I study religion as an academic subject and specialize in Mormon mission history and theory. The other day, I spoke with a Latter-day Saint who appeared a little confused that someone could make a career of this. He brought up Preach My Gospel, the church's official manual and statement on missionary work, and implied that this closed the canon on missionary discourse. The thinking is done, the missionary task is hard at work, so why mess with it? He could understand the historical value of interpreting and assessing our missionary past. But the theoretical part of it left him, what I thought seemed, a bit incredulous.

I came across a story in my thesis research that downright ticked me off. And then I realized that Latter-day Saints reinforce stories like these frequently in their missionary discourse. The consequences of allowing this kind of behavior extend into many dimensions of social exchange. Mormons already generally feel a tension between the world and Zion, which I would further describe as an us/them mentality. So when they feel sanctioned to practice their missionary work or to in the very least approach their missionary work with an allowance for this kind of behavior, it further complicates the tension. I'll explain why in a moment. But first, a quotation from the missionary's journal:

"I went back in to her father and said: 'You're next. Come on.' He refused. His wife walked away and with tears in her eyes said to me: 'John's ready, I know he is. He has been attending church for years, keeps all the standards of the Church, and has been a dry-land Mormon.' I said: 'Brother Bancroft, your wife just told me with tears in her eyes that you are ready for baptism.' He bristled: 'Oh, she did. Well, I'm not.' I said: 'And furthermore, I say you are and that you are going to be baptized. Now you come with me peaceably or I'll get one of these elders to help me carry you out.' He refused. I put my arm under his, lifted him slightly off the floor and marched him down the aisle of the chapel, across the amusement hall, out through the patio, and into the room where the baptismal clothes are stored. All the way out he kept saying, 'I am not joining the Church; I won't be baptized; you can't force me; it doesn't matter what my wife thinks; I'm not joining the Church.' I simply assured him verbally and physically that he was. When we got into the room with the clothing, someone was already handing items to the other young man, and I asked 'Brother' Bancroft what size pants he wore. He did not respond. I held a pair up to him and said, 'These will fit you,' and put them over his arm, and then asked for his shirt size. He said: 'Sixteen,' and with that single word agreed to join the Church. With his clothes, I marched him across the foyer to the dressing room. Since he had been around the Church for years, people began flocking around to shake his hand. I said: 'You folks please leave us alone and do not interfere.'

"By this time a couple of hundred people were aware of what was going on and so they congregated in the outside patio to watch. I marched Brother Bancroft over to the dressing room, took him in, and said: 'Get dressed.' He had given up and began taking his shirt off. I said: 'I've got someone else, but I'm posting a guard at the door.'

"Well, by this time the stage was set and so the elders who had contacts at the conference who they thought should join the Church began taking me from one to the other, and in each instance after five or ten minutes' conversation and a little gentle persuasion, one after another agreed to join the Church, until we ended up with nine baptisms—not one of whom had come with the slightest intention of being baptized.

The compulsion here is appalling. To physically force a man, in the presence of a congregation of other persons, to go into a dressing room and prepare for baptism against his will astounds me—it's unconscionable in the extreme.

This missionary was actually, in the Mormon system, a mission president. And (to complicate things) he was also serving as a general authority at the time. He later became an apostle. This account comes from Bruce R. McConkie's diary and can be found in his son's memoir, The Bruce R. McConkie Story: Reflections of a Son.

I'm disturbed by this account because of its positive valuation among Latter-day Saints. Of course, in normal circumstances, one doesn't walk up to a man, demand that he be baptized, and then physically force him to do it. But if prompted by the Spirit, such a thing is appropriate, even heroic. Joseph Fielding McConkie continues the story by mentioning how he met Brother Bancroft's son Bruce: the man held his manhandling baptist (little "b") in such esteem that he named a child after him. In the end, the wife and family had prayed for divine intervention, and God brought it in the form of an abusive mission president exercising dominion over someone who vehemently expressed a desire not to be baptized into the Mormon church.

This thinking is dangerous for Mormon missiology because it perpetuates the possibility that, in theory, a missionary and/or other family members can exercise enough faith to bring about a baptism of another individual, even if it's against his or her will. This can lead to (many times intense) pressure to produce results as a missionary. Even in their first lessons, Mormon missionaries proclaim individual agency as a core doctrine for Mormon theodicy: God is omnibenevolent, but evil exists in the world because he will never take away one's agency, or will to choose good/evil. Yet their behavior betrays this affirmation. They pray that God will intervene and bring someone to conversion. That's an appropriate prayer, until it moves to an extreme. At this very moment, you could find Mormon missionaries in the middle of a longer-than-average fast in order to call down enough spiritual response from heaven that somebody or more become baptized. A more appropriate fast would be for something related to the individual missionary, like fasting for an added conviction of one's missionary message, or fasting for physical strength to work hard, or fasting for a more cheerful or optimistic countenance, and so on.

That pressure to perform also risks turning a blind eye to the enormous good that missionaries are currently doing for their religion. Missionaries and Mormons can ignore positive effects on society brought about by missionary service because such service might not directly contribute to baptisms. This interpretation of missionary activity perpetuates the us/them worldview, or at least supports the basis for that thinking. We are sent to teach people, rather than to serve people. I have recently read about a missionary feeling as though he is on the front lines of a spiritual war literally combating Satan in the struggle for souls. That may be a legitimate phenomenon and valid emotion, but I would hope that he would consider his own soul as needing third-party support against the wiles of a deceptive adversary, particularly through the person and power of Jesus. We all need that support. We all need to support each other. And we all need the respect and courtesy of taking our own steps toward those ends by our own desire and choice.

And let's congratulate our missionaries for service well-rendered, not baptisms "attained."

That one individual may be right in thinking that working in Mormon mission theory may be incompatible in a post-Preach My Gospel culture. But I'd hope Mormons would have enough caution and desire to improve their missionary effort that they could understand the value of renegotiating our missional and cultural impulses and traditions.

The Protestant missionary William Carey, known by many as the "Father of modern missions," repeatedly spoke of the "Great Commission" when justifying his proselytism. Jesus had recruited all Christians to missionary service when he declared that his disciples must take the gospel to every nation (Matt. 28:18 - 20), and Carey believed this included vigorous efforts of the eighteenth century to expand the religion in foreign parts of the world.[1] Missionaries in the 1990s grappled with the aftermath of colonization and sensed that paradigmatic shifts would affect the trajectory of Christian missions in the twenty-first century. In their questioning of previous missionary practices and theories, these missiologists discovered myriad interpretations of the Great Commission after William Carey that anachronistically assumed a unified understanding of Matthew 28.[2] These diverging interpretations arose out of the period of economic expansion undertaken by Roman Catholic nations of the sixteenth century and the parallel underdevelopment of missiology among the first Protestants.

By the sixteenth century, Catholic Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans had already headed up efforts to proselytize the world. Though they tended not to refer to Matthew 28, these missionaries saw their commission in terms of worldwide expansionism. Gregory the Great directed missionaries to the British Isles, first with Augustine of Canterbury and later with a whole cadre of Irish monks who had trained each other in the proselytism to large clans and tribal peoples. He urged Augustine and others to fulfill the injunction of Jesus at the ascension to make disciples of all nations, though not necessarily in a global context. The church wished to establish relations with the surrounding "nations" of the time, which meant carrying the gospel to a less-distant or less-abstract community of non-Christians. Gregory's coordination with Irish monks encouraged the development of a systematic mission effort through networks of monasteries which came to dot the European countryside.[3] Mission centers connected to Rome increased throughout the Medieval period, sustaining a successful and ongoing evangelical enterprise. Later, when Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit order, his staunch proselytizers insisted on yet more ambitious missions. The Jesuits' identity included the Great Commission as their main impetus for spreading the kingdom of God; they considered themselves literally sent by Jesus to preach to all the world.[4]

Roman Catholics' understanding of the Great Commission came to be tied to economic conquest as Spanish and Portuguese explorers charted the Atlantic. Thanks to European explorations of the seas, the missionaries' global vista dilated beyond their own borders which had hiterto marked the edge of civilization. Catholic friars embarked on missions to the New World via trade routes and state-sponsored explorations. In 1511, the first bishopric west of the Atlantic was set up in Santo Domingo. Less than fifteen years later, the first diocese was established in Mexico (Tlaxcala). Franciscan missionaries reported enormous conversions by 1529. "I ... baptized in this province of Mexico," Peter of Ghent wrote to the church in Spain, "upwards of 200,000 persons--so many in fact that I cannot give an accurate estimate of the number." Some days brought over ten thousand converts, others as much as eight thousand, Peter affirmed. Catholics first occupied these areas of mass conversions as colonies before missionaries noted success.[5] A few decades prior, Pope Nicholas V affirmed the right of the Portuguese to the peaceful occupation of all lands of the unbelievers that might be discovered along the west coast of Africa.[6] A successor, Alexander VI, directly managed the expansion of Roman Catholicism through exploration and colonization as evidenced in his papal bull Inter Caetera Divinae issued in 1493. By the groundswell of the Protestant Reformation, Catholics had engaged in worldwide expansionism and were interpreting their mission in terms of a commission to preach the gospel to a global audience. Protestants, on the other hand, needed time to develop a coherent missiology around the Great Commission, due to their pressing internal controversies and immediate local challenges.

Before Protestant thinkers could set their sights on reaching the whole earth with their Christian message, they faced several rivalries and contentions among many Reformers and theologians in addition to the conflicts with their Catholic critics. Matthew 28:18 - 20 remained problematic during the early Protestant Reformation due to the emergence of the Anabaptist movement and sharp polemics levied by Catholics. Anabaptists challenged the validity of infant baptism which invoked the contempt of other Protestants. These debates over infant versus believers' baptism focused Protestant attention of the Great Commission on what Jesus meant by "baptizing all nations." Martin Luther argued that this meant nothing more than baptizing every person, children included. Most Protestants followed suit; even those that disagreed with the nuances of Luther's position still read Matthew 28 in relationship to the Anabaptist controversy.[7] Catholic polemicists attacked the growing Protestant movement on their lack of missionary work. Robert Bellarmine considered Protestants heretics because such attack Christianity from within. Protestants had not produced noticeable results in converting the heathen, and for Bellarmine this revealed a chronic preoccupation with their own fellow Christians. Catholics, however, had produced significant proof of fully engaging in the conversion of heathens, the Protestants just quibbled over doctrine. Bellarmine contended that the marks of the true church included a continuing effort to take the gospel to all nations.[8] Erasmus responded with a plea that Christians engage in a world missionary enterprise, but he largely left out Matthew 28 from his scriptural argument and reference ongoing rivalries within the church in a way that almost admitted to Bellarmine's criticism.[9]

John Calvin took on criticisms like Bellarmine's and castigated the Anabaptists as much as anyone. Unlike Luther and Erasmus, he developed a theology of mission with Matthew 28 in mind, but still provided little support for a scope beyond Europe. His interpretation of Matthew 28, like other Reformers, came in response to other theological controversies of the time and not necessarily as a direct statement on Protestant mission. Calvin brought Catholic readings of the Great Commission into question, arguing that Jesus had directed his commission to the apostles and not to the body of the church.[10] Because this charge lay with the apostles, Calvin believed it would take God raising up disciples before a contemporary mission effort could be authentically established. The Reformers had been raised up, but Calvin emphasized their pastoral role as teachers of correct doctrine over their careers as proselytizers or missionaries.[11] When he coordinated his own pastoral missionary movement in Geneva, Calvin spoke of an expansion through time, the longevity of the movement, more than raw numbers of converts. While gospel teachers would need to reach the whole earth, Calvin still thought in terms of inspired and righteous teachers, and not so much of foreign missionaries. Interestingly, however, it was Calvin who organized what many consider the first Protestant mission. He sent missionary pastors to a short-lived French colony in Brazil, but the effort did not gain enough traction to last much later than 1556.[12] Perhaps Calvin eyed colonies on the American continent as the Jesuits did; even so, he failed to start an enduring mission overseas and mostly confined his pastoral ambitions to Geneva.[13]

The first Protestant missiology to include a notion of a Great Commission appears in the work of Adrian Saravia. He argued that the church still held a responsibility to preach the gospel as part of a continuing missionary enterprise. Saravia's A Treatise on the Different Degrees of the Christian Priesthood met with resistance from the branch of Protestantism that would probably most agree with him.[14] Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, published a chapter-by-chapter refutation of Saravia's treatise, insisting like his predecessor that missionary work was only an apostolic commission. Johann Gerhard joined in criticizing Saravia and argued further that any missionary activity had ceased with the apostles and that the church had only to concern itself with repairing its ecclesiology and theology. But Saravia's ideals did not disappear from Protestantism. Justinian von Welz just a few decades later urged all Christians of the Augsburg Confession to set up a missionary society to work toward converting all unbelieving nations. The most developed sense of the Great Commission in early Protestantism culminates in von Welz's missiology, informing later Protestant missionaries like William Carey and Alexander Duff.[15]

Once missiological ideas of a "Great Commission" formed within both Catholicism and Protestantism, a long a dynamic history of European colonization was unavoidably called into being. When Carey amplified with Saravia and von Welz had advanced centuries before, a coherent mode of proselytism through economic expansion colored his theory and methodology. The Great Commission itself gained a thoroughly modern slant. Taking the gospel to all nations meant to many missionaries in the nineteenth century taking capitalism to all nations. And true to the scientific worldview of many moderns, missionaries came to interpret the Great Commission linearly and in some cases anachronistically, assuming that Protestants had always read Matthew 28 through the lens of colonialism and globalization.[16]

Missionary societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries frequently invoked the Great Commission, many times unintentionally, to justify economic development of Third World countries as a means to proselytize and convert non-Christians. The idea of a "Great Commission" developed alongside the economic expansion of Western Christianity and European nations and its first theorists naturally linked it to their economic ambitions, or in the very least, their modern worldview. The fact that Roman Catholics more effectively engaged in foreign mission work before Protestants, and that Protestants came to identify with the Great Commission missiology of Gregory the Great and other Catholic popes by the eighteenth century, suggests that the institutionalized networks for proselytizing on a global scale fostered an expansionist view of global mission. The structures that facilitated the growth of European influence interpreted Christian mission in global terms--in Great Commission terms--earlier than decentralized Reformation movements. While Protestants worked to elaborate and clarify their theological similarities, they naturally started with the distinctives of their movement which related to more central doctrines like the eucharist and baptism. Debates over missiology took a back seat to controversies of ecclesiology, soteriology, and theology. But once missiology occupied a more central position in the identity and worldview of later Protestants, they could not ignore the composition of the world they inherited from Western expansionism, and this provided some unity to their emerging missiology of a Great Commission and the missiology developed by Catholics centuries before.

[1] William Carey, An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (Leicester, England: Ann Ireland, 1792), esp. Section I: "An Enquiry whether the Commission given by our Lord to his Disciples be not still binding on us."

[2] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991); Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996); David F. Wright, "The Great Commission and the Ministry of the Word: Reflections Historical and Contemporary on Relations and Priorities," Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 25 no. 2 (Autumn 2007): 132 - 57.

[3] Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), 67 - 69.

[4] Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, "Of the Ninth Apparition."

[5] Neill, 169.

[6] Nicholas V, Romanus Pontifex (1454).

[7] Wright, 143 - 45.

[8] Robert Bellarmine, Controversiae, Book 4.

[9] A translation of notable passages of this exchange appears in J. R. Coates, "Scholarship and Missions: Erasmus" in East and West Review: An Anglican Missionary Quarterly Review 2 no. 3 (1936), 244 - 49.

[10] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4:8:11.

[11] Calvin, Institutes, 4:3:4.

[12] Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555 - 1563 (Geneva, 1956).

[13] A. W. Morrison, trans., Calvin's Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Edinburgh, 1972), 3:250 - 55; Amy Glassner Gordon, "The First Protestant Missionary Effort: Why did it Fail?" International Bulletin of Missionary Research 8 (1984): 12 - 18.

[14] L. B. Smith, "The Contribution of Hadrian a Saravia to the Doctrine of the Nature of the Church and its Mission: An Examination of his Doctrine as related to that of his Anglican Contemporaries," Ph.D. diss., Edinburgh University, 1965.

[15] James A. Scherer, trans. and ed., Justinian Welz: Essays by an Early Prophet of Mission (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1969).

[16] Wright, 149.

Joseph Smith had served almost four months in prison when he suddenly dictated a batch of letters which would epitomize how he defended himself and fellow Mormons as victims of religious conflict. One letter addressed a request by Isaac Galland to learn more of Mormon doctrines and practices, which Smith wrote two days after his famous March 20, 1839 letter to the church at Quincy, Illinois where he consoled Latter-day Saints using revelatory guidance he had received from heaven. Unlike his letter to the Saints, Smith reasoned with Galland using the Bible and painted Mormons as the recipients of unfathomable abuse while also pointing to such abuse as almost an expected outcome for God’s chosen people and evidence for the divine source of Mormon teachings. How he defended Mormonism to Galland reveals a pivotal adjustment in Smith’s self-identity from the bearer of the new covenant to the prophet at the center of a struggle over the truth in the Bible no one of his generation had the nerve to accept. The narrative of God’s chosen people facing the forces of evil through persecution and turmoil and the methods of legitimizing the Mormon gospel through biblical reasoning had previously appeared in the pamphleteering strategies of Mormon missionaries, perhaps comprising source material from which Smith derived his own manner of proselytism.[1]

Smith was no novice to defending Mormonism prior to his Liberty Jail experience. In 1833 he wrote to N. C. Saxton, the editor of American Revivalist, and Rochester Observer, proclaiming that the new covenant of which New Testament apostles had spoken had been established in America. Though weak in the eyes of a learned world, Smith nevertheless ventured into “the field to tell you what the Lord is doing and what you must do to enjoy the smiles of your saviour in these last days.” The time had arrived when God would “set his hand again the second time to recover the remnants of his people,” and the Book of Mormon signaled this movement to restore Israel. Smith endeavored to defend the Book of Mormon as a credible record of the Native Americans and a scriptural document attesting to the covenants God had made with ancient American peoples. Americans had little time to accept the Book of Mormon before calamities attending the Second Coming would “sweep the wicked of this generation from off the face of this Land.”[2] After Saxton published only a few portions of his letter, Smith again wrote to the editor, this time in disappointment, stating that the previous editorial had been commanded by God and that by neglecting to publish the whole letter, Saxton risked staining his garments with the “blood of your readers.”[3] These letters resonate with a high pitch of apocalypse: embrace the validity of the Book of Mormon or suffer the devastation of the wicked; Joseph as prophet was sent to warn his neighbors of the impending upheavals and where to find protection, despite his lack of education or theological sophistication; the Bible had long foreseen these last days and prophesied of this kind of divine dealings and covenant relationships with humankind. Mormons as victims of Satanic counteroffensives to the work of God does not appear in this early appeal to join the movement.[4]

When Joseph Smith wrote to Isaac Galland in March 1839, he outlined the Missouri persecutions with vivid detail. Mormons’ character had suffered from misinformation and injury. Gangs of “ruffians and murderers, three times, in the state of Missouri” had broken them up under the guise of official state authority. Mobs forced persons of “low and worthless character” to swear falsely against the Mormons, then used such testimonies to justify robbing, plundering, and hunting them. Smith and others had faced mock trials and had been denied the rights of habeas corpus, which, of course, went against the legal tradition and constitutional rights granted by the federal government. “Long faced Baptists” and unreligious accusers threatened the Latter-day Saints, not genuine Christians, and so they now needed good neighbors more than ever. In the final analysis, these ruffians opposed Mormonism simply because “Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraced it felt himself at liberty to embrace every truth.” Smith dedicates the rest of the letter to expounding through reason and biblical verse why Mormonism is truth. In summary, he reasoned: the Bible plainly teaches that divine authority must accompany religious rites, otherwise they are not efficacious; no one can assume divine authority, such must be extended through priesthood ordination; through the laying on of hands, authority had been extended to Mormons; Mormons, therefore, practiced an authorized and acceptable mode of baptism. Smith then invites Galland to consider his doctrinal statements and provides a lengthy list of Bible verses for him to peruse.[5]

Smith focuses on the doctrine of baptism by proper authority, not the imminence of the Second Coming, and moves strategically through Mormon victimization toward the legitimacy of Mormon doctrine. One should take their doctrines seriously because of how apparently the Mormons suffer for holding to them. Not only do Mormons have a gospel worthy of Satanic opposition, but they can prove their case with the Bible alone. Theirs is a gospel that was anticipated by the Bible; their message retrospectively establishes how their gospel naturally flows and extends from New Testament prophecy. The Book of Mormon receives no mention here, only the Bible. Conversion to the truth of Mormonism through baptism becomes the point of action toward which Smith moves the reader. Smith now sees himself as the religious leader of these honorable and virtuous people who must battle the calumnies of false preachers.

Mormon missionaries during the 1830s employed this format of linking hostility toward Mormonism to proof of its divine origins and then directing the reader toward a correctly interpreted mode of baptism based on biblical theology.[6] Called by one historian the “father of Mormon pamphleteering,” Parley Pratt made strides in publishing and distributing tracts that defended and explained Mormonism.[7] In the preface of his famous A Voice of Warning, Pratt asks what is to be done to correct the public mind regarding the harsh treatment of Mormons. He answers by providing a correct account:

Having said so much to impress upon the human mind the necessity of hearing, and then judging, I would only add, that the object of this publication is to give the public correct information concerning a religious system, which has penetrated every state from Maine to Missouri, as well as the Canadas, in the short space of seven years; organizing churches and conferences in every region, and gathering in its progress from fifty to a hundred thousand disciples; having, at the same time, to sustain the shock of an overwhelming religious influence, opposed to it by the combined powers of every sect in America. What but the arm of Omnipotence could have moved it forward amid the rage of mobs? Having to contend with the prejudice of the ignorant and the pen of the learned; at war with every creed and craft in Christendom; while the combined powers of earth and hell were hurling a storm of persecution, unparalleled in the history of our country.[8]

Pratt then goes to the Bible to prove how biblical prophecy had been fulfilled in the advent of Mormonism. The spiritual gifts would attend true followers of Christ and would become manifest in the true Christian church immediately prior to the Second Coming. Pratt explains that the covenants of God remained in force and that wise Christians would seek the laws of the gospel and the means for entering the righteous covenant, thus averting themselves from the destructions of the last days.[9] Perhaps one of the lengthiest defenses of the Book of Mormon at this time, chapters three and four of A Voice of Warning establish how the book accurately describes the history of the Native American and how it qualifies as scripture. Here was solid evidence of the new covenant coming to the earth following biblical prophecy. Pratt urges the reader to convert to the Book of Mormon—and to submit to the proper mode of baptism.[10]

Other extant pamphlets of Mormon missionaries at this time follow a similar strategy. Pratt’s A short account of a shameful outrage (1835) makes a spectacle out of his own preaching while hostile listeners levied eggs at him. Trivial persecutions warranted consideration that the missionary preached a true message, so much so that Pratt took it upon himself to publish the account. That same year, Pratt also published a book of poems about the Millennium that situated the new religious movement at the very threshold of the day of earth’s renewal; he clearly felt that the Millennium was so near, it could occur at any moment. By the Nauvoo period, Pratt almost entirely concerned himself (in writing) with the persecutions the Mormons had endured and petitioning the public for support and redress. Orson Hyde’s A prophetic warning to all the churches (1836) resembled Smith’s letter to N. C. Saxton. “God will soon begin to manifest his sore displeasure to this generation,” Hyde wrote, “and to our own country, by vexation and desolating wars; bloody! bloody in the extreme! The war cloud will arise from an unexpected quarter. The hearts of many, in authority, shall faint, because they shall not know what measure to adopt to avert the calamities of war.” The course of safety lay in the new covenant that Hyde attempted to “prove from the scriptures” had now come to the Mormons after the Jews and later Christians had apostatized from the truth. Repentance by aligning with the new scriptures was the only way to avoid the forthcoming cataclysms.[11]

When directly asked to proselytize, Joseph Smith had adopted by 1839 the same format used by missionaries like Pratt and Hyde. He began by situating the Mormons within the biblical narrative of the children of Israel, and no better social dimension could do this than the Mormons’ own sufferings for their beliefs. Smith could not understand why outsiders would find their beliefs so offensive. Only the fact that they believed the original truth of the Bible which apostate Christendom had long before distorted through the creeds could account for any violence against the Mormons in his mind. What was the truth that others found so offensive and which Mormons embraced? That apostolic authority must attend a properly administered baptism for the ordinance to be salvific, and a rudimentary reading of the Bible would confirm this truth. Talk of the Book of Mormon did not come front and center, only biblical reasoning and the invitation to believe what the Bible clearly and succinctly affirmed was the proper mode of baptism. Smith had gone from the possessor of the key of knowledge regarding how to escape apocalyptic catastrophe in the Saxton letter to the possessor of the keys of apostolic authority to effectually administer baptism in the Galland letter. Just how directly early Mormon missionary pamphleteering influenced Smith’s evolution of self-identity remains to be seen, though his mission theology did develop parallel to the missionary literature of the 1830s.

[1] These letters include a petition to the Missouri Supreme Court on March 15, 1839; a letter to Presendia Huntington Buell on March 15; a letter to the church at Quincy, Illinois on March 20; a letter to his wife Emma Smith on March 21; a letter to Isaac Galland on March 22; a letter to Emma on April 4. Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1912), 3:277–81; Dean C. Jessee, ed., Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2002), 426–28; 429–47; 448–53; 454–62; 463–69.

[2] Jessee, 294–98.

[3] Jessee, 299–300.

[4] This letter follows a similar format to Lucy Smith’s letter of January 6, 1831 which she addressed to her brother, Solomon Mack, Jr. Her formula included explicating the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah regarding the restoration of the house of Israel and the forthcoming revelation of God now realized in the Book of Mormon. The wickedness of contemporary Americans evinced the fact that they lived in the Last Days and that the Second Coming was at the doors. She casts herself as a possessor of divine truth who must warn others of the disasters that would soon come and where to find protection. She delivers all of this in highly proselytizing language, urging the readers toward some kind of conversion (in particular, to the validity of the Book of Mormon). Joseph Smith and other Mormons seem to share in their overall mode of proselytism, specifically in strategy, form, and content.

[5] Jessee, 454–61.

[6] Mormon missionary pamphlets published before 1840 consist of the following: Parley Parker Pratt, A short account of a shameful outrage, committed by a part of the inhabitants of the town of Mentor, upon the person of Elder Parley P. Pratt while delivering a public discourse upon the subject of the gospel; April 7th, 1835 (Kirtland, OH: Messenger & Advocate Press, 1835); Pratt, The Millennium, a poem: to which is added hymns and songs on various subjects, new and interesting, adapted to the dispensation of the fulness of times (Boston: n.p., 1835); Orson Hyde, A prophetic warning to all the Churches, Of every Sect and Denomination, and to every Individual into who hands it may fall (Toronto: n.p., 1836); Pratt, A Voice of Warning and Instruction to All People, Containing a Declaration of the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Commonly Called Mormons (New York: W. Sanford, 1837); John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, (commonly called Mormons;) including an account of their doctrine and discipline; with the reasons of the author for leaving the church (St. Louis: John Corrill, 1838); Ephraim Owen, Jr., Mormons: Memorial of Ephraim Owen, Jr., Late of Green county, Indiana, now of Davis county, Missouri, Asking of Congress to afford protection to the people called Mormons, in the enjoyment of their civil rights as citizens of the United States; and complaining of loss of property, &c. (Washington, D.C.: Committee on the Judiciary, 1838); Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled: Zion’s Watchmen Unmasked, and its editor, Mr. L. R. Sunderland: Exposed: Truth Vindicated: the Devil mad, and priestcraft in danger! (New York: O. Pratt & E. Fordham, 1838); Sidney Rigdon, Oration delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon on the 4th of July, 1838, at Far West, Caldwell Co. Missouri (Far West: Journal Office, 1838); Francis Gladden Bishop, A brief history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, from their rise until the present time, containing an account of, and showing the cause of their sufferings in the state of Missouri, in the years 1833–38. And likewise a summary view of their religious faith (Salem, Mass.: Blum & Son, 1839); John P. Greene, Facts relative to the expulsion of the Mormons, or Latter-day Saints from the State of Missouri, under the “exterminating order” (Cincinnati: R. P. Books, 1839); Reed Peck, “The Original Reed Peck Manuscript,” n.p. (1839); Pratt, History of the late persecution inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons, in which ten thousand American citizens were robbed, plundered, and driven from the State, and many others imprisoned, martyred, &c., for their religion, and all this by military force, by order of the executive (Detroit: Dawson & Bates, 1839); John Taylor, A short account of the murders, roberies, burnings, thefts, and other outrages committed by the mob & militia of the State of Missouri, upon the Latter Day Saints (Springfield, Ill.: 1839).

[7] David J. Whittaker, Early Mormon Pamphleteering, Ph.D. diss. (Brigham Young University, 1982), 58.

[8] Parley Pratt, A Voice of Warning and Instruction to All People, Containing a Declaration of the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Commonly Called Mormons (New York: W. Sanford, 1837), ix–x.

[9] Pratt, 70–71.

[10] Pratt, 108–14.

[11] Orson Hyde, A prophetic warning to all the churches, of every Sect and Denomination, and to every Individual into whose hands it may fall, n.p. (1836).

I was pleased to see classmates discuss and debate the issue of analyzing religious truth claims as scholars (as opposed to adherents, or otherwise sympathetic observers). In our class on the life and thought of Joseph Smith, the problem of how to account for the production of the Book of Mormon led to a divide between those who recognize a place for considering the validity of Smith's claims and those that feel Smith should be judged only from a naturalist perspective (so long as we are doing academic work). In other words, the academy can only judge Smith within its own framework, and its framework does not include a recognition of the supernatural as valid. To qualify as supernatural, some phenomenon must therefore be beyond our ability to naturally observe. So, talk of angels and revelations falls outside of the natural realm that scientific and rational analysis can observe and offer explanations. This is well and good, until the object of inquiry involves behaviors, claims, and rational experiences of religious individuals. We face this issue head on in religious studies because our entire project precisely involves humans who affirm supernatural or unrational religious experiences.

The discussion evolved into something much more generic than a debate over Joseph Smith. And I believe this tension between what reason tells us and what we want to believe is at the heart of so much difference between groups of people, be they political, religious, academic, or cultural.

What I appreciate about postcolonial theory is that it acknowledges this tension and does nothing to dismantle it, ignore it, or resolve it. Rather, postcolonialism seeks the fundamental well being of humans from every walk of life, and therefore must acknowledge the validity of an exhausting array of epistemologies. So, a postcolonialist will say that the cosmology of the Native American is not invalidated by the scientific observations of the Westerner; on the contrary, the Westerner is guilty of imposing his cosmology on the Native American, so what does this say about the validity of such cosmology? Reason cannot explain why reason is valid, or why reason accurately explains reality any more than faith can explain why faith accurately explains reality. Postcolonial theory zeroes in on that fact to question the use of knowledge and discourse to install power relations and privilege one group of people over another. In other words, the modernist must ultimately trust that scientific observation leads one to truth without proof, just like everybody else, so who's to say that scientific observation be privileged over, say, an indigenous interpretation of reality? By what standard must we affirm empiricism over any other mode of interpreting reality?

I like the idea of using religious studies to study this thing we call religion, and if religion includes affirmations of the supernatural, so be it. I'm not convinced that this somehow threatens the reasonableness of our analysis. I do worry about apologetics in the academy only because I have observed in apologetic work a tendency to hold fast to one truth claim in the face of all other criticisms or points of view, and that's precisely what I criticize about academic or scientific elitism. The academic holds up reason and empiricism as the most valid interpretation of reality, yet can only use reason and empiricism to justify that view, which I don't believe necessarily justifies that assumption. The apologist does the same, just with specific claims. Everyone would fare better by looking for what resonates with his or her own sense of honesty and integrity as players in a universe that fills our senses and imagination with experiences we seek to explain adequately, be they academic, religious, fantastical, unrational, etc., always remembering the parameters of the discourse at hand (for the betterment of the discourse itself, and what it's trying to do).

If anyone ever wanted to know what gets my blood boiling to critical levels, it's when someone justifies the worst kinds of abuse to a child. I try to be an open-minded individual, though I recognize my own flaws at being consistently open-minded, which reminds me to always give some room in my mind to what someone proposes or argues, especially when it involves absolutes, like "A equals B, B equals C, therefore A equals C," etc. But I will admit to one absolute in political discourse that I unequivocally and uncompromisingly believe in regardless of what anyone may drum up to the contrary: sexual abuse of a child is always, always evil and completely unacceptable in every single context, every single one.

Roman Polanski sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in 1977, and there are actually people signing petitions for his release from extradition.

No, he really did sexually assault this girl. This isn't some kind of mistake that people are claiming happened to this poor man. The evidence was taken and catalogued and used in a court trial: they found semen on the girl's underwear the day after the assault, naked photographs of her he had taken, and Quaalude pills in his house. After the victim testified, Polanski was indicted for:

 

• furnishing a controlled substance to a minor
• committing a lewd or lascivious act upon a child under 14
• unlawful sexual intercourse
• rape by use of drugs
• perversion (oral copulation)
• sodomy

 

Court records indicate that the parents of the victim wanted to spare the girl the trauma of testifying in a criminal trial, which prompted them to work out a plea deal in which Polanski would plead guilty to one charge: unlawful sexual intercourse. His lawyers then managed a tricky maneuver where they got Polanski psychologically evaluated as part of the pre-sentencing procedures. This evaluation was ordered by the judge to last 90 days. They finished the evaluation in 42 days and Polanski posted bail. The judge got wind of this and tried to apply the brakes, signaling the possibility that he could sentence Polanski with the worst prison time possible for the crime. At this, Polanski fled to France.

France made sense: though his parents were Polish, he was born in France prior to their moving back to Poland just before Nazi Germany overran the country, and there he could escape extradition charges as a natural citizen of the country. He has remained in France until last week, safe from extradition to the U.S. to face his due sentence.

Now, some are calling for his release from a Genevan prison where he awaits the extradition process thirty years after his crime, many of them film industry colleagues like Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Polanski has had enough grief in his life, they say, because he lost his mother to the atrocities of Auschwitz and his wife was murdered by Charles Manson's family. Surprisingly, but not totally surprising, the victim herself has asked that L.A. County drop the charges, because the more this goes on, the more of a spectacle this poor woman becomes in the mass media; she just wants her right to privacy, for goodness' sake.

Can this be real? This qualifies for me as some of the most barbaric reasoning I have ever heard. Reminds me of some of the logic you hear when a soldier at war snaps and commits murder. "Well, he had endured so much atrocity..." Inexcusable. This was a child who was afraid of him. Regardless of the adult victim wanting her peace of mind, what kind of precedent does this set in our society to relativize children's rights? It's not enough that he drugged her, took all her clothes off, photographed her naked, began to have intercourse with her, realized it was unprotected so proceeded to commit sodomy on her, on a 13-year-old? How on earth can rational human beings relativize this?

I've felt for quite a while that Hollywood's morals had hit rock bottom and that their role as social commentators should be criticized and ignored. At least with this controversy (why is it controversial?) true colors emerge in bold relief. It's no mystery to me any longer exactly who perverts social experience on the screen, when they stand in solidarity in favor of a convincingly convicted child-rapist. You won't find me supporting Scorsese or any of the rest of those petition signers unless they reverse course.

I remember getting a paper back in an upper-division undergraduate class with the T.A.'s comments criticizing my work for not including more technical language. She said specifically that writing in "plain English" dummed down my work and did not address the concerns and thoughts of a scholarly audience. She couldn't find anything wrong with the arguments, evidences, or conclusions of my work, just with my tone and style. I pulled the T.A. aside after class and challenged her comments (and lower grade), and defended my opinion that scholarly language doesn't necessarily improve anything about the scholarship itself. She didn't budge, and I had to adjust my writing for the duration of the semester to placate this arrogant graduate student. (I say arrogant because she really did insist on her grade on the grounds that she "had experience in scholarly writing unlike" me, and that it would challenge me to improve my writing. Incidentally, her graduate degree program got scrapped the next year; some "experience" in scholarship as a department...)

One cannot write too many graduate-school papers without receiving admonitions to improve one's writing. Unfortunately, the feedback never explains very precisely how to improve the writing, and almost certainly the reader will leave out any considerations of prose. It's hard enough to grade a class' worth of 25-page papers, and I imagine my instructors focus on the main argument and evidences rather than on the syntactical expressions of those ideas. Yet, I find that I don't struggle through my ideas nearly so much as I struggle to adequately find expression for such: I know I understand what I'm thinking, it's communicating it to others that proves the real obstacle. When confronted with a block of this sort, I have generally found examples to lean on. For a good website design, I gather several ideas from other talented designers for inspiration; I study the chord constructions and progressions of other musicians to understand the building blocks of the most genius compositions; I read what strike me as excellent sermons before crafting my own talks and lessons for a church audience; I watch carefully the motions of the best golfers before swinging the club with my own hands; and so on. For some reason, I struggle to find exceptional and prolific examples of historical writing.
 
Prolific writers seem almost a dime a dozen. Just hit up the Barnes and Noble classics rack and there you have writers who have secured their place as the greatest. But when has a historical masterpiece gained the notoriety of a Shakespearean play or a Dostoevsky novel? I noticed the work of Edward Gibbon today as one publisher touted his Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire as the greatest work of historiography. But that same text came under fire in a past history class for its triumphalist prose and rushed judgments in many places. Gibbon certainly broke new ground with his work that had enormous impact; but learning from his prose would most likely invite the same old criticisms from my professors and colleagues.
 
Three books stood out to me last year for eliciting in me certain reactions. I decided to compare their opening paragraphs for their prose, whether they improve upon historical writing or what not.
 
Jon Butler's Religion in American Life begins with:
 
"The French Jesuit Pierre de Charlevoix was fascinated by the religious customs of the Algonquian-speaking Indians of southern Canada and northern New York and New England. In his two-volume Journal of a Voyage to North-America (1761), Charlevoix related many stories about Algonquian religion that seemed both wonderful and strange. Charlevoix was especially intrigued by Algonquian dreaming and its dramatic effect among traditional Algonquian believers. He was particularly taken by a story told to him by French Jesuit missionaries working among the Algonquian Indians. An Algonquian man dreamed that he had been a prisoner held by Algonquian enemies. When he awoke, he was confused and afraid. What did the dream mean? When he consulted the Algonquian shaman, the figure who mediated between humans, the gods, and nature, the shaman told him he had to act out the implications of the dream. The man had himself tied to a post, and other Algonquians burned several parts of his body, just as would have happened had his captivity been real."
 
Ronald Walker, et al., Massacre at Mountain Meadows:
 
"In April 1859, Brevet Major James Henry Carleton received the orders that would mark his place in Utah history. He and his First Dragoons were to escort Maj. Henry Prince, U.S. Army paymaster, on the first leg of his journey from California's Fort Tejon to northern Utah's Camp Floyd. But that was not all. 'When I left Los Angeles,' Carleton later explained, 'General [N. S.] Clarke, commanding the department of California, directed me to bury the bones of the victims of that terrible massacre' at the Mountain Meadows in southern Utah."
 
And Philip Benedict's Christ's Churches Purely Reformed:
 
"Although Martin Luther towered over the initial decades of the Reformation, Calvinism superseded Lutheranism within a generation as the most dynamic and widely established form of European Protestantism. Into the 1540s, the cause remained confined primarily to Switzerland and the neighboring regions of south Germany. Around midcentury it burst its fetters. Reformed churches took root and grew in defiance of the established authorities in France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and the vast Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. England's national church assumed a Reformed cast under Edward VI between 1547 and 1553 and permanently joined the ranks of Europe's Protestant kingdoms when Elizabeth I succeeded Mary Tudor in 1558. A growing number of princes within the Holy Roman Empire accepted the faith and imposed it upon their subjects. By the end of the sixteenth century, Reformed worship was established from Aberdeen to Alba-Julia and from Béarn to Brest-Litovsk. Soon, the colonizing efforts of England and the Netherlands would carry it to North America and South Africa as well."
 
Whether or not these three examples demonstrate excellent prose in historical writing, I've listed them above because my initial reactions to them came as a kind of good-better-best feeling. Butler's opening paragraph appears loaded with direct references to "Algonquian" persons and things, and he relies heavily on the "to be" verb. The authors of "Massacre at Mtn Meadows" provide a brief yet descriptive introduction to the time, place, and horror of the Mountain Meadows site shortly after the massacre events occurred. Benedict's introduction lacks nothing in terms of vocabulary, but he avoids overblowing his writing with puffery or overly scholastic language; I'm confident I could have read this introduction as a recent high school graduate and understood it. But how do Butler, Walker et al., and Benedict compare to others? Is there a Camus, Milton, or Wordsworth among the historians, or does historical writing require tedious or generic prose?