in the “Bible,” and even the basic matter of exactly how literally this “Bible” is going to be used as a doctrinal guide.
Calvin wasn’t the first to pretend to base his entire theology upon so-called “Biblical Truth.” But Calvin was the first to successfully rid himself of a traditional clergy that would have otherwise bickered and politicked with him over its history and interpretation into some sort of moderation. Calvin was the first to actually sell an entire civilization upon the notion that one guy could deliver God-like Truth and Wisdom just by being clever with the way he gleaned through the Biblical texts.
If you look at the Apostle’s Creed however, and then read the volumes and volumes of Calvin’s own creeds, confessions of faith, and doctrinal theses, you have to conclude that John Calvin gleaned a lot more from the writings of the Biblical authors than those who actually wrote the Bible did. If we assume the Apostle’s Creed was written by the close associates of Jesus Christ within a heartbeat of His being with them personally, and this simple creed, this short statement of faith and brief historical sketch of Christ’s mission is all they thought to pass on to us as a summary of Christian belief, then the results of John Calvin’s deliberations over the Canonical texts show that Calvin had theological ideas that went well beyond the Apostle’s Creed or anything expressly in the Holy Bible itself, whatever its translation.
When Joseph Smith “straightened out” the Bible, he at least had the audacity to claim an angel had told him how to fix it, or that God or Christ or the Holy Spirit or all three at once showed him what the Biblical authors really meant to write instead of what we ended up with. Calvin, on the other hand, like most other Christian dogmatists, rather than revealing great “truths” via direct messages from Deity or other supernatural Powers-that-Be, very clearly drew his “Biblical Truth” from Classical Greek Theism and Western philosophy in general. The rest he admittedly pulled out of his backside with no apologies.
Calvin’s theology comes down to five main points-which incidentally were never written down by himself and presented coherently as five connected points. They were eventually gleaned from his writings and sermons by those wishing to debate him:
Total Depravity:
Sin has affected all parts of man. The heart, emotions, will, mind, and body are all affected by sin. We are completely sinful. We are not as sinful as we could be, but we are completely affected by sin.The doctrine of Total Depravity is derived from scriptures that reveal human character: Man’s heart is evil (Mark 7:21-23) and sick (Jer. 17:9). Man is a slave of sin (Rom. 6:20). He does not seek for God (Rom. 3:10-12). He cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). He is at enmity with God (Eph. 2:15). And, is by nature a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3). The Calvinist asks the question, “In light of the scriptures that declare man’s true nature as being utterly lost and incapable, how is it possible for anyone to choose or desire God?” The answer is, “He cannot. Therefore God must predestine.”
Calvinism also maintains that because of our fallen nature we are born again not by our own will but God’s will (John 1:12-13); God grants that we believe (Phil. 1:29); faith is the work of God (John 6:28-29); God appoints people to believe (Acts 13:48); and God predestines (Eph. 1:1-11; Rom. 8:29; 9:9-23).
Unconditional Election:
God does not base His election on anything He sees in the individual. He chooses the elect according to the kind intention of His will (Eph. 1:4-8; Rom. 9:11) without any consideration of merit within the individual. Nor does God look into the future to see who would pick Him. Also, as some are elected into salvation, others are not (Rom. 9:15, 21).Limited Atonement:
Jesus died only for the elect. Though Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient for all, it was not efficacious for all. Jesus only bore the sins of the elect. Support for this position is drawn from such scriptures as Matt. 26:28 where Jesus died for ‘many’; John 10:11, 15 which say that Jesus died for the sheep (not the goats, per Matt. 25:32-33); John 17:9 where Jesus in prayer interceded for the ones given Him, not those of the entire world; Acts 20:28 and Eph. 5:25-27 which state that the Church was purchased by Christ, not all people; and Isaiah 53:12 which is a prophecy of Jesus’ crucifixion where he would bore the sins of many (not all).Irresistible Grace:
When God calls his elect into salvation, they cannot resist. God offers to all people the gospel message. This is called the external call. But to the elect, God extends an internal call and it cannot be resisted. This call is by the Holy Spirit who works in the hearts and minds of the elect to bring them to repentance and regeneration whereby they willingly and freely come to God. Some of the verses used in support of this teaching are Romans 9:16 where it says that “it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy“; Philippians 2:12-13 where God is said to be the one working salvation in the individual; John 6:28-29 where faith is declared to be the work of God; Acts 13:48 where God appoints people to believe; and John 1:12-13 where being born again is not by man’s will, but by God’s.Perseverance of the Saints:
You cannot lose your salvation. Because the Father has elected, the Son has redeemed, and the Holy Spirit has applied salvation, those thus saved are eternally secure. They are eternally secure in Christ. Some of the verses for this position are John 10:27-28 where Jesus said His sheep will never perish; John 6:47 where salvation is described as everlasting life; Romans 8:1 where it is said we have passed out of judgment; 1 Corinthians 10:13 where God promises to never let us be tempted beyond what we can handle; and Phil. 1:6 where God is the one being faithful to perfect us until the day of Jesus’ return.
Chronologically tag-teaming Calvin was the second major influence upon American frontier religion, the Dutch Reformer Jacobus Arminius. http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/Heritage/Arminius.htm Arminius was born a few years before Calvin died and studied under Calvin’s brother-in-law in Geneva. He started his career as a staunch Calvinist Reformer but after a while noticed a few problems with Calvin’s Biblical and logical conclusions. It was mostly Arminius and his followers who started breaking Calvin’s teachings down into the five points he most emphasized because it was those five main points they disagreed with so much.
http://christianity.about.com/od/denominations/a/calvinarminian.htm
http://www.ondoctrine.com/10armini.htm
http://www.tlogical.net/bioarminius.htm
In a nutshell, Arminius came to argue:
- Humans are naturally unable to make any effort towards salvation (see also prevenient grace). They possess free will to accept or reject salvation.
- Salvation is possible only by God’s grace, which cannot be merited.
- No works of human effort can cause or contribute to salvation
- God’s election is conditional on faith in the sacrifice and Lordship of Jesus Christ.
- Christ’s atonement was made on behalf of all people.
- God allows his grace to be resisted by those who freely reject Christ.
- Believers are able to resist sin but are not beyond the possibility of falling from grace through persistent, unrepented-of sin.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminianism
Generations later, Arminius’ theology came to be incorporated into the tenets of Baptists, Methodists, the Congregationalists in early New England colonies, the Universalists and Unitarians. Even a few “liberal” Southern Presbyterian congregations allowed some Arminian teachings—much to the chagrin of the Anglican Communion. The Smith family was associated with most of the above, particularly the Congregationalists, Universalists, and Methodists. Emma Smith, Joseph’s wife’s family were staunchly Methodist.
it was Arminian theology in particular that fueled the revivalist flames that created Joseph Smith’s so-called “Burned-Over District” in upstate New York. Christ’s “Great Commission” (Matthew 28:16) to take the gospel to the world was pretty pointless to the Calvinist, because God, in Calvinism, had already chosen those He was going to save and this election was assured and irresistible, and not based on merit at all anyway. Believe or not believe, confess or be baptized, it didn’t matter in the end. It was really all down to God, not you. The Methodists however, were driven to sell the sinner on the idea of repenting, since they believed it was the sinner’s choice to make. Salvation to the Methodist was dependent first upon you exercising your free will to accept Jesus. And after that, Methodists were also fervently engaged in making sure they didn’t “backslide” and lose their election as they, unlike the Calvinists, believed to be possible.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+28%3A16-20&version=NIV
“Methodist” was originally an epithet used by Oxford students to describe the methodical way founders John
Wesley, a professor there, and his younger brother Charles, had formed a “Holy Club” on campus to organize their lives. George Whitefield soon teamed with Wesley and introduced an animated form of open-air “revival” preaching to their club. Their original intent was a reorganization of the Church of England, but the whole “revivalist” approach infected branches of it to the point that they began to be called “Methodist.”
Wesley was very Arminian but Whitefield gravitated to some seriously Calvinist ideas as their church spread around Scotland and the British Isles, which strained their relationship. It was Whitefield however, who convinced Wesley it was not immoral to preach outside a consecrated church structure and brought the gospel message to all classes high and low, including labor castes who were until then outside the central focus of the Church. That’s not a particularly Calvinist approach mind you, and I can’t really account for Whitefield’s motivation for the populist, egalitarian overview of his Christian mission. Whitefield was instrumental in founding an independent sect called the Free Church of England which ultimately led to an entirely separate 
Methodist church.
Whitefield first brought the notion of revivalism to the American colonies and fired up the First Great Awakening. When Whitefield died, Wesley, who outlived him, was free to take Methodism in an entirely Arminian direction with no further in-fighting from Whitefield. It’s this Arminian message in the Second Great Awakening, Joseph Smith’s time, that set the Methodists apart from the Calvinist pack as something new and exciting. The Methodists opened up the American religious playing field and the rest had to scramble to keep up with them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism
http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_methodism.htm
While the Puritans of early America were certainly exposed to the thoughts of all the central Reformationists, including Jacobus Arminius in the Netherlands, Zwingli in Switzerland or even the German primo-heretic Martin Luther, they were addictively attracted to the brutishly simplified teachings and extreme disciplines of Calvin. Calvinists believed prosperity was always an indication of God’s favor, and hardship was always the result of sin and faithlessness. They believed that personal sin could bring God’s punishment upon the whole community and people required constant supervision and chastisement. Conversely, they also believed that hard work and faith was always rewarded by God. These concepts are inherently schizophrenic when objectively reviewed.
Calvin himself professed to believe in the “Priesthood of all Believers,” yet the purest descendants of Calvin’s religious machine, the Presbyterians, count Joseph Smith as an archetypal heretic because he claimed his authority without religious degrees or titles. “Who is this Joe Smith upstart?” they asked when he appeared in the thick of the religious scene of his day, telling them they had it all wrong. My Lutheran ancestors of course asked the same question about Calvin, when he did the same thing to Martin Luther’s followers back in the Old Country. My Lutheran relatives have described Calvin as an impertinent, egocentric despot who never finished a seminary class, never took a vow, and was never ordained by anyone of any authority to teach anything other than Legal Humanism. And that only in French.
Who the hell is Joe Smith? Who the hell is John Calvin? I could fairly reply. Thomas Jefferson asked himself the same question and came to conclusion that Calvin was Satanically inspired fool.
I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
Jefferson, almost as Joseph Smith was kneeling down in the woods to confirm his own dubious assessment, of period Christianity, was also writing this:
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
For a sample of the philosophical nonsense Jefferson was describing as the Platonistic, the “Classical” or rather, “Pagan” foundation of Calvin’s God, here’s a segment from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online:
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/K113
Regardless of the Biblical translation then, the Reformers and the Protestants, just like their Roman predecessors, were all decoding Biblical texts from their slightly varied but still narrow perspectives as products of a Hellenized, Greco-Roman, Western civilization. From the early Church Fathers and before, Christian scholars, Roman, Eastern, Protestant and Reformers alike have been trying to make Biblical texts support conclusions about the nature of God that Classical philosophers had long taken for granted as logical and thus true. The “Jesus of the Bible” or the “God of the Bible” was invented by Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and their Pagan Greek philosophical fellows. The writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were simply jiggered and interpreted hundreds of years later to make them seem to support the established “science” of these Pagan philosophers.
The Church of England’s Westminster Confession of Faith, negotiated in 1646 for example, describes God as “without body parts or passions.” This is a concept of the Supreme Being the Pagan Greeks and other Western philosophers had formulated generations before Constantine and his Nicene Council first codified it into Christian dogma in 326. When you start from this Pagan assumption, and you then examine God’s Biblical dealings with man through the relatively narrow and scarce Biblical texts that have survived, it is very easy to produce the sort of absurd, even cruel and arbitrary God that Calvin invented for himself. And again, in fairness, though Calvin and his fellow Reformationists were all claiming to be using the “Bible Alone!” as their sole source of wisdom, they were in fact also simply plugging generations of written and unwritten base assumptions from the corrupted “Church” they were rebelling from, automatically into Biblical verse. They used base assumptions from their admittedly corrupt “Church Tradition” to fill in the holes and answer questions the Bible itself didn’t even come close to answering.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Creeds.html
Contrary to the Pilgrim’s Puritan claim on America as their ultimate Calvinist free-fire zone, the actual Fathers of the Constitution were some of the first Western philosophers and religionists to actually look at the Bible without preconceptions and allow themselves to evaluate its provenance, historical and literary value dispassionately and realistically—apart from the thousands of years of Christian mythology and the fabled Church histories surrounding it.
Thomas Paine was one of the chief authors and instigators of the American Revolution. Like Jefferson and others in their circle of American visionaries, he had religious notions that drew serious rebuke from most of his Christian countrymen, authoring amongst other works, The Age of Reason, which was called by his detractors, “The Atheist’s Bible.” His main approach illustrated a modern, critical Biblical scholarship that was generations ahead of its time, though common today.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel07.html
Both Paine and Jefferson expressed sentiments that could very easily be put into Joseph Smith’s terms: The Church had fallen apart and the Bible was never intended to be the last word on the subject. In other words, all three of these American patriots were saying that the Church had not been either Providentially preserved from, or inspirationally Reformed from heresy and fatal collapse. The the Bible was never a complete “How To” manual left directly from the pen of Jesus. Christ had never intended to leave a Biblical record in total perfection specifically to save the Church from error, so the boast that mankind didn’t need anything other than the Bible to run society in Christian harmony is ludicrous. Thomas Jefferson even edited his own version of the Bible, removing the parts he said were idiotic or anti-social, illogical, demonic and dangerous to the nation.
Yes, Jefferson was branded by many a heretic. It was a serious detriment to his political aspirations. However, Thomas Jefferson went on to found the nation and became its president in due time. Joseph Smith on the other hand, got shot down like a dog by an angry mob of Christians.
Timing is everything I guess.
And then again, Jefferson never claimed to talk to God and Angels. Jefferson never tried to found his own church and muscle in on Christianity’s piece of the American pie.
All Hail the Protestants Part 5: In God We Trust
It is the undeniable truth that Calvinists took over England, and through English colonization, Calvinism was the main religious force in opening up the North American continent, specifically those colonies who later became the United States of America. What Calvin’s modern fans try to obfuscate however, is the fact that the small group of truly great thinkers who authored and crafted the US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights where the relationship between religion and State authority was cleanly severed, were in truth a coven of dissidents reacting directly to Calvinistic oppression and abuse of power. They had seen it historically on two continents for many generations. For this reason, the Founding Fathers incorporated protection for all religion in the Constitution. They also limited government from taking a position on religion at all, other than acknowledging the Great Architect of the Universe, the Creator, Who grants all mankind its universal rights.
From the birth of the Church of England to the American Revolution, the State enforcement of Christianity had been seen by America’s Founding Fathers to be, a capricious and bloody disaster. After Henry VIII, the Church of England had first undergone a violent flip-flop back to brutally enforced Roman Catholicism with the short-lived “Bloody Mary,” Henry’s daughter. She died mercifully prematurely in her reign, and from then on the Parliament became over-run with Protestants eagerly driven to force Roman Catholics out government, the court, and ultimately all of England if they could manage it. They rapidly codified anti-Catholic laws including the proscription of Roman Catholics from ever taking the English Crown again. This power-hungry English Parliament looked over the channel in Europe, and jealously spied Calvin’s incredible control of every aspect of Genovese society. They soon adapted themselves to exploit Calvin’s whole approach.
In 1567, Mary Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate the Scottish Throne because she was a Roman Catholic.
Scotland had been forcefully aligned with England and politics had gone all Puritan on her. Her heir and son James, had been raised a Protestant. He met the new Protestant requirement to take his mother’s throne, but James was only 13 months old however. Several regents ruled on his behalf while he grew up. Before he ascended to his kingly duties, he took to travelling Denmark and Norway to learn the sport of witch hunting, which was immensely popular in Scandinavia at the time. He was a very active participant in these trials and punishments, and in one famous case testified that the witches involved had cast a spell of bad weather that was intended to sink his boat and prevent his participation as he travelled to the court. He authored a little book on the subject titled Daemonologie in 1597, which became something of a handbook for witch hunting fanatics.
James I (Known as James VII of Scotland) practiced his witch hunting hobby as the Scottish King a while. He took a Danish wife while he was at it. Inevitably his mother was executed as a threat to English Protestantism by Elizabeth I. This cleared the way for him to take the English throne without dispute, since unlike his mother, James’ religion was all in order and he had a proper Protestant spouse to make proper Protestant heirs with. He united the two kingdoms of Scotland and England in 1603 as James I of England, when Elizabeth I died childless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_England
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-witchcraft-and-witches.htm
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/james-I-witchcraft.htm
In 1605 a Catholic soldier named Guy Fawkes, supposedly guarding a pile of firewood underneath James’ firs
t parliament as English king, was discovered to also have a pile of powder kegs nearby with which he intended to blow up the entire government. After that, James forced English Catholics to swear an oath of loyalty and deny the supremacy of the Roman Pope over English law. He was quite friendly to them afterward however.
http://talesofcuriosity.com/v/GunPowder/
James I also tried to conform the Scottish Protestants as closely as he could to the English Protestants. This annoyed the Scottish immensely. Part of James I’s problems with the Scottish had to do with the Scottish Reformationists claiming way too much independence from the English Church, of which he was now the head, and resting way too much authority on the scribblings of John Calvin. Of course, as already noted, in reality James I had begun his King’s career in Scotland as a back-woodsy Calvinistic Puritan like all the other Scottish Protestants. When he came into the English Throne however, all his witch hunting and whatnot alienated the English Court’s more cosmopolitan, educated Puritans who considered him to be unsophisticated and superstitious. But James I was well thought of throughout his kingdoms, and he made many important cultural and religious “advances” at least from the English, Protestant perspective.
In 1607 a group of settlers sailed from James I’s England and founded the American colony of Jamestown in his name. This entrepreneurial venture became the toe-hold of the Church of England on a big new continent.
http://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement.htm
James I gave us the era of William Shakespeare. He fostered art and architecture, music and social progress. He brokered something of a peace between Catholic and Protestant, England, Ireland and Scotland, and he sponsored the translation and publication of the Bible that would become the New World English Standard, his “Authorized Version,” which was first published in 1611.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version
Oddly enough, neither the Pilgrims, other American colonists, or the common English used their king’s “Authorized Version” until around 1651, some thirty years after he made it available to them all. Until around that period, the Geneva Bible was used in the home. This had been compiled in Geneva in part by Calvin’s brother-in-law, as headed up by English refugees from Bloody Mary. It was finally published and Dedicated to the new Protestant Queen, Elizabeth I in 1560.
The Geneva bible was flamingly anti-Roman, something the Anglican church had no quarrel with, but it was also flamingly anti-authoritarian, something the English Crown had issue with. So the Bishop’s Bible was used in church.
This Bishop’s Bible wasn’t the first English “Authorized” Bible. In 1539 Henry VIII ordered Thomas Cromwell to supervise Myles Coverdale in producing the English Great Bible, so-called because it was huge. It is sometimes also called the “Cromwell Bible.” It was also very expensive. It was a clergy-only authorization not meant for the masses. Because Henry VIII grew impatient with the scholarship and tedious deliberation involved, Coverdale ended up basically ripping off the work of William Tyndale who Henry had branded a heretic and traitor, and executed three years previously. Coverdale took Tyndale’s work and removed the objectionable anti-Catholic and anti-authoritarian marginal notes, consulted the Latin Vulgate and various German translations and made editorial corrections for political and dogmatic reasons to keep his king happy. He did not spend any time at all looking at any ancient Biblical texts. The result was clumsy Olde English and would be scarcely understandable today.
Another irony of the Great Bible is the fact that Myles Coverdale in 1535 had
already published the first complete English Bible. The Coverdale Bible, unlike other English translators, included the full New and Old Testaments. Like the Great Bible, it was based on Tyndale and German translations. So it is important to note that the Great Bible was very specifically published by the Church of England for some very specific editorial reasons not at all related to scholarship or accuracy. Henry VIII already had an excellent English complete Bible from Coverdale. He wanted one like it, but spun to his own purposes, as supervised by his Vicar General Thomas Cromwell, to insure the resulting volume met the express interest of supporting his king as the sole Defender of the Faith. Not the Pope. Not the Bible. Not John Calvin. But Henry VIII, King of England.
http://smu.edu/bridwell_tools/specialcollections/prothroexhibit/english27.htm
http://www.chaplain.us/Bible/bible.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bible
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English_Bible_translations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverdale_Bible
It could be fairly claimed that all of these translations served one political or theological purpose or another rather than represented true and accurate preservation of Holy Writ. But when the Geneva Bible made the Holy Scriptures available in common English vernacular it became immediately popular with the common folk. It was very much a Calvinist document however, a movement that hadn’t yet been smoothed into existing Anglican doctrines maintaining the unilateral Church authority of the English King. Unlike Calvin’s Calvinism and the masses who actually might like a little Biblical anti-authoritarianism, the Church of England and its heads of state didn’t like using a Bible infested with Calvinesque marginal notes authorizing rebellion from Crown and Church. Calvin encouraged slaves and servants to choose God over their masters, and a host of other dangerous free-thinking intimations. So in 1586, under Elizabeth I, a council of bishops produced yet another Bible based on William Tyndale’s work. This again is ironic, since Tyndale had only decades before been arrested by Henry VIII and imprisoned for over 500 days in filthy conditions until he was nearly dead. Finally Henry invented some feeble evidence and Tyndale was convicted of heresy and treason in a contrived trial and then strangled and burnt at the stake in the prison yard on October 6, 1536. His last words were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.“
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/william-tyndale.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
http://biblehistory.ca/article.php?fragid=22&year=1568
For James I’s Biblical mission, he didn’t have to worry about Henry VIII’s fondness for all things Roman Catholic, that had passed from the Anglican Church in no uncertain terms. But 
when he left the Scottish rabble and became an English king as well, it became a problem of uniting the equally rabid English and the Scottish Protestant factions not against a Roman Pope, but into agreement upon the sovereignty of the King of England as head of both Church and State. That just wasn’t an easy proposition. English Calvinists brushed over rather a lot of Calvin’s views on rather a lot of Church-State issues because they didn’t fit the Anglican foundation. James felt he had to insure this Anglican power base would be observed throughout his kingdoms. This meant he had to mount yet another Biblical rendition that either left all the politics out, openly supported his role as King and Church Head, or the very least, walked that fine line between a sort of neutral accuracy and asking for trouble. Again, he used Tyndale’s work as a centerpiece. His team would go back to the oldest known manuscripts and attempt not just a literal translation, but something that captured the majesty of the Word of God, something everyone could not only read and enjoy as literature, but a Bible that would exclude all marginal interpretations and leave it to the Church (Him as its head) to do all the interpreting.
And the rest is history…
Backtracking the English Bible even farther however, to be fair, the first first delivery of the Holy Scripture to the English masses of course, has to be credited to John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was such a prolific religious idea man and academic genius that he, not Martin Luther, is lauded by the scholarly as the precursor to the Reformation Movement. He was in fact, a Reformer before the Movement caught up with him. He professed
that the Bible should be an open possession of the Body of Christ, not a secret collection of scribblings in a language the common population couldn’t even read. He was embarrassed that English nobility read the only common-language Bible they could easily get in French, the only other available being the Vulgate, which was in Latin, which by that time was no longer a common language and was used only by academics and the clergy. Wycliffe instigated an English translation from the Latin that resulted in English versions of the New Testament and an edited, more readable edition of the Old Testament that had been already finished, by Nicholas of Hereford, all of which was again edited and revised by Wycliffe’s associate John Purvey in 1388.
Wycliffe’s pre-Reformation Reforming led to his Roman Catholic opponents saying, “The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity.” And in Wycliffe’s time, Rome was the only game in town. The Roman hierarchy attempted to completely exterminate Wycliffe’s work, but about 150 manuscripts still remain. Tyndale was indeed inspired by Wycliffe’s efforts, which is but one more thing that put him at odds with Henry VIII. Henry VIII did not look at Wycliffe as a Reformer. Henry VIII was the only Reformer Henry VIII needed in his Court. Henry VIII saw Wycliffe as a rebel and troublemaker who in the end was declared posthumously a heretic, excommunicated, dug out of the Church’s Holy Ground, and dumped ignominiously into the local river. Just to make sure he stayed dead, his writings and books were all burned and declared heretical and banned.
http://www.tlogical.net/biowycliffe.htm
At any rate, 1653 brings us to England’s first full-bore Calvinist witch hunter and overall pompous English bastard, Oliver Cromwell. By by 1653 Cromwell had promoted his exploits killing Catholic Celts on the battlefield into a high position in Parliament. He then overthrew King Charles I, had him executed for ostensibly for seeking help from a Catholic army during the battle which Cromwell sold as treason, dissolved Parliament, dissolved the monarchy, formed the “Commonwealth of England,” and installed his own “Barebones” Parliament consisting of hand-picked ministers.
Oliver Cromwell was a distant relative of Thomas Cromwell, the man who’d found Henry VIII the legal and doctrinal excuses for taking over the job of English Pope. ![225px-Oliver_Cromwell_by_Samuel_Coop[2]](http://lrwhitney.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/225px-oliver_cromwell_by_samuel_coop2.jpg "225px-Oliver_Cromwell_by_Samuel_Coop[2]")
Henry had taken Oliver’s kin to the heights of power in his Kingdom, but Thomas eventually found his English Reformation plans put on hold as Henry cut off his head. It seems Parliament thought he was getting too big for his britches and convinced Henry Thomas Cromwell had to go. His kinsman Oliver obviously figured out how to prevent that from happening again by killing the king first, and taking over Parliament himself.
Oliver Cromwell was a truly raving England-First Puritan who professed that God guided his every move. And being a true Calvinist to the core, he had no use for a monarchy pretending to be the head of the Church, and he had no need for a professional clergy to tell his Parliament how to govern English society.
When Oliver Cromwell quoted the Bible it was the full Calvinist Geneva Bible mind you, not the King James Version. Cromwell was all about doing God’s will as he saw fit and any one or anything that encumbered this mission was eliminated. Cromwell had won brutal battle after battle in his campaign against Scottish and Irish Catholics, and even formed a violent aversion to his period Scottish Presbyterians who refused to conform to his English Church and legal systems. He knew what was best for them and he was damned well going to force them to accept it. After conquering them all, he declared himself “Lord Protector of England, Ireland, and Scotland.”
Cromwell’s army slaughtered more than forty-percent of the native Irish population for refusing to renounce Catholicism, and drove by force the remaining indigenous population to County Connaught, with the Act of Settlement in 1653. His treatment of the Irish has been categorized by historians as “genocidal.” Even the Scottish Presbyterians had been fighting for a Stuart restoration to the Scottish and/or English Throne, in the person of Charles II, but Cromwell easily and brutally put down both Catholic and Protestant supporters of the Stuarts.
The only thing Oliver Cromwell hated worse than Catholics was heretics and traitors. The only thing he hated worse than heretics and traitors were witches. And be slaughtered a lot of each.
http://www.forerunner.com/champion/X0004_3._Oliver_Cromwell.html
http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon48.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
Cromwell’s Commonwealth died with him and the monarchy was restored in 1660 with Charles II, who dug up his bones and hung him by his shroud at Tyburn, except for his head which was cut off and displayed outside Westminster Hall. For the most part his ethnic cleansing of the Irish and gloating victories over the Scottish combined with his furious Calvinism still to this day overwhelm any contributions he may or may not have made to English society.
The English Crown in the 18th century diminished into something close to a “Super Minister,” and almost a figurehead that Parliament could listen to or not. But though a figurehead, the king remained an important figurehead and led by example if nothing else.
In 1745 “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” Charles Edward Stuart, Scotland’s last Stuart pretender to the English and Scottish thrones, returned to Scotland from his safe exile in France, and led a Jacobite or “Highland” rebellion that recaptured his Scottish throne. This surprised everyone including his loyal followers. The English were taken aback and in a state of panic. He then stupidly insisted upon taking on his claim to the English throne. That didn’t go so well for him.
http://www.britishbattles.com/battle_of_culloden.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden
Invading England and capturing its capitol city was not an entirely idiotic notion. The Scots were actually doing quite well at first. (And of course they had God on their side…) The English Parliament even fled town and the entire government was essentially in the process of abandoning London to the oncoming Scottish forces. In the last push however, Charlie got spooked, received some bad intelligence and became convinced a huge force was just waiting for them a few miles closer to their goal. He turned tail and retreated back up into Scotland to have a rethink.
George II of England couldn’t believe this stupid move, thanked God for such a stroke of luck, took advantage of the time Stuart had granted him to rest, rally, and reorganize his forces. Then he sent the Duke of Cumberland chasing backup to Inverness with his best and brightest to solve the Scottish Catholic problem once and for all, in the same way Oliver Cromwell had solved the Irish Catholic problem generations before.
On April 15, 1746, Cumberland’s army faced off with the last Stuart claimant to the English throne with cannon, musket, and sword at Culloden Moore in northern Scotland. When he was finished, there wasn’t much left other than carnage and bloody tartan. He followed up the Jacobite slaughter by systematically burning out the entire Highland population. Likewise, by legal proscription, rape, pillage, and mass murder he drove out or effected the near genocide of the Highland Clans. The Jacobites were mostly Catholic, mixed with a smattering of Scottish Episcopalians, who had splintered from the Scottish Presbyterians because they wouldn’t conform to the Church of England’s guidelines. I mention this again because it isn’t coincidental. This butchery didn’t take place because of simple politics. It was a 
religious war. It was Christians killing Christians because they disagreed who should be running the Church and State.
(So in one-thousand seven-hundred and forty-five years since the birth of Christ nothing much had changed.)
As usual, George II mainly ended up the King of England because he wasn’t Roman Catholic. George II’s father, George I had been imported from Hanover, which is now in Germany, even though there were English and Scottish heirs with perhaps better claims. The British Isles contestants were all Roman Cathol
ics or had Catholic sympathies.
George I spoke very poor English. He was regarded as a bumpkin and a foreigner by Parliament, and turned out to be far more conciliatory to Roman Catholics than they’d imagined he would be. Undaunted by his efforts at moderation, Parliament continued to enact anti-Catholic measures that grew increasingly oppressive. The English public never warmed up to him either, and it was said that his heart was never in England, but Hanover.
As a young heir to the English throne, George II came to heated debates with his father over the dangers of allowing Roman Catholics to undermine the English Church and State by allowing them power and position when they were forsworn to a foreign Pope. This was an attitude that carried over to the American colonies and remained stalwart amongst the Protestants in the United States of America until about 1960, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, was elected president midst much the same objections from opponents over his allegiances to Rome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy)
Over these Catholic conspiracy issues and other matters of governing England, George II became enraged at his father in public one too many times, and was banished from Court till his father passed away and he took the throne in 1727.
Unlike his father, George II spoke fluent English and was a gung-ho Calvinist. He refused to go back to Hanover for his father’s funeral and this little gesture of contempt won him the approval of all English society. His slap-down of the Jacobites at Culloden was the last pitched battle ever fought on English soil. Protestantism had unquestionably been secured in the British Isles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_II_of_Great_Britain
http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/hanover_2.htm
But a pitched battle was brewing on American soil at the same time. In 1776, George II’s heir, King George the
III, ultimately lost the American colonies. I leave you to sort out the reasons for this heated move to independence by the English colonists. There are a lot of theories, but a look at actual history will tell you it had as much to do as a whiskey tax and a beer tax and the price of tea, as it did with securing religious freedom. And perhaps the Calvinists were right in the end: the exercise of bashing Bibles back and forth for so many centuries eventually beat some sense into America’s head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom
America had begun to realize that religious liberty wasn’t liberty at all unless all individuals were allowed to debate and investigate their own understanding of religious truth, and were then free to observe these beliefs. America had also learned from Calvin’s oppression, that religion wasn’t worth anything if you could not enjoy the fruits of your own labors. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness may not be in the Bible, and happiness may not even be pious, but it wasn’t a bad as it was cracked up to be. And perhaps America had even learned that it was none of the local church biddies’ business if you wanted to dance
, or sing, or fart on your own doorstep. In America, a man’s home truly became his castle, and that made him head of his own church in his own home.
John Calvin may have been given credit for founding the hardworking American ethos. But he taught God’s truth by bad example. America learned the value of true religious freedom by suffering the lack of it under Calvin’s colonial hell on earth.
http://bustill.blogspot.com/2008/04/religious-intent-providence-politics.html
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=5153
All Hail the Protestants Part 4: That Old Time Religion
America’s Christian propagandists tell their children the story of Pilgrim Fathers who fled persecution in England for religious freedom in the New World. (And yes, it is propaganda, look the word up). And no, I’m not slapping down the Christians and taking the Mormon side of this argument. Mormons are big advocates of this happy American Pilgrim fable.
The proposition that there could be anything inherently wrong with the Pilgrims is going to be infuriatingly offensive to Christians of any stripe in America. And remember, again, in their mind, this includes Mormons, because they think they’re Christians like anyone else. Like every other American Christian, Mormons believe they are the end product of thousands of years of Godly guidance and constant refinement.
The American need to romanticize the Pilgrims stems from telling yourself for generations just how specially blessed by God you are for simply being an American citizen if for no other positive attributes. Of course you need proof of this every day just to stem off the creeping disbelief caused by looking at yourself in the mirror every morning and knowing how messed up you really are. So American children are raised on this wonderful little fairy tale about the quaint boys and girls of Plymouth Rock and how they helped mommy Pilgrim and daddy Pilgrim bring Jesus to the red American savages and preserve “True Religion” in the free country the founded. Naturally, it makes you, as a young Christian, and patriotic child of America, feel all warm and fuzzy, and your eyes get all rosy red and weepy when you are reassured like this, from sea to shining sea, every year in a national holiday, that you are absolutely wonderful and chosen by God.
The truth is, the Pilgrims were Puritan fascists who were only looking for their own religious freedom. They
were too damned pious, independent and fanatical even for the more mainstream zealots of English and European Reformations. They called themselves “Puritans” because they were dedicated to purifying the Church of England of Roman influences. They hated Rome and they hated heretics, and they hated sinners and they really hated witches. Their reigning English King, James I was also a foaming Protestant Scottish witch hunter, and was every bit as fanatical as the Pilgrims were, since they were all theological soul mates. But James I actually had to sophisticate himself a bit, particularly stifling his witch-hating fanaticism when he took power in England. He had to accommodate the more moderate and educated Protestantism that then still held great sway in his English Court and Parliament. This social moderation at home however, didn’t slow him from encouraging the exportation of sharp, Puritan zeal to his growing colonies in the New World though, where raw Puritanism would be free to dominate the new society he intended to found there.
http://www.mayflowerfamilies.com/mayflower/mayflower_compact.htm
I say with very little exaggeration, that living under Puritan rule in the New England American Colonies would be nearly as religiously oppressive as living under the Taliban in Afghanistan, or Wahhabi ruled Saudi Arabia. The principle difference between Sharia Law and Pilgrim Law would be that the Pilgrims let women show their whole faces in public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia
http://www.iran-bulletin.org/political_islam/punishmnt.html
When American Protestants in particular talk about “Puritanism,” they allude to what they term a Protestant reaction to a Roman Church who’s clergy had become entirely corrupt. The Roman Church sold forgiveness to those who could afford it. The Roman Church was liberal and debauched within its hierarchy, but punishingly strict to the common folk. The Roman Church picked who would and who would not be saved based upon social and political intrigue and if it were at all possible to extract from the sinner, the Roman Church would invariably negotiate a generous contribution to the Church which could fix nearly any sin. We are also told by modern Protestants, when they praise their “Reforming” of this corrupted Roman Church, that it was also the goal of the Reformation to correct the excesses of the Inquisition, to liberate mankind to think and speak freely in Church or public venues. Modern Protestants contend that it was the torture and torment and brutal repression of art and science and music and free will that the Puritans wanted to purify out of the Roman Church. It was the selling of indulgences and political meddling that the Reformers wanted to reform out of the Church.
While it was true that the Reformation wanted to correct the corrupt doctrinal cottage industry the Roman Church had set up to support its clergy, the Puritans in particular on the other hand, weren’t all that put off by
the Inquisition’s tactics or even goals in and of themselves. The Puritans and many other Reformers in truth just wanted the Inquisitional zeal applied unilaterally up and down the Church ranks from clergy to commoner. They just didn’t think you should be able to buy or politic your way out of being tortured into a confession of heresy. They figured that kings, Popes and bishops and priests were just as good candidates for heresy as anyone else—the more the merrier. Puritans in short, actually wanted more repression and more micromanaging of the Body of Christ. They wanted the power to institute the same sort of fanatical purification of Christendom that the Inquisition only pretended to enforce, and then only selectively, often for personal, social, or political reasons. The Puritans wanted their newly cleansed Protestant Inquistition to be universally applied to all Christians of whatever rank. The Puritans wanted everyone to be beaten into piety whatever his station in the Church or society– they just wanted to insure it was being done fairly and correctly by a dictatorial theocracy of their own design.
We read about the Salem Witch trials, some decades after the Pilgrims landed, and think that hanging nineteen men and women as witches on the say-so of a couple of snotty little girls looking for attention was a fluke carried out by an isolated, small group of inbred fanatics. We think the old man they crushed under stones for refusing to submit to their trials was the result of some abnormal paranoia due to the bunker mentality of a pioneer colony in a harsh new land. When we read about the dozens of fellow colonists they just let rot in jail for months as they queued them up for their American Inquisition, we assume that this sort of fiendish treatment had to be the product of some sort of atypical mass mental illness brought about through a bad diet and not enough sunlight. But no, that’s what Puritans did. That’s what Protestants did. That’s what the Roman Church did before them. That’s what Christians have always done.
The Reformation just made torture and inquisition a sport anyone could dabble in by voting themselves into power, rather than restricting the game to a permanent class of elite clergy and the high-born. The Pilgrims merely wanted to democratize religious persecution so the common man–and men only mind you–could get a piece of the action.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SAL_ACCT.HTM
http://www.libraryontheweb.org/student_pages/witch_trials/trials.html
The Pilgrims didn’t intend to found a nation based upon the freedom of religion at all. They hadn’t the slightest conception of a pluralistic society that could tolerate letting everyone worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience and understanding. Their America was founded as the Puritan’s chance at the unfettered purification of human society as they defined purity, through whatever means necessary, with nobody looking over their shoulder to moderate their efforts. The Pilgrims intended to establish a Bible Commonwealth. Citizenship, or “Freemanship” as they called it, was restricted to church members. Religious dissenters were banished. Originally even freemen didn’t even have the right to elect the colony’s officers. These were appointed by the clergy councils.
http://www.mayflowerfamilies.com/colonial_life/pilgrims.htm
The allegedly God-fearing, venerated, funny-hat-and buckle-wearing Pilgrims we celebrate at Thanksgiving
every year by eating pumpkin pie and turkey till we can’t walk straight, brought with them a culture of religious bigotry. They whipped, imprisoned, hung, and publicly humiliated even their minor religious offenders in stocks, dungeons, gallows and on whipping posts usually in the town square or other places of public access where their fellow colonists could pass by and mock or taunt them. When we see these quaint depictions of Puritan discipline in woodcuts or read about them in history books, we are usually told or allowed to assume these punishments had something to do with civil misdemeanors or criminal activities. To the contrary, most of these routine sentences to ritual public humiliation were related to not living up to their legally mandated “Christian” obligations. Or rather, poor Christian observance was criminal activity to them.
The Pilgrims didn’t really put a big red letter “A” on your breast to shame you as an adulterer, or suspected adulterer–since the accusation alone was usually enough to destroy you. The Pilgrims by law could kill you for adultery, though in practice this never happened. And it was the letters “AD” with which you would be marked, and if found without this mark you would be branded on the forehead. This was later liberalized to merely whipping adulterers severely twice, giving recovery time between whippings, and marking them with “AD” letters–then if caught without this marking, rather than branding them, the sentence was moderated to severely whipping them again and again, every time they were found improperly labeled.
Fornicators who refused to get married were severely whipped, fined, and imprisoned. Getting married would let you off with only a fine, but the fine was far greater if you were already engaged, because you had already gotten the ultimate sex problem solved and you just didn’t have the piety to patiently wait for the ceremony. You would get three hours in the public stocks for cursing God or lying in public. If you denied the Holy Scriptures, a magistrate could sentence you to as severe a whipping as he felt appropriate to humble you, short of endangering life or limb.
In one rare Plymouth Colony case, bestiality got one confused farm boy hung, and the interesting thing there is that they also executed the sinful animals. I presume this was so these corrupted livestock would not go about the colony enticing other colonists into the same sin with their sexy barnyard ways.
Two gay Pilgrims in Plymouth got both whipped to shards, one of which was banished into the wilderness to die, and the more repentant one, the one apparently not deemed the instigator, was branded on the shoulder with a hot iron and banned from ever owning property in the colony, but allowed to remain.
There were two witchcraft trials in Plymouth colony, decades before the more famous Salem trials, though in Plymouth “not-guilty” verdicts were issued and the complainants were fined for bringing false charges.
The Pilgrims lived in a patriarchal theocracy and its patriarchs were misogynists bastards in general. For example, in 1662 Thomas Bird was sentenced to a double whipping for adultery with the unfortunately named Hannah Bumpass. Bumpass was essentially seduced or coerced by Bird, but she was given a stout single whipping anyway for quote: “…yielding to him, and not making such resistance against him as she ought.”
If the Pilgrims really didn’t like you over some generalized heretical activity they couldn’t pin down with a specific charge, or if they just didn’t like your attitude, or you were missing too many sermons on Sunday without a good excuse like being trapped in a well or withering away on your sickbed, they would just banish you to die alone out in the wilderness by “shunning” you.
The Pilgrims would fine you for harboring a Quaker. (The Quaker they would drive out to die in the wilderness.)
The Pilgrims would even punish you for celebrating Christmas or Easter because they weren’t in the Bible. They probably would not approve of the nation of their legacy inventing yet another un-Biblical holiday in their honor and calling it “Thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is not in the Bible and therefore is not holy. Celebrating it would be unholy. Unholiness is punished.
http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/CrimeAndPunishment.php
http://www.newnorth.net/~johhnson/geneology/beliefs.html
http://www.mayflowerfamilies.com/colonial_life/pilgrims.htm
http://almy.us/news/newsletters/website/art0402.htm
The architect of the American Theocratic Paradise the Puritan Pilgrims had come to create, was called by the English, John Calvin. His allegedly brilliant religious mind fired up Reformationists all over the European religious theatre into ecstatic heights of raving piety. If you believe his modern Christian fans, Calvin was a modest and quiet man who restored pure, Biblical Truth to all mankind. To other Christians, he’s a despotic know-it-all and a sanctimonious, unqualified upstart. To quite a few Christians, and many more non-Christians, John Calvin is one of the most evil men in the history of the planet.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/calvin/
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/John_Calvin.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin
http://one-evil.org/people/people_16c_Calvin.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm
Jean Cauvin was born in 1509 in Noyon, in the Picardy region of France, son of Gerard Cauvin, primary attorney for Charles de Hangest, bishop of Noyon, who among other things oversaw the prosecution of heretics and witches. The Church routinely tortured and murdered heretics of course, but in the wake of the Papal Bull of Pope Innocent VIII, (1482-1492) the publication of Summis desiderantes affectibus in 1484, and the follow-up pamphlet Malleus Maleficarum in 1486 by Dominican monks Henrich Kramer and James Sprenger, the French Church became infected with the witch hunting hysteria that had already been sweeping across Europe.
http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
John Calvin retained a fervor for sniffing out and prosecuting witches throughout his life, which was about the only thing he and the Vatican ever agreed upon. In fact, he started out his education in Paris to study Latin, and prepare for the Roman priesthood. He was sent there by his father to build upon the Church and social base of power he had already laid the infrastructure for in Noyon.
A few years into it, Calvin’s father became involved in a Church-related financial debacle that inflated into a full-fledged scandal. Gerard was either guilty of a major screw-up or just got chosen by the Church to be the patsy and was excommunicated. His former boss added the trumped-up charge of heresy just to teach him a lesson.
Nicholas Cop, Rector of the University of Paris, a Protestant activist, had grown fond of young Calvin, and agreed to fund his education if he would change his studies to law since a career for him as a professional Roman Catholic was at that point pretty much out of the question. It was also a tribute to Calvin’s old man. John did change his study to Legal Humanism, but his father died some years later as the result of a long and dragging depression and physical illness. John’s mother had died earlier, and His father was denied burial on consecrated ground with her until John and his older brother were able to give security for the payment of their father’s debts and other obligations the Roman Church demanded.
Having lost all pride, family fortune and social position, John continued with his legal studies and attained a Doctorate in Law at Orleans in 1532. He returned to Paris rather cheesed off at the Catholic Church. He tied up with Nicholas Cop again and became an enthusiastic Protestant Reformer. That didn’t last long before the French Church chased them both out of town and Calvin settled in Basel, Switzerland, where he worked on and published his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion.
http://www.reformed.org/master/index.html?mainframe=/books/institutes/
John rubbed elbows throughout his law studies with fellow Humanist lawyers who based their philosophies on the Classic Greek and Roman thinkers. He moved amongst Protestant Reformers of all stripes who moved in the same legal and philosophical circles. Calvin postulated a new sort of theocratic system based around a council of elders (“consistory” he called it) and envisioned openly that his hereditary heirs would carry this absolute rule into posterity. He wrote a catechism and confession of faith for this proposed social order. About the time he had worked his religious master plans out he had moved his quest for a job and a congregation into largely French-speaking Geneva Switzerland. There he had gained powerful supporters like the city Chancellor Ami Perrin and noted evangelist, pastor and Reformer, William Farel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_Perrin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Farel
After gaining an audience and some favor with the Geneva City Council through his highly placed friends, in January of 1538 , Calvin presented his plans for the systematic Reformation of a wild and wooly Geneva. The city council was hotly divided but ultimately rejected his proposals, particularly the earnestly drafted religious creed he wanted the entire city to swear to. The council also refused to grant Calvin and Farel the power to excommunicate, an authority they had demanded because it was critical to insure that their plans could be enforced. Calvin retaliated by denying the Lord’s Supper to all Genevans at the Easter services that soon followed, saying the entire city was too debased to be worthy of communion. The City Council kicked Calvin and Farel both out of Geneva literally on their arses, calling Calvin a would-be “Pope.”
Calvin hid out in Strasbourg Switzerland and found some financial support there. He engaged in a travelling lecture series. He secured a modest position as a pastor and began to build a reputation there as a speaker. Eventually in 1540 somebody still boostering him in Geneva remembered his polemic skills and invited him to author the city’s written response to a new Papal Bull demanding Geneva’s return to Vatican rule. Calvin wrote such a great refusal that he was invited back almost immediately to come help run the Reformation in Geneva, but Calvin didn’t trust Geneva’s government and Church councils enough to risk his life right away. There had been a genuine turnover in these social and political powers however, and Calvin’s supporters had indeed taken full charge of the city. After a year of negotiations that reassured him his authority would never again be questioned, Calvin returned triumphantly in 1541 to a huge banquet in his honor and piles of booty as a reward.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05calvin.html
http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/14.html
Calvin had so re-arranged his new Geneva government that he had absolute power. He literally ran a theocracy. He controlled the police, the courts, the media, and every church in town. Those who cared to oppose or even debate him were swiftly dispatched one way or another, sometimes fatally, often brutally.
When he couldn’t find any conventional sinners to persecute, Calvin had an obsession with ferreting out
witches. Most of his victims in this sport were women who wouldn’t submit to his will or the will of their husbands. But again, that doesn’t make him unique in the Protestant world, Martin Luther was likewise an avid witch hater. Rating these two on the scale of social enlightenment, the best you can say about Calvin is that he was slightly less anti-Semitic than Luther was, and the best you can say about Luther is he was too busy demonizing Jews to have very much time actively persecuting any other demons in his pantheon of the Godless.
One of Calvin’s French fans from Geneva published Les Sorciers in 1564. This little tome, published in Geneva, proposed that witches were a major danger for humanity and had to be systematically exterminated.
http://www.visualstatistics.net/east-west/witch%20trials/witch%20trials.htm
In 1553 Calvin had a dispute with a Spanish physician through the mail. Servetus was one of the most brilliant
minds of the era and the first man to chart the human pulmonary system. Servetus opposed Trinitarianism and rejected infant baptism. Furthermore, Servetus had been mocking Calvin openly in various academic venues, calling him a despot and the “Pope of Geneva,” and bragging that he was coming to Geneva to argue the matter in person and hoped to join the honored ranks of those the great John Calvin had banished. Instead Calvin had him arrested, tried for heresy, and Calvin’s wholly-owned review panel obligingly condemned Servetus to be burned to death in a public square over a stack of his writings. The only objection Calvin raised was that he would have preferred to have beheaded Servetus rather than burn him.
Well, the whole truth is, Servetus wasn’t burned in a conventional sense at all. He was slowly roasted from a distance and scourged by showers of faggots, or hot coals over a period of at least five excruciating hours.
Calvin’s period and even modern supporters have actually defended Calvin’s actions by claiming–and I’m serious about this—that it’s fine that Servetus was executed for blasphemy and heresy, because he was indeed a blasphemous heretic. They sometimes claim that he should have known better than to come to Geneva and debate Calvin directly man-to-man, and that Calvin had warned him, and some even say that had Servetus been merely decapitated by sword as Calvin had preferred instead of being roasted alive with his books as the tinder, nobody would have been outraged and we wouldn’t still be remembering this one small blot on Calvin’s otherwise wonderful career. Some even say that Servetus repented to God as he slowly went up in greasy, fleshy smoke and begged Calvin to forgive him. This the Calvinists say, not only proves Calvin was right about his heresy, but demonstrates that Calvin actually did him a favor by lighting him up because he found Jesus in the end.
http://www.thestudiesinthescriptures.com/Pages/English/Eng%20PD/Eng%20PD%2080-89/EngPD%2085.htm
http://www.executedtoday.com/tag/michael-servetus/
http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/educational-resources/servetus-controversy.htm
http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/jac_arnold/CH.Arnold.RMT.8.html
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/americas-debt-to-john-calvin
http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/calvin-and-american-exceptionalism
http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/articles/full.asp?id=70%7C%7C868
Probably to avoid another unpopular and grisly public spectacle, what with all the screaming and the smell of burnt flesh permeating the town, In 1547 Calvin did actually specify the beheading of another congregant prone to debate, Jacques Gruet, for blasphemy. At some point Calvin got tired of his objections, so after breaking him down under torture, he got him to confess numerous sins, the biggest of which was taking credit for an anonymous note left on Calvin’s pulpit arguing against infant baptism. Jacques Gruet
In his reign over his City/State of Geneva, Calvin is known to have overseen the execution or torture of thousands of witches and religious non-conformists. Not even his supporters contest this fact. He tortured or killed adulterers and blasphemers, and even hung children from their armpits from gallows to signify that they deserved death, or just threatened them with death if they didn’t obey him. Calvin even executed one child for striking his parents.
http://baptist-potluck.blogspot.com/2009/06/this-is-calvin.html
To many, even those who helped John Calvin initially to power, like Ami Perrin, Calvin became a despot, a bully and hypocrite, the founder of a personality cult, not a Christian hero. In the end, Calvin imprisoned Perrin’s wife for the crime of dancing. His father-in-law was prosecuted in connection with his wife’s dancing for accusing Calvin of being the “Bishop of Geneva.” Perrin had originally hailed Calvin as a component of Guillaume Farel’s Reformation battle against Rome, but Farel soon came to be known as an appendage of Calvin’s Reformation Empire, and Perrin eventually lost all belief in Calvin’s mission in Geneva.
I understand that you are considering imprisoning my father-in-law and my wife. My said father-in-law is old, my wife is ill; by imprisoning them you will shorten their days, to my great regret, which I have not deserved, and which would be to give me poor recompense for the services I have done you. Therefore I beg you not to imprison them. If they have done wrong, I will bring them here to make such amends that you will have reason to be content. I pray you to grant me this, since if you put them in prison, God will aid me to avenge myself for it.
—Ami Perrin, quoted by François Bonivard[2]
I don’t know what made Perrin think this plea would have any effect on Calvin. In 1548, Calvin imprisoned his
own brother’s wife for suspected adultery but couldn’t prove the charge. Calvin dogged her down for nine years and in 1557 finally convicted her of adultery with one of his own servants. If Calvin’s own blood, family, and household wasn’t immune to his deadly piety, Perrin’s begging for mercy wasn’t going to have any influence at all on the “Pope of Geneva.” Not only was Perrin’s petition refused but Perrin was accused of treason.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/return-to-geneva-life-of-calvin-part-7
Perrin still maintained tremendous influence in Geneva however. There was a lengthy trial and acquittal, and Perrin began to openly move against his former comrade Calvin. Eventually Perrin led an attempted coup against Calvin’s government, based mainly on the promise to expel the hordes of French Protestant refugees like Calvin who were flocking to Geneva to escape the Inquisition or Roman Church in general. These “Huguenots” had all but taken over the Swiss city, and Perrin’s native Reformationists, who Calvin disparagingly and incorrectly called “Libertines,” could no longer stand the oppression of Calvin’s Calvinism. The Huguenots however, Calvin’s French friends, and many other refugee foreigners seemed to embrace Calvin’s pious, unilaterally oppressive and uniformly prosecuted religion. This has to be evaluated of course, in light of the alternative, which was for most going back to France or Spain or elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire, and was being tortured and burned by the Inquisition.
Perrin’s rebellion failed and he was sentenced in absentia to have his right hand cut off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot
http://www.ideofact.com/archives/000160.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/452566/Ami-Perrin
Perrin’s revolt was the last time anyone dared quibble with John Calvin about anything on any level on any subject in Geneva. Calvin dismissed Perrin’s defeat as God’s justice and described Perrin as “our comic Caesar.”
And yet, for all it’s blatantly despotic nature, today’s Calvinist apologists go so far as to claim Calvin’s Geneva is the pattern upon which the US Constitution was modeled.
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=5153
http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-man-who-founded-america
-28077/
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/issue06/calvin.htm
The truth is, even Calvin’s Bible said: By their fruits ye shall know them. The United States of America wasn’t the fruit of Calvin’s despotic theocracy. The United States of America was God’s attempt to clear His vineyard of Calvin’s religious weeds.
All Hail the Protestants Part 3: Out of the Woods
I’m having a hard time slogging through the repetitiously violent and repressive movements of historical Christianity. It must be done however just to get to the point where we can intelligently discuss Joseph Smith and all the “funny” ideas detractors claim he had. I suppose that’s one reason why Mormons don’t bother to do so any more on any level. It’s tedious, contentious, and the vast majority of self-professed Christians don’t know much about any of it either, nor would they care to debate it with any intellectual honesty.
Most devout Christians don’t really want to even try to understand their so-determined “non” Christian peers at all. That’s because, if you are not a “Christian” as they define it, you are not their peers. You are not their brothers in Christ and you should be treated like any other heathen. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/19/nation/la-na-alabama-governor-20110119) They want to “save” you, because you are going to hell if you don’t see things their way. It doesn’t matter to them if you worship the Great Money God, Space Aliens, or Satan Himself. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, followers of Zeus, it’s all the same to the Christian. Some Christian political and social apologists today will beg off this very central Christian doctrine by sliding around it with the argument that, no, they’re not our brothers and sisters in Christ, but they’re still children of our Father in Heaven. Anyone without a head not already firmly planted in a very dark and cramped place, would reply, well, if you’re a Trinitarian our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ are exactly the same guy. It’s just more Christian “Mystery” gibberish.
The job of the Christian apologist in these enlightened times is to attempt to make fundamental Christian dogma sound pluralistically forgiving enough that the Christian can at least wait till you die of natural causes to let God dish out your eternal punishment. It sounds like the average Christian wouldn’t be inclined to hasten your demise because you didn’t measure up to their definition of “Christian.” The well-meaning but historically ignorant Christian will pretend his faith allows him to agree to disagree, to live in peaceful co-existence with the infidel in a culturally and religiously diverse republic. This however, has not been the “traditional” Christian social or political standard, or in fact shall I say, Christian military standard:
Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before…
The late 1960’s produced the inventors of the “Jesus Freak” or “Red Letter Christian” modern embrace of the always loving and conciliatory words of Christ Himself. The concept of focusing almost entirely upon the teachings of Jesus is a very recent invention of the latter-day Christian recruiter. One of the most successful of these, Joel Osteen, who inherited the ministry of his father’s pioneering Houston Texas, Lakewood mega-church in 1999. He began to be pressed about his reluctance to send all non-Christians to hell in his sermons. This came to a timely inquisition mounted by fellow evangelicals framed by concurrent political events involving a prominent Mormon presidential candidate and other defense-of-family related political and social issues. Mormon elements and the evangelical Christian crowd had found themselves mixing together trying to meet mutually desired political results and it became imperative for Christian activists to draw lines for the future rule of the country after disposing of their temporary Mormon allies. Osteen replied essentially that he wasn’t going to be the one to define who was or wasn’t Christian, or who was or wasn’t going to heaven, Christian or not. Osteen said he was just trying to focus on the gospel of Christ’s gift of salvation and teachings of positive living. Osteen was immediately sent to the corner by his Christian fellows, with a dunce hat on his head.
Osteen is just the latest “Christian” with half a brain in his head to actually sit back and examine some of the preposterously evil tenets of “traditional” Christianity and try to find a way out of its inherently stupid
consequences. But in Christian circles, this sort of open thinking, or frankly, thinking at all, brings very active protest from the Christian establishment as quickly now as it did in Joseph Smith’s time. Osteen’s church has been literally mobbed and assailed by his fellow evangelical Christians in protest of his attempts to make the Christian faith sound intelligent and enlightened. A Mormon might be inclined to take Osteen’s side in this debate, but this won’t help Osteen any. His Christian protesters are right. Allowing the acceptance of Christ alone to be the primary indicator of a “Christian” faith represents a serious surrender of centuries upon centuries of stridently developed basic Christian dogma. The notion that non-Christians might not only avoid burning in hell but actually go to heaven is unthinkable in “orthodox” Christianity. http://www.av1611.org/osteen.html http://www.safeguardyoursoul.com/html/joel_osteen_exposed.html http://www.forgottenword.org/osteen.html http://www.blog.joelx.com/joel-osteen-megachurch-pastor-without-christ/668/
One of Osteen’s problems is that he did not suffer the lengthy education of divinity school or any sort of seminary, wherein he could have been properly conditioned to read the Bible in general, and the words of Christ in particular, in a properly slanted direction. Most Christian theologians, scholars and clergies through the ages have concluded that God deliberately created the savage, the heathen, the “non” Christian fundamentally without hope of salvation and of little or no worth to God or man. Christianity differs only in its understanding of whether or not God saves these worthless humans all on His own according to His whims, or if man has any sort of power or obligation to ask to be redeemed from his natural-born sentence in hell. In some cases, even the most current Christian theologians will propose clearly and boldly when asked, that natural-born man is entirely the spiritual creation of the devil, and physically born of filthy parents on a filthy planet that has been surrendered in God’s disgust to Satan. In most of Christianity, man is not only no son of God spiritually or physically, but he’s some other creature entirely created body and soul by Satan.
I use the word “legislation” here very purposefully, because that is exactly what the collections of bishops and Christian councils through the ages have been doing—legislating their particular Christian beliefs and setting
appropriate punishments for not conforming to the religious-political bills they have thus authored. Christianity as it is popularly known today, based upon these generations of arguments and committee decisions made “orthodox” only by brute force, is no more infallible or inspired than your local city council meeting. The main difference between a city council meeting and say, the Council of Nice , is that if you lose the vote in a city council meeting they don’t draw and quarter you in the local park and sell tickets to the spectacle to fund youth hockey. (Unless you’re talking about my city council meetings…) Christian tradition is a litany of club rules no more “True” than the charter and by-laws of your neighborhood bowling league and bears no higher spiritual or moral authority to send you to either heaven or hell than the Cub Scouts or the Rotary Club.
All politics is local they say, and that’s exactly the level at which every now monumental Christian sect and tradition began. Through the centuries these local movements have fought, won, lost, amalgamated, grown, conquered and spread into worldwide institutions. But they all started with one, two, a handful of non-spectacular local guys with a few big ideas they pulled out of the Bible or a few “purifying” gospel gimmicks like full-immersion baptism or changing the Sabbath back to Saturday. They just kept selling their innovations or “restorations” or “reformations” by hook or crook, or through brute political force whenever possible. And then they outlawed and obliterated anyone or anything that preceded or opposed them.
The same of course, can be said of Mormonism—with the exception of these processes being almost utterly internalized. Brigham Young in particular was a very heavy-handed nation builder. He took Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, English, Irish, Scottish Immigrants, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and converted them directly into Mormons. Not Americans, but Mormons. Deseret Mormons.
Apart from an incident or two however, Mormons have made no effort at all to use any sort militant force to expand and conquer the Christian world by force. Since conquering pagans by force of arms is the history of Christianity itself however, Mormonism’s Christian opponents in the United States in particular, have always had tremendous fear that Mormon subjugation would be the inevitable outcome of allowing Mormons to have human and civil rights like any other citizen. Christians were already in the process of subjugating heathens in America and they naturally concluded that Mormons would do the same thing to them if they ever got a political or social foothold in a constitutional republic that protected their minority world view.
While Mormonism hasn’t obliterated American Christianity by any means even in its Utah home, within the traditions and educational history of the LDS church itself today however, and Insofar as present-day Mormonism is concerned, they’ve erased the entire history of Christianity right up until Joseph Smith was old enough to read a Bible.
In the Beginning, God created Joseph Smith.
This brings me back to my point of this collection of exploratory essays: God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ didn’t choose Brigham Young or John Taylor or any of Smith’s other better educated, better read and better prepared contemporary LDS church founders; Deity chose to appear to Joseph Smith. You would think the Mormon would thus be interested in understanding what Joseph Smith was all about at the time this choice was made. But not so. Joseph Smith was a Christian. Most Mormons today don’t even know what a Christian is.
In his own words, Joseph Smith was just a confused kid in an era and in a region of the frontier United States that enjoyed its religion the way we’d go to a movie or sporting event today. It was what Joseph Smith did instead of watching TV or playing video games. The religion of the Smith’s day and chief sport in Joseph’s neighborhood was Mainstream Protestantism. They had a league and a set of rules, and you had to play the religion game their way or you were kicked off the field and out of the association of professional American religionists.
This is still particularly true of the sort of devout Christian who likes to mount the ever-popular anti-Mormon,
anti-“cult” and anti-everyone-else sorts of crusades. It’s religious glory. It’s entertainment. It’s a living. Their mission isn’t one of helping you to understand the followers of the “false” gods they parade before the trembling faithful. The mission of these professional Christian spook-chasers is to bring the intellectually curious or wavering Christian back to Jesus by illustrating to them that exploring other religions leads only to blackest hell and eternal torment. These sorts of itinerant anti-Mormon, anti-cult crusaders make a fair living reassuring their fellow Christian meal tickets that their salvation is secure, and giving them just one more reason to feel even better about themselves being Christians. That, and just sitting around being pious or thinking of good works to do is boring as hell. http://www.boblarson.org/ http://www.demontest.com/
http://www.waltermartin.com/whatsnew.htmlChristian faith is, in general, every bit the product of “occultic mind control” and “blind obedience” as Christian critics claim Mormonism to be. Most Christians were born Roman Catholic or Anglican or Lutheran or Baptist or whatever, and they don’t even know what that really entails other than party loyalty. They love Jesus. They know the Bible is the Word of God. They accept at face value that Bible says exactly what their clergy says it says, and that it comes to us exactly as God wrote it personally. Most of them recite lengthy creeds and prayers every week that just clang like cheerful little bells in their ears and make them feel better but make little sense to them.
When most Christians come up with questions their ministers and clergy can only dodge or answer inanely with an allusion to the “mysteries of God,” they frankly just aren’t motivated enough by sheer intellectual curiosity or spiritual insight to push beyond this unsatisfying response. So they passively concede the point and accept that some day when they are carried up to meet Jesus, they may start to understand how stupid they were for thinking that so many of their central church doctrines sounded idiotic, cruel, and heartless. They’ll look into their Savior’s eyes and suddenly realize, yeah, I get it now: You created those savages out in the jungle expressly so they could burn in hell. You put them there and prevented anyone from reaching them with a Bible because you were going to send them to hell anyway. That makes total sense to me now. That’s not cruel or unfair at all. You meant for it to be that way because you created them inherently worthy of hell. How could I have been so ignorant?
Because God’s will is a “mystery” beyond human comprehension, the discerning Christian will try very earnestly to stop being quite so discerning until all the overtly stupid parts of their religion no longer bother them. They will quietly and faithfully accept that they are saved from the fires of damnation. That’s the important thing. Those other guys aren’t. Those errant denominations, those false Christians, those non-Christians–as good as they might be in earthly terms–they’re going to hell and we aren’t. That’s all that’s important in the end.
Now, nowhere and at no time more than in Joseph Smith’s young America was
this revivalist Christian war against the human intellect fought more fervently and openly between the competing branches of professional Christian recruiters. No criticism, no examination of Mormonism would be fair or informed without knowing exactly what Joseph Smith and his period fellows were responding to in their local Christian environment. Remember; God Himself was prompted to come down and straighten out the whole American Christian mess—if you believe Joseph Smith. That is the argument here you know.
http://homepage.mac.com/oldtownman/civilwar/01/burned.html
http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_burnedoverdistrict.htm
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780815337928/
http://elektratig.blogspot.com/2009/02/burned-over-district-vs-passed-over.html
Why Smith? Why America? Why then? Christianity had already decided amongst itself on various levels back and forth, over, across, up and down the globe, that Christ’s Church had in fact fallen all apart—several times and then some. They differed only on matters of how far the Great Apostasy had progressed and of course each little sect claimed to have either escaped it as a secret branch of “True Believers” or claimed to have “Reformed” the Church before it collapsed entirely. Most of the big Christian dogs acknowledged major failings in the Church but claimed that God had used a corrupt system in a corrupt institution run by corrupt men to pass along His perfect and unsullied Truth through “Divine Providence.”
Christianity had indeed been arguing the same question Joseph Smith was asking when he came back from the revival tents and tried to sit down with a Bible and make sense of their competing ideas: Ok then, Smith wondered, which of this stuff is actually gospel and who gets to say what’s in and what’s out? Until Joseph Smith however, every time Christianity brought one of these authoritative arguments to a head, the most politically connected side “won” and the other side became “heretics.” Joseph as it happened this time around, was protected under a spanking-new constitutional republic that granted him the unalienable right to worship in any manner he pleased without fear of legal reprisal. If convention, conformity, and peer ridicule wouldn’t work, America’s Christian industry needed to eventually invent ways around the law and Constitution, the Bill of Rights, so they could ban Smith’s ideas and kill this heretic anyway.
http://www.exvampire.com/
Joseph Smith’s entire post-vision history from a legal and sociological standpoint can be summed up as a case of professional American Protestants repeatedly finding themselves out of luck on the score of being able to convict him of heresy and burn him as a witch. They struggled for decades at it and then finally tried to go for treason instead. When it became clear that he’d obviously win that court battle too, like he had won acquittal over the years on scores of their other legal gambits against him, they just formed a mob, stormed the jail and shot him dead. http://www.relfe.com/07/Bill_William_Schnoebelen.html
Though Joseph Smith’s Christian detractors were arguing complaints against him as if Christianity was the official state or national religion, the Founding Fathers had already realized that if you do make Christianity the State religion, the first thing that would happen is the state and federal government would be empowered to define what was and wasn’t “Christianity” all on its own. This would allow the government to stifle, foster, proscribe, and persecute, whoever and whatever it deemed not to be “Christian,” or “Christian enough.” The Founding Fathers decided by Constitutional amendment, that there were never going to be any “official” heretics in the United States. Oh, there were plenty of “heretics” around mind you, and still are. The Founding fathers, many of them, were just as particular about their “orthodoxy” as Joseph Smith’s critics. The authors of the US Constitution however, just felt that the Church and/or State had no right to take these heretics down to the church basement with the local mayor and sheriff, beat a confession out of them with a blowtorch and an axe handle, and then burn them to a crisp in a public square or hang them from the nearest tree, in “traditional” Christian fashion.
Joseph Smith, like Jesus lecturing his elders in the temple as a child, passed into full heresy by alluding to his frontier American Christian clergymen and their various denominations as “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” http://scripturetext.com/2_timothy/3-5.htm This turning of scripture against those who claimed to profess its infallibility is particularly annoying to those being thus belittled. It’s a great putdown if nothing else. But really understanding what he meant by this isn’t possible unless you’ve spent the same childhood trotting from preacher to preacher, revival to revival, stump-sermon-to-stump-sermon in rural New York at the dawn of the 19th century. To understand Joseph Smith and all those who followed him into his radically liberal new form of 19th century heresy, you first have to understand what Smith’s home-town country preachers were sermonizing about all his life.
Joseph Smith started out a fervent Bible-believing Christian from a family of longstandingly fervent Bible-believing Christians, and yet became so disenchanted with the local promoters of this belief system, that he rejected many of the basic institutionalized doctrines of the religion itself. He did that entirely without the help of any angels. This is no small observation. Joseph Smith came to his heretical opinions primarily through the Bible. Modern Mormonism imagines it has taught itself about its history and formative leadership, but this amounts all too often to a superficial wallowing in self-indulgent tribute to the saintliness of joseph Smith and lesser Mormon demigods like Brigham Young. In reality, modern Mormonism has so sanitized and saintified its founders that it has no clue just how brilliant and insightful the foundational doctrines of Mormonism are.
In reality, Joseph Smith was a beer-drinking, stick-fighting, pioneer prophet who died with a belly full of wine and a flaming gun in his hand. Joseph Smith went out of this life in a hail of bullets and a blaze of glory, bringing down his assailants shot-by-shot. Even the mob that killed him essentially said, He lived good and he died good. (Footnote pg 285 BH Roberts Comprehensive History, from journal of PP Pratt.) Brigham Young by contrast, limped his wagon into the Salt Lake Valley a couple of years later, sat his portly old sack of bones wearily up from his sickbed in the back, puked over the side, said, “This is far enough, this is the place,” and set immediately about rebuilding Joseph’s radical little church into a docile Quaker’s Paradise.
Because it does not educate itself about “normal” Christianity, the sort of Christianity Joseph Smith’s “First Vision” was prompted by and the religious environment in which Mormonism was cultivated, the Utah Mormon culture is quite incapable of understanding, much less appreciating the nature, meaning, or beauty of the conversion experience they so pretend to admire in their pioneer ancestors. Simply put, you can’t emulate the original pioneer spirit sitting on your fat Mormon backsides in a comfortable Wasatch Front hideout for nearly two-hundred years trying to convince yourself that church basketball is as entertaining as the NBA and local Mormon musicals are every bit as good as Broadway simply because it’s by Mormons and for Mormons. You can’t then then pop your heads out of the dust into the real world after almost two centuries , and expect to carry on a sensible conversation with actual Christians as if you’ve really got anything in common with them any more. You don’t. Even the so-called “Christians” who invaded the peaceful Mormon valleys came out primarily to badger and hound and “civilize” and otherwise persecute Mormonism, so even the Christians Mormons have been in contact with out there remain an aberrant bent and Mormons have been ignoring if not shunning them outright for generations anyway.
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, yes, all of those founding Mormon saints had everything in common with the greater Christian world. They were Christians from various accepted Christian sects and they’d already decided that Christianity was pretty screwed up before they ever ran into Joseph Smith. They had all independently come to find the same complaints against Christianity that Smith was addressing. They weren’t sure what was true any more, but they knew what wasn’t true. They may not have known exactly how to fix Christianity, but they spoke the same language. They thought the same thoughts. When Joseph Smith appeared before them giving new “Christian” answers that suddenly seemed to make sense, they accepted his inspiration because they’d already been through the same questions and prayed themselves into similar conclusions. All today’s modern Utah Mormon culture has left of this magnificent spiritual awakening is a correlated system of answers to questions they don’t know enough to ask in the first place. They know these answers are true only because the “Prophet” (insert current name here………) says so. For the native Utah Mormon this is a sad, shallow experience compared to their pioneer ancestors. And the whole truth of the matter is, the modern Utah Mormon experience simply can’t pretend to be worthy of the heart and soul of its newfound converts outside the Wasatch Front who are re-creating that pioneer Mormon rebirth on an ongoing basis.
The Mormon missionary program for one is little more than a sales-pitch made up of rote prattle that the young missionary has no understanding of whatsoever. Many now prevalent Mormon recruitment fables are actually embarrassingly contrived when presented to a Christian with any sort of Biblical education at all. In Matthew 16:18, Mormonism has back-engineered for example, a great Biblical argument to explain its own authority versus the Roman Catholic Church. The Romans for some time how have claimed this verse as proof of a direct blessing upon the Roman Church by Christ Himself. Protestants and the Eastern Church have however, debunked this verse for ages. When Mormonism inserts itself into the equation amid these two or three longstanding lines of interpretation, Mormonism just looks a little contrived and “me too.”
Whenever it was that Mormonism first eventually came into contact with the Roman Church and its proponents, it apparently never occurred to LDS leadership and apologists that there is no inherent need to prove via the Bible or Church tradition that Joseph Smith had the “authority” to found the most correct version of the Church of Christ. Most people would think that God coming down personally and telling Joseph Smith that he was the guy would be enough to make the prospective Mormon happy on that score. If Joseph Smith talking to God directly doesn’t impress you enough to believe he’s authorized to organize “The Church” you’ve just got no reason to join up. http://bible.cc/matthew/16-18.htm
But yes, if you have to scrounge up something in the Bible, Mormons can say Peter was the not the “rock” upon which the Church would be built, but it was the notion that Peter had come to know Jesus was the Christ through personal “revelation” to which Christ was speaking in this verse. Mormons claim then that It’s revelation the Church would be built upon. Peter is a Greek word meaning “rock,” and you could say that Jesus is making a pun here in saying that it wasn’t going to be Peter “The Rock” but a different “rock.”
And I say also unto thee, That thou art a “rock” Peter, but upon this rock instead–this whole revelation thing you’re talking about here–I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 16:18 Pro-Smith Version
Mormons say Jesus refers to revelation . To read it that way however, the word “but” should replace “and.” It would also help if you were drunk, because you can check any manuscript or translation you want, but it always says, “and.” The Mormon interpretation relies heavily upon connecting the previous verse’s inflection I suppose: Yeah, you’re one kind of a rock Peter, and (but) upon this similar rock, (your personal revelation that is) I’m going to found my Church…
Joseph Smith’s Protestant peers however, have generations of anti-Pope rebuttal arguments that just seem to make far more sense than the Mormon attempt to hijack this blessing. Protestants have long said that Jesus was simply referring to Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, and the Church would be built upon this principle of confessing Christ to be your Savior. Related Protestant interpretations have argued that that Jesus referred to the object of Peter’s confession itself, the Person of Jesus, meaning that Jesus was acknowledging that He was indeed the Christ and that His Church would be built upon Himself and the salvation He offers.
By relying upon this sort of interpretive reading, even out of the Bible, you are unfortunately playing the same self-limiting religious game in which Joseph Smith felt trapped. Young Joe indeed went out into the grove to pray his way out of this pointless self-imposed maze of self-defeating Old-World Christian Biblical lobotomizing. Joseph had been through the Bible back-to-front-to-back-again. He’d heard every scripture in the Bible read to him every which-way; upside-down, sideways and backwards. As a result, Joseph Smith had only concluded that religious professors were not much help in understanding Christian dogma even if they meant well. The only clear and universal answer he could find in the Bible was to take his questions directly to God and expect a direct reply. (James 1:5) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james%201:5&version=KJV
Quoting the Bible with a Mormon spin only sounds great if you give a damn about the Roman Church’s claim to primacy in the first place. Mormons have been pointlessly spinning and bashing that verse for absolutely no reason for going on two centuries now. Why? This Roman claim of primacy is a claim that the Roman Church took almost two millennia to concoct for itself and finally lobby itself into agreeing upon in the first place. That passage could in fact mean exactly what the Roman Church says it means and it would entirely irrelevant to Mormonism. The Mormon claim to authority doesn’t come out of agreeing upon an interpretation of what is or isn’t in the canon, and then agreeing upon what the canon actually means word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase. The Mormon claim to authority comes from God picking Joseph Smith to reorganize the Church and replace that whole process with a direct pipeline of communication from God’s mouth to Man’s ear. In any case, the Roman Church in everyone’s eyes obviously went straight to hell after Peter died anyway as far as anyone but the Romans are concerned. Rock or no Rock, Peter, Pope and all, you still have all the historical proof of Joseph Smith’s “Great Apostasy” even if the Romans are reading that verse correctly as some sort of initial blessing on Peter.
Roman Catholics were a scarce commodity in early America however. Joseph Smith didn’t go into the woods to pray about the primacy of a Roman Pope. The claims of the Pope in Rome were all but irrelevant in early American politics and religion. All the details of the generations of hardened religious arguments attendant to the Eastern Church v Western Church, or Roman Catholicism v Reformation were dumped happily on the other side of the pond insofar as American Christianity was concerned in Joseph Smith’s day. Papists were just bad. Papists were loyal to Rome, not America. No further discussion really. There may have been pockets of Roman Catholics here and there, but they were curiosities more than primary religious movers and shakers relative to Joseph Smith’s experience. America was about hard-core Protestantism at full throttle.
Almo
st at the same moment Joseph Smith was having visions in the trees, American Protestants were wrapping up their religious, social, and political mandate in a concept that came to be known as “Manifest Destiny.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny This concept specifically named the “Anglo-Saxon” race’s God-given assignment to fill the North American continent from sea-to-shining-sea with devout Anglo-Saxon Protestants. (I can’t explain how such a large portion of this allegedly Anglo-Saxon blessing was actually perpetrated upon its victims by Norman, Irish, Scottish, or English/Nordic stock.) The specificity of this in all honesty “just plain white people’s” commission from the Almighty became very evident in several bits of legislation and forced removals of the highly peaceful and Christianized “Five Civilized Tribes” from the company of their White Anglo-Saxon Christian brothers in the Eastern states. This ethnic cleansing culminated in 1839 along the “White Man’s Trail of Tears” that left 4000 Cherokee dead and the rest half-frozen, half-naked and starving along the forced winter march from their homeland in the East to a piece of crap reservation in the raw frontier of Oklahoma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears The Five Civilized Tribes were called so because they were almost entirely assimilated into “White” society and culture. They were some very serious Protestant Christians among their other “civilized” qualities. But that wasn’t quite enough. They were still “Indian,” and they were taking up some very convenient proper
ty the Anglo-Saxon Master Race wanted to use at the moment. Joseph Smith and his Mormon adventure into not quite good enough American Christianity ended in almost exactly the same result for the very same reasons.
Of course today’s Christians resent any comparison to their treatment of Native Americans or Mormons for that ma
tter, with the actions of one Adolph Hitler. Manifest destiny, and the several Mormon Extermination orders drafted, some officially and legally, were pretty much the same program Hitler was using to justify the expansion of his own state religion and absorption of surrounding lands, peoples and cultures into it. http://basangpanaginip.blogspot.com/2007/02/hitler-man-who-used-evangelical.html
Almost co-incident with the Protestant Illinois and Missouri-based mobs that killed Joseph Smith in Carthage Jail in 1844, there was a series of major Protestant mobs that formed in Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love” to riot and kill or drive the Roman Catholics out of that city’s Anglo-Saxon Protestant American Paradise. http://www.aoh61.com/history/bible/phila_bible_riots.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots
Along with frontier America’s very mainstream WASPS of course, Joseph Smith would have been acquainted with a few local Shakers and other peculiar or aberrant Christian Protestants, but they were even less influential on a young man in the American wilderness than the Roman Catholics, because it turns out that in the Shaker example for instance, expecting members to willfully not reproduce or engage in any of the related fun activity both diminishes any recruit’s motivation to join the group, but ultimately thwarts expansion and continuation of the movement.
There were also Quakers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker and Mennonites and Amish and a whole host of
the odder sort of buttonless, funny-hat-wearing, primitive, Fundamentalist-Puritanical-Protestants floating over to early American and developing their clannish infestations in the US. These however, were mostly non-English immigrants and practitioners of closed or tight communal orders, often speaking German or some other foreign tongue. Especially in those days, plain, dumb, white, English-speaking Americans would not be in any way attracted to these odder sects and would in fact be prone to ridicule and persecute them. This worked out well for the Amish and so forth, because frankly, they didn‘t want anything to do with the “English” as they still call anyone other than themselves.
The Quakers or “Religious Society of Friends” unlike some of the other peculiar Reformation era spawns, spoke English and came out of a British Isle experience alright, but they were already condemned as heretics on numerous scores on both sides of the Atlantic. Most offensive to the American Puritans was the claim that man could talk to Jesus Christ directly without benefit of any clergy at all. In the Massachusetts Bay colony, Friends were outlawed 
entirely and subject to immediate execution on sight. Several Quakers (Mary Dyer) were hanged on Boston Common for publicly preaching. In England, Friends were excluded by law from sitting in Parliament from 1698 to 1833.
The Baptists, descendants of the English and European Anabaptists who were universally despised by Roman Catholic and Protestant alike on both sides of the pond only two generations previously, had by Joseph Smith’s time gone almost mainstream. It had helped the Baptists to be separated from both the Inquisition and the Reformation, both of which found reasons to object to Anabaptist theology. But in New England, they were still battling lingering suspicion and condemnation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptists
The snake-handlers, the glossalalliacs—tongue-speakers–the whole Charismatic Movement had almost kicked off in Smith’s time, making the Baptists’ Old World controversy of infant baptism-verses-Believer’s Baptism hardly exciting at all. As for the Charismatics; these fledgling evangelicals got shunned into obscurity and were consider
ed freaks for the most part by the fervent and demanding New England conservative clergies who dominated Smith’s local scene.
Joseph admittedly experimented with “folk magic” or what became known as “Spiritualism.” Rather a lot of the Christians Smith fellowshipped with were into “divination” and other “spiritual gifts.” Though this benign activity translated into a history of detractors characterizing him as a “money digger” or “spook hunter” of some sort, had Smith been born a century later, his notions of prophesy and the “Full Gospel” gifts returning to earth would have by then become downright common. As for “money digging,” this charge was a major hobby in Smith’s day, as every American believed the place was littered with ancient Indian gold and pirate treasure—the only issue at hand was the method of sensing where it was buried.
Prophecy in and of itself as a concept, 
actually became a big business in Christian circles a century after the founding of Mormonism–Smith was just a bit premature in this effort. Today you can turn on the radio or television at any given moment and hear fully-accredited Christian televangelists refer to themselves as “prophets of God” and talk at great length about their “visions” and “revelations.” One famous such proclamation came from the master evangelist Oral Roberts back http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/rating_the_dead_televangelists/ in 1987 during the height of the televangelist era, when he prophesied that Jesus was going to call him home if he didn’t get eight million dollars to save his City of Faith complex in Tulsa Oklahoma, which was hemorrhaging cash to the tune of ten million dollars and more a year. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964970,00.html Roberts had proven this strategy already in a previous vision in 1980 connected with raising funds for the Christian medical tower around which his 
City of Faith development was centered. This previous vision featured the image of a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus Christ
towering over the completed skyscraper of his hospital–which is now CityPlex Towers and mostly office space, since the project immediately went belly-up after its centerpiece was finished. So far there are no mobs led by ordained Christian ministers burning Christian “prophets” like Oral Roberts out of their homes, raping their women, pillaging their villages, and seizing the property they are fo
rced to flee or die. Unlike their contemporaries in Joseph Smith’s day, Christian ministers have been most forgiving of their overtly sinful behavior. Most of thes
e fallen tele-prophets went right back into business after a year or so of public self-flagellation and a lot of open weeping. There’s a reason for this. Christians believe that Christ died for every sin you have ever committed, every sin you are now committing, and every sin you will commit. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior you are just flat out saved period no doubt no contingencies. You have been, are now, and always will be forgiven. And we’re all sinners anyway. Sin is sin big or small it’s all the same. Forgiveness is free. Heaven is heaven, and all Christians get there in the end. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t seem right does it? It’s God’s will though. It’s a mystery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker
http://www.rickross.com/reference/tbn/tbn19.html
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/char/more/hist.htm
http://www.epk.com/entertainment/jessica-hahn-hit-on-larry-king/
http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/DN-tilton_28met.ART.State.Edition2.50eb9da.htmlMy Lutheran relatives however would correct; God may forgive you, but the congregation never will. I mean this literally, because archetypal Faith Healer Oral Roberts blitzed through the family homestead in North Dakota on one of his early revival tours and “healed” a relative who had a heart condition that required him to keep nitroglycerine pills handy when he had an incident. Roberts told him to trust Jesus and throw away the pills. That worked for quite a while. Oral Roberts was long gone with all his loot of course, when my kinsman had another fit, dropped nearly dead to the floor, and as he lay there struggling, everyone realized the pills that would have brought him out of it in a few minutes were also long gone.
Uncle Oscar should have had more faith I suppose. That must be his fault then.
A lot of effort has been put into revising Joseph Smith’s pretty orthodox childhood Christian credentials into some sort of hillbilly occultic humbuggery. This is to be expected from his critics, who believe Mo
rmonism is Satan’s own Church. The thing to remember however is, they believe everyone’s church other than their own is going to send you to the devil as well. You don’t have to see angels or talk to God or be a false prophet to burn in hell as a non-Christian. Even John Calvin, who invented most of modern American Protestantism found that out when he was hauled into a heresy trial at the start of his religious career for merely being imprecise in his Trinitarian language. http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2009/s09060184.htm The truth is, when Joseph Smith went seeking answers in the Bible, he went seeking answers about mainstream, modern, institutionalized Protestant denominations and the problems he had with their doctrines. He wasn’t praying for help in digging up pirate gold. He wasn’t out in the woods asking for God’s divine plan to fund the first Christian amusement theme park. He wasn’t looking for a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus to bless his religious empire. He was trying to figure out what the Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists were all squabbling about amongst themselves. And when he studied his Bible, he studied it as one of them—he studied the Bible as a Christian.
