Reading about her in several diaries, Brigham let her do about anything she felt like. I guess this was one of those things :)

http://www.utlm.org/images/brighamyoungswivesandestate/bywives5_cott_folsom_webb_barney.jpg

that a lot of Cult members in the early 1900s word crosses. Anyone know when the official (or is it like everything in Modumb, "unofficial") ban on them started.

As noted, the following wasn't the case in Brigham Young's day...

http://www.suite101.com/content/why-dont-mormons-use-crosses-a73560

>Why Don't Mormons Use Crosses?

>Crosses Predate Christianity

>The sign of the cross existed well before the time of Jesus, meaning that it is not an exclusive symbol of Christianity. Ancient pottery and artwork predating Christianity features cross symbols.

>In some instances, crosses are merely decorative. In others, they are used to symbolize various pagan gods or goddesses. The cross didn’t become a Christian symbol until a few hundred years after the death of Christ.

>Crosses Were a Tool for Execution

Sister Evans could use some history lessons; this one is from an LDS reporter...

http://wildernesschristianity.net/info/LDS/The-Cross.html

Mormons and the cross
Peggy Fletcher Stack
Salt Lake Tribune

>Now a historian at California State University in Sacramento claims in a just-completed master's thesis that Mormon aversion to the cross is a relatively recent development in LDS history, prompted in part by anti-Catholic sentiments.

"It first started at the grass-roots level around the turn of the 20th century, " Michael Reed argues in the thesis, "The Development of the LDS

"It later became institutionalized during the 1950s under the direction of LDS Prophet David O. McKay," Reed writes.

A bit of a plug for RFM seems in order... Mike Reed first came here when I was a newbie, and he was a TBM apologist. And trust me, we tangled... Now he's a self-described agnostic who posts on some other sites and has visited here as well...

And about 19h Century Mormons branding cattle with a cross?

>"The Paiutes left the scene with a few animals and whatever trinkets, tinware, and clothing they could carry, but the whites took control of the livestock and the wagons. According to most accounts, Klingensmith, Haight, and Lee distributed the loot from the massacre. Most of the surviving stock was driven to Iron Springs, where Klingensmith, John Ute, George Hunter, and Ira Allen spent a day marking fifty cows with a cross, the church brand. Others say Haight told Klingensmith to take the wagons and goods to the tithing office in Cedar City." (footnoted)

(Will Bagley, "Blood of the Prophets"; p. 171)

Thanks for the replies, but can someone explain why the church have such an adversion to it, other than their lame explanation of "We don't want to be reminded of an accident, such as crashed cars etc" which I and I'm sure others were told. At alt.mormon where I use to post, a Mormon gal told of getting a cross necklace from a Christian school friend and had refused it because she's Mormon. But than again, I got accused of wearing a satanic symbol over my Star of David necklace.

Since we tangled in the past and I was pretty tough on him, I feel I owe him a bit of praise for his scholarship, which has received deserved praise.

The "anti-Catholic" explanation seems entirely plausible to me; Steve Benson has posted here in the past about LDS disdain for Catholicism as touted by Bruce R. McKonkie...

I don't see a lot of rational explanations for bigotry myself; we know that JS was "far less racist than Brigham Young" and actually endowed some blacks with the PH, for example. Yet Young's views held sway for over a century...

Some areas of LDS dogma, for example, do have easy explanations; we note that in BY and JS's day the issue of the Saints drinking liquor wasn't huge, but when Heber J. Grant became LDS leader, it was suddenly verböten... This was during the U.S. Prohibition era...