Whatever your stance on polygamy, don’t you think that the nation–and particularly the Church’s enemies–were merely using it as a pretext to destroy the Church? I have a hard time believing that a sincere desire to protect “the innocent victims” really motivated the crusade against polygamy in nineteenth-century America.

Why is this so difficult to believe? See Sarah Barringer Gordon’s _The Mormon Question_ on how many non-Mormon Americans viewed the Mormons and the practice of polygamy. If you don’t think opposition to polygamy was a primary reason many Americans were opposed to Mormonism, what was the reason then? Was it just irrational, Satan-inspired antipathy in your mind?

Aaron B

What is the point of disparaging looking past the pretext to see what the real agenda of the movement was?

Also, realistically, do you think that the people in the United States cared about “victims” of polygamy who were themselves Mormons? When these polygamous Mormon women were in the United States, they were persecuted and even permitted to be exterminated, despite being victims of polygamy.

I think the problem was the Joseph Smith claimed to see God and Jesus, that he claimed they told him that all of the other churches were wrong, and that he claimed to be a living prophet. In addition, he used his fair share of “condemnatory prophecy” (see thread on Lehi and condemnatory prophecy).

Persecution of the Saints existed before polygamy was instituted.

Do you think that opposition to polygamy was the primary reason so many Americans opposed Mormonism? There was no element of “irrational, Satan-inspired antipathy” involved? I know it is popular nowadays to de-emphasize the persecutions of the Saints, to turn things around and say that it was our own fault, etc., and especially to defend the actions of the Americans who perpetrated the persecutions out of bigotry, so maybe we can indeed eliminate the “Satan-inspired” part and just highlight their antipathy, without suggesting that it was Satan-inspired (just to be sensitive to those persecutors). In sort, do you think that it was all our own fault because we practiced polygamy (because God told us to do it)?

Popular among who, John? It doesn’t sound like a particularly popular argument to me.

My goodness, I post the Reynolds jury charge — how more innocuous can a post be? — and four comments in, you’re already breaking out the persecution/martyr complex.

Aaron B. then jumped on me wondering whether I could actually believe that regular old-school bigotry (he said “Satan-inspired antipathy”) was the real agenda and that people weren’t truly concerned for the “innocent victims.” I used strong rhetoric in my answer, partially speaking to a sub-text of Aaron’s comment: a willingness to absolve the persecutors of illigimate intentions and ascribe to them the legitimate aim of eliminating polygamy (i.e. they would never have persecuted us if we didn’t have that immoral doctrine of polygamy). Am I reading him wrong?

Why do you have to accuse me of a persecution/martyr “complex”? Did the persecution of Latter-day Saints happen or did it not? I don’t see any reason for ignoring the fact that it happened, that it was wrong no matter what effect the Latter-day Saints had on voting patterns in Missouri or what the rest of the U.S. thought was happening in the “Mormon harems,” and that the state-sanctioned persecution in which the federal government participated was an injustice.

Are people who don’t allow anyone to lessen historical perceptions of the persecution of racial or ethnic minorities labeled as having a persecution/martyr complex? If not, why do I merit that label by pointing this injustice out when the opportunity arises?

Well, there are ways of telling Aaron he’s wrong without sounding like a the-world-hates-me martyr.

(And using Aaron as a barometer of what is popular? I would venture to guess that if there is any correlation between Aaron’s views and popular views, it’s an inverse one).

Your form masks a good point that you have: Anti-Mormonism clearly has earlier roots than mere anti-polygamy ideas. We were chased out of New York and Pennsylvania long before anyone thought about polygamy. And anti-Mormons successfully used the legal system to persecute the church prior to polygamy — Joseph Smith’s trials, for example.

I believe that the conventional wisdom is that people didn’t like Mormons, pre-polygamy, because (pick any number of these):

-Joesph’s religious views were very hard to accept.
-Joseph got a reputation as a fraud and/or womanizer.
-Mormons were insular and weird (has anything changed?).
-Mormons were a political bloc.
-Satan was stirring up the hearts of men to anger.

Then the church instituted polygamy, which gave anti-Mormons a flash point to unite their argument with abolitionists and others. At some point, anti-Mormonism and anti-polygamy may have become almost synonymous.

But you’re entirely correct, of course, to suggest that the roots of anti-Mormonism go far deeper than polygamy.

Sounds like “Satan-inspired antipathy” to me.

Umm, duh. Of course it was wrong. In fact, I think the world is more aware of the wrongness of Mormon persecution than possibly at any other time. Everyone knows it was wrong.

Which is why your “I know it is popular nowadays to de-emphasize the persecutions of the Saints” seemed to be an unwarranted assertion of persecution / martyrdom. You are asserting that the world is against you, and that you are boldly taking an unpopular position, but everyone agrees that the Mormon persecution was wrong.

If someone says, “I know it’s popular these days to suggest that the sky is green, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it’s blue,” it’s going to appear to me that this person is seeing persecution where it doesn’t exist and trying to paint himself as an iconoclaust or martyr when there’s really nothing to get worked up about.