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‘Satan Mourns Naked upon the Earth’: Locating Mormon Possession and Exorcism Rituals in the American Religious Landscape, 1830–1977

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Stephen Taysom
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Abstract

Since its inception in 1830, an important feature of Mormonism has been its belief in a literal Devil and in the ability of the Devil to possess human beings. Despite the pervasiveness of these beliefs and practices, Mormon possession and exorcism is a largely unstudied phenomenon. What follows is a careful study of four historical accounts of Mormon exorcism rituals dating from 1830, 1839, 1888, and 1977, and their narrative presentations. This article traces the development of Mormon possession/exorcism beliefs and practices and situates them within their larger historical contexts. The article also describes the relationship between Mormon dispossession rituals and the dispossession rituals of Protestant and Catholic groups in American history and presents through a consideration of the impact of broader American cultural trends on the theory and practice of Mormon exorcism from 1830 to 1977.

Keywords

Mormonexorcismdemonritualcult
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Winter 2017 , pp. 57 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2017

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References

Notes

* At the top of the LDS Church hierarchy is the First Presidency, which consists of the President and two counselors. Next in authority is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles which consists of men who are designated as “special witnesses of Christ.” These are lifetime appointments. Below them are the various Quorums of the Seventy. Members of these three groups are known as “General Authorities” (as opposed to lay “Local Authorities” such as Stake Presidents and Bishops) and they are full-time, paid employees of the LDS Church.

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2. Romney, Marion G., “Satan, the Great Deceiver,” Ensign, February 2005. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2005/02/satan-the-greatdeceiver?lang=eng. Retrieved January 30, 2015 Google Scholar.

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4. William James discusses his theory of live options in his 1896 lecture “The Will to Believe.” The category is explicated at length in Whittaker, John H., “William James on ‘Overbelief’ and ‘Live Options,’” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1983): 203–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Blythe offered the first rigorous and interpretative exploration of exorcism and possession as a method of nineteenth-century Mormon identity formation in the first two chapters of his excellent dissertation. Blythe, “Vernacular Mormonism.”

6. There are very few rituals that, particularly in the nineteenth century, evaded official description. Exorcism is one example and another is “deathbed dedication.”

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8. Vision, Hiram, Ohio, February 16, 1832; in Revelation Book 2, pp. 1–10; handwriting of Joseph Smith and Frederick G. Williams; LDS Church Archives. Holograph available as a digital image at http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/vision-16-february-1832-dc-76?p=3.

9. In Smith's teachings, the Devil's angels were those spirits who chose to follow him when he was cast out of heaven. They are, then, of the same heavenly family as human beings, but without physical bodies.

10. Joseph Smith, Sermon, January 5, 1841, in Nuttall, L. John, “Extracts from William Clayton's Private Book,” pp. 7–8, Vault MSS 790 Google Scholar; Journals of L. John Nuttall, 1857–1904; 19th Century Western and Mormon Americana; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Hereafter referred to as BYU.

11. Joseph Smith Sermon, May 21, 1843, recorded by Howard Coray. MSS 1422; Coray family papers; 19th Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts; BYU.

12. See Mark, 5.

13. Entry June 22, 1856, in Wilford Woodruff Journal, v. MS 1352, Box 2, Folder 3, LDS Church Archives. In this, as in many other things, Young was in disagreement with LDS Apostle Parley Pratt. Pratt argued that it was not the spirits who had followed Lucifer to earth who possessed humans, but rather it was the spirits of the departed, who are unhappy, [and who] linger in lonely wretchedness about the earth. The more wicked of these are the kind spoken of in Scripture, as “foul spirits,” “unclean spirits,” spirits who … sometimes enter human bodies, and will distract them, throw them into fits, cast them into the water, into the fire, &c. They will trouble them with dreams, nightmare, hysterics, fever, &c. They will also deform them in body and in features, by convulsions, cramps, contortions, &c., and will sometimes compel them to utter blasphemies, horrible curses, and even words of other languages. Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855), 115.

14. “Spirit Possession,” Deseret Evening News, July 3, 1909, 4.

15. Madsen, Truman G., The Sacrament: Feasting at the Lord's Table (Provo, Amalphi Publishing, 2008), 135.Google Scholar

16. Joseph Smith introduced the “endowment” ritual in 1843, but it is unclear when the lines regarding possession were added because no reliable script of the ritual exists before 1984. Summaries of the ritual date to the 1840s, but none purport to be actual transcripts. The relevant line regarding possession was included in the 1984 version and remains there.

17. Revelation, December 7, 1830, Manuscript Revelation Book 1, in Jensen, Robert Scott, Woodford, Robert J., and Harper, Steven C., eds., Revelations and Translations: Manuscript Revelation Books, Revelations and Translations, vol. 1, Smith, Joseph Papers, ed. by Jessee, Dean C., Esplin, Ronald K., and Bushman, Richard Lyman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 384 Google Scholar. Hereafter referred to as JSP.

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22. Twelftree, Graham H., Jesus the Exorcist: A Contribution to the Story of the Historical Jesus (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1993), 3.Google Scholar

23. Levack, Brian P., Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 33.Google Scholar The five most detailed exorcisms in the New Testament are found in Mark 1:21–28, Matthew 8:28–32, Mark 7:25–30, Mark 9:14–29, and Mark 3:22–27.

24. Forsyth, Neil, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 10.Google Scholar

25. For a detailed discussion of the role of the Satan character in the New Testament, see Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Vintage, 1995).

26. Levack, Devil Within, 6–15.

27. Parley Pratt produced the same type of diagnostic list in 1855 in Key to the Science of Theology, 115–16.

28. Reed, Annette Yoshiko, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology, Demonology, and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (June 2004): 154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Johnson, Maxwell E., “The Apostolic Tradition,” in The Oxford History of Christian Worship, ed. Wainwright, Geoffrey and Tucker, Karen B. Westerfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39.Google Scholar

30. Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 91.Google Scholar

31. Stark, Ryan, Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 28.Google Scholar

32. On the issue of cessationism and its effects on Protestants of all stripes, see Colle, Ralph Del, “Miracles in Christianity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, ed. Twelftree, Graham H. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 235–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. See, for example, the case of the possession of Hartford, Connecticut, resident Ann Cole. Cole's “possession” led to no dispossession ritual, but it did launch the second-largest witch hunt in New England history. A wide range of primary source material dealing with the Cole case is published in Hall, David D., ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1693 (Boston: Northeastern University Press), 148–69.Google Scholar

34. Poole, W. Scott, Satan in America: The Devil We Know (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 3–32 Google Scholar, passim. There is some debate among scholars about the frequency of demonic possession in Colonial America. Poole argues, as I do, that the occurrences were so infrequent and so insignificant in comparison to the reports of witches’ contracts with Satan, that they cannot be properly understood as a live element of the early Puritan worldview. Others, like Richard Godbeer, attribute much greater significance to the possession accounts from the period. Although the issue remains disputed, it has highlighted the need for greater scholarly study of the subject. For Godbeer's perspective see his The Devil's Dominion: Religion and Magic in Early America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

35. For a detailed discussion of “possessed accusers,” see Games, Alison, Witchcraft in Early North America (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 65–71.Google Scholar

36. Witmer, Amanda, Jesus, The Galilean Exorcist (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 23.Google Scholar

37. Carey, Patrick W., Catholics in America: A History (London: Praeger, 2004), 55.Google Scholar

38. Stone, James Kent, The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1870), 76.Google Scholar For a discussion of Stone, see Mullin, Robert Bruce, Miracles and the Miraculous in the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press), 109.Google Scholar

39. Franchot, Jenny, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 188–89.Google Scholar

40. Heyrman, Christine Leigh, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 57.Google Scholar It is worth noting that even at the height of American Evangelical belief in a physically violent Devil, the notions of bodily possession and exorcism were largely ignored.

41. Poole, Satan in America, 58.

42. Heyrman, Southern Cross, 73.

43. Thomas Coke to John Wesley, April 17, 1784, Typescript, Papers of Dr. Thomas Coke, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, U.K., PLP 28.5.16a. I am indebted to Christopher Jones for bringing this document to my attention.

44. Information on this publication is found in Taylor, Rosemary, “English Baptist Periodicals, 1790–1865,” Baptist Quarterly 27 (April 1977): 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Taylor notes specifically that this publication's “reputation for conservatism was justified.”

45. “Diabolical Possession,” Christian Secretary, May 29, 1829, 8:19, 76.

46. “The Demoniacs of the New Testament, [After the German of Dr. Ebrard by Professor Reubelt],” Methodist Quarterly Review, July 1857, 9:405.

47. Davidson, Karen Lynn, Whittaker, David J., Ashurst-McGee, Mark, and Jensen, Richard L., eds., Histories, 1832–1844, Histories, vol. 1, JSP, 116.Google Scholar

48. Jones, Christopher C., “The Power and Form of Godliness: Methodist Conversion Narratives and Joseph Smith's First Vision,” Journal of Mormon History 37 (Spring 2011): 88–113.Google Scholar

49. JSP, Histories, 1:214.

50. Joseph Smith History, Draft 2, ca. 1838–1841, in JSP, Histories, 1:384. For reasons that are unclear, Knight did not offer his own account of the possession/exorcism in his autobiography. Instead, he simply reproduced Smith's account of the events. It must be noted that there are two potential problems with the document because the account of the Knight exorcism is recorded eight years after the event itself. The first is the simple, and common, tendency for events to be misremembered as time passes. There is no question that Smith performed an exorcism in 1830, because the Palmyra Reflector, a New York newspaper that mocked Smith and his followers relentlessly, published a piece in the June 30, 1830, edition that satirized the event. Second, and more complex, is the possibility that Smith, having developed and refined his theological notions on the subject of Satan, the body, and God between 1830 and 1838, may have read the newer ideas back into the earlier event. Despite the potential for problems with this source, it is the only extant first-person record of the event.

51. Dogberry, Palmyra Reflector, June 30, 1830.

52. For a discussion of Woodruff's retrofitted journal entry, see Park, Benjamin E., “‘A Uniformity So Complete’: Early Mormon Angelology and Microhistorical Theology,” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 2 (2010): 30.Google Scholar

53. Knight's aunt had taken to her bed and was in tremendous pain. Knight became convinced that the woman was possessed by the Devil when she claimed that she was about to die “for the redemption of this generation, as Jesus-Christ had died for the generation in his day.” Knight concluded that “Satan had … put a lying spirit in her mouth.” Newel Knight, “Autobiography,” MS 19156, fd1, 189–94, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

54. Joseph Smith, History, 1838–1856, vol. A-1, created June 11, 1839–August 24, 1843; Digitized image of original holograph available at http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1–23-december-1805-30-august-1834?p=139&highlight=annoyer.

55. Non-Mormon observers bristled at the use of the Knight story to strengthen Smith's prophetic bona fides. In response to the 1909 Deseret News article mentioned above, a Catholic newspaper, the Intermountain Catholic, published a piece entitled, “The Obsession of Newel Knight.” Although the author of the article accepted the reality of both possession in general and the possession and exorcism of Newel Knight in particular, he rejected the belief that the exorcism was evidence that “God approved of the teachings of Joseph Smith.” Rather, he argued that “the expulsion of the evil spirit derived its effect from the name of Jesus, not from any grace inherent in the Mormon Prophet.” “The Obsession of Newel Knight,” The Intermountain Catholic, July 17, 1909.

56. Joseph Smith to Hyrum Smith, March 3–4, 1831, original in Joseph Smith Collection, LDS Church Archives. Digitized scan of original holograph available at the Joseph Smith Papers Project, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/letter-to-hyrum-smith-3-4-march-1831?p=2.

57. MSS 497; Lorenzo Brown diary and autobiography, January 29, 1839; 19th Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts; BYU. Brown also notes that his first exposure to Mormonism involved seeing “an elderly man speaking in tongues.”

58. Lorenzo Brown Autobiography, January 1, 1856, 1. MSS 497, BYU.

59. Crosby, George H. Jr., “What I Remember of the Benjamin Brown Family,” n.p., 1933 Google Scholar, copy in author's possession. While stories of various supernatural experiences persisted in Brown family lore, the story of the exorcism apparently dropped out since it was included neither in Crosby's 1933 account nor in Lorenzo Brown's own 1856 summary of his life.

60. Benjamin Brown, “Account of the Healing of Sister Crosby,” MS 5645, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah. Although the document is undated, the event must have occurred in early 1839, before the members of the branch relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois, to join with the main body of Mormons.

61. The issue of gender and blessings for health or exorcism is controversial. In 1842, Joseph Smith told members of the LDS church’s women's organization, the Relief Society, that the signs that follow believers, and he explicitly mentioned the power to cast out devils “follow[s] all that believe whether male or female.” “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the Society, 28 April 1842,” Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, LDS Church History Library, MS 7238, 33. Notwithstanding this admonition, exorcisms performed by women must at this point have been rare; I found none in my research. There is, however, much more evidence of a long history of Mormon women laying on hands for the healing of the sick.

62. Poole, Satan in America, 42

63. Foucault, Abnormal, 206.

64. Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 67.Google Scholar

65. Brown, Benjamin, Testimonies for the Truth, (Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1853)Google Scholar; republished in Gems for the Young Folks (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1881), 72–73.

66. “Discourse, Given by Elder Joseph F. Smith, in Paris, Idaho, 19 August 1883,” Deseret News, Semi-Weekly, October 2, 1883, 1.

67. Blythe, “Vernacular Mormonism,” 71.

68. “Priesthood Meeting,” Deseret News, November 5, 1879, 10. A Stake President is a lay ecclesiastical leader who presides over several congregations. A Stake is roughly equivalent to a Catholic diocese.

69. James, G. Duffin Journal, Southern States Mission, 211–13. MSS 1696, BYU.Google Scholar

70. See, for example, the 1830 case of Hyrum Page and his seer stone.

71. Cuneo, Michael W., American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty (New York: Doubleday, 2001), xiv.Google Scholar

72. All quotes from this section are from Leonard J. Arrington’s Journal, August 1977, MSS 10, Box 33, fd 1, Leonard J. Arrington Papers, Utah State University Special Collections, Logan, Utah.

73. Cuneo, American Exorcism, 9.

74. A similar dynamic occurred during the possession of Nicole Aubrey in Laon, France, in 1566. In that case, it was the “demon” within the possessed person who demanded that only a Catholic Bishop could successfully complete the ritual. See the Pearl, Jonathan L., Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 44.Google Scholar

75. Kimball, Spencer W., “The Reconstitution of the First Quorum of the Seventy,” October 1, 1976. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1976/10/the-reconstitution-of-the-first-quorum-of-the-seventy?lang=eng. Accessed January 22, 2015.Google Scholar