As we all know, Mormons love to talk about how they overcame all sorts of severe persecution, God blessed them, they became a successful people and settled the intermountain west....yada yada yada....you all know the story.

My thoughts are this...for a very long time, I believed the church narrative that the Mormon persecutions were a unique chapter in American history. But were they?

Were there any other religious denominations in the middle 19th century that were persecuted into extinction and we never hear about them because there is nobody alive today to tell their story? Was Mormon persecution really as unique as they say it is? So far as I know, the extermination order that was issued in Missouri has no other parallel. But maybe I am wrong.

There are two sides to every story. What we heard as Mormons was the Mormon side of the story. One person's persecution is another person's retaliation for bad behavior.

Joseph would pick a town, tell his followers that God wanted them to have that town--the new Zion. They would move in en masse and take over with bad behavior and schemes that made the original town's people miserable. When people had had enough, they did what was necessary to correct the situation. They basically made people mad has hell and those people reached a point where they just weren't going to take it anymore.

It wasn't persecution meted out to the Mormons for the most part. They were just getting their comeuppance--a deserved punishment.

I can't stand hearing Mormons play the persecution card.

Don't forget, Joe was leader of his own army, called himself king, had the Danites to do his dirty work, and printed his own money. On top of that his sexual adventures were legendary. The so-called persecution was not Mormon lambs to the slaughter like the Mormons want you to think. The Mormons were like parasites that would choke the life out of towns. It is not surprising that the townspeople and even the government felt that something had to be done.

Persecution is a spin that Mormons, even today, like to put on problems that they created by their own actions.

Joe Smith was famously tarred-and-feathered in OHio, but there is reason to believe it was not for his beliefs but for his propositioning of an underage girl. His secret polygamous marriages with other underage girls coming to light gave that side of the story credibility (to me, at least). The Mormons fled Ohio because of the collapse of the illegal Kirtland (Non)Bank; yet the Mormons spin it that the regulators somehow had it out for them, The Mormons were not completely innocent in days leading to the Hawns Mill, Missouri event. The extermination order was due to ongoing skrimishes between the Mormons and Missouri Militia. The Mormons couldn't get along with other settlers, even after they had been given their own county. The Mormons fled Nauvoo after widespread polygamy and criminal treatment of underage girls was brought to light by the publication of the Nauvoo Expositor and subsequent burning of the presses of that newspaper. So among all the Protestant religions in existance in the American Frontier, the Mormons couldn't get along with people in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. Who's fault would that be?

Finally the Mormons persecuted others themselves, most infamously the Mountain Meadows Massacre where over a hundred people were killed.

You may want to read books such as "Massacre at Mountain Meadows" by William Wise.

He talks about how those poor persecuted mormons were kicked out of everywhere because they were monsters.

I totally agree with the premise that the Mormons were never the meek little lambs that they have made themselves out to be. However, to be fair, the extermination order signed by Gov. Boggs and the subsequent expulsion of the Mormons really did happen. I find that to be impossible to justify no matter how awful or deluded the Mormons back then actually were.

My question though isn't whether or not the Mormons deserved what they got, but rather if they were unique in the annals of American history. I know Mormons love to point to their persecutions as some sort of proof of truthfulness of Mormonism (supposedly because the work of God will always be strenuously opposed by Satan and his minions). But were the Mormons unique in this regard, or were there other religions that were just as harshly persecuted as the Mormons? I'd love to show that Mormon persecution wasn't unique, that strange cults in the 1800s often encountered fierce opposition.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2017 06:48PM by Strength in the Loins.

Well, there was an entire political party dedicated to opposing the Masons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party

"The Anti-Masonic Party was formed in upstate New York in February 1828… Opposition to Masonry was taken up by some churches as a religious crusade, particularly in what became known as the Burned-over district."

Right before the BOM was written, and right in JS' neighborhood no less. IMO this was probably the inspiration for the Gadianton Robbers.

As for whether the extermination order was justified, there was a good informative thread on this not long ago, started by a TBM complaining about it.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1969409

There was a lot if anti catholic sentiment.

In New York from 1777 until about 1810 Catholics coould not hold public office. Near Boston in the same time period a convent was burned to the ground

At one time there was a lot of persecution against quakers.

As always the Jews had it bad as well in the same period.

>>There was a lot if anti catholic sentiment.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. "Persecution" might be too strong a word for it. I think in most cases it was more a case of discrimination along the lines of, "No Irish need apply here," etc.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2017 11:33PM by kathleen.

Strength in the Loins,

Governor Boggs wasn't the first one to issue an "Extermination Order."

The first Extermination Order came from the mouth of Mormonism's very own Sidney Rigdon to be enacted upon Gentiles--anyone not a Mormon.

But, you won't hear that in Gospel Doctrine class.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2017 11:33PM by kathleen.

Yes, Sidney Rigdon gave the Salt Sermon-- threatening to kill off the inhabitants.

The Danites had already engaged in so much evil that the people and Gov. Boggs were in a panic. Threatening to exterminate Mormons was for the purpose of driving them out of the state. I do wish, though, that they had gotten rid of Joseph instead of just locking him up. I guess he got "leg bail", but I wish he hadn't.

It's amazing to me that that self righteous prick Joseph smith lived as long as he did.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2017 07:56PM by Aquarius123.

Quoth Martin Harris:

"They should have killed him sooner!"

Just Google the topic “Puritan persecution of Quakers” and you will have your answer. America’s claims to religious freedom is historically peppered with many episodes of persecution of the “others.”

My take is that the early Mormons had a habit of making themselves unwelcome wherever they went.

That's right, kathleen!

In 1642, the Colony of Virginia enacted a law prohibiting Catholic settlers. Five years later, a similar statute was enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1719, Rhode Island imposed civil restrictions on Catholics.

In the 1830s and 1840s, prominent Protestant leaders, such as Lyman Beecher and Horace Bushnell, attacked the Catholic Church as not only theologically unsound but an enemy of republican values. Some scholars view the anti-Catholic rhetoric of Beecher and Bushnell as having contributed to anti-Irish and anti-Catholic pogroms.

Beecher's well-known Plea for the West (1835) urged Protestants to exclude Catholics from western settlements. The Catholic Church's official silence on the subject of slavery also garnered the enmity of northern Protestants. Intolerance became more than an attitude on August 11, 1834, when a mob set fire to an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics.

The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856.


(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United_States)

Hmm. A nativist/nationalist party that runs on hatred of "not us." Now where have I heard that recently? "Know-Nothing" is an apt name.