THE LAW OF GOD
Blood Atonement and Murder
Within the Mormon Kingdom of God
"Mormon history is rather a mixed up affair." William Law, 1st Counselor to Joseph Smith
"It has always been a well-understood doctrine of the church that it was right and praiseworthy to kill every person who speaks evil of the prophet. This doctrine was strictly lived up to in Utah until the Gentiles arrived in such numbers that it became unsafe to follow the practice; but the doctrine is believed, and no year passes without one or more of those who have spoken evil of Brigham being killed, in a secret manner..."
John D. Lee, Brigham Young's adopted son
"Mormonism demands perfect submission-total dethronement of individuality-blind obedience. There is no middle path. "
Thomas B.H. Stenhouse, Editor of the Deseret News
Preface
One reason Mormon history is a "mixed up affair" is due in part
to some of the highest LDS authorities requiring a censored version of church history. These clergymen feel that anything less then a faith- promoting version of history is detrimental to its members. In order to keep its history "faith promoting", the LDS Church therefore
has made it policy, in recent years, to reinterpret portions of its past. These same officials, who have authorized this standpoint, are not interested in an historical account of the LDS people, and they are ready to enforce their point of view with threats of censure of recalcitrant LDS historians and denying non-conforming historians access to LDS archival materials.
LDS General Authority, Boyd K. Packer, articulated these officials' position by remarking: "In the Church we are not neutral. We are one-sided. There is a war going on, and we are engaged in it. It is a war between good and evil, and we are belligerents defending the good. We are therefore obliged to give preference to and protect all that is represented in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have made covenants to do it...." (1)
Addressing those who might damage the faith of LDS members by exposing them to earlier Church teachings and history, Packer instructed: "Your objective should be that they will see the hand of the Lord in every hour and every moment of the Church from its beginning till now.... there is no such thing as an accurate or objective history of the Church which ignores the Spirit.... Church history can be so interesting and so inspiring as to be a very
powerful tool indeed for building faith. If not properly written or properly taught, it may be a faith destroyer..." (2)
In an address at a meeting of the All-Church Coordinating Council, Elder Packer stated that the three greatest dangers to the modern church were "the Gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement, and the ever present challenge from so-called scholars". (3) Therefore in the late 20th Century several Mormon intellectuals, who did not conform to the church's "faith promoting" policies, were
"purged" from the ranks of the LDS Church. Since then limits have been placed on the academic freedom of Mormon scholars, and there are increasingly fewer historians willing to be intellectually objective in writing church history for fear of ecclesiastical retribution.
This work intends to explore blood atonement or the "Law of God"
in early Mormon and Utah history. It is one of many areas of history that some timid LDS scholars will skirt due to the inherent controversy the subject matter. Indeed most LDS histories will not even address objectively whether the doctrine of Blood Atonement was ever practiced because of the heated debate such an inquiry would create. Lately LDS historians seem more concerned with the church's image rather then with true academic inquiries. The late historian and faithful member of the LDS Church, Juanita Brooks likened these new LDS apologists to "lawyers protecting a client" rather than
as being true historians.
Current faith promoting Mormon histories proudly declare that there were fewer deeds of violence in Utah than in other pioneer settlement of equal population citing examples of mining camp vigilante justice in surrounding territories as proof. However due to the secrecy surrounding the murders committed in Utah for theocratic reasons, the actual number of reported homicides of which there are many accounts, may represent only a small portion of those who were actually put to death in the Mormon Kingdom of God.
While Brigham Young was still President of the LDS Church, the Salt Lake Tribune stated: "It is estimated that no less than six hundred murders have been committed by the Mormons, in nearly every case at the instigation of their priestly leaders, during their occupation of this territory. Giving a mean average of 50,000 persons professing that faith in Utah, we have a murder committed every year to every 2500 of population. The same ratio of crime extended to the population of the United States would give 16,000 murders every year." (4)
The Hon. Robert N. Baskin, a former Mayor of Salt Lake City and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Utah, admitted that he was not sure how many people were murdered in the name of religion in early Utah, but he cited the following observation:
"In the excavations made within the limits of Salt Lake City during the time I have resided there, many human skeletons have been exhumed in various parts of the city. The present city cemetery was established by the first settlers. I have never heard that it was ever the custom to bury the dead promiscuously throughout the city; and as no coffins were ever found in connection with any of these skeletons, it is evident that the death of the persons to whom they once belonged did not result from natural causes, but from the use of criminal means... That the Danites were bound by their covenants to execute the criminal orders of the high priesthood against apostates and alleged enemies of the church is beyond question.... How many murders were secretly committed by that band of assassins, will never be known, but an estimate may be made from the number mentioned in the confessions of [William A.] Hickman and [John D.] Lee, and the number of human skeletons which have been exhumed in Salt Lake City, the possessors of which were evidently murdered and buried without a knell, coffin, or Christian ceremony." (5)
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of Salt Lake City wrote an article published in their official periodical with similar concerns.
"While laying the waste pipes in front of the residence of Brigham Young recently the skeleton of a man -- a white man -- was dug up. A similar discovery was made last winter in digging a cellar in this city. What can have been the necessity of these secret burials, without coffins, in such places?" (6)
There is no way to verify whether Chief Justice Baskin's, The Tribune's, or the RLDS' statements regarding the number of murders in Utah attributed to its theocratic leadership are true. However what seems to appear as outrageous slander against the hierarchy of the LDS Church; has some veracity in the historical diaries, periodicals, and records of early Mormon pioneers. The records of Utah Latter-day Saints, Apostates, and Gentiles (7) all mention heinous deeds carried out in the name of priesthood authority.
Mormon Bishop Aaron Johnson of Springville, who faithfully carried out orders to dispatch two members of his ward, acknowledged "Brigham Young had men around him who aided in ridding Salt Lake City of gamblers and desperadoes." A Brigham Young University professor of religion also affirmed that Young "sanctioned at least some" of
the murders of undesirable characters in the Mormon Kingdom of God.(8)
To help understand the practice of "relative morality" by early leaders of the LDS Church one must look to the teachings of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Kingdom of God. Smith once wrote to a young woman he was attempting to seduce into polygamy:
"That which is wrong under one circumstance may be and often is, right under another. God said thou shalt not kill, --at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted-by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire. If we seek first the kingdom of God, all good things will be added…even
things which may be considered abominable to all who do not understand the order of heaven." (9)
The intent of this study is not to cast aspersions on the modern LDS Church as it is presently constituted, nor is intended to infer that the Latter-day Saints as a whole were a depraved people. Rather it is an attempt to examine the use of corporal and capital punishment to enforce the "Laws of God" in the theocratic Kingdom of God which emigrated to the Great Salt Lake Basin in 1847.
Thomas Stenhouse,(10) an LDS insider who was a faithfully believer in Mormonism but opposed Brigham Young's absolutism, remarked: "The Mormon people of Utah are not the offspring of a barbarous race, neither were they raised and nurtured in uncivilized nations…a kinder and more simple-hearted people is not upon the face of the earth…That Brigham Young is by his natural instincts a bad man or that his apostles and his bishops are men of blood, is not true. Here and there among them a malicious man is met with, but, a part from religion, the ruling men in Utah would be considered good citizens in any community." (11)
However to comprehend how these "good citizens", who were taught
high moral teaching", could commit the atrocities and heinous acts they did during much of the 19th Century, Stenhouse stated that one must understand "the hatred of the Gentile and the apostate" that
existed in the among the Latter-day Saints. He proposed that the more the Latter-day Saints believed that they were spiritually linked to the ancient Israelites, the more they were able to justify the use of the Levitical laws to slay their enemies.
Stenhouse explained that in this context, it is easy to understand how excesses of the Mormon theology combined with ardent prosecution by Gentile reformers could lead a basically placid people to commit the horrific deeds perpetrated at Mountain Meadows and elsewhere in Utah. (12)
Footnote:
1. Boyd K. Packer, "Do not spread disease germs!" Brigham Young
University Studies, Summer 1981, pp. 259, 262-271.
2. Ibid
3. 24 July 1993 Salt Lake Tribune, SLC UT
4. 25 January 1876 Salt Lake Tribune SLC UT
5. R.N. Baskin, Reminiscences of Early Utah, 1914 p 154
6. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, The
Messenger November 1875, SLC, UT
7. Joseph taught his followers that the members of his church are to
be called Saints, and non-members, Gentile, even if of the Jewish
Faith. Apostates were once believing Saints, who had become
disillusioned and left the faith.
8. D.Michael Quinn,The Mormon hierarchy:Extensions of Power,Vol.II,p
243.
9. Dean C. Jessee, ed., Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. 1984 p 508.
10.Thomas B.H. Stenhouse was a former confidant of 19th century LDS
General Authorities and editor of the Deseret News and The Daily
Telegraph.
11.TBH Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints, 1873 p 460
12.Ibid p 480
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