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Curious Gentiles and Representational Authority in the City of the Saints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Eric A. Eliason
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Extract

The erection of a State of the Union whose population consisted of Turks or Afghans would not be a worse blunder fraught with more dangerous consequences than the creation of a State composed of Mormons.

— C. E. Dutton, an American geologist who surveyed Utah several times during the 1870s.

R T. Barnum, the great circus promoter, came to Salt Lake City to meet Brigham Young. The Church President jokingly asked Barnum, “Well, how much money do you think we could make if you were to put me on display back East?” Barnum answered, “Mr. President, I guarantee you half the receipts which will be in excess of $200,000 a year because you would be the greatest show in town.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Summer 2001 , pp. 155 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2001

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References

Notes

Special thanks is due to my research assistant, Patrick C. Madden, who helped organize and scan the images for this article. William H. Goetzmann, Richard Cracroft, Ed Cutler, Stephanie Smith Eliason, Dennis Cutchins, and Nick Mason all contributed valuable feedback.

1. Dutton, C. E., “Church and State in Utah,” Forum 5 (1888): 320 Google Scholar.

2. From P. T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, as quoted in Moore, R. Laurence, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 118 Google Scholar.

3. “Deseret” means “honey bee” in the language of the Jaredites—a people chronicled in the Book of Mormon. Mormons hoped their society would emulate the cooperation and industry of a beehive (Book of Mormon, Ether 2:3). While technically Utah was administered as a U.S. territory, Mormons sought the autonomy of statehood and prepared for what they hoped was Coming by having the theocratic shadow government of Deseret administer much of the region's affairs. See Dale L. Morgan, “The State of Deseret,” Utah Historical Quarterly 8 (April, July, October 1940): 65-239; Campbell, Eugene E., Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847-1869 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988), 201-31Google Scholar. For a critical look at Mormon government from a presentist point of view, see Bigler, David L., The Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

4. Brigham Young chose apostle Orson Pratt to make the public announcement. See Arrington, Leonard J., Brigham Young: American Moses (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 323 Google Scholar. “Polygyny” is the technical term still used by anthropologists for marriage forms involving more than one wife. More broadly, “polygamy” is any marriage form involving more than two people. “Polygamy” has popularly come to mean “polygyny” largely because it somehow came to be applied to Mormon marriage practices which are perhaps the most familiar example of a multiple marriage culture in the Western world. The theological justification for plural marriage can be found in a revelation received by Joseph Smith and recorded in the Latter-day Saint Scripture the Doctrine and Covenants, section 132.

5. As Foucault and many others have pointed out, Victorians generated discourse about sexuality quite vigorously in subaltern, scientific, and (beginning in a few elite circles) therapeutic forums. Taboos did not halt discussion of sex but probably increased it—draping it with a lurid sense of titillation. This is the main point of Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1978)Google Scholar.

6. Fifer, J. Valerie, American Progress: The Growth of the Transport, Tourist, and Information Industries in the Nineteenth-Century West (Chester: Globe Pequot Press, 1988), 285 Google Scholar.

7. See “‘They Ain't Whites… They're Mormons’: Fictive Responses to the Anxiety of Seduction,” in Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction ofHeresy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 121-52.

8. Stocking, George W. Jr., Victorian Anthropology (Toronto: Free Press, 1987), 324 Google Scholar.

9. See also Williams, Raymond, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 87–93 Google Scholar.

10. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 302.

11. One of the few dissenting voices in the view thatcivilizationwas evolving away from more immediate and “supernatural” forms of religiosity (which Tylorian theory held were illusory and based on incorrect thinking) was Andrew Lang, who argued that animism was based on not flawed reason but actual supernatural experience (ibid., 320).

12. Reynolds, David S., Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 3–11 Google Scholar.

13. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 303, 317.

14. See Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978)Google Scholar.

15. “A Cambridge Clergyman,” Mormonism or the Bible? A Question for the Times (Cambridge: T. Dixon, 1852), and “A Clergyman,” Mormons, the Dream and the Reality; or, Leaves from the Sketch-book of Experience of One who Left England to Join the Mormons in the City of Zion, and Awoke to a Consciousness of Its Eronius Wickedness and Abomination (London: Joseph Masters, 1852).

16. Paddock, A.G., In the Toils: or, The Martyrs of the Latter Days (Chicago: Shepard, Tobias, 1879)Google Scholar; Fuller, Metta Victoria, Mormon Wives: A Narrative of Facts Stranger than Fiction (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856)Google Scholar; and Switzer, Jennie Bartlett, Eider Northfield's Home; or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, the Story ofthe Blighting Curse of Polygamy (New York: J. Howard Brown Company, 1882)Google Scholar. This genre of sensationally titled woman-escapes-from-the-Mormons narratives has not completely died out. Consider for example the successful paperback by Laake, Deborah, Secret Ceremonies: A Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond (New York: Island Books, 1993)Google Scholar.

17. Maria Ward [pseud.], Female Life among the Mormons: A Narrative of Many Years’ Personal Experience by the Wife of a Mormon Eider Recently from Utah (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1858), 237.

18. Young, Ann Eliza, Wife No. 19, or The Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Expose of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy (Hartford: Dustin, Gilman & Co., 1875), 321 Google Scholar.

19. Amanda Dickinson, “Polygamy Degrades Womanhood,” Women's Journal, March 29, 1870, 29.

20. “Orientalist” is meant here in the dual sense of “compared to the Orient” as well as in the Saidian sense of a view manufactured by colonial culture that reveals more about the preconceptions of the colonizers than the native culture ostensibly under investigation. See Said, Orientalism. For examination of the Orientalist nature of anti-Mormon literature, see Givens, The Viper on the Hearth, 4, 15-16, 130, 132.

21. Myres, Sandra L., Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 (Aberquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 90 Google Scholar. For a general overview of anti-Mormon polemics, see Charles A. Cannon, “The Awesome Power of Sex: The Polemical Campaign against Mormon Polygamy,” Pacific Historical Review 43 (February 1974): 61-82.

22. For an analysis of the subliterary culture, see Billington, Ray Allen, The Origins of Nativism in the United States, 1800-1844 (1933; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Two books exerted an especially powerful impact on nineteenth-century America: Monk, Maria, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, As Exhibited in a Narrative ofHer Sufferings during a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years as a Black Nun, in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal (New York: Howe and Bates, 1836)Google Scholar, and Lippard, George, The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall; A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery and Crime (Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart and Company, 1876)Google Scholar.

23. David Brion Davis, “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (September 1960): 205-24. For anti-Catholic literature in particular, see Pagliarini, Marie Anne, “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America,” Religion and American Culture 9, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 97–128 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While such writing was not leveled only against Mormons, its application to the new religion produced the first North American Version of ancient blood libel legends and helped anti-Mormonism to emerge as a still-thriving social and intellectual movement itself worthy of study—America's homegrown bigotry in response to America's homegrown religion. Just as stereotypes of blacks as sexually aggressive, and Indians as “Indian givers,” can be fruitfully interpreted as psychological inversions of the true nature of white Americans’ interaction with these groups, so too can the image of Mormons secretly plotting to do violence to their Gentile neighbors be fruitfully regarded as an inversion of the more common reality. For Maria Ward's exposure as a fraud, see Richard F. Burton, City of the Saints and across the Rocky Mountains to California (New York: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861; reprint, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 229. It is perhaps worth noting that a “ward” is the term used by Mormons for the fundamental unit of church organization—the geographic area that makes up one congregation. To a Mormon, “Maria Ward” would have religious connotations like “Maria Church,” “Maria Parish,” or “Maria Monk” might have for other Christians.

24. See Sarah Barringer Gordon, “The Twin Relic of Barbarism: A Legal History of Anti-Polygamy in Nineteenth-Century America” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1995).

25. Paddock, A. G., The Fate of Madam La Tour: A Story of the Great Salt Lake (New York: Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1881), 366 Google Scholar.

26. Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Introductory Preface,” in Mrs.Stenhouse, T. B. H., “Teil it AU”: The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism (Cincinnati: Queen City Publishing, 1874)Google Scholar.

27. During about five years in the 1850s and 1860s, more Mormons lived in England than in the Utah Territory. Continuing migration and slowing conversion rates reversed this. See Arrington, Leonard J. and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 127-44Google Scholar.

28. For a general overview of Mormon defenses of plural marriage, see “The Blessings of the Abrahamic Household,” in Hardy, Carmon G., Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 84–126 Google Scholar; and Whittaker, David J., “Early Mormon Polygamy Defenses,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 43–63 Google Scholar.

29. John S. Tanner, “Milton and the Early Mormon Defense of Polygamy,” Milton Quarterly 21 (March 1987): 41-46.

30. Bushman, Claudia L., ed., Mormon Sisters (Cambridge, Mass.: Emmeline Press, 1976)Google Scholar provides a number of essays that give insight into the political and social views of women regarding polygamy and feminism. See especially Stephanie Smith Goodson, “Plural Wives,” 89-112, and Judith Rasmussen Dushku, “Feminists,” 177-98.

31. May, Dean L., Utah: A People's History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 166 Google Scholar.

32. See Whitney, Helen Mar, Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph: A Reply to Joseph Smith, Editor of the Lamoni (Iowa) “Herald” (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882)Google Scholar. Also see Whitney, Helen Mar, Why We Practice Plural Marriage: By a “Mormon” and Mother (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884)Google Scholar.

33. Whitney, Plural Marriage, 5, 7.

34. See, for example, Gates, Susa Young, Heroines of “Mormondom,” Noble Women's Lives Series, vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884)Google Scholar, and Tanner, Annie Clark, A Mormon Mother; An Autobiography (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

35. This revelation is recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants (132). The Doctrine and Covenants is a collection of revelations, mostly Joseph Smith's, that Latter-day Saints regard as Scripture.

36. The inappropriateness and moral failure of nineteenth-century female reformers’ “rescue mindset” regarding plural wives is demonstrated in Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Searchfor Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 177–212 Google Scholar.

37. May, A People's History of Utah, 124.

38. Stewart, Michael, “The Legal History of Utah,” in Utah Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Powell, Alan Kent (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 322-26Google Scholar.

39. Morgan, Dale L., The State of Deseret (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987), 7–27 Google Scholar.

40. Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 165.

41. Morgan, The State of Deseret, 13.

42. Young, Brigham, Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, 124-25Google Scholar.

43. This was the world's first department store, and Brigham Young is credited as its inventor. See Arrington, Leonard J., Fox, Feramorz Y., and May, Dean L., Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 92–93 Google Scholar.

44. R. Laurence Moore uses Mormon history as an example for his argument in his Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 25-47; which is, in short: religious Outsiders— particularly Jews, Mormons, and Catholics—have defined the character of the American religious landscape more than the religious mainstream has by experiencing to the fullest the unique brand of religious liberty America has to offer, and thereby they have defined the limits of that freedom.

45. Burton, City of the Saints, 1.

46. See Howard Stansbury (U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers), An Expedition to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake oflltah; including description of its geography, natural history, and minerals, and an analysis of its waters, with an authentic account of the Mormon settlement (Philadelphia: Lippencott and Grambo, 1852).

47. Burton, City of the Saints, 250.

48. Gunnison, John W., The Mormons or Latter-day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake: A History of Their Rise and Progress, Peculiar Doctrines, Present Condition, and Prospects, Derivedfrom Personal Observation during a Residence among Them (Philadelphia: Lippencott and Grambo, 1852, 1860; reprint, Brookline: Paradigm Publications, 1993)Google Scholar.

49. Thomas Kane's correspondence concerning his diplomatic mission to Utah during the Mormon war can be found in Hafen, LeRoy R. and Hafen, Ann W., eds., The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858 (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark Company, 1958), 265-93Google Scholar. See also Roland, Charles P., Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964, 1993), 206-8Google Scholar.

50. See South, Will, Andy Warhol Slept Here? Famous and Infamous Visitors to Utah (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 8, 11, 16Google Scholar.

51. See Remy, Jules and Brenchley, Julius, A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City, 2 vols. (London, 1861)Google Scholar; Ole Bech-Peterson, “Familiarizing Orientais: Nineteenth-Century Danish Literary Travelers among the Mormons,” OASIS, working paper no. 106, February 2000; Wilhelm Topsee, Fra Amerika (Copen-hagen: Gyldendal, 1872); and Watt, Robert, Hinsides Atlanterhavet, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: R. Bloch, 1872-1874)Google Scholar.

52. The story of the purposes and results of prominent Gentile visits to the Mormon kingdom before Mormon Integration into American society and easy access to the region would need book-length treatment.

53. Spurr, David, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 193 Google Scholar.

54. Greeley, Horace, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York: C. M. Saxton, Barker and Co., 1860)Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., 209-28. See also Horace Greeley, “Two Hours with Brigham Young,” New York Tribune, August 20, 1859.

56. These publications caused some of Burton's numerous run-ins with the Society for the Suppression of Vice. See Zipes, Jack, When Dreams Come True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1999), 49–60 Google Scholar.

57. See Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–32 Google Scholar.

58. Burton, , City of the Saints, 224-28Google Scholar.

59. Brodie, Fawn M., The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 185 Google Scholar.

60. Burton, , City of the Saints, 482-83Google Scholar.

61. Fawn Brodie, Editor's Introduction, ibid., xxv, xxxvi.

62. It is not clear from the context of Burton's Statement whether he meant taking plural wives, entering the Endowment House, or both. This exchange is reported by Wright, Thomas in his Life of Sir Richard Burton (New York: Putnam and Sons, and London: Everettand Co., 1905), 163-64Google Scholar, and may be apochryphal.

63. Burton, , City of the Saints, 248 Google Scholar.

64. There are two good biographies of Porter Rockwell: Schindler, Harold, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God/Son of Thunder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966, 1993)Google Scholar, and Dewey, Richard Lloyd, Porter Rockwell: A Biography (Farmingdale, N.Y.: Paramount Books, 1986, 1993)Google Scholar.

65. Burton, , City of the Saints, 503-4Google Scholar.

66. Burne, Glenn S., Richard F. Burton (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985), 97 Google Scholar.

67. Burton, City of'the Saints, 1.

68. See Stark, Rodney, “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research 26 (1984): 18–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shipps, Jan, Mormonism: The Story ofa New Religious Tradition (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Eliason, Eric A., ed., Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001)Google Scholar. The College of St. Hild and St. Bede at the University of Durham in England held a Conference April 19-23, 1999, devoted to the question of whether or not Mormonism constituted a world religion. Amid much discussion about the viability of the concept of “world religion” itself by scholars such as Bryan Wilson, Ninian Smart, Douglas Davies, Malise Ruthven, and John Hinneils, a consensus emerged that Mormonism makes as good as, if not a better, case for being a world religion as any faith.

69. Regardless of what ulterior motives he might have had, it is difficult to come away from Burton's account without the sense that he was genuinely impressed with 1860s Mormon society.

70. This order encouraged militia and private Citizens to kill all Mormons who refused to leave Missouri and made such action legal. See Anderson, Richard L., “Clarifications of Boggs's ‘Order’ and Joseph Smith's Constitutionalism,” in Church History Regional Studies, Missouri, ed. Garr, Arnold K. and Johnson, Clark V. (Provo: Department of Church History and Doctrine, 1994), 27–70 Google Scholar. Although it lay dormant for many years, the governor of Missouri did not officially rescind it until 1976 (Christopher S. Bond, Executive Order, June 25, 1976, governor's office, Jefferson City, Missouri).

71. I credit this observation to Professor Richard Cracroft of Brigham Young University. See Cracroft, Richard H., “The Gentle Blasphemer: Mark Twain, Holy Scripture, and the Book of Mormon,” Brigham Young University Studies 11 (Winter 1971): 119-40Google Scholar.

72. Folklorist Jill Terry Rudy has collected significant evidence of a well-developed tradition of nineteenth-century Mormon self-deprecatory lore in “Portraits in Song: Gleanings from the Brigham Young Folksong Cycle,” unpublished manuscript in author's possession.

73. On the tall tale in American folklore and literature, see Brown, Carolyn S., The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

74. Twain, Mark, Roughing It (New York: American Publishing Company, 1872; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1980)Google Scholar, “Prefatory.”

75. Ibid., 93.

76. Ibid., 111.

77. Ibid., 94.

78. Arrington, Leonard J., Brigham Young: American Moses (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 325 Google Scholar.

79. Twain, Roughing It, 97. Perhaps Twain's appraisal of “Mormon beauties” is perhaps driven more by the internal logical requirements of his joke than by his observations. Richard Burton found Mormon women attractive and noted “noble regular features, the lofty, thoughtful brow, the clear transparent complexion, the long silky hair, and greatest of all, the soft smile of the American woman when she does smile” (Burton, City of the Saints, 251-52). Evaluations of Mormon women's attractiveness seem to have more to do with the rhetorical goals of the evaluator than any “objective” reality.

80. Twain, Roughing It, 97. Twain met Porter Rockwell but did not consider his appearance and demeanor worthy of his reputation as a man of action. This low appraisal may explain Twain's reluctance to believe stories about Rockwell.

81. See Brooks, Juanita, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 219 Google Scholar.

82. Twain, Roughing It, 98-102.

83. The question of the how large Brigham Young's family was depends, of course, on what year is in question. It expanded and contracted over the years with marriages, deaths, and divorces. In the span of his life, he was married to twenty-four women, sixteen of whom bore him children. See Arrington, Brigham Young, 420-21.

84. See Appendix. Bunker, Gary L. and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Graphic Image, 1834-1914: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 40, 44, 45, 47, 50, 89Google Scholar.

85. For an account of the early problems with and eventual debunking of the once widely accepted theory that Joseph Smith had plagiarized a work by would-be romantic novelist Solomon Spaulding, see Bush, Lester E. Jr., “The Spaulding Theory Then and Now,” Dialogue 10 (1977): 40–69 Google Scholar. The main problem with the Spaulding theory turned out to be that once the Spaulding manuscript resurfaced it turned out to have very little to do with the Book of Mormon.

86. Twain, Roughing It, 102.

87. There is a widespread Latter-day Saint oral tradition which holds that Twain said that the book of Ether is aptly titled because it “puts you to sleep.” However, there is no documentation that Twain ever exploited the humorous potential of this double meaning of the word Ether. Of course, it would have been even more funny if Twain had played on the double meaning of Ether in his “chloroform in print” quip about the Book of Mormon. What seems to have happened, as is often the case in oral traditions, the Mormon folk “bettered” the historical record and put these words in Twain's mouth. The fact that Mormons have taken pride in being mercilessly ridiculed by Twain is curious. Perhaps it is better to be mentioned negatively by Twain than not at all. Also, being made fun of by Twain puts Mormons in pretty good Company. There may also be at work here an element of putting into a Gentile's mouth a sentiment that good Mormons should not say. Thereby Mormons can say it vicariously. Twain's assessment has been so often repeated by scholars to this day that one would wonder why hundreds of thousands of Mormons of all levels of education have made the Book of Mormon a centerpiece of their worship and missionary activity Mormon scholars, of course, find much that is exciting and inspiring in the book and some non-Mormon scholars do as well, as Hatch, Nathan O. demonstrates in The Democratization of American Christknity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 113-22Google Scholar.

88. Emmerson, Everett, “Religion,” in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, ed. LeMaster, J. R. and Wilson, James D. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), 632 Google Scholar.

89. Twain, Roughing It, 111.

90. Twain, Mark, Christian Science (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907)Google Scholar.

91. Alexander, Thomas G., Utah, the Right Place: The Official Centennial History (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1996), 173-78Google Scholar.

92. Bunker and Bitton, The Mormon Graphic Image, 147-49.

93. Crofutt, George A., Crofutt's New Overland Tourist and Pacific Coast Guide (Chicago: Overland Publishing, 1878-79)Google Scholar; Frank Goodyear, “Mormonism Captured: Photography and the Visual Representation of the New Zion” (panel presentation draft in author's possession, presented at the October 1995 Western History Association Meeting), 7.

94. For an account of the federal campaign against plural marriage, see Eliason, Eric A., “‘An Awful Tale of Blood’: Theocracy, Intervention, and the Forgotten Kingdom,” in FARMS Review of Books 12 (2000): 95–112 Google Scholar.

95. Clifford, James, “On Ethnographie Allegory,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. Clifford, James and Marcus, George E. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 120 Google Scholar.

96. The watershed book in this movement was Clifford and Marcus, Writing Culture.

97. The list of religious movements put down or oppressed using political, social, and economic justifications is longer than space allows. Below I provide only a few examples: for the U.S. Army's campaign against the ghost dance of the 1880s and 1890s, see Mooney, James and DeMallie, Raymond J., The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991)Google Scholar, Utley, Robert M., Last Days of the Sioux Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Hittman, Michael and Lynch, Don, Wovoka and the Ghost Dance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)Google Scholar; for anti-Catholic sentiment peaking in mass riots and arson in Philadelphia in the summer of 1844, see Clark, Dennis, The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982)Google Scholar and Light, Dale B., Rome and the New Republic: Conflict and Community in Philadelphia Catholicism between the Revolution and the Civil War (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996)Google Scholar; for the jailing and harassment of Amish, Mennonite, Jehovah's Witness, and other religiously motivated conscientious objectors during World War I and World War II, see Homan, Gerlof D., American Mennonites and the Great War: 1914-1918, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 34 (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1994)Google Scholar, Driedger, Leo and Kraybill, Donald B., Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1994)Google Scholar, Bush, Perry, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, and Schüssel, Lillian, comp., Conscience in America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in America, 1757-1967 (New York: Dutton, 1968)Google Scholar; for the raid on and jailing of hundreds of Short Creek polygamists and the break-up of their families by Arizona governor Howard Pyle in 1953, see Bradley, Martha Sonntag, Kidnappedfrom That Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996)Google Scholar; for the mayor of Philadelphia's 1985 aerial bombing and burning of sixty-one homes as part of a campaign against the religious sect MOVE, see Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Wagner-Pacifici, Rob, Discourse and Destruction: The City of Philadelphia Versus Move (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar and Bowser, Charles W., Lei the Bunker Burn: The Final Battle with Move (Philadelphia: Camino Books, 1989)Google Scholar.

Another example of religious persecution in American culture is the late 1970s and early 1980s activities of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) and other anticult organizations that, despite their overtly hostile stance toward new and small religions that require serious commitment from their mem-bers, managed to position themselves as a resource of “cult experts” often called on by the media for commentary. CAN promoted and engaged in the practice of kidnapping people who had elected to join unpopular high-commitment religious groups and subjected them to a kind of psychological torture called deprogramming to return them forcibly to “normal” society. Deprogramming at its peak involved the forcible removal of proselytes from their Community of faith and days of isolation from any contact except with the deprogrammers who worked vigorously and ceaselessly with their “patients” by using verbal and sometimes physical intimidation to get them to renounce their religion. While CAN focused its efforts on the most marginal-ized and vulnerable of American religions, groups as varied as the Unifica-tion Church (Moonies), the Children of God, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientolo-gists, Mormons, Cafholics, and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church had their members subjected to deprogramming. By the late 1980s, the methods of deprogrammers had begun to come under increasing condemnation. The Church of Scientology prevailed in its legal campaign against CAN and took over its operations. See, for example, Bromley, David, Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Bromley, David G., ed., Brain-washing Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Histori-cal Perspectives (New York: Edwin Meilen, 1984)Google Scholar; Biermans, John T., The Odyssey of New Religious Movements: Persecution, Struggle, Legitimization: A Case Study of the Unification Church (New York: Edwin Meilen, 1987)Google Scholar; Melton, Gordon J., Cults and New Religions (New York: Garland, 1994)Google Scholar; and Miller, Timothy, ed., America's Alternative Religions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

98. The plausibility that the Branch Davidians were the victims of legally dubious raids in which the ATF and FBI contributed to the deaths of more than eighty men, women, and children is not well understood by the public and virtually ignored by the mainstream media even though it is well documented in many scholarly publications and eye-witness oral histories. See, for example, Tabor, James D. and Gallagher, Eugene V., Why Waco? Cults and the Battlefor Religious Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Wright, Stuart A., ed., Armageddon in Waco: Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Thibodeau, David and Whiteson, Leon, A Place Called Waco: A Survivor's Story (New York: Public Affairs, 1999)Google Scholar; Blackman, David B. Kopel and Paul H., No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997)Google Scholar; and Wessinger, Catherine Low-man, How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000)Google Scholar.