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Will Bagley Lecture Live In Slc 9/7/11


John Larsen

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Posted

One of the speakers at the recent FAIR Conference compared critics and their fixation on Mormon "blood oaths" to Amelia Bedelia, the character in children's fiction who takes figurative expressions so literally as to be absurd, with comical results.

Now that's clever...I am now imagining Will Bagley dressed up in an apron and hat. If only I knew how to photoshop.

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Posted

Thanks for addressing these Kevin. My issue with Bagley's use of Mormonism Unveiled links it to Isaac Haight's alleged prayer circle held after the massacre, wherein the participants thanked God that they were able to live up to their covenants to avenge the blood of the prophets. The source never appears in Mormonism Unveiled, though Bagley cites it as being so. While Lee may have very well provided the overall corpus of the book, it's obvious that Bishop exaggerated several portions of it, contra Bagley's claim that Lee was the sole author.

Any clue where the claim for this alleged event might have originated from?
Posted

Any clue where the claim for this alleged event might have originated from?

It managed to turn up in Juanita Brooks' biography of John D. Lee as well, though I haven't had time to hit the stacks and check Brooks' source. Google Books hints at it, but I can't source-check online.

If it did happen, and I think it's likely that it did, it wouldn't be entirely out of character. Prayer circles outside the temple were common during the period. D. Michael Quinn's work on the subject gives a brief overview of the practice. http://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFLibrary/19.1Quinn.pdf

As for whether they were thanking God that they were able to take vengeance into their own hands remains questionable. As Pahoran has noted earlier in the thread (and I'm very much inclined to agree with him on the matter), it's clear that the Saints were praying that God would enact His vengeance upon their enemies, corresponding with such passages in the Bible as Rev. 6:9-10 and in the Book of Mormon, Mormon 8:40-41.

I'd love to start a thread on the Law of Retribution, but it would probably be closed and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. The FAIR article on it is good, and eventually I'd like to add my own research to it beyond what others have published.

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