Violence in Early Mormonism - Was It All Unjust Persecution?

MRM ^ | Bill McKeever

[MHGinTN]

Selective/elective ignorance ... they kind of hope it will just fade away as an issue. But please, don’t ping the BBgunner.

[Godzilla]

In Greek mythology, Mormo was a spirit who bit bad children, said to have been a companion of the goddess Hecate. The name was also used to signify a female vampire-like creature in stories told to Greek children by their nurses to keep them from misbehaving.

The words "mormo" and "Mormon" are found in Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, 1974, p. 1169:
mormo, n. a bugbear; false terror. [Obs.]
Mormon, n. [Gr. mormon, a bugbear.]

the puffins, a genus of sea birds characterized by a short, thick beak.
MORMON ARCTICUS
http://www.audubon.org/bird/BoA/images/00766p1.jpg

[m-] the mandrill
Simia Mormon
http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/webimages/0/6000/200/6234_med.jpg

[FastCoyote]

This whole thing about how kind and pure Ole Joe was misses the following:

Smith led the raid on Zion which was a war party to kill Gentiles stopped only by cholera.
Regarding Boggs extermination order, it was preceded by Rigdon’s Salt Sermon. Moreover, if Boggs were so evil, why didn’t he bump off Smith at Liberty Jail?

Of course, it is likely Smith order an assasination attempt on Boggs
[In his home, on the rainy evening of May 6, 1842, Boggs was shot by an unknown party who fired at him through a window as he read a newspaper in his study. Boggs was hit by large buckshot in four places: Two balls were lodged in his skull, another lodged in his neck, and a fourth entered his throat, whereupon Boggs swallowed it. Boggs was severely injured. Several doctors—Boggs’ brother among them—pronounced Boggs as good as dead; at least one newspaper ran an obituary. To everyone’s great surprise, Boggs not only survived, but gradually improved.

Meanwhile, the crime was investigated. Sheriff J.H. Reynolds discovered a revolver at the scene, still loaded with buckshot. He surmised that the suspect had fired upon Boggs and lost his firearm in the dark rainy night when the weapon recoiled due to its unusually large shot. The gun had been stolen from a local shopkeeper, who identified “that hired man of Ward’s” as the most likely culprit. Reynolds determined that the man in question was Orrin Porter Rockwell, a close associate of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr.. However, Reynolds was unable to capture Rockwell.

Some Mormons saw the assassination attempt positively: An anonymous contributor to The Wasp, a pro-Mormon newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois, wrote on May 28 that “Boggs is undoubtedly killed according to report; but who did the noble deed remains to be found out.”[citation needed] Rockwell denied involvement in oblique terms, stating that he had “done nothing criminal”

]

Smith was according to the Nauvoo Expositor and other sources hiding fugitives in Nauvoo as well.

So, in short, Smith was a criminal who was trying to foment a Civil War.

[SkyPilot]

As you well know, Joseph was never convicted of any crime.

My brother went to prison for white collar crime.

He gets out this October. We (and he) acknowledge his guilt. He is paying his debt. It isn't easy. Ask his wife and boys.

What did Joseph Smith do when confronted with prison?

He didn't act as my brother did and act within the Law, did he?

In fact, I would like to ask my brother how many prisoners get pistols to shoot at others while they are in jail awaiting trial?

Awaiting Trial?

Hey - that's a concept Old Mountain man! Why didn't Joseph Smith accept his Trial? Jesus had 7 Trials.

He accepted all of them, and didn't hit or oppose his accusers.

[SkyPilot]

We can, however, go back and forth about Joseph Smith's arrest and death......forever....

The debate has to end at some point.

What I would really like to know is what you think about this? I have explained its origins on this thread, so there is no mystery about why I bring it up.

Why is the Inverted Pentagram on a Mormon Temple?

Are you going to try and feed me the LDS propaganda that the Pentagram (which is even recognized by the FBI as a Satanic Symbol in their criminal investigations) is simply misunderstood like this ridiculous posting?

The Ancient Pentagram - A Christian Symbol

[MHGinTN]

“Why is the Inverted Pentagram on a Mormon Temple?” ... Because it was a Masonic image that the early founder didn’t comprehend?

[Colofornian]

Concerning this particular thread, I found the arguments that Joseph Smith was not a "martyr" at all to be with foundation - simply because Smith was in jail for offenses which would be considered criminal even today....to wit:
- Threats and Assault {Intentionally or knowingly causes physical contact with another when the person knows or should reasonably believe that the other will regard the contact as offensive or provocative}
- Destruction of Private Property {Willful injury to private building and or property. Damage to materials of construction project. Arson. Trespass, generally, and other offenses.}
- Felonious Sexual Assault {Engages in sexual penetration with a person, other than his legal spouse, who is 13 years of age or older and under 16 years of age where the age difference between the actor and the other person is 3 years or more}

I call to the witness stand, the original wife of Joseph Smith, widow Emma Hale Smith, an admitted foe of polygamy.

Mrs. Emma Hale Smith, did you or did you not confide with Joseph Smith's personal secretary, William Clayton, as to what your opinion was that "did in" Joseph?

(Yes I did; Mr. Clayton recorded it in one of his six journals he kept from 1840 to 1853).

And did you at that time place the blame of Joseph's death upon the "assassins?"

(No I did not)

And did you at that time place the blame of Joseph's death upon either a mob or non-Mormons in general?

(No I did not)

Well, then, by all means, please tell us what you told Mr. Clayton.

I believe it was these "secret things which had cost Joseph and Hyrum their lives." (these 10 words are from p. 144 of Clayton's journal)

And you're referencing secret polygamy?

(Yes)

That will be all. I now call the Nauvoo Expositor publisher and former Mormon William Law to the witness stand.

Mr. Law, according to a report from Lyndon W. Cook, BYU Studies 22 in the Winter of 1982 (p. 66), did you not put your arms around Joseph Smith, Jr.'s neck and tearfully plead for him to toss out the entire extracurricular "business" of plural marriage?

(Yes, I did)

And what was Smith's response to you then?

(He told me, also in tears, that he couldn't--that God had commanded it, and that he had no choice to obey)

Did you stand by Smith and publicly deny rumors of church-sanctioned polygamy even after it had been going on for some time?

(Yes. I wrote a piece in Times and Seasons on July 1, 1842, entitled "Much Ado About Nothing.")

But that piece didn't hold up even two years, did it? For on June 7, 1844, in the only edition of the Nauvoo Expositor--due to Joseph Smith's order of its destruction, you essentially knew that printing about the seduction of young women by Smith and others; the ensuing ruination of innocent reputations; and the secrecy of sexual liaisons in the name of religion -- all recorded in your call to repentance upon your "brethren" would bring these accusations of ugly adultery and attempted seductions to the surface...did you not?

(Indeed. We wanted repentance so that old orthodoxies and old teachings from the Book of Mormon would be restored)

Instead, what happened?

(The Expositor was destroyed by Mormon leaders)

So Mormon leaders from the top down engaged in suppression of a free press?

(Yes)

So, as other witnesses have already told us, at the beginning of that second week of June in Nauvoo, Joseph, being Mayor, presided over an unusual city council meeting where fears were expressed by Smith and other Mormon leaders as to what could happen if the Expositor kept on publishing. Therefore, he labeled it a "nuisance" and order it destroyed.

[Old Mountain man]

Why are you going from a lynch mob to a pentagram? Talk about flipping around. Lets get back to the protestant lynch mob. Is that your favored method of trial and conviction? Isn’t that what you are saying?

[Old Mountain man]

Wow, so you too favor a lynch mob as a method of trial. This thread is very revealing of what you “Christians” believe.

[Colofornian]

...lynch mob as a method of trial.

(Oh you mean the earlier June 1844 "lynch mob" of Mormons who attacked & destroyed personal property, committed vandalism, all at the order of Mayor Joe Smith? That wasn't mob action? Joe Smith declared Law and the Expositor as being "guilty" of being a "public nuisance" and had a "conviction-by-city-council" trial).

You know, few excuse the behavior of Jack Ruby's action in a Dallas basement. So it doesn't mean, if someone trying to get at the guilt or innocense of Oswald, raises the evidence against him after-his-death in a mock trial.

It's illogical of those who raise the likely guilt of Oswald to be accused of supporting his death via Ruby. (try again)

[Enosh]

*Snarl-slobber...Woof!*

LOL! Poor guy...

[Graybeard58]

place mark

[Osage Orange]

Interesting hit piece. What are you people going to do if we start posting hit pieces on your churches?M

BTTT

[Osage Orange]

The crickets are loud this morning..........

[Osage Orange]

I for one....would be interested in how you explain the inverted pentagram on a mormon temple.

Thanks-

[Old Mountain man]

I, for one, have no intention of doing enough research to do so. If you are so curious, look it up. The subject is lynch mobs of protestants.

[Godzilla]

“It may be admitted that some of [Smith’s ancestors] believed in fortune telling, in warlocks and witches... Indeed it is scarcely conceivable how one could live in New England in those years and not have shared in such beliefs. To be credulous in such things was to be normal people.”
- LDS Historian B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 6 vols., 1930, v. 1, pp. 26-27

“Many of the earliest Mormons, including [Oliver] Cowdery, Martin Harris, Orrin P. Rockwell, Joseph Knight and Josiah Stowel, were rodsmen or money diggers but became Mormons for religious reasons.”
- Marvin S. Hill, LDS historian, “Secular or Sectarian History: A Critique of No Man Knows My History,” Church History, v. 43, p. 86, March 1974

[ejonesie22]

So are the bats that inhabit a couple of the belfries, if you know what I mean...

[Gamecock]

I think the inverted pentagram is worthy of it's own thread. I've never heard of it in the Mormon context, but I'm sure it would rate up the with the Hollow Earth theory.