Anti-Mormonism
Anti-Mormonism refers to individuals, literature, and media that are opposed to the beliefs, adherents, or institutions of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement as a whole. It may include hostility, prejudice, discrimination, persecution, and violent physical attacks targeting Mormons and the Latter Day Saint movement.
Opposition to Mormonism began before the first Latter Day Saint church was established in 1830 and continues to the present day. The most vocal and strident opposition occurred during the 19th century, particularly the forced expulsion from Missouri following the 1838 Mormon War, during the Utah War of the 1850s, and in the second half of the century when the practice of polygamy in Utah Territory was widely condemned by the majority of Americans. Opponents of polygamy believed that polygamy forced wives into submission to their husbands and some described polygamy as a form of slavery.
The largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Modern-day opposition generally takes the form of websites, podcasts, videos or other media primarily criticizing the LDS Church, or protests at its large gatherings, such as its semiannual general conference, outside of Latter-day Saint pageants, or at events surrounding the construction of new temples. Scholars hold that the church's historical claims are false, while some non-Latter-day Saint Christians teach that the faith is non-Christian. Critics claim that it is a religion based on fraud or deceit on the part of its past and present leaders.
Most Americans accept Mormonism as a valid faith, and in 2012, the US presidential candidate Mitt Romney's membership in the LDS Church was described as "non-issue" in that year's election. Despite this, the percentage of Americans who stated that they would not be willing to vote for a Mormon president had increased from 25% in 2008 to 34% in 2012.
The FBI began tracking anti-Mormon hate crimes in the United States in 2015 and have noted an increase in incidents over time.
Origin
The term, "anti-Mormon" first appears in the historical record in 1833 by the Louisville Daily Herald in an article, "The Mormons and the Anti-Mormons". In 1841, it was revealed that an Anti-Mormon Almanac would be published.Dozens of publications had strongly criticized Mormonism since its inception. In 1834, Eber D. Howe published his book Mormonism Unvailed. The Latter Day Saints initially labeled such publications "anti-Christian", but the publication of the Almanac and the subsequent formation of an "Anti-Mormon Party" in Illinois heralded a shift in terminology. "Anti-Mormon" became a common self-designation for those opposed to the religion.
Today, the term is primarily used as a descriptor for persons and publications active in their opposition to the LDS Church, although its precise scope has been the subject of some debate. Some use it to describe all thought perceived as critical of the LDS Church. Siding with the latter, less-inclusive understanding of the term, Latter-day Saint scholar William O. Nelson suggests in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism that the term includes "any hostile or polemic opposition to Mormonism or to the Latter-day Saints, such as maligning Joseph Smith, his successors, or the doctrines or practices of the Church. Though sometimes well-intended, anti-Mormon publications have often taken the form of invective, falsehood, demeaning caricature, prejudice, or legal harassment, leading to both verbal and physical assault."
Reaction
Many of those who have been labeled "anti-Mormon" object to the designation, arguing that the term implies that disagreement or criticism of Mormonism stems from some inherent "anti-Mormon" prejudice, rather than being part of a legitimate factual or religious debate.Even some members of the LDS Church who write negatively about it have had their writings labeled anti-Mormon. Ex-members who write about the LDS Church are likewise frequently labeled anti-Mormon, even when their writings are not inflammatory in nature. The debate on who is "anti-Mormon" frequently arises in Mormon discussions of authors and sources.
Stephen Cannon has argued that use of the label is a "campaign by Latter-day Saints to disavow the facts presented by simply labeling the source as 'anti-Mormon'". Critics of the term also claim that Mormon authors promote the ideal of a promised heavenly reward for enduring persecution for one's beliefs.
Those individuals and groups who challenge Mormonism, particularly those who approach the challenge from an evangelical Christian perspective, would generally sustain that they do, in fact, have the best interests of the Mormon at heart.
History
Opposition to Mormonism in Smith's lifetime
The Latter Day Saint movement—its devotees being known as Mormons—arose in western New York, the state in which its founder, Joseph Smith, was raised, during a period of Christian revivalism in the early 19th century. Smith claimed to have had visions involving God, Jesus, and angelic Native American prophets. His claims were often not received well by those in the community in which he lived, which is evident in the following excerpt from Smith's account of LDS Church history:In New York and Pennsylvania, anti-Mormonism concerned whether Smith had factually encountered the so-called golden plates; whether those plates belonged to the people rather than Smith; whether Smith had genuine visions ; Smith's treasure-digging episodes; and his alleged occult practices. In Ohio, anti-Mormons focused on the ill-fated banking efforts of the Kirtland Safety Society and other failed economic experiments, including the United Order.
In Missouri, once the major gathering place of Latter-day Saints, members tended to vote in elections as a voting bloc, wielding "considerable political and economic influence," often unseating local political leadership and earning long-lasting enmity in the sometimes hard-drinking, hard-living frontier communities. The apparent differences between Latter-day Saints and the broader community culminated in hostilities and the eventual issuing of an executive order—later becoming known as "the Extermination Order" by the LDS Church—by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs, which declared "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State." Three days later, a renegade militia unit attacked a Mormon settlement in Hawn's Mill, resulting in the death of 18 Mormons and no militiamen in the eponymously named Hawn's Mill massacre. The so-called Extermination Order was not formally rescinded until 1976.
In Nauvoo, Illinois, persecutions were often based on the tendency of Mormons to "dominate community, economic, and political life wherever they resided," writes Drew VandeCreek of Northern Illinois University. The city of Nauvoo had become the largest in Illinois, and its city council was primarily composed of Latter-day Saints; the Nauvoo Legion—a militia composed of Mormons from the city—had grown to a quarter of the size of the U.S. Army. Other issues of contention included the LDS Church’s doctrine on polygamy; freedom of speech; Smith's anti-slavery views expressed during his presidential campaign; and the LDS Church's doctrines on exaltation and human deification. After the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor printing press and institution of martial law, Joseph Smith was arrested on charges of treason against the State of Illinois and incarcerated in Carthage Jail, where he was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob on June 27, 1844. Anti-Mormon persecution became so severe in Illinois that most of the residents of Nauvoo fled across the Mississippi River in February 1846.
In 1847, Mormons established a community hundreds of miles away in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. Beginning in 1849, every federally appointed official left Utah under duress from Mormon pioneers. In 1857, President James Buchanan determined that the Mormons in the territory were rebelling against the United States government. In response, Buchanan deployed one-third of the US Army to Utah in 1857 to engage in what became the Utah War.
Early publications
Much of the anti-Mormon sentiment during that period was expressed in non-Mormon publications, which appeared very early in LDS Church history. In his 2005 biography of Joseph Smith, Richard Lyman Bushman cites four 1838 pamphlets as anti-Mormon: Mormonism Exposed by Sunderland, Mormonism Exposed by Bacheler, Antidote to Mormonism by M'Chesney, and Exposure of Mormonism by Livesey.The first was authored by Origen Bacheler, who had no direct contact with any Latter-day Saints. It included a debate between him and Parley P. Pratt, though Pratt's side was omitted. Bushman notes that the author's rhetoric was similar to that of many other polemicists of his era, offering insight into the type of material viewed as anti-Mormon. The pamphlet described Joseph Smith as a "blockhead," a "juggling, money-digging, fortune-telling impostor," and, along with the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, as "perhaps the most infamous liars and impostors that ever breathed.... By their deception and lies, they swindle them out of their property, disturb social order and the public peace, excite a spirit of ferocity and murder, and lead multitudes astray on the subject in which they have the deepest interest." He expressed outrage at "the miscreants who are battening on the ignorance and credulity of those upon whom they can successfully play off this imposture." He called the Book of Mormon "the most gross, the most ridiculous, the most imbecile, the most contemptible concern, that was ever attempted to be palmed off upon society as a revelation." He believed the religion "can be viewed in no other light than that of monstrous public nuisances, that ought forthwith to be abated" and that the Mormons were "the most vile, the most impudent, the most impious, knot of charlatans and cheat with which any community was ever disgraced and cursed." Antidote to Mormonism describes Mormons as "miserable enemies of both God and man—engines of death and hell." M'Chesney described combat with them as being "desperate, the battle is one of extermination." Bushman described the characteristics of these anti-Mormonism materials as sensationalizing actuality:
British author Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, the novel in which the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance, includes a very negative depiction of the early Mormon community in Utah after its migration westwards and the foundation of Salt Lake City. Mormons are presented as violent, rigidly intolerant, and corrupt, systematically terrorizing both members of the LDS Church and non-Mormon neighbors as well as forcing polygamous marriage on Mormon girls against their will.
Later in his career, Conan Doyle apologized to the Mormons for his depiction of their religion. During a 1923 tour of the United States, Doyle was invited to speak at the LDS Church's Salt Lake Tabernacle; while some individual Mormons remained deeply upset over the negative depiction, in general, the Mormons present received him warmly.