Des News Article Re: "Under the Banner of Heaven" Mini Series

[JLHPROF]

3 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Bluebell is making a compelling case. I had not considered her angle. How can a religion with as many millions of members/former members as we have not have at least a list a few out-of-control examples? For sure, several examples are horrible but what - 6 examples? 10? 20?

As I just said, it's not an issue of percentages.
It's an issue of the source.

[Calm]

31 minutes ago, Analytics said:

It depends upon which contemporary observer you ask.

Which is exactly what the article says, though I suspect you might see it as poisoning the well:

Quote

Contemporary observers that were not writing hostile anti-Mormon polemics recognized the truth of this as well

If you have contemporary sources that were not engaged in extensive criticism of the early church and culture that made comments about the high levels of violence by Saints, I would be interested to see them. 

[bluebell]

2 minutes ago, ttribe said:

[sigh] I'll just point out the part where I said - "...but the Mormon community shouldn't simply respond with a 'there's nothing potentially harmful' in our teachings or culture which could lead to bad acts. That simply isn't true." My sense in reading comments by many defenders both here and on Facebook is that they are trying to paint a picture which ignores the ugly teachings of Brigham Young and others upon which the Lafferty brothers relied to justify their crimes.

I don't think anyone is trying to ignore those teachings, only keep them in context and paint a picture that works with the actual incidents of historical violence in the name of the church.  I think that many here are also still trying to confront the accusation that "mormonism breeds dangerous men" when there is no evidence to support that, and some evidence that contradicts it (which Cal I believe has provided, IIRC).

It's a given that good things can also be warped and used as an excuse to do evil things.  It really doesn't matter what the "things" are.  I don't know that anyone needs to acknowledge that, but I guess people can spend time arguing that that should be happening whenever something bad happens in the name of something good (like love, for example).

The pragmatist in me doesn't see the point of such a requirement in general.

Now, if the data shows that something is producing a lot of bad acts--more bad acts than exists in the greater community--then yes, let's acknowledge that and work to change it.  Obviously there is more going on there than just humans being human if that is the case.

But I don't believe that anyone can support the idea that the teachings of the church--even the historical teachings--have produced more bad acts than have been produced by the greater non-mormon culture and ideology of the same time and place.

Evidence seems to suggest the opposite.  

 

[bluebell]

7 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

We have events that came directly from our religion too.

Yes, but very very few.  A handful out of 200 years worth of events.  If such events were the rule (were the common, understood, and accepted interpretation of such teachings) we would expect to see a lot more of them.

But we don't see that.  That is noteworthy.

  

[Calm]

Would an argument against gun control in the US be valid if they pointed to a dozen bombing incidents in a country with strong gun control laws and claimed that country was prone to violence…without looking at the overall incidence of violence there?

[pogi]

23 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

As I just said, it's not an issue of percentages.
It's an issue of the source.

It is an issue of percentages when there is not a "source" in history free from violence.  Should we truly judge the source by the statistically insignificant outliers?

 

 

[bluebell]

31 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I'll restate a point I made above. When Brigham Young went to the site of one of the coldest mass murders in U.S. history and saw the marker, he said it should read, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I have taken a little." That is from Wilford Woodruff's journal.

Was the mass murder really God "taking a little" of the vengeance that the Saints had been praying for? Maybe the mass murder wasn't sanctioned by the Church, but Brigham Young sure thought it was God carrying out his righteousness.

He might have (I really have not looking into those sources so I have no idea if they are seen as legitimate or not).  He lived through a pretty hard time with a lot of persecution and suffering and that would not surprise me at all if it tainted his view of things.  I don't think anyone could come through something like that and not have it warp them a little on some topics.  That's not an excuse for his sins (whatever they may have been), just an observation.

I'm guessing that BY was familiar with the idea that God uses the wicked to punish the wicked (since it's a theme throughout scripture) so it would not surprise me if he believed the MMM was a result of that (if he did, I would disagree with him).

[ttribe]

23 minutes ago, pogi said:

Ok, but that doesn't answer my question.  Are you suggesting that he is wrong in his assessment about a film that he was a producer and writer on?

I don't know DLB. I don't know what's going on inside his head. I suspect, based on previous things he's said about the church, that he is likely to say things with rather black-and-white tones and with a certain amount of shock value. I would be surprised if this series reflects that kind of attitude. I could be wrong.

[Calm]

24 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

think the question isn't the prevalence of quantity, but whether our religion was the legitimate source of the number that did occur?

How can you tell if it is a source?  Generally cause and effect involves having a control group, but that is impossible for history, so the best way appears to me to compare similar cultures and populations, one where certain beliefs existed and others where they didn’t, in this case NonMormon and Mormon cultures in the West in the mid to later 1800’s statistically compared.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Calm

[pogi]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

How can you tell if it is a source?  Generally cause and effect involves having a control group, but that is impossible for history, so the best way appears to me to compare similar cultures and populations, one where certain beliefs existed and others where they didn’t, in this case NonMormon and Mormon cultures in the West in the mid to later 1800’s statistically compared.

One problem with his approach is that it doesn’t consider the individual, their mental states, their personal histories of abuse/trauma etc.  There is no way of knowing how mental health played a role, or if placed in another context would they have had a tendency towards violence still?  One simply can’t implicate the “source” in good faith when the outliers are statistically insignificant.     
 

You can have a saint and a murderer raised from the source.  Same family even.   People with violent tendencies will make reasons for violence out of anything.  They don’t need a legitimate source to justify it.  

[ttribe]

49 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I don't think anyone is trying to ignore those teachings, only keep them in context and paint a picture that works with the actual incidents of historical violence in the name of the church.  I think that many here are also still trying to confront the accusation that "mormonism breeds dangerous men" when there is no evidence to support that, and some evidence that contradicts it (which Cal I believe has provided, IIRC).

It's a given that good things can also be warped and used as an excuse to do evil things.  It really doesn't matter what the "things" are.  I don't know that anyone needs to acknowledge that, but I guess people can spend time arguing that that should be happening whenever something bad happens in the name of something good (like love, for example).

The pragmatist in me doesn't see the point of such a requirement in general.

Now, if the data shows that something is producing a lot of bad acts--more bad acts than exists in the greater community--then yes, let's acknowledge that and work to change it.  Obviously there is more going on there than just humans being human if that is the case.

But I don't believe that anyone can support the idea that the teachings of the church--even the historical teachings--have produced more bad acts than have been produced by the greater non-mormon culture and ideology of the same time and place.

Evidence seems to suggest the opposite.  

 

Since you insist on pushing this, perhaps you can help me with the following -

• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from the Oath of Vengeance against the United States which was once in the Endowment?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from the oaths and penalties in the pre-1991 Endowment (which were mimicked by the Laffertys in the murders)?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young teaching the doctrine of Blood Atonement?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young's teachings on race?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young's 'javelin through the heart' teaching about adultery?

When you have a church with a prophet at its head, who then teaches violence, it gets interpreted by some as being from the church. When certain rites and rituals include images and symbols of violence, it gets interpreted by some as being from the church. The resulting use of those teachings, images and symbols for actual violence by some is a foreseeable outcome. Like it or not, the Laffertys are part of the legacy of such teachings. Like it or not, so are the LeBarons. Like it or not, Warren Jeffs is part of the legacy of the early teachings on polygamy. All of those things may have been abandoned by the modern church, but they are part of the legacy of its history. That's the story being told, in my opinion.

ETA: The concept of Mormonism is broader now that it was in the earliest days of the church. There are many offshoots from the main church which are still part of 'Mormonism' and which trace their roots to the same place(s).

Edited April 26, 2022 by ttribe

[JLHPROF]

21 minutes ago, pogi said:

One problem with his approach is that it doesn’t consider the individual, their mental states, their personal histories of abuse/trauma etc.  There is no way of knowing how mental health played a role, or if placed in another context would they have had a tendency towards violence still?  One simply can’t implicate the “source” in good faith when the outliers are statistically insignificant.     
 

You can have a saint and a murderer raised from the source.  Same family even.   People with violent tendencies will make reasons for violence out of anything.  They don’t need a legitimate source to justify it.  

You are assuming that all outlier instances were the actions of individuals.  Is there no small scale application for an inquisition, witch trial or crusade among our faithful?

38 minutes ago, Calm said:

How can you tell if it is a source?  Generally cause and effect involves having a control group, but that is impossible for history, so the best way appears to me to compare similar cultures and populations, one where certain beliefs existed and others where they didn’t, in this case NonMormon and Mormon cultures in the West in the mid to later 1800’s statistically compared.

It's safe to say the Catholic religion led to the inquisition.  The Protestants brought about the witch trials.  Have Church members ALWAYS officially dealt with heretics kindly and gently?  I would argue no.

[Calm]

Just now, JLHPROF said:

Have Church members ALWAYS officially dealt with heretics kindly and gently?  I would argue no.

I wouldn’t argue against that, but is it because of a belief or because we are human and have human weaknesses?

[Calm]

https://www.facebook.com/nate.oman.1/posts/10159051178453160
 

Quote

My take is that 19th-century Mormons weren't violent because they were Mormon. They were violent because they were 19th-century Americans. It was a violent country. Think Bleeding Kansas, the Civil War, native American dispossession, vigilantism, etc. However, as with everything else that they did, 19th-century Mormons wrapped their practices in religious rhetoric. For example, 19th-century Mormons were also, mainly, farmers. They wrapped farming in religious rhetoric. However, they weren't farmers because they were Mormons. They were farmers because they were 19th-century Americans.

It's also important to realize that 19th-century violence by Latter-day Saints wasn't evenly distributed across time. It wasn't as though there was a constant backdrop of Mormon mayhem and murder. Rather, violence occurred in two situations. First, the vast majority of ALL violence committed by Latter-day Saints in the 19th century came in 1857, during the Utah War when the U.S. government sent an army to Utah and the Mormons feared extermination on a grand scale based on their earlier experience in Missouri. 1856 and 1857 were also poor harvest years, which set the community on edge with fears of famine. Brigham Young and others made matters worse by initially whipping up hostility toward the invading outsiders. None of this reflects well on Latter-day Saints, and much of it was appalling, most notably the Mountain Meadows Massacre. However, it's the kind of violent tinder box that wars often create, regardless of religion.

The other instances of violence in 19th-century Utah mostly look like garden variety vigilante justice and violence against claim jumpers. This latter problem was particularly acute in Utah, because Mormon settlers were often legal squatters, despite having lived on land for years. Furthermore, federal policy was explicitly hostile toward Mormon property rights. Federal land law was seen as a way of undermining Mormon influence by keeping Latter-day Saint title to land precarious and finding ways of preferring competing "Gentile" land claims. In the absence of formal legal protection for vested property rights, some Latter-day Saints opted for violence. Again, the interaction between squatters' possession, legal ambiguity, and competing claims to land produced violence all over the American west. The difference was that in Utah this violence was actually more muted -- mainly because church courts successfully resolved competing claims to title among Latter-day Saints eliminating most of the demand for violence -- and, like everything else Latter-day Saints in that period did, wrapped in religious rhetoric ex post.

 

[JLHPROF]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

I wouldn’t argue against that, but is it because of a belief or because we are human and have human weaknesses?

It's not an either/or.  And it doesn't have to rise to the level of murder.

Our members and leaders (at least local) have often brought great harm to sinners and heretics, often following teachings and doctrine from the prophets and apostles.

[Vanguard]

28 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Since you insist on pushing this, perhaps you can help me with the following -

• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from the Oath of Vengeance against the United States which was once in the Endowment?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from the oaths and penalties in the pre-1991 Endowment (which were mimicked by the Laffertys in the murders)?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young teaching the doctrine of Blood Atonement?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young's teachings on race?
• What good, wholesome, uplifting thing came from Brigham Young's 'javelin through the heart' teaching about adultery?

When you have a church with a prophet at its head, who then teaches violence, it gets interpreted by some as being from the church. When certain rites and rituals include images and symbols of violence, it gets interpreted by some as being from the church. The resulting use of those teachings, images and symbols for actual violence by some is a foreseeable outcome. Like it or not, the Laffertys are part of the legacy of such teachings. Like it or not, so are the LeBarons. Like it or not, Warren Jeffs is part of the legacy of the early teachings on polygamy. All of those things may have been abandoned by the modern church, but they are part of the legacy of its history. That's the story being told, in my opinion.

ETA: The concept of Mormonism is broader now that it was in the earliest days of the church. There are many offshoots from the main church which are still part of 'Mormonism' and which trace their roots to the same place(s).

You're shifting the argument from the Church produces an inordinate amount of bad acts/violence, to how can certain things/beliefs in the Chruch be considered good? I don't believe bluebell was making the case that no bad things have happened but that their numbers are no more than what we would find in the community at large. That's different.

[ttribe]

Just now, Vanguard said:

You're shifting the argument from the Church produces an inordinate amount of bad acts/violence, to how can certain things/beliefs in the Chruch be considered good? I don't believe bluebell was making the case that no bad things have happened but that their numbers are no more than what we would find in the community at large. That's different.

Well since I've explicitly stated that I don't believe the church produces an inordinate amount of bad acts/violence, it seems you are attributing to me an argument I didn't make. 

[Tacenda]

This may not not be good for the church if they bring up any ties with early polygamy. https://www.saltlakemagazine.com/preaching-evil-flds-documentary/

[pogi]

12 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

You are assuming that all outlier instances were the actions of individuals.  Is there no small scale application for an inquisition, witch trial or crusade among our faithful?

It's safe to say the Catholic religion led to the inquisition.  The Protestants brought about the witch trials.  Have Church members ALWAYS officially dealt with heretics kindly and gently?  I would argue no.

This is where statistics come into play and why they are relevant.   Are these accounts in our religion statistically significant when compared to violence caused by mental health issues in the general public?  You are the one who seems to be making assumptions. I am suggesting that we can’t jump to conclusions.  I don’t see good evidence of trends of violence in our religion when compared to anything else.  We are talking about a handful of outliers, not the inquisition. 

[ttribe]

Some comments from someone (Anthony D. Miller) who has seen the first two episodes:

Quote

I wanted to do a post of my thoughts after watching a private screening in SLC of the first two episodes of FX's, Under the Banner of Heaven series that will publicly release on Thursday on Hulu.

I think the first two episodes do a really nice job showing a spectrum of Mormon experience. One critique of the Book was that it didn't do this.

 

The lead character, Jeb Pyre, is a fictional, active believing member of the LDS Church, who is the lead law enforcement investigator of the Brenda and Erica Lafferty murders.

 

The character is a good man, a believing Church member, loves his family, cares about truth and justice, and while not perfect, he represents in the first two episodes the kind of Mormon I tried to emulate. It is a very devotional and committed expression of Mormonism, which while not exactly the same, it rhymes with the version of Mormonism that I experienced as a believing member in my youth and young adulthood.

Brenda Lafferty is represented similarly, as a good, believing Church member, who genuinely wanted to make a positive difference in the world. So far, I think the series honors her.

 

Brenda's parents and siblings are also represented as mainstream, good people, active believing Church members.

 

The other police officers who work with Jeb Pyre are also represented as good, thoughtful men.

 

There is a non-Mormon detective who adds well to the story so far.

 

Then, there are complexities shown of the more patriarchy influenced, more literalistic, anti-government, sometimes violent dynamic of some members of the Lafferty family.

 

Today, they'd likely be represented by supporters of the Bundys when they took up arms against the Government, or when they took siege of a Government facility. Or maybe, they'd be represented by believing Church members who also subscribe to QAnon type theories, or perhaps even believe we are on the verge of an armed Civil War. They quote scripture and teachings of past Church leaders as the source of their versions of Mormonism. At least, that is my take.

 

Part of the story of the series includes flashbacks, as well as references to LDS Church Historical events, teachings, narratives, and to Restoration scripture. So far, the purpose of including those things seems to offer Jeb Pyre context that might help him in his investigation of Brenda and Erica's murders, and motive related to how the killers interpret Church teachings, History, and scripture.

 

In the flashbacks to Church History, Emma Smith is represented as a very strong person--even as a hero, I'd say.

 

Some of the content in first two episodes is quite uncomfortable.

 

I would say that at least from what I've seen so far, the critiques of the series as an attack on the LDS Church either don't recognize the work the actors and writers put in to show the positive and good versions of Mormonism, or they are focusing on the versions of Mormonism that actually merit calls for increased transparency and critiques.

From what I watched in the first two episodes, the series shows Mormonism breeding good men and women, as well as some dysfunction with some related to patriarchy and harsh interpretations of things, as well as violence too.

 

I don't think it is accurate to suggest that the series suggests that Mormonism breeds violence in men. It does in some men, but not all men.

 

But, I've only seen the first two episodes, and many in the media were able to preview the first five episodes.

 

I am excited to watch and to discuss the remaining episodes. I'm excited to witness the discussions that happen across the spectrum of Mormonism--including the critiques.

 

My hope would be that the Series could have a similar impact for things Mormonism that the movie Spotlight impacted Catholicism. Maybe that is too hopeful, but we shall see.

 

[Vanguard]

30 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Well since I've explicitly stated that I don't believe the church produces an inordinate amount of bad acts/violence, it seems you are attributing to me an argument I didn't make. 

Then why did you quote bluebell on an argument she didn't make?

[ttribe]

Just now, Vanguard said:

Then why did you quote bluebell on an argument she didn't make?

Did you actually read the back-and-forth between she and I? If so, it's not obvious. I'm also quite sure she can respond for herself.

[Vanguard]

Just now, ttribe said:

Did you actually read the back-and-forth between she and I? If so, it's not obvious. I'm also quite sure she can respond for herself.

While I don't doubt you both are going back and forth, you're comments from her most recent post did not connect with what she said. It would be nice for you to include the actual post you claim you were referring to.

[ttribe]

2 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

While I don't doubt you both are going back and forth, you're comments from her most recent post did not connect with what she said. It would be nice for you to include the actual post you claim you were referring to.

Oh, good grief. I'm under no obligation to help you through the reading process. There are several elements to the discussion between she and I and I'm not going to multi-quote them into a single, enormous, unwieldy post.

[Vanguard]

5 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Oh, good grief. I'm under no obligation to help you through the reading process. There are several elements to the discussion between she and I and I'm not going to multi-quote them into a single, enormous, unwieldy post.

I've looked back at the last several posts she has made including an even earlier one with you. I don't see it. Are you sure you're addressing the right thread?