This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper runs a section on their website called “Mormon Land,” which they say “explores the contours and complexities of LDS news.” Salt Lake Tribunes describes: “The Mormon Land newsletter is a weekly highlight reel of developments in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” So they made it clear it is about the church, not just Mormon culture or history.
A weekly highlight reel? I imagine an old-timey voice narrating over the carillon music: ‘This week in Mormon Land! Apple Beer is sweeping the nation, but how will Utah’s teetotalling legislature react?‘
Well, back in early August, the church officially announced that media groups should be expected to label the church by its correct name. Stop calling us “Mormon” or “LDS”, which President Nelson said were labels used “in the early days of the restored church” by Antimormons “as epithets, as cruel terms–abusive terms.” This announcement was really nothing new. The church had set this policy back in the 90’s. “Responsible media will be sympathetic in responding to our request,” President Nelson said. And how did the media respond? The Associated Press immediately published a headline about the “Mormon leader” (with a devlish-looking photo of President Nelson below it), and the Salt Lake Tribune published a headline about the “LDS Church.” Both news organizations made a strong point to not follow the request in their very articles about the request.
We need to be “courteous and patient in our efforts to correct these errors” by the media, President Nelson said. But the days and weeks and months went by, and there was nary a change in how much of the mainstream media group labeled us. Peggy Fletcher Stack’s “Mormon Land” continued in the Salt Lake Tribune uninterrupted. Highlight reels about exommunicated bishops bashing the church, a pop singer complaining about the church, a smaller percentage of church membership in Salt Lake City… negative story after negative story. Suddenly “Mormon Land” stopped sounding old-timey and started sounding more illiberal.
I saw someone remark: “What if a newspaper ran a newsletter about Israel called ‘Jew Land’?” Well I don’t know how people would take this, but if the newsletter had negative after negative story I don’t think it would pass journalistic standards. Especially if it was printing inside Israel by a decidedly non-Jewish group. And the fact that the label ‘Mormon’ was originally applied to the church as a vicious pejorative, and that members of the church are asking people to stop using that label, I don’t see how anyone could justify it. It would definitely be considered Antisemetic.
Peggy Fletcher Stack of the Salt Lake Tribune incorrectly claimed “before the church’s full, formal name was spelled out in 1838 by founder Joseph Smith, many members called it the ‘Church of the Latter-day Saints.’ But church brass specifically rejected that name” in the recent name policy announcement. Not true, Peggy. From the beginning, the church’s name was Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints. In April 1830, Joseph Smith ordained Oliver Cowdery “an elder of the ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.'” Skeptics often point to an 1834 volume of the church newspaper Star which calls the church: “The Church of Christ, recently styled the Church of the Latter-day Saints, contumeliously called ‘Mormons.’” But they don’t mention that this record is itself titled “the elders of the church of Christ.” Christ was still in the title, so obviously the church still considered itself the “church of Christ.” Skeptics also leave out the last part of that quote: “contumeliously called Mormons.” Contumeliously called Mormons. Contumeliously.
Contumeliously means “insolently abusive and humiliating.” From the beginning, the church recognized the name “Mormon” to be abusive and humiliating, and that’s why they wanted to “style” it to something else. Thus, the label “Mormon” was from the start used as an insult, according the the very incident Peggy Fletcher Stack was refering to. So why does Peggy Fletcher Stack and the Salt Lake Tribune continue to run “Mormon Land”?
One of the early uses of the label “Mormon” came in 1834, when Willard Chase published an Antimormon book titled “Mormonism Unvailed” [sic]. His title page described the book as a history of the church’s “rise to the present time, with sketches of the characters of its propagators, and a full detail of the manner in which the famous golden bible was brought before the world.” A litany of books and newspapers attacking the church and its members soon followed, using the label “Mormon.” Even Wikipedia states: “The terms Mormon and Mormonite were first used in the 1830s as pejoratives to describe those who followed Joseph Smith and believed in the divine origin of the Book of Mormon.”
Oh, but these terms were “soon adopted by Mormons themselves, however, and has lost its generally pejorative status,” Wikipedia claims. That’s so nice to know! Not exactly true, however. In the following years, temples were burned, families removed from their homes, thousands raped and murdered, children died of exposure to the cold, and a state-sponsored “extermination order” carried out by Antimormons screaming “Mormon.” The signed Missouri manifesto that led to the government’s “extermination order” complained:
“More than a year since, it was ascertained that they had been tampering with our slaves, and endeavoring to sow dissensions and raise seditions amongst them. Of this their “Mormon” leaders were informed… In a late number of the Star, published in Independence by the leaders of the sect, there is an article inviting free negroes and mulattoes from other states to become “Mormons,” and remove and settle among us.”
from The Secret Constitution
They hated “Mormons” for trying to free their slaves. Soon after this manifesto, Missouri Governor Lilburne Boggs signed the order to exterminate all “Mormons.” He declared: “The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state.” Then in 1844, William Law and other Antimormons set up a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor which provoked the murder of Joseph Smith in Carthage jail. Their newspaper headquartered in, Nauvoo, the heart of what was “Mormon Land” of that time, defended Missouri’s genocidal order, declaring that church members were “amenable to the laws of the land,” amenable to the widespread killing and the seizure from “the Mormons their lands in Missouri.” The newspaper called for further violence against the “Mormon usurpation.” It was a call for violence which was heeded. Joseph Smith was soon murdered and the church was driven out of the city, out of the state, and expelled to the barren wasteland of Utah.
President Russel M. Nelson recognized this history when he said: “In the early days of the restored Church, terms such as Mormon Church and Mormons were often used as epithets—as cruel terms, abusive terms—designed to obliterate God’s hand in restoring the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter days.” As the largest newspaper in the heart of Latter-Day Saint country today, the Salt Lake Tribune ought to be fully aware of this history. Even if they aren’t, they should respect a minority group’s wish to be called by its real name. Why do we even need to give reasons? It’s our name! People have a right to be called by their real name.
Countours And Complexities: Cultural Appropriation
Salt Lake Tribune they tells us that their “Mormon Land” section “explores the contours and complexities of LDS news.” Let’s consider what exactly that means. Contour is defined as “the outline of a figure or body; the edge or line that defines or bounds a shape or object.” A contour fits something within a boundary. The contour of Utah separates it from Nevada and the other states. What are the contours of the church that the Salt Lake Tribune are exploring? What are the boundaries of its definition?
President Nelson explained that the big problem with the label Mormon is its “glaring omission is the absense of the Savior’s name.” Enemies of the church use the label to “expunge the sacred name of Jesus Christ” from our identity. When a foreigner asks you, “Are you American?” do you reply, “Yes, I’m Utahn”? This would imply that you consider yourself fundamentally different than people in New York or Tennessee, and it might sound as if America were in a Civil War. We would be rhetorically setting up a contour that separates us from the rest of America. This is what the media’s use of the label Mormon has done with us and Christianity. It has placed us as a church under an umbrella of sects categorized as “Mormon” while the reality of the matter is the church is directly the church of Jesus Christ.
This rhetorical fallacy has led to further contouring, further boundaries you can see delineated in many “Mormon Land” stories. It goes well beyond just reporting current events. It is the delination of who we are as people and faith. Contours defining and dividing us from Christianity. With the media in general, it is as if William Chase rose from the dead and made his “Mormonism Unvailed” book into a series, with weekly updates of the church’s “rise to the present time, with sketches of the characters of its propagators, and a full detail of the manner in which the famous golden bible was brought before the world.” Why is it that the Antimormon persecutors of the 1830’s sound so similar to way the mainstream media treats us today?
Next, “complexities.” What does the Salt Lake Tribune mean by “complexities of LDS news”? I have pointed out before, Modernist skeptics try to boil church issues down to a pure form, to show contraditions between “us” and them.” Post-Modernists take a different approach where contradiction is a “complicated picture.” But the problem with Post-Modernism is it tends to seek complexity when it should be simple in order to change what is going on. Contours are delineated where boundaries shouldn’t exist and complications are introduced where boundaries should exist. We can see this in the media’s agitations about all sorts of things… ordaining to the priesthood, getting rid of Bishop interviews, changing the policy about marijuana, etc. “Complexity” could just becomes a codeword for “changing boundaries.” So a media series about “contours and complexities” could just be “defining and changing.”
Is this the role of an independant, non-Latter Day Saint newspaper? Is it acceptable for a big media corporation to appropriate a faith and a culture, defining who we are and what we do, to tell us what our contours and what our “complexities” are? Do we need a Salt Lake Tribune reporter following us around, always behind our shoulder like an infernal goul? I don’t think this would happen with any other religious or cultural group. As a minority group in America, it is appalling that this kind of behavior towards us is mainstream and accepted.