A Call for A Retraction

To stay busy, I have subscribed to both the National Geographic Magazine and the Smithsonian Magazine. I have subscribed to National Geographic before, but this is my first experience with the Smithsonian. Can you imagine my surprise as I noticed that there was a major article on Mormons in my very first issue of the Smithsonian? What a coincidence!

As you may imagine, I had very little tongue left to bite as I endured through the entire bigoted article. I immediately felt the temperature in my apartment begin to rise as I checked the frozen-over thermostat to make sure the temperature was still at 50 degrees.

I am losing more and more faith in the "fair" and "balanced" media. Ignorance cannot be an excuse anymore. With all the counter-media efforts made by the Church to dispell rumors and myths about our faith, there is no excuse for any journalist from any major media organization to continue to believe and report their biased "facts." It is flat-out intolerance.

My major concerns with this article are mainly concerned with:
1. An overabundance of secondary sources (historians with a biased view)
2. A scarcity of LDS sources to create an important balance
3. The creation of the "Utah War" between Brigham Young and the entire United States
4. The concept of polygamy permeating nearly every paragraph of the article.
5. Fighting words written by the author to incite new negative feelings toward Mormons and the Mormon Church

I am so opposed to this article that I have written a letter to the editor expressing some of my views. Since my letter will most likely go unheard and overlooked by Smithsonian, I have decided to post my response on my blog and use this as my soap box. This is also a way to follow Elder M. Russell Ballard's counsel to BYU-Hawaii graduates to use the media and technology (such as blogs) to define our beliefs.

You can read this article yourself by copying and pasting the following link in a new browser window:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/brink-of-war.html

Here is my letter.

To the Editor-


As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I feel outraged at the bigoted views expressed by author David Roberts in the article about the Utah War. The theme most often repeated in this article was that from the very beginning, the Mormon Church was at odds with the United States government. It is a fact that the early Mormons did feel abandoned by the same government that promised religious freedom to all people, but Mr. Roberts made no attempt to record the efforts made by Joseph Smith and others to legally and lawfully seek proper redress from the government. Dozens of letters were sent and many visits were made by members of the Mormon Church to every United States president between the years of 1825-1845. Joseph Smith personally visited with President Van Buren twice in 1839 and 1840 and both times he was told by the President, “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.” Joseph Smith was even a presidential candidate in 1844 when he realized that all his efforts at redress were in vain. His campaign ended abruptly when he was murdered on June 17th 1844.

No efforts were made by Mr. Roberts to explain how Mormons fulfilled a request made by President James K. Polk in June of 1846 to have 500 Mormon men join the United States military in their campaign during the Mexican-American War. These 500 men were living in Iowa, halfway between the homes they were driven from in Nauvoo, Illinois and the homes they hoped to make in the unsettled territory of the west. Still, at the encouragement of Brigham Young, the request from President Polk was filled and the men left their families. They would not return to their homes for several years and some of them would never return.

Mormon support for the cause of America is not new. Our scriptures teach us that the Lord caused the Constitution to be written by wise men, and that those who keep the laws of God would not break the laws of the land. Joseph Smith wrote to a newspaper reporter on March 1, 1842 that “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

This article is a perfect example of how historians, such as Mr. Roberts, attempt to write about popular contemporary issues while remaining disguised in the comfortable cloak of history. Surely, this is an attempt to feed off of the recent activities of the FLDS Church, a church we are not a part of and who is not a part of us.

As an American and a Mormon, I am willing to lay down my life to defend either cause. It is the eventual religious freedom of this land that gives me a chance to practice my faith and religion. It is the doctrines and tenets of my faith that teach me, and other Mormons like me, to do what we can to make this land a better place for everyone. To me, both my citizenship of this great nation and my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ create the very thread by which I live my life.