Benjamin E. Park

“At Mountain Meadows, competing visions of the American Kingdom of God met head on.” So states a new article by esteemed historians Sarah Barringer Gordon and Jan Shipps in their new article, “Fatal Convergence in the Kingdom of God: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American History,” Journal of the Early Republic (link here). This is a paper that has been nearly a decade in the making. I remember them presenting a very early (and very different) version at MHA quite a few years ago, and then helping workshop a drastically revised edition at the Danforth Center a few years later. I’m thrilled to finally see it in print. And though it has changed over the years, its main thesis is pressing: historians need to do better at centering religion in the story of Mountain Meadow’s tragedy.

This may be the most important article on the massacre that doesn’t explicitly deal with the massacre itself. Rather, the massacre mostly provides a launching point to discuss the fervent, patriarchal, and violent trends of Mormon and Methodist faiths in the antebellum period. We have too often succumbed to the oppositional language of religious competition, Gordon and Shipps argue, because Methodists and Mormons were much more similar that typically depicted. This makes the massacre all the more grisly and intimate. Once we remove the artificial distance between the perpetrators and victims, the tragedy’s relevance to America’s broader history is much clearer.

The article provides a very thoughtful and provocative overview of John D Lee, the leader of the Mormon atrocity, and Alexander Fancher, the Methodist captain of the ill-fated migrant company. Both lived lives full of violence, migration, and religious fervor. They exhibited the extremes of the faith’s traditions, as well as the mundane nature of patriarchal rule in their homes and congregations. Gordon and Shipps trace their movements across a terrain filled with conflict, slavery, and, again, violence. This is not so much a history of these two individuals,  or even of their denominations they represent, but rather of their age and its many paradoxes.

The article also has a lot to say concerning the historical craft. While there are a lot of records for Lee and the Mormons, the authors assume that similar records from the Fancher party were probably destroyed at the massacre. How do we reconstruct both sides of the conflict? How do we treat the many reminiscences and partisan accounts? Gordon and Shipps spend many pages turning to the reader and directly addressing these questions. This is one of those few articles that make sophisticated historiographical as well as historical points. Because of this, it would likely work well in the classroom with advanced undergraduate students.

So was the Mountain Meadows Massacre a religious event? I must admit I’m not completely convinced. While Gordon and Shipps are persuasive in showing that religion has been overlooked in the historiography, and they impressively demonstrate how central religion was in the lives of the massacre’s participants (especially in how they got to that southern Utah desert), it has yet to be seen how religion played out on that bloody field itself. But in using the massacre to explain the world that both led to it and made it possible, this is an important an thoughtful study.

The journal also includes responses from the paper by Ari Kelman, an expert on Civil War-era America, and Laurie Maffly-Kipp, a leading scholar on Mormonism. They both praise the article while also prodding it in insightful ways. Together, the article and its responses are a great example of scholarly rigor and dialogue. I hope to see similar formats going forward.

It took two years, but my children finally became addicted to the Hamilton soundtrack. I played it for them on the way to the waterpark a couple Saturdays ago and they have wanted to listen to nothing else since. It seemed fitting, then, that the most recent issue of Journal of the Early Republic has a roundtable focused on the play, its meaning, and its shortcomings. (For some reason, JSTOR and MUSE don’t have the issue up yet, and the JER website doesn’t feature the TOC; I had access through my university’s EBSCO account.) All but one of the entries (there are six in total) are presentations from last year’s SHEAR conference. Besides a brief introduction by editor extraordinaire Catherine Kelly, the other contributors are Joanne Freeman, Andrew Schocket, Heather Nathans, Marvin McAllister, Benjamin Carp, and Nancy Isenberg. I strongly recommend it.

As with any roundtable with so many essays, it would be a fool’s quest to try to summarize them all here. But here are a few of my favorite thoughts:

• Joanne Freeman, a Hamilton expert who has certainly been a (deserving) winner in this Hamilton moment, placed the play within the long trajectory of Hamilton’s image in American culture. “From the dawning of the republic to the present day,” she explains, generation after generation has created a Founding narrative that served their needs, with Hamilton’s reputation rising and falling accordingly” (258). At various times condemned as an example of federal overreach and corruption and heralded as a visionary for the modern federal state, the story of Hamilton is the story of American political culture. In the Age of Obama, the celebration of “an immigrant striver” reflects its broader context (259). However, at every moment, especially the present, this leads to overlooking other key features of Hamilton’s past, especially his elitism. It is up to historians to “take full advantage of the spotlight” and teach the complexity and paradoxes of the nation’s founding (262).
• Andrew Schocket is a noted expert of America’s “founders culture,” and he situates Hamilton within a genre he calls “American Revolution rebooted” (264). This genre, he argues, is a conversation that has taken place over the past few decades over our founders and what they mean for the present. Seen in this context, Schocket argues that the play is not nearly as, well, revolutionary as sometimes depicted. In fact, there are other contributions to the genre that are more revolutionary when it comes to race and gender.
• Heather Nathans, a professor of drama, shows that Hamilton is far from the first play to depict the guy as as a key character. In fact, there were at least nine dramas just before the Civil War that invoked Hamilton as either a character or by reputation (272). And a constant feature in these works: the complex engagement with slavery. “Miranda is just one of many contemporary playwrights who have struggled with how to re-present slavery’s violent past,” Nathans explains (276).
• A specialist in African American theater, Marvin McAllister directly addresses racial representation. More than just “fan fiction,” as some observers have argued, McAllister says that Hamilton presents “an aspirational vision of what the nation could be” (283). Such a vision is outside of history, of course, even as it appropriates history for its own purposes. But this “exciting idealization of America” obscures the real struggles that have taken place (288). It will be up to future scholars, dramatists, and activists to build on the idealistic vision.
• But is Hamilton historically accurate? Benjamin Carp says that might be the wrong question to ask. Attendees should know that it’s not accurate history–the characters are breaking out into song and dance, after all. Rather than wondering if it is “good history,” we should rather ask, “is it good for historians?” (292) At its best, the play asks intriguing questions regarding how history and myth are constructed. It is left to historians to take advantage of the doors that are opened.
• Nancy Isenberg, as you might expect, is not as optimistic. She worries that by merely celebrating the play, historians are abdicating their duty to hold popular memory accountable. She says the historical errors in Hamilton are not peripheral, but “massive” (296). The play distorts Hamilton’s personality and, especially, his commitment to power structures. (I especially enjoyed her discussion of the “faux-feminism” politics in the play [299].) Hamilton is not helping the promotion of accurate and useful history. “Americans ought to feel uncomfortable about their collective past,” she concludes. “We look foolish otherwise, as cheerleaders of American exceptionalism” (303).

I appreciated Isenberg’s critiques, though at times I wondered if she was constructing a strawman. The only people she cites for uncritically celebrating Hamilton are not historians, and there have been plenty of scholars who have offered nuanced critiques of the play that have helped shape public discussion. That includes Isenberg‘s essays, as well as those by Annette Gordon-Reed and, especially, Lyra Monteiro. (I assigned the latter’s provocative and smart essay in my undergraduate class last Fall.) But while I fall more on the side of Benjamin Carp and Marvin McAllister, who said he welcomes, “without question…the dramaturgical and representational perfect storm” (281), I really appreciate Isenberg critical stance. At the least, it provokes discussion—in a very persuasive way!—which is the purpose.

I’m currently putting together an Age of Hamilton class for next Spring Semester to coincide with the play arriving in Houston. I look forward to assigning this roundtable, and I’m sure it will prompt great dialogue.

Happy reading!

Today it was announced that the LDS Church would stop using using the Boy Scouts of America’s Varsity and Venturing programs, which are designed for 14- to 18-year-old young men. While they will still enroll younger boys, between 8 and 13, in the Cub and Boy Scouts, this is a big move. (You can read the Church’s official release here, and excellent news coverage here.) Largely thanks to Mormon boys automatically enrolling in the BSA, around twenty-percent of Boy Scouts nation-wide are LDS. Ceasing the Varsity and Venturing program will take away around 130,000 boys–more than 5% of the entire scouting body. And given that the Church’s commitment to the younger scouting programs seems shaky–are those programs really less “difficult to implement within the Church” than Varsity and Venturing?–it appears that’s just a temporary stop-gap to lessen the complete blow of separation. I assume a full detachment from the BSA is in the near future.

The Boy Scouts program has long played a crucial role in LDS youth. For Mormon leaders, the program provided a way to develop a certain sense of masculinity and responsibility. It also provided an avenue toward Americanization: previously seen as aliens to America’s cultural body, Mormon communities could prove their patriotism through their participation in the most red-blooded of all American institutions. The results were plentiful: a disproportionate number of eagle scout awards are earned by Mormon boys; weekly youth activities often revolved around completing the criteria found in the boy scout handbook; frequent scouting award ceremonies were held in church buildings, mingling religious fraternity with secular achievements; organized scout camps became a rite of passage; and at least once a year, many wards would hear pleas for members to contribute to the “Friends of Scouting” program.

I can tell you that as someone who never really bought into scouting, it was all a bit overwhelming.

But the BSA was an increasingly awkward fit for the modern LDS Church, on at least two fronts. First, the affiliation required local units to spend far more money on young men programs than it did young women. This inequality of resources has been a point of contention, especially with the younger generation’s growing disillusionment with Mormonism’s gendered structure.

And second, in an expanding global church that tries to correlate practices and programs across cultures and continents, the fact that American youth programs were based on a different set of expectations was odd. From outside American borders, the LDS attachment to the Boy Scouts of America seemed a remnant of a parochial institution.

This is why, in some ways, the Church’s distancing itself(and eventual disassociation altogether) from the BSA should come as good news. This will allow resources to be more equally distributed throughout local congregations. (Or at least, it will make continued inequality even more indefensible.) And the Church can feel more comfortable that their youth across the globe are receiving a more correlated experience. Given the Church’s penchant for developing and instituting its own programs, they should be ready to move on in a post-BSA world without much problem.

But there is another cultural trajectory that led to this separation, and it doesn’t have as positive a spin. Or at least as progressive a spin. In recent years, due to both change at the leadership structure as well as external influence, the BSA has been forced to ease up on some of its more traditional practices. They announced that they would admit gay scouts in 2013 and transgender scouts this year. They also decided to allow gay men to serve as troop leaders. The latter move seemed especially dire to the LDS Church, as they released a statement saying they were “deeply troubled” by the decision. They even threatened that “the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined.” Today’s announcement proves they were not bluffing.

And though the Church’s insistence that recent news the BSA might allow girls into their scouting programs did not play a role in this move, it is hard to imagine this gendered barrier meant nothing. The writing seemed on the wall for the past few years given recent developments. In the end, it is unlikely that a challenge to the LDS church’s gendered structure for youth did not play into the decision.

So while many progressives may applaud the Church’s decision to move toward ending their affiliation with the Boy Scouts, others might see the move as further proof of the world’s corruption. Even the Boy Scouts, the narrative will go, were prone to be swayed by popular opinions. Part of me worries this will lead to even further retrenchment and isolation. Only time will tell.

Also, as Bryan Waterman put it on twitter, “How will all those young men get their drivers’ licenses without becoming Eagle Scouts?” It’s an important question.

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(As a footnote: this decision makes me wonder of Thomas S. Monson’s state of health. Of all the big supporters of the Boy Scouts at the LDS institutional level, Monson was the biggest. Even those who expected a separation to take place between the two organizations didn’t think it would come before Monson’s death. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart, or perhaps his increasingly diminished health has led to a concomitantly diminished voice in these matters.)

A couple weeks ago I highlighted Laurie Maffly-Kipp’s presidential address which appeared in the recent issue of Journal of Mormon History. That issue also featured another article I wanted to highlight: Barry A. Joyce’s “The Temple and the Rock: James W. Leseur and the Synchronization of Sacred Space in the American Southwest.” Joyce is an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware who has done excellent work on historical consciousness in America. He is currently working on a history of shared sacred space in the American Southwest. This article is a spin-off of that larger project, as Mormons in Arizona, drawing from a larger LDS tradition of mesoamerican imagination, prove a potent case study.

The article’s title references to an odd feature on the Mesa Temple grounds. In 1924, Lesueur oversaw the placement of a petroglyph-covered rock (weighing 8,860 pounds!) from the San Tan Mountains, a region filled with remnants of previous indigenous populations. Among the etchings on the great stone are what Lesueur believed to be “an exact reproduction of a similar character in a copy of the characters which Joseph Smith copied from the plates of the Book of Mormon and gave to Martin Harris.” Despite this shaky justification, the rock remains near the temple today.

Joyce digs into LeSueur’s life as a way to explain this Mormon fascination with indigenous artifacts. What is well known is how members of the LDS faith have long believed Native Americans to be the descendant of Book of Mormon people. What is not always acknowledged is how that belief fit within a broader cultural phenomenon of sacralizing the colonized lands of the American southwest. LeSueur was a journeyman who moonlighted as an armchair archeologist and anthropologist dedicated to understand the civilizations who had come before in his state of Arizona. To him, these were chosen people whose legacy still had relevance for today. He led tours, wrote books, and even published a tourism pamphlet that explained the sacred ground upon which Arizonans walked.

I won’t say too much more about the article, rather than how refreshing it is to see an article in the JMH dedicated to proving the relevance of a Mormon story to outside scholarship. I strongly recommend it.

Most of the attention yesterday, May 4th, was on the congressional vote repealing the Affordable Care Act. With good reason. But just up the road from the Capitol, President Donald Trump also signed his thirty-fourth executive order. Titled “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,” the order counseled the Department of the Treasury not to pursue punishment of religious leaders or institutions who speak out “about moral or political issues from a religious perspective.” (It also called for support of religious institutions who claim objections from preventive care, but that’s another issue.) Put simply, the order takes aim at the “Johnson Amendment,” or a bill that prohibits political activities by non-profit organizations. That included churches. Under the law, a religious institution could face serious financial penalties, including losing tax-exempt status, for doing things like endorsing candidates. Since the executive branch can’t merely revoke the bill—though the order encourages the legislature to do exactly that—it does seek to weaken it by requesting the Treasury not to enforce it. This theoretically means that religious organizations can now speak out on political matters and political leaders to their hearts’ content without fear of federal retaliation.

It’s a shame the bill will be overshadowed by the health care debate, because it is a conversation that America needs to have. Polling seems to imply that a majority of Americans don’t want their churches to endorse candidates. Experts have pointed out that this action can enable an infusion of even more cash into the public sphere, as churches can now serve as non-taxed super-pacs in support of a campaign or cause. There will (hopefully) be plenty of coverage by legal scholars and tax nerds to better explain what this will mean going forward.

But I’m a historian. So I want to briefly talk about what the executive order means within America’s long tradition of “religious liberties.” Or at the very least, I want to make two broad points. First, compared to the first century of America’s existence—the religious “founding” referenced in Trump’s order itself—this is a drastic shift from previous practices. But put in the context of the last few decades, the executive order is more a reflection of contemporary circumstances. That is, the revocation of the Johnson Amendment is simultaneously radical and commonplace.

Trump’s executive order is correct that most early Americans believe religion played a crucial role in politics. As scholars have demonstrated, much to Thomas Jefferson’s chagrin, religion became even more important following the Revolution. Even after disestablishment, or the ending of “established” religions at the federal and local levels, most assumed that religious ideals still infused political action. In the vacuum of federal oversight over ecclesiastical practice, a Protestant establishment quickly dominated the mainstream and dictated cultural norms. Put another way, religious regulation was merely privatized. Those on the margins were bullied into submission. Alexis de Tocqueville called this the “tyranny of the majority.” Religious groups were still in control.

But Protestant culture had to draw the line somewhere. They did so by denouncing the practice of clerical interventions into political actions. As Spencer McBride recently demonstrated, the American clergy learned that they had to walk a tight line of teaching political principles without manipulating electoral activities. Ministers teaching their congregations values and judgements were fine; ministers telling their congregants how to vote would be an infringement on the personal conscience.

Those who transgressed these boundaries faced the wrath of angry neighbors. The most obvious examples are the Mormons and Catholics, who quickly come to mind because I’m writing a paper on the topic this very week. Critics accused these groups of corrupting the democratic process through clerical directives. One newspaper editor argued that while the Mormons “have the same rights as other religious bodies,” as soon as they “step beyond the proper sphere of [a] religious denomination, and become a political body” they lose the right to appeal to religious liberty. Another wrote that this “clannish” principle was foreign to American soil and similar to what the Catholics had done in their communities. Indeed, another early anti-Mormon claimed that the LDS Church was “natural allies” with “Romanism” and its un-democratic activities. Joseph Smith’s involvement in state elections was one of the factors that would eventually lead to his death. In the 1840s, ecclesiastical intervention into electoral politics was a major offense worthy of both legal and extralegal retaliation.

Flash forward over a century. Lyndon Johnson sponsored what came to be known as the “Johnson Amendment” in 1954 without any controversy. Even in the midst of a religious resurgence in America—this is the same period that “One Nation Under God” became a national motto and “In God We Trust” was added to our currency—there remained broad support for keeping non-profit organizations out of explicitly partisan activities.

Yet the regulations were never really enforced, especially in recent decades. This is true for both sides of the political divide. Most famous is the Religious Right, a coalition in the 1980s that grouped religious and conservative voices behind Ronald Reagan. Jerry Falwell and other spiritual leaders spoke clearly and directly on political issues. They would no longer watch from the sidelines. Two decades later, Jerry Falwell Jr. was one of Donald Trump’s foremost spokesmen. As a result of this historical thrust, 81% of white Evangelicals voted for the otherwise non-religious GOP candidate in 2016. In many ways, Trump’s attack on the Johnson Amendment is a vindication of their support.

But conservatives are not the only people who benefited from the amendment’s lack of enforcement. African-American churches have long been outspoken on political issues, and they were often at the forefront of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, especially in the South during the primaries. Liberal religious groups have vehemently supported same-sex marriage, social justice, and tax reform for quite some time. The Religious Left may not nearly be as organized and powerful as its conservative counterpart, but it is far from non-existent.

So this is all to say that while Trump’s executive order may appear radical when compared to America’s long-form history—and that the order’s appeal to a particular religious founding is quite baseless—it is actually more a reflection of recent trajectories than a disruption from them. (Ironically, the LDS Church has stated they don’t plan to take advantage of the new rules.) The real changes have been quietly happening over the past half-century, and federal policy is only now beginning to catch up. The weakening of the Johnson Amendment, then, is not so much a new direction as it is the culmination of a trek already taken.