This morning, my Google alerts brought to my attention an article in which the author was expressing his outrage over a BYU-Idaho commentator who equated the persecution of Mormons in the nineteenth century with slavery. The BYU-Idaho author was seeking to make connections and build empathy in predominantly white Latter-day Saints for Black Lives Matter activists, protesters, and rioters. It was a good faith attempt to build a bridge; however, as we should expect the attempt earned a kick in the teeth from liberals.
The critics argued that Mormons were trying to out-victim the victims of slavery. In today’s world, it is impossible to out-victim black Americans. Despite attempts by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to put together a coalition of blacks and Latinos, there efforts have failed because Democrats have largely taken African American support for granted while they have courted the Latino vote and pushed for open borders, amnesty, and sanctuary cities. Many blacks have felt pushed aside by Democrats, because the party has a new favorite victime-du-jour. Unemployed African Americans find themselves competing for jobs with Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and other immigrants. The voices of black activists, until they became useful tools for the Democrats as of late, has largely been relegated to the back of the liberal bus.
Let’s take a moment to examine the premise, if not the specifics, of the proposal that persecution of Latter-day Saints equates to slavery. Slavery has existed since the earliest records of human history. World religions document its practice. Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and early Christianity all accepted in in various forms. Ancient empires, like Babylon, Assyria, Persia, and others practiced it. Long before America was discovered, Africans practiced slavery. In parts of Africa today, it is still practiced. (Liberals don’t talk about that much!)
Latter-day Saints are part of a religious continuum. Outside observers see us as a recently-founded religious upstart that emerged out of the hubbub of the Second Great Awakening. We Latter-day Saints consider ourselves to be the restoration of the primitive Christian Church of the first century. That Church, the one Jesus established in his ministry, was also a restoration church. Jesus restored the lost Melchizedek Priesthood to Israel, the fullness of which had been missing since the ministry of the prophet Elijah. Jesus fulfilled the Levitical or Mosaic Law and re-instituted the ancient faith of Abraham and the Patriarchs of Genesis. The Church of Jesus Christ, with a few notable periods of apostasy caused by mankind’s rejection of God’s prophets, the Church of Jesus Christ has existed since Adam taught the knowledge of Christ to his children and grandchildren. Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were Christian prophets. They knew by revelation of the coming of Christ and had faith in his atonement. It was by their faith in Christ, the Messiah, that they found fellowship with God and eternal life.
Persecution of the followers of Jesus Christ has existed in all ages, whenever the Church has existed. The faithless have always persecuted those who followed Christ. Abel believed in Christ. Cain did not. Abraham was opposed by Nimrod. Moses was opposed by Pharaoh. Elijah was opposed by Ahab and the priests of Baal. The Jews themselves often persecuted the prophets God sent to them. Jesus was opposed by religious and non-religious antagonists. Caiaphas and Annas, lacking authority to crucify Jesus, preferred charges of treason to Pontius Pilate. The ancient apostles were persecuted and killed. Their persecutors were Roman authorities and pagan priests.
Therefore, slavery and persecution have always existed, separately from one another. At times, like when the people of Israel were Egyptian slaves, a religious and ethnic justification of slavery was the norm. Typically slaves came from either poor classes of a society or they became enslaved due to a military defeat. When you read ancient history, the word “servant” is used interchangeably with “slave.” There were white people who were slaves as well as Africans, Asians, Middle-Easterners, and almost every other population. Some pre-contact American Indians kept slaves.
Slavery in America took on a particularly onerous twist legally that made it particularly dehumanizing. That was the change of legal status that made enslaved persons property and made the status of slavery inheritable. This was particular to North America and people of Protestant theological backgrounds. In Spanish America, although slavery was practiced, manumission was fairly common. The Papacy had declared that enslaved persons had souls and that Christians were accountable to God for their just and humane treatment. This was obviously abused in countless instances, but overall, the Spanish in America more frequently freed slaves and often intermarried with them. Spanish America recognized legally established classes that included peninsulares (upper class persons born in Spain), creoles (Spanish people born in America), mestizos (persons of Native American and Spanish parentage), and mulattoes (persons of African and Spanish ancestry). The lowest class were African and Indian slaves with no European ancestry at all. Nevertheless, in the Spanish system in America, slaves were still considered a human being with a soul.
In English North America, things got weird. Slavery started small, but grew rapidly. I have written in another blog post how Bacon’s Rebellion forced colonial elites to change the legal status of slavery to drive a wedge between poor whites, indentured servants, and black slaves permanently. The change of status of a slave from a person to chattel was unique in the history of slavery. It meant that, from 1670 to 1857’s Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, slaves had “no rights a white man was bound to respect.”
America was founded on the Protestant Ethic and Protestantism was the social and moral matrix for the society. Historian Stanley Elkins book Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life explores the vacuum of large, authoritative institutions in America which might have deterred or at least moderated the evolution of slavery in America. Protestantism recognized no central authority. There was no Pope or central religious authority. After the Revolution, there was no monarch. Christianity itself was fragmented and divided. There was no longstanding social class structure. The openness and freedom to individual white Americans led to a lack of accountability, morally speaking. Seeking to justify their actions, white Protestants formulated a doctrine that theorized that black Africans were descendants of Cain (Canaan) and Ham from the Bible. Passages declaring that they were to be “a servant of servants” (see Genesis 9:25-28) were cited to justify enslaving black Africans.
The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura and the inerrancy of the Bible (which differed from Catholicism), led Protestants to believe the Bible was never to be questioned. The Bible was used as the final authority in all things spiritual. Thus, the enslavement of Africans was believed to be God’s will. Much later, this doctrine insinuated itself into the teachings of the Latter-day Saints through new converts, who had not matured spiritually enough to abandon this fateful “leaven.” We did not invent the “seed of Cain” doctrine, but it was assumed to be true by Protestant converts to Mormonism. It took generations to begin to deal with this issue in the Church. Being a religion that believes in current revelation, Latter-day Saints don’t make adjustments to the Church doctrine or organization without guiding revelation. The leaven in the loaf was difficult to remove.
The legal status of slaves in the United States was not finally settled until after the conclusion of the Civil War. Through troubled Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the later emergence of the civil rights movement, white America had to come to terms with these old notions, and move gradually toward full equality for African Americans. Slavery isn’t to be defended, but it is important to understand that the history of slavery has changed profoundly over the last century. Historiographically speaking, as late as the 1940s, historians writing about slavery were often apologists for it. They portrayed the opinions that Africans were ill-suited for freedom, that slavery was a positive good, because it provided for a class that was otherwise indolent, lazy, lacking initiative, and morally unfit for life without forced labor. One of the arguments earlier historians used was that, if slavery was so bad, why did blacks tacitly consent to it? They show instances were potential slave uprisings were sabotaged by other blacks who warned masters in advance. They argued that even John Brown could not assemble enough support from slaves to mount a successful rebellion.
Today’s historians retell the account of slavery from the historigraphical outlook of resistance. In modern histories of the Antebellum Period, historians show how slaves passively resisted bondage in many different ways. More recent research has informed us of more overt resistance by slaves as well. Keep in mind, however, that this is a change in the way historians write about slavery. What caused the change? Elkins’ book in 1976 rocked the way historians perceived it. It was controversial and it caused a backlash that reshaped the way historians write about slavery and the way it is understood today.
Slavery and religious persecution are two societal ills that have almost always existed, in every place and time in the world’s history. They are both heinous in the impact it has on their victims. Slavery shaped American society and its impact is still felt today; however, official sanction of slavery in the world ended in 1888, when Brazil finally abolished it. It still continues illegally in some places and is associated with human trafficking today.
Religious persecution continues unabated. Communist governments, like China, persecutes Muslims, Christians, and the home-grown Falun Gong religion. The Muslim world does not tolerate the free exercise of religion and, in some Muslim countries, Christians are forced to pay unfair tax penalties or tribute to their Muslim “overlords.” In Christian America, Hutterites, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists, are still persecuted and marginalized.
Since I am a Latter-day Saint, I am intimately familiar with the history of the persecution of our people. One correspondent on Twitter recently acknowledged that she never knew that, in the 1830s, violent anti-Mormon mobs prevented Mormons from voting, burned homes, farms, and killed our people. She lives some ten miles from the area where this occurred, but its not taught in her state’s history. The Governor of Missouri, Lilburn L. Boggs, signed the infamous “Extermination Order” that declared Mormons enemies of the state, to be driven out or killed. Until 1976, there was still an unenforced bounty of $50 on killing a Mormon in the state. The chief executive of Missouri, the mob leaders, and President Martin Van Buren, who refused the petitions of the saints for protection, were all Democrats.
In the 1840s, the founder of the Church, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob of some 200 people, who painted their faces black. Smith was being held in custody by the governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, a Democrat. President James Buchanan, a Democrat, deployed the US Army to Utah in 1857 to occupy the territory and try to wrench it from control of the Mormons. The outbreak of the Civil War ended the occupation and the saints remained as bystanders, considering the war to be a punishment from God on the Union that had driven them into the wild, desert West.
The persecution of Mormons was, in the decade leading to the Civil War, a top-shelf issue for Democrats and Republicans. Protestants in Congress used Mormon polygamy as a bogeyman. Democrats used it as a pro-states rights argument, stating that if Mormons could practice polygamy on a state level without federal interference, the southern states could practice slavery over the government’s objections to the practice. The Republicans, to prevent losing the argument, connected the two together. They claimed that slavery and polygamy were the “relics of barbarism” that had to be abolished.
You see, slavery and Mormonism were linked politically by both parties struggling to gain the moral upper hand. Historically they are linked because the struggle between Democrats and Republicans connects them.
It is important for any historian to have empathy for the subjects of his study. Few historians have ever had proper empathy for Latter-day Saints. They can’t understand the mindset. They often make the mistake of interpreting history through the assumptions of modern times. Latter-day Saints of the nineteenth century overall favored abolition of slavery. As an unpopular religious sect, our missionaries were told to steer clear of the controversial topic of slavery. The biblical guidelines were accepted, that a slave would require his master’s consent to be baptized. A person who owned slaves could be baptized and remain a slaveholder. Mormons had enough opposition without adding abolitionism to the message. When some southern converts migrated to Utah, they brought their slaves with them.
The Prophet Joseph Smith favored emancipation and proposed that government lands in the West be sold to purchase the freedom of the slaves. He opined that slaves should be freed, educated, and prepared for full equality. Even Lincoln didn’t want equality—he wanted an end to forced labor, but he explicitly said in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that he did not envision equality for black Americans. Brigham Young, whose racist views are most often targeted by modern critics, said on more than one occasion that his advice to slaveholders was to take their slaves to a free state and grant them liberty. He was one who held fast to the “seed of Cain” doctrine and opposed racial mixing. He saw slavery as the law of the land and that the Church’s element was the spiritual. Latter-day Saints favored the abolition of slavery, but they were not abolitionists—a nuanced political distinction.
Anti-Mormon sentiment of the nineteenth century has ebbed and surged into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When B.H. Roberts was elected to Congress in 1898, Congress refused to seat him because he was a polygamist. During this period, the anti-Mormon press led to lynchings of Mormon missionaries. The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s targeted Mormons, Jews, and Catholics along with blacks. When Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, president of American Motors in Detroit, was a moderate Republican and a supporter of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and he ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency in 1964 and 1968. He opposed racist Democrats who fought against civil rights in 1964. Although the Church would not change its policy regarding a ban on ordaining blacks to the priesthood until 1978, the rank-and-file membership of the Church were largely in sympathy with the civil rights cause. (What ultimately led to the 1978 revelation repealing the priesthood ban had nothing to do with American blacks at all. It arose from the explosive growth of the Church in Brazil, where people of mixed race are numerous.)
Another surge of anti-Mormonism occurred from 2007 to 2012 when Mitt Romney ran for the presidency. Some scholars found a marked increase in anti-Mormon activity, literature, and media that spiked during this period, much as occurred during the B.H. Roberts controversy. In this case, Republicans as well as Democrats attacked Romney’s faith. Incidents of violence and vandalism occurred in several areas in the United States targeting Mormon believers, our meetinghouses, and temples.
Latter-day Saints accept that persecution and calumny is always going to be a factor as the Church advances in the world. The larger and more influential it becomes, the more opposition it will incur. We regard that as a maxim or corollary of sorts. We have become a global Church. Nowhere has the Church grown as rapidly as it has in Africa. Anti-Mormons from the United States actually traveled to various African nations and lobbied to prevent official recognition of the Church and to prevent our missionaries from entering those countries. Nevertheless, the work has gone forth quickly there—ironic for a religion that is so often represented as racist. This opposition is not exclusive to Africa. In Russian, foreign Latter-day Saint missionaries were expelled several years ago. In India, where the Church is also growing rapidly, one ministry that advocates for persecuted Christians in India also operates and anti-Mormon web site that attacks (and persecutes) Latter-day Saints.
To conclude, the legacy of slavery and religious intolerance exist side by side as the “twin relics of barbarism” that endure today. Latter-day Saints experience marginalization, exclusion, and are often the targets of violence still today. African Americans still experience the societal impact of slavery even today. We share a legacy of oppression in that small way. We do not equate what we endured in the first century of our Church’s existence to what slaves suffered for three hundred years. Yet the marginalization of Latter-day Saints is still largely ignored compared to the racism against African Americans. Latter-day Saints don’t march or protest, generally. We quietly accept persecution as one of things one must accept as a follower of Christ and a member of his true Church. We are part of a faith that goes back to Adam in the Garden of Eden, who saw God and bore witness of his existence to his posterity. We are of the faith of Shem, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, and all the prophets and apostles that went before. Our own modern prophets have instructed us that we should not expect to abide in the eternal glory these ancient saints enjoy unless we are willing to undergo what they endured.
We are not trying to out-victim black Americans or anyone else. We trust in the judgments of God and wait patiently for his vindication of all who suffer and are oppressed at any time. We are not the adversary of the black people. We believe all are the children of God and we have faith that God will set things right in his own time. Attacking Mormons, defacing our churches and temples, and the statues of our leaders will never impact our resolve to seek and prepare for God’s justice to be established. It also will not benefit any group who targets the Church for exclusion and persecution because of historical racism it its past. We are moving forward and we should get credit for that, at least.
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