THE CAMBRIAN PESHER

THE CAMBRIAN PESHER

THE VOICE OF THE DESPOSYNI TO THE AMERICAN DISPERSION

St. David’s, 2008

The Mormons

It is impossible to offer a discussion of Mormonism without hazard. Mormons are quick to differ with any assessment which is not flattering, and non-Mormons are quick to differ with anything less than opprobrium. I have avoided it many years for this very reason. Why try to offer mediation between parties whose swords are still drawn? You only risk getting cut in the ensuing melee.

On the other hand, much is to be gained from an irenic resolution to this uniquely American phenomenon. American Evangelicalism is suffering confusion from its internal contradictions, and Mormonism from its institutional bondage. Since so many of our Catechumens in the Grail Church are either former Mormons or remain affiliated with the Mormon Church, perhaps it is time to offer a more public position on this complex dilemma.

One should first understand that the Mormon Church must be distinguished from the Mormon movement. This is not so easy to do. For the Mormon, there is no difference between the two. The one cannot be had without the other. The Mormon sees his religion and nothing else. In a negative way, so does his adversary.

The people of the United States are largely descended from peasants. They are an unlettered people ignorant of Christian antiquities. Of course, there has always been an emphasis on education, and 19^th Century Americans were probably better educated than Americans generally are today. But the kind of education which prevailed during that era was a biased one which gloried in the traditions descended from Roman antiquity and not those which came from those of the Celts of northern Europe, which is their true heritage. America’s greatness was due to its knowledge and discoveries in science and industry - and its convenient ignorance of the classics. Today, our knowledge consists merely in popular culture and bureaucratic procedures that we use in government and business. Not very many of us know how to actually make anything or do anything anymore.

Although the origins and customs of the Celtic Church were preserved in its oral histories and mythological tales, these traditions were summarily dismissed by the medieval Roman Church, and later, by the Protestant English. To be successful in the European world, Celtic scholars had to subliminate their heritage or abandon it altogether.

The Tudors are a perfect example of this process. Henry Tudor, of course, was a Welshman. And his ascendancy to the throne of England gave much hope to the old, Celtic Britons that the tide had finally turned. Now a Welshman possessed the Throne and Welsh was the language of court – a fine thing, indeed, for a long oppressed people.

But the Celtic renaissance was not to be. Henry abandoned his heritage and then attempted to persuade the Welsh to embrace the English way. The Normanized English were more cosmopolitan and that suited the regal temperament much better than the rustic sentiments of his ancestry. Like a woman who has just discovered her husband’s mistress, understandably, the Welsh wanted to take pride that the heir to the English Throne would always be “the Prince of Wales,” but down deep, they knew this was merely a face-saving sop for a greater betrayal.

The American Frontier

The established, well-to-do of Europe never wanted to come to America. Life was too comfortable for them. Only the turn of political fortunes would induce a longing-eye toward a dangerous wilderness. America usually attracted the failures and misfits of the old Continent.

America was also one of the destinations of slave traders. Many of America’s first comers were the victims of kidnapping in the port towns of England. Others were youngsters guilty of petty theft or other misdemeanors which labeled them as delinquents and the subjects of deportation to the Colonies. It was big business then, much like the drug trade is today. Press gangs would roam city streets and would snatch boys and girls, sometimes even from the arms of their parents. Heavily bribed magistrates would look the other way.

These children would be brought to America to work the plantations, or later, after the more compliant Negro was introduced, they became indentured servants. In any case, since they were too young to have been indoctrinated by their parents, they were largely ignorant of their ancestry and heritage. They had no way back to the families they scarcely remembered. The only way to escape their unhappy circumstances was to steal from their masters as much as they could carry and then flee to the unknown mountain country of the Appalachians. Many of them were slaughtered by Indians, but of those that survived, they became our ancestors.

Joseph Smith was born in Vermont in 1805 and then later moved with his family to western New York in 1816. He was just one generation removed from the Colonial period. While the seaboard portions of New England had been settled in an orderly fashion after the manner of the Puritans, the Appalachians of the Middle Colonies and New England – including Vermont – were settled by the white slaves that had escaped to the high country characteristic of the region of Joseph Smith’s childhood. Many of these settlers were unchurched and uncultured frontiersmen, along with the women who escaped with them. Wild and ignorant of the Gospel, it was to these people that a young, wiry evangelist would be commissioned by the Presbyterian Female’s Missionary Society to convert – the Rev. Charles G. Finney.

The Burned-Over District

In 1824, this lawyer-turned-preacher, filled with passion to plead Christ’s cause, left his new bride behind for his first tour of upstate New York. It was too dangerous for the company of a woman. Preachers were thrashed, bullied, and otherwise tormented to the glee of local ruffians. Finney, however, was an imposing figure, standing a long six feet two inches, muscular, with a heavy brow and a booming voice. Drawing from his legal training, he preached a fire and brimstone message which terrorized his audiences, and at the same time, insulted the self-respect of the educated. He introduced unconventional methods, such as the mercy seat, which demanded his listeners make an immediate decision for Christ. Large, burly men would be broken by his sermons and weep bitterly at these places of reconciliation with their Maker. Where others had failed before, Finney now succeeded. The New York frontier was in the thralls of a religious excitement and a fire was lit that would consume all before it. Entire towns would close their shops to listen to this eloquent and impassioned preacher. Others would come out of sport and a dare that they could withstand this new spiritual force, only to be prostrated in agony over their guilt and lawlessness.

Later historians would call this region, “the burned-over district,” because there was no pocket of resistance, no untouched hamlet which escaped these revivals. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Yes, the South had a campmeeting culture with impressive stories of transformation to tell, but never before had the effects of the Gospel been so pervasive and so thorough in a populated area. Almost overnight, a wild frontier had turned into the Kingdom of Heaven, and to the chagrin of the urban clergy who rejoiced in the swelling church rolls, the converted were now directing their zeal toward reforming the church and society. Movements emerged condemning Masonry, slavery, dueling, Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, and warmongering. (Finney opposed the Mexican-American War.) Free congregationalism and a “New School” theology were advocated teaching the doctrine of free will and condemning the paralysis of New England Calvinism. Finney would later be invited to pastor New York City’s largest church, but New England would turn its back on the revivals, and because of that, would succumb to the Unitarian movement. Shut out from New England, Finney’s associates turned westward and carried the revival into the Ohio River Valley. Finney would eventually follow them to Oberlin. The upper Midwest would become the home of a new brand of American Evangelical.

“I believe in the gods, and Joseph Smith is his Prophet”

From this religious turmoil would come Joseph Smith and the Mormons. While Finney would approve the reforms identified above and he would embrace the experience of “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” as his own, he was appalled at the bastard offspring of his revivals. Spiritualism and psychic experimentation would make their appearance in the Fox sisters. Communalism and group marriage would be advocated by the Oneida Community. And of course, the Mormon religion would emerge and follow the path westward along the revival trail left by Finney’s associates. All of these came from the “burned-over district” in the aftermath of Finney’s revivals.

Historians will wrangle until the end of time over Joseph Smith’s accounts of his visions and spiritual experiences. And it is useless, in my opinion, to even try. Any spiritual movement, if it is ever to succeed, must be based upon much more than the claims of a single individual, no matter how great his stature might be in public acclaim.

Moses, the putative son of Pharaoh, could not have succeeded in liberating the Hebrews except with a very public display of Divine power. The Law of the Covenant was delivered by the Almighty Himself in a fiery quake witnessed by millions of people at the same time.

The ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ was accompanied by miracles too numerous to record and then finally by His own Resurrection. And while the general public did not witness the resurrected Christ, He did appear to enough people simultaneously – five hundred on one occasion – an objective fact that would seem to rule out hallucination.

While prophets can dream dreams and see visions from Old Testament times until now, they all must stand upon the firm pillars of the Law and the Gospel. The Book of Mormon is compelled to do so, as well. It contains explicit confessions of Evangelical faith, and however apocryphal it might be in its story telling, it remains a Christian document in its essential features: those elements necessary for saving faith. Whatever might have been its source – whether a guardian angel or a peddling scribbler – it betrays its Evangelical roots, even the very terminology of theological discourse in New York during the early 19^th Century.[1] It might be a bastard son, but it is a son, nonetheless.

Mormonism began as a religious movement among a unique group of people that experienced the power of Finney’s revivals. The Mormon Church, however, must be distinguished from the movement it represents. What Joseph Smith and his successors did with the movement in founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints must be seen in the same light as what Luther and the other Reformers did to Protestantism: it raised churches in imitation of Rome and said of their idols, “Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings12:28). As in the case of Jeroboam’s misguided Reformation, we can say of the Protestant Reformers that they were great and godly men, but still “saw men walking as trees” (Mark 8:24). They left the old church to create churches of their own, only to see them follow their own paths of corruption. Joseph Smith fell into the same error, and had he lived, it is hoped he would have mourned the outcome. At any rate, the problem is not in the failure of the pure church; the problem is with the idea of church itself.

The fact that Joseph Smith felt compelled to validate his church by eclectically plagiarizing from every popular movement at the time, especially from Freemasonry, and then to justify every ecclesiastical decision with either visions or augury, indicates the same syncretism of the old Catholic Church as it attempted to absorb the various pagan cults it encountered during its expansion. His cleverness was truly a mark of genius, but it didn’t make it true. We might be tempted to say it was all a pious fraud. We could say that Mormonism all began as a young man’s attempt for recognition and dignity that simply got out of hand. But there was much more to it. Luther had the nobles who saw in his ravings the opportunity for Germany’s liberation from Papal domination. What did Smith’s followers see in Mormonism that caused its ascendancy?

The Welsh Nation

The ethnic composition of upstate New York during this time period should not be ignored. It was predominately Welsh and continues to have a strong Welsh tradition to this day. The Welsh also followed the American westward expansion into the Ohio River Valley.

While Divine assistance in Finney’s success cannot be discounted, the Welsh temperament comes into play, as well. John Wesley noted that the Welsh were as wild as the Indians he encountered in the Georgia colony. The sight of adult and child nudity along the Welsh coastline was always a curiosity, if not an embarrassment, to English travelers. And their ethnic sporting traditions were insanely rough, with broken bones and missing teeth the inevitable aftermath of these contests. Yet in contrast, Wesley’s greatest evangelistic success was among the tear-washed faces of Welsh coal miners.

We might want to credit this tender side to the bardic tradition and the Welsh roots in Druidism. The Welsh have always loved the well-crafted verse and have been easily moved by the warrior poet. It might be that Finney touched a collective nerve which resonated every time he stood to preach his sermons.

But there is more to it than that. The Welsh love their families and they love their heritage. They believe it is sacred. And because it is sacred, they don’t believe that a heritage is inherited just through the pen of the scholar or through a mother’s nursery rhymes, however much they may be fond of both. For the Welsh, they receive their past through a mystical conduit, either through a kind of spiritual possession or through a reincarnation. It might be genetic, or it might be that the spirits of their ancestors come back to whisper in their ears while they sleep. There can be any number of explanations, but the fact remains: a true Welshman is an embodiment of his people since the beginning of time. He does not need to be taught his heritage; for his heritage is within him already. It is intuitive. He believes that his thoughts and actions are the same as what any Welshman would think or do.

This idea breaches close to shamanism. But it is different in a fundamental way. Shamanism relies upon practices and rituals which induce the trance and the spiritual revelation which follows. On the contrary, the Welsh way believes the Welshman needs no spiritual aids. He already is living in two worlds, the world of physical reality and the world of the altered state. The authentic Welsh Druid has no interest in the chakra or other processes of enlightenment. He believes he can operate in both realms at will and at the same time. His fathers and teachers come to him. He hears their voices and follows them to places of discovery in his dreams.

I know first hand whereof I speak. I have preached sermons and composed lengthy dissertations with complex logic and references in my sleep. I have conversed with invisible mentors in these experiences. The story of Joseph Smith does not surprise me.

But is it true?

It was true for him. His discoveries were life changing. For his followers, they needed their own revelation to prove that his path was their path. That is all any spiritual leader has a right to do. One man’s private revelation cannot become the canon by which to judge another man.

Whether Joseph Smith found a collection of gold plates in a physical sense is improbable. Like John the Revelator, he was likely in an altered state when this vision occurred.

Did he correctly translate them? Maybe, but probably not. Every vision can be corrupted by outside input, even our own as we desperately try to recover and reconstruct what we learn in our fleeting visions before they are lost to memory. Many times, I have scratched my head in vain, trying to remember that inspiring sermon I heard in my sleep. Joseph Smith tried to reconstruct his Golden Bible by staring in his hat!

Smith was influenced by the prevailing controversy of the time which suggested that the pre-historic inhabitants of the North American Continent were descended from the Twelve Tribes of Israel. This itself was a Welsh tradition. The Welsh believed that some of the Israelites migrated to the British Isles and forged a union with the ancient Britons. They also believed in pre-Columbian Welsh migrations to North America. And speculation was commonplace early in America’s history – even among such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson – that some of the Indian tribes resembled the Welsh both in dialect, custom, and physical features.

Nothing in Welsh mythology suggests the lengthy and convoluted accounts in the Book of Mormon, but it does form the backdrop into which this dreamy-eyed mystic could come to believe that a historical novel his friend discovered at a local library was in fact the very translation of the plates he saw in his vision.[2]

Edward Williams, later in that same century, would face censure for his forgery of the Iolo manuscript and others, upon which would be built the 19^th Century reconstruction of Druidism and ancient Welsh history.[3] The world of scholarship condemned him as a fraud, but the crime was not what it seemed.

As a Welshman, again, his dreams and inspirations were as real as an unearthed parchment. What he knew from oral tradition, he tried to give credence in the world of letters. I am not excusing the literary license taken by him or by others like Joseph Smith; I am simply explaining why they can be frauds, yet not believe they are frauds. For them, it is all real, and while it might be taken by some as the sign of an unstable mental state, the maxim is true that “genius is but one step removed from madness.” This is what we mean by mysticism. William Blake was a respected mystic. Even Isaac Newton had his mystical side and dabbled in astrology and biblical numerology. Mormonism is a continuation of the Welsh mystical religion.

The path of discovery for the human species is always the same. We observe a phenomenon. We interpret the phenomenon. We observe the phenomenon again to see if it happens the same way. If it doesn’t, we re-interpret the phenomenon. We try to recreate the phenomenon to see if it fits our interpretation. We try to manipulate the phenomenon to make it fit our interpretation. If we can’t, our explanation becomes more complex. In the course of time, misinterpretations cannot be ignored. They cause death or disaster. Then, we revisit the phenomenon to simplify the explanation and start the whole process over again – Occam’s razor.

Mysticism tries to unite effects with seemingly unrelated causes, but not in the same way as superstition does. Superstition is dogma; mysticism is hypothesis. For the mystic, the explanation changes with each new spiritual experience. In contrast, superstition denies and condemns the contradicting experience. The genius of Mormonism is its ability to change with new circumstances. Its weakness is its elaborate syncretism. Rivaling any medieval sophist, their apologists are brilliant in demolishing the premises of their adversaries, yet pathetic in defending their Church. Mormons are willing to use Occam’s razor on everyone else’s religion but their own.

An example of this is Richard Hopkin’s How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God. It ought to be required reading for every Evangelical. It is both devastating to traditional theology and illuminating in its defense of primitive, Semitic concepts.

Hopkins convincingly “humanizes” God and shows that the traditional view of an impassible, transcendent deity creates a Platonic God who cannot ever be truly known. Platonism is its own form of paganism. A God with perfect foreknowledge is not the God of the Old Testament, especially of the Patriarchs.

The Semitic God eats and walks and converses. He gets angry, discouraged, and changes his mind. He asks for opinions, makes jokes, and likes the smell of roasted beef.

Yet Hopkins goes too far, as any Mormon must, because he feels compelled to defend the polytheism of Joseph Smith and the early Mormon leaders. Must we follow the Mormons into a definition of deity that includes just about everyone and everything? Can we not accept the God of biblical revelation?

The ancients, including the Druids, believed in a supreme God and then a family of lesser gods. We might call them “angels” or “the sons of God” or perhaps even “elohim.” But “Yahweh Elohim” answers to the need for a god who is not controlled by independent aspects of the universe. Indeed, there can be no “uni”verse without a deity who is bigger than the “stuff” of creation. In their desire to be different, Mormon theologians have devised an evolutionary cosmology that would rival any Gnostic cult of the 2^nd Century . . . and it is just as complicated.

What ought to matter foremost in every religion is the doctrine of design. Does how we see the world actually fit the world we see? Like the proverbial seven blind men describing an elephant, there is never a time when the threshold of truth is finally reached for “autonomous” man. So many things are intuitively discovered and so many things have yet to be discovered, one wonders if anyone can claim to have an original idea. It seems that ideas come from a different plane of existence, and surely no “god” would be worthy the name who couldn’t think independently of creation’s limitations.

Of course, for the Mormon, the path of discovery continues until, as the Druids say, “every rhith is known in the path of Abred.” At that time, the creature takes a leap into transcendence and becomes a god. And that all might be true, but the “path of discovery” is laid out by someone who is already transcendent. The leap into transcendence cannot happen by accident or self-will. The pre-existence of a transcendent being must be assumed, as it is in Christianity; otherwise, it is not a leap possible for anyone. The quest for immortality or transcendence is a gift bestowed, not a power to be grasped. The Mormon need for a personal God did not have to be sacrificed upon the altar of a transcendent God. Mormons could have adopted the old Druid view that God is the head and the cosmos is his body. At least in that scheme, transcendence is an equal principle with immanence. Left with only an immanent god, their god is always a becoming god, a view shared by Wiccans.

Oblivious to these shortcomings, Joseph Smith’s Mormonism was embraced by American Welshmen because they saw something in it which resonated with their heritage – that internal gyroscope that told them that there was balance in his system of religion.

What might that have been?

The Stairway to Heaven

In the biblical story about Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, we find him in Genesis fleeing for his life from his brother, Esau. Deprived of resources for a comfortable night’s sleep, he sleeps on the ground and uses a stone for a pillow. I still sometimes wonder how such a thing can be considered comfortable. Couldn’t he have found a pile of leaves or pulled some grass. Why a stone?

As he sleeps, he dreams of a stairway to heaven, with angels ascending and descending. When he awakens, his mystical frame of mind convinces him that he is in a sacred place, the very portal to God. He marks the spot with stones, names it “Bethel” and promises to return.

He continues on his journey and arrives at the house of a kinsman, Laban, from whom he purchases his wives. We know the story well enough and need not repeat it here. But there are a few things which are important to note and which are applicable to our discussion.

First, Jacob had a superstitious view of sacred places. It was not until his all-night wrestling match with the angel that he discovered the truth about Bethel. It was he who was the stairway to heaven and it was upon him that the angels ascend and descend.

“Bethel” means “house of God” and Jacob’s name was “Israel” the “prince of God.” The completed revelation tells us that wherever you find the “prince of God” there you will find “the house of God” and the pathway to heaven.

The “house” then does not refer to a place, a temple or a building of some kind. The house refers to a lineage, a covenant lineage, a sacred lineage.

This is true of the Welsh tradition as conveyed in the Grail legends and elsewhere. Since as early as the fifth century, the Welsh bards have claimed a Silurian connection with the holy family of Jesus. The medieval stories never dared to suggest that it was an actual mingling of Christ’s own bloodline with that of the royal family of Silures. Instead, they substituted the story of Joseph of Arimathea as a proxy legend for the truth.

Aristobolus is traditionally associated with Joseph of Arimathea. But it is not ever entirely clear what relation they had to each other. Hippolytus identifies Aristobolus as one of the Seventy and the first bishop of Britain.[4] He is said to have had other Hebrews accompany him on the mission, including a “St. Ilid.” Ilid was the founder of the mission at Llan Ilid and is cited as the author of British proverbs:

'Hast thou heard the saying of Ilid,

The saint of the race of Israel?’

Scholars have speculated who this mysterious Ilid might have been. Some have supposed that he was really another alias for Joseph of Arimathea. Why he would have had another name is never explained. But this association was the work of Williams in his Iolo manuscript, so is suspect.

Morgan does not rely upon the Iolo manuscripts in his St. Paul in Britain but relies upon direct sources, such as the Greek Martyrologies and the old “Genealogies of the Saints of Britain”:

These came with Bran the Blessed from Rome to Britain – Arwystli Hen [Aristobolus], Ilid, Cyndaw, men of Israel; Maw, son of Arwystli Hen.

In these sources, Joseph of Arimathea is not mentioned at all. And Aristobolus is said to have come with his son. In other traditions, Joseph of Arimathea also comes with his son named, Josephes. Do we have an overlaying of traditions here? Why would the ancient writers feel compelled to replace the story about Aristobolus with the one about Joseph of Arimathea?[5]

Regardless, the Welsh have always believed in the notion of a covenant lineage passed-down through patriarchal (or familial) succession. Joseph Smith tapped into this belief, announcing at one point that he, too, was of the lineage of Jesus Christ.[6]

What drew the Welsh to Smith’s Mormon Church was its emphasis on the family, clan, and the father. The Celtic abbeys are called to mind as are the family conventicles which dotted the Welsh countryside during the Middle Ages. The Welsh have traditionally preferred the communal experience of the extended family group. The ecclesiastical structure of Rome and a clergy disconnected from normal family life have always offended Welsh sensibilities. They were willing to die rather than embrace it.

The Mormons, too, practiced an economic communal way of life in its United Order Cooperatives.[7] This threatened the hegemony of Eastern banking establishments over the economy of the United States and later became the real reason why so many maledictions were heaped upon them.

In this respect, we can say that Mormonism is a continuation of the Welsh nation.

Esau’s Pottage

Second, Jacob captured Esau’s birthright and blessing. What were they? They were everything involved in the family succession of the covenant. Jacob was given the right to perpetuate the sacred family.

What did Esau get? The sword. He got the war culture, the state and the prophet.[8] After Jacob’s encounter with the angel, he met his brother and they embraced. Jacob said to him, “I have seen your face as if it had been the face of God.” Esau was to be respected and feared, but to keep away at a safe distance. Jacob was invited to dwell with Esau, but he declined and settled elsewhere.

Esau would later repudiate the idea of family succession. As Apocryphal sources tell us, he conquered the land of Edom and set up a kingship. Israel never had a king until they experienced a spiritual apostasy, but even then, it was according to a family line (1 Samuel 7).

The Principle

Third, the Welsh have always been tempted with unconventional marriage customs. This is true of the Celts in general. As far back as Julius Caesar, he claimed the Celts shared their wives in common.

Of course, Caesar was looking in from the outside and did not understand the custom of hierogamy, but certainly, the world knew then and it has always known - with an air of contempt, I might add - the Welsh fondness for fecundity and the sacred union.[9]

Perhaps no other doctrine endeared itself to the Welsh Mormons than Smith’s introduction of “the Principle” or the notion of “celestial marriage.” He took it further than the ancients did. The Welsh did not believe in eternal marriage because relationships could be changed so easily. Rather, they believed in the clan and if a woman was married to one in the clan, then she was married to all.

How this worked in practice is not a matter of concern here, of course. It is sufficient to point out why Mormonism attracted the Welsh.[10]

Of course, Jacob formalized the patriarchal practice of polygamy and made it a permanent feature of Israelite society.

The American Religion

While we can say that Mormonism was primarily a Welsh phenomenon, we cannot say that Welsh Americans embraced it as a whole. Indeed, the greater portion of the Welsh embraced Evangelicalism, favoring, oddly enough, a curious blend of Calvinism and Methodism. They were hostile to their Mormon cousins and sought to expel them from every Midwestern community in which they appeared.[11]

This was the New School Evangelicalism of Finney and his associates as they settled the Ohio River Valley. Oberlin College, which would dominate the Evangelical landscape during the latter half of the 19^th Century, would also become the kingmaker in Presidential politics. Even when its influence was waning, Theodore Roosevelt acknowledged that a Republican nomination was not possible without Oberlin’s blessing.

For New Schoolers, the agents of change were the revivals, education, and social justice through state action. Unlike the Mormon emphasis on the family and its theocracy, New Schoolers believed that a spiritually-induced, psychological change (i.e. sanctification) was the ultimate remedy to fallen humanity.

The antagonism between the New School Evangelicals and the Mormons would continue throughout the 19^th Century and was especially evident in the Republican Platform from 1856 and onward. It declared a culture war against the remaining pillars of barbarism in the United States: slavery and polygamy.

How the Republicans handled the issue of slavery is well-known to us all, but how polygamy was eliminated is a curious story to be told. I will briefly summarize here.

The Mormons thought that their Utah colony was a safe distance from Washington and the watchful eye of federal troops. But the intercontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and changed all of that. The bliss of isolation faded away and Mormons had to, once again, contend with their Evangelical opponents.

It is generally known how Mormon polygamy was outlawed on the national level. Utah was denied statehood until the practice was banned. But adjacent territories were settled by Mormons, as well, such as Idaho. The territories had sizeable non-Mormon populations which were tolerant of polygamy. The polygamists were treated differently in those places, and the methods used to expel them are strange to American democracy.

It was a simple process, but a dubious one. Polygamists were declared non- citizens and disenfranchised. The newcomers, who were non-Mormon, were the only citizens that could vote or hold political office. The result was predictable.

One senses an ulterior motive in all of these endeavors. Polygamy was an affront to modernism and feminism, of which Oberlin was becoming a nursemaid with its co-ed collegiate program and its sympathies for the social Gospel. But leading Evangelicals had given up on discrediting the irrational foundations of the Mormon movement. Everything that could be said in criticism of Mormon origins could also be said of any religion, including Christianity: a holy text of uncertain origins, textual irregularities and anachronisms, a corrupt leadership, the credulity of following prophets and visionaries, arcane ceremonies, and so on.

Of all people, it was James H. Fairchild, Finney’s successor as Oberlin’s President, who debunked the prevailing Evangelical Mormon theory at the time:

The theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon in the traditional manuscript of Solomon Spaulding will probably have to be relinquished . . . Mr. Rice, myself and others compared it (the Spaulding manuscript) with the Book of Mormon and could detect no resemblance between the two. Some other explanation of the Book of Mormon must be found, if any explanation is required. (Articles of Faith, James E. Talmage, p. 502 “The Trial of the Stick of Joseph”, p. 40 Jack West)

So then, what sustained the energetic hostility to the Mormons late in the 19^th Century? It was their economic system. The Mormons were simply the victims of a vilification bought and paid for by financiers who saw the communal practice of Mormonism as a threat to raw capitalism.[12] Newspapers did their bidding and whipped-up the fervor of Evangelicals. It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that Evangelicals would be suckered into reactionary movements, which in the end, accomplished nothing. Later, they opposed the labor movement because they were told it was “godless communism.” They passed Prohibition, thinking it would end drunkenness. They empowered the Republican Party in the 1980s because it promised to end abortion.

Now, after these four decades, abortion is still with us, and so are public drunkenness, polygamy and labor unions. The only thing that has changed is that corporate monopolists have a stranglehold on our economy and we live in a regulatory straight-jacket.

With the Reynolds decision (1879), the polygamy controversy gave the legal justification to extend a power to the federal courts which in the end provided the authority to legalize abortion. And abortion remains legal today because Evangelicals do not have the grace to repent of their complicity in subverting the Constitution. [13]

In spite of the Civil War, the federal courts were willing to enforce federalism and state’s rights, and did so for a generation. But the Evangelical do-gooders had to rid the world of evil through the strong arm of the state, and set a course of federal usurpation which in the end overthrew the laws of virtually all of the fifty states which banned abortion. And the course is not finished, even to this day, as we helplessly watch a federal government out of control and destroying the nation itself.[14]

Polygamy could have been remedied by recognizing it as a civil union with an enforced dowry and a lenient process of divorce for the woman as well as the man. Deprived of legal coercion, Mormon husbands would have found their ability to maintain polygamous households on the backs of despairing housewives as too costly. Instead, Evangelical Christians wanted to use the bully club and now we have a controlled society.

The Mormon Nation

Joseph Smith exalted the U.S. Constitution to the same level of veneration as his sacred books. Mormons still reverence the Constitution and that explains why they are constantly entangled with movements on the so-called “radical” right. It is a most remarkable and impressive confrontation which is emerging between Constitutionalist Mormons and the World Elite who are implementing various globalist objectives. The same Eastern Establishment which used Evangelicals to hound their polygamist forefathers are now about to use Evangelicals and their doctrine of “Israel is God’s country” to empower the Neo-conservative agenda in making the world safe for Israeli hegemony.

In contrast, the Mormons believe America is the home of the reconstituted House of Israel while Zionist Evangelicals believe the Jews are God’s chosen people. The Evangelicals stand ready to sacrifice the Constitution, and even the nation itself, to defend Israel “at any cost.” All of this is based upon some bizarre interpretation of Bible prophecy which is supposed to herald the 2^nd Coming of Christ. We are repeating the lunacy of the medieval Crusades.

Mormons will be hounded again by their Evangelical nemesis – this time, not for polygamy, but for their Constitutionalism. Evangelicals are on the brink of an apostasy which will usher in the reign of terror of the Antichrist, complete with bio-chips, rationing, and a gulag.[15] We shall see if this latest emergence of the Welsh nation will be strong enough to withstand “the Beast whose deadly wound was healed.”

If it does, it will only be so because Mormons have been able to theologically and institutionally separate the priesthood from the Church and the Temple. Bethel follows Israel. It is the priesthood which creates the Church and the Temple, not the other way around.

The Church and the Temple are in alliance with the New World Order and have betrayed its members at every stage this tyranny has progressed. Most Mormons do not know this. Their history of duplicity to escape the “morals police” of the 19^th Century has become a character flaw. Mormons do not know that their leadership has been turned and that if the holy seed is ever to survive within Mormonism, the priesthood must cut off the Church. If it doesn’t, it will go down with them.

A servant of Jesus,

James Stivers

Church Overseer