Book Reviews

Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested

Boundaries. By Stephen C. Taysom. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.xiv + 259 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

SHAKERS AND MORMONS are but two of the many religious groups that sprang up on the American frontier about two centuries ago. Over time, the Shakers have dwindled to just a handful of practitioners, while the Latter-day Saints multiplied and became a world-wide religion headquartered in Utah. Although Shakers and Mormons are Christians, they had rather different belief systems. Their regard for the physical or material world is a prime example: Shakers essentially abhorred it, as evident in their practice of celibacy. By contrast, the Mormons lustily embraced physicality, practicing polygamy in the nineteenth century while energetically building cities and transforming portions of the interior West into a garden. The nineteenth century was indeed a defining time for both Shakers and Mormons, and it is the time period that religious studies scholar Stephen Taysom addresses in this book. Interestingly, Taysom does not focus on any discourse between the Mormons and Shakers, though that might make a fascinating book in itself.

In Taysom’s words, the ultimate goal of both religions was “to behave in ways that imitated God,” but their methods differed (100). To the outside world, Shakers appeared meek while Mormons often appeared confrontational. However, both religions clearly established—as do all religions— boundaries between their own faiths and the faiths and activities of others. In doing so, they exerted strong—and sometimes seemingly draconian— control over their own followers. Taysom shows that these religious groups developed physical boundaries for two major reasons, namely, to distinguish themselves from others and to control behavior within. These boundaries operated at several scales, from larger external spaces (geographical) to smaller scale (personal space, including the bodies of individual worshippers). To tell the story of how this worked, Taysom employed the methodologies of several disciplines, including social and religious history, theological studies, and cognitive anthropology.

This review addresses the Mormon side of Taysom’s study. Plumbing the primary source literature, albeit somewhat selectively, Taysom offers an insightful look at the early Mormon experience in relation to boundaries set by designs such as the City of Zion, which was propounded in detail by Joseph Smith in the early 1830s. After the murder of Joseph Smith and the long trek away from their beloved Nauvoo, the Mormons reached Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young. According to Taysom, “by the time that the Mormons arrived in the Great Basin, they had already given up their original ideas about the religious basis of physical boundaries” (53). He claims that by 1847 the Saints had discarded the ideal City of Zion plan and adopted a different set of boundaries in the interior West. This involved a new role for temples and increasing emphasis on sacred garments that further distinguished Mormons from others.

Although Taysom’s interpretations of Mormon history are intriguing, some may claim that he oversimplifies it. For example, he claims that the Saints found isolation, peace, and prosperity following their arrival in Utah. This is true, but only to a point. Although the Mormons settling what would hopefully become Deseret certainly faced less overt hostility than the mayhem they had experienced in the Middle West, they faced many other challenges. These include the sobering geopolitical reality that the area claimed by the Mormons: 1) had, to their dismay, become part of the country they had just fled; 2) witnessed a flood of California bound gold rushers; and 3) was increasingly besieged by federal authorities who challenged Mormon institutions. Given these conditions, some readers may find it difficult to fully accept Taysom’s claim that the supposed peace and prosperity found by the Mormons had actually become so disorienting to Brigham Young by the mid 1850s that he deliberately “inflicted the crisis” of the Mormon Reformation on his own people to rectify it. In Taysom’s view, the tensions palpable by the mid 1850s were not generated by contact with outsiders nor exacerbated by the physical environment, but rather generated by the Mormon leaders themselves who, in effect, had become addicted to (and craved) conflict. As Taysom puts it, “too much tranquility” prompted the Mormon leadership to create “harsh rhetoric” (170). To Taysom, the practice of polygamy was simply another Mormon strategy aimed at ramping up tensions between Mormons and outsiders, including federal authorities. This is an interesting premise, but it overlooks the fact that the Mormons at that time believed that polygamy represented the ancient times and beliefs that they were commanded to recapture. Although abhorrent to many, polygamy was an integral part of Abrahamic religious and cultural traditions, and it remains so today in Islam.

In conclusion, Taysom’s account of Mormon decision-makers’ motives may be challenged by some readers and welcomed by others. The former will claim that he overlooks the Mormon leadership’s vision and passion in building up the western Zion as a distinctive place (where, as Brigham Young put it, the angels would be pleased to visit). These critics could confidently claim that Young raised the bar in 1850s Utah Territory, leaning hard on followers to behave in a more saintly manner and to create more sustainable settlements in preparation for the Second Coming. Other readers, however, will find that Taysom’s critical interpretation offers new and exciting ways of explaining Mormon decision-making during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. As Taysom astutely notes, the Mormons behaved in a cyclical pattern, episodically challenging authority at times and then backing off at others. Employing this strategy of resistance and capitulation, they achieved success rather than annihilation. Regardless of their views about the early Mormons, all serious students of Utah and LDS history will find Taysom’s book worthwhile, if sometimes controversial, reading.

RICHARD FRANCAVIGLIA Salem, Oregon

Colonel Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons, 1846-1883.

Edited by David J. Whittaker. (Provo: BYU Studies, 2010. 240 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

THIS VOLUME EDITED BY David J. Whittaker grew out of activities at Brigham Young University during the 2008-2009 school years. Staff at the Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, prepared a public exhibition of manuscripts focusing on Thomas L. Kane and his relationship with the Mormons. During the exhibition, the library sponsored a lecture series by scholars on various aspects of Kane’s relationship with the Mormons. The seven essays in this printed volume came from the lecture series. The essays and their authors include: “Thomas L. Kane and Nineteenth-Century American Culture,” by Matthew Grow; “He is Our Friend: Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons in Exodus, 1846-1850,” by Richard E. Bennett; “Thomas L. Kane and the Mormon Problem in National Politics,” by Thomas G. Alexander; “Full of Courage: Thomas L. Kane, the Utah War, and BYU’s Kane Collection as Lodestone,” by William P. MacKinnon; “Tom and Bessie Kane and the Mormons,” by Edward A. Geary; “Touring Polygamous Utah with Elizabeth W. Kane, Winter 1872- 1873,” by Lowell C. (Ben) Bennion and Thomas R. Carter; and “My Dear Friend: The Friendship and Correspondence of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane,” by David J. Whittaker. The volume concludes with “Thomas L. Kane: A Guide to the Sources” which is a helpful look at manuscript sources at BYU and published documents concerning Thomas L. Kane and a review of Matthew J. Grow’s “Liberty to the Downtrodden”; Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) by Charles S. Peterson.

This volume, which is published jointly by BYU Studies and the University of Utah Press, is the fifth in the “Biographies in Latter-day Saint History” series. The seven essays range in length from twenty-one to thirty-eight pages in length, and the slim volume is illustrated by eightyseven figures and photographs. Grow’s essay reviews Kane’s extensive immersion in nineteenth-century culture and particularly the reform aspects of ante-bellum American culture. Grow writes, “Kane perceived the Utah War as a ‘Holy War’ waged on the Mormons by an Evangelical nation, a belief that shaped his sense of mission in protecting the Latter-day Saints’ religious liberty from the intrusions of federal officials and the U.S. Army” (26).

In Grow’s judgment, “Kane’s life remains significant because he represents two nineteenth-century cultural types: the romantic hero and the honorable gentleman” (27). In his essay, Bennett suggests that Kane’s early involvement with the Mormons profoundly changed his life, as “Kane admitted his association with the Mormons had soured him from pursuing politics and encouraged him to pursue other humanitarian causes” (53). Of interest in Alexander’s essay on Kane and the Mormon Problem in national and territorial politics is footnote 81 concerning Alexander’s 1966 essay on Judge James McKean. Alexander notes, “I should point out I do not now agree with many of the conclusions I arrived at in defense of McKean. Rather, I now believe that he was an anti-Mormon bigot and that many of his actions were clearly illegal and aimed at undermining Mormonism” (87).

Bennion and Carter’s essay is a new and valuable look at Utah society and architecture in the decade of the 1870s as viewed particularly through the lens of plural marriage and the eyes of Elizabeth Kane. This volume adds much to our knowledge of Thomas and Elizabeth Kane and nineteenth-century Utah history.

RICHARD W. SADLER Weber State University

The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South.

By Patrick Q. Mason. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xi + 252 pp. Cloth,$29.95.)

BY LOOKING AT Latter-day Saint (LDS) history from a fresh regional vantage point—in this case, the American South—Patrick Mason has made a valuable contribution to the field of Mormon studies. The Mormon Menace is a fine illustration of just how successful contemporary scholarship on Mormon history has been in moving beyond older conceptual models focused primarily on Utah and the West. The South and its people, declares Mason, were both a significant domain for LDS proselytization and a foil against which Utah Mormons could construct and reinforce their collective identity. Readers concerned with Mormonism’s past will want to read this book in order to explore these points at length.

Mason's book, however, does not ignore Utah and the West completely. Rather, it illuminates Utah's complicated symbiotic relationship with the South, a point Mason especially emphasizes in his first two chapters. Using the story of Mormon elder Joseph Standing's death at the hands of an infuriated Georgia mob (which he relates in Chapter 2), and the equally harrowing tale of the Cane Creek massacre, where two Mormon missionaries and two of their converts were gunned down on a Tennessee farm (the subject of Chapter 3) as representative instances of violence against Mormons in the South, Mason shows just how much anti-Mormon leaders in the region relied on like-minded elements in Utah for their rhetorical ammunition. "The national anti-Mormon movement," including associated groups in the South, writes Mason, "fed upon the reports they received from their faction in Utah" (53).

Not surprisingly, the Mormon practice of polygamy gave rise to much of the antagonism between the LDS faithful and their southern Protestant opponents, a point Mason develops in Chapters 4 and 5. Though it flourished in the Latter-day Saints' western heartland, the alien practice of plural marriage was the single worst stumbling block to the growth of Mormonism in the southern states. But this knowledge will not "feel" new to readers who possess more than a passing familiarity with Mormon history. Still, it is striking to note just how truly incensed and resentful southerners were over polygamy. Fears of "home wrecking" Mormon missionaries, intent on seducing southern women and spiriting them off to enlarge their supposed harems in the West, tapped into southern white males' fears about "white womanhood" and their shared responsibility as its culturally designated protectors. The result of this unshakable dread of the Mormon elder was the construction of the "Mormon" as a cultural corollary to the "black beast rapist," the sexual predator that allegedly lurked, barely suppressed, inside every African American man in the South.

The book's final few chapters—with the exception of Chapter 8, which sheds light on how anti-Mormonism in the South contributed to the perpetuation of Latter-day Saint collective identity in the Mormons' western home—are less relevant for readers primarily interested in Utah history, chiefly because they move away from discussing Utah's place in the calculus that informed and was informed by southern anti-Mormonism. They are, however, still worth perusing. Chapter 6 details southerners' doctrinal quarrels with Mormonism, while Chapter 7 tries to provide a general accounting of some three hundred occurrences of southern anti-Mormon violence. Chapter 9, Mason's final one, tries to broaden his argument about persecution and religious identity by bringing southern Jews and Catholics into the mix, and by showing how their willingness to bend more readily to southern cultural norms and attitudes distinguished them from Mormons.

The Mormon Menace is a good book, well-researched and thoughtfully written. Readers of Utah and western history will find the book's earliest chapters, with their narrower focus on the polarized relationship between Utah and the American South, most interesting. It is safe to say, though, that a glance at the rest of the volume won't hurt anyone.

BRANDON JOHNSON Bristow, Virginia

Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon,

1889-1895. Edited by Edward Leo Lyman. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2010.liii + 794 pp. Cloth, $125.00.)

ABRAHAM H. CANNON was a prominent son of George Q. Cannon, an extremely influential LDS church and Utah leader in the late nineteenth century and, like his father, Abraham became an apostle and a polygamist. Tragically, he died at age thirty-seven, but, fortunately, during his seven years as an apostle, he kept a detailed and intensely interesting diary in which he recorded a wealth of information that will be enjoyed by readers of varying interests. The Cannon diaries are ably edited by Edward Leo Lyman and published by Signature Books as the twelfth volume in the “Significant Mormon Diaries Series.” While they do predominantly contain a trove of information and insights into contemporary LDS activities, doctrines and practices, and church governance, they also include those on politics, business and finance, mining, publishing, and much more.

Lyman states that never before had he “encountered anything comparable to the insights chronicled in Abraham H. Cannon’s diaries….” and that “the Cannon document was the ‘most valuable single source’” he had access to during his work on his 1986 book, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (xi-xii).

As an apostle, Cannon met regularly with the church’s first presidency and his fellow apostles. He was privy to their discussions and even disagreements over a variety of church matters of doctrine and practice and the concerns they sometimes had over them. He faithfully recorded the details of their meetings and discussions in his diary, which, today makes for fascinating and intriguing reading. A few of the many possible examples must suffice, including two which reflect my own interest in books. In January 1890, Cannon writes that he met with President Wilford Woodruff “concerning Dan Jones’ book ‘Forty Years among the Indians,’ which we are printing.” Woodruff had been informed that “the author was censuring in his book the authorities of the church in Arizona and Pres. W. did not approve of this.” Cannon notes that he duly “erased from the Ms.” the objectionable passages as he revised the book and that “Bro. Jones” concurred with such actions. That same month, Cannon records that the heirs of Parley P. Pratt claimed the church owed them $13,500 “for the use which the Church has had of [Pratt’s] books, ‘The Voice of Warning’ and ‘The Key to Theology.’” He notes that the church did not recognize or acknowledge the claim but chose to give the family $6,750 as a “donation” only and adds that from then on the family would own the copyright to the books (49-52).

Readers searching for those rare gems of information and insight that only a well-placed insider in the LDS church hierarchy could provide will not be disappointed. Apostle Cannon provides an abundance of such material which includes discussions on such subjects as “Negroes” and priesthood, the Adam-God doctrine, plural marriage (much on the Manifesto), temple ordinances and practices, the Word of Wisdom, the nature of the Holy Ghost and Godhead, and many more.

Lyman feels the most valuable contribution of the Cannon diaries is “the insight they provided into the evolutionary process of Church leaders as they struggled to accommodate the political realities of the time” (xii). One telling diary entry shows that in evolution sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. Cannon quotes from a letter from fellow apostle, John W. Young (Brigham’s son), who says he “does not see how it is possible for Latter-day Saints to be anything else but Democrats, and yet he acknowledges the immense monetary power and other influence of the Republicans” (220). In addition to informative footnotes and a handy index, editor Lyman has included in this handsome volume a helpful listing of Cannon family members and their relationships and a “cast” of “prominent characters” to identify many of the individuals written about by Cannon. My main regret about the book is shared by Lyman who wishes he could include all the material in the Cannon diaries, but is constrained by the limits of a mandated one-volume abridgement. This edition includes nearly double the material of a previously published abridgement of the diaries. Unfortunately, we do not know what we may be missing, but hope and trust that Lyman, a respected historian of many years, has struck the right balance.

CURT BENCH Salt Lake City

From the Muddy River to the Ivory Tower: The Journey of George H. Brimhall.

By Mary Jane Woodger and Joseph H. Groberg (Provo: BYU Studies, 2010. xxxvi + 245pp. Cloth, $18.95.)

THIS BIOGRAPHY of George Henry Brimhall, second president of Brigham Young University, is of interest to students of both Utah and LDS history, those concerned with academics in the state, and anyone who has every attended BYU, but it’s value is not limited to so narrow a group.

Several features of this book increase its worth and broaden its appeal to a much larger audience. Sixty-three photographs, from formal pictures of BYU faculty to one of Brimhall driving his 1922 Dodge, add interest to his life and to the period in which he lived. That period comes into even sharper focus with more than a dozen boxes containing succinct summaries of events like the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 and biographies of individuals across a broad spectrum: Alma Richards, first Utahn to win an Olympic medal, psychologist William James, and LDS Apostle and United States Senator Reed Smoot. Each box includes sources for its specific topic.

Notes are detailed, although there is no separate bibliography. A chronology of Brimhall’s life helps a reader put events into perspective. Appendices list three generations of his family and present a sampling of Brimhall’s “sermonettes,” brief talks he delivered to students and faculty each Monday evening for the eighteen years of his presidency. Those talks, often including his own poetry, certainly reflect the style and attitudes of that period. A biography of a person like Brimhall, especially when authored by a descendant, can be just an homage, but these authors have not fallen into that trap. While the book discusses Brimhall’s achievements, which are many and significant, it does not shrink from the controversies nor the negatives. Certainly Brimhall himself focused on the positive. Each chapter is headed by an epigraph or poem sampled from his writing, such as “I’m glad I’ve loved fair science;/ I’m glad I’ve loved good art// I’m glad I’ve loved religion/ And held it in my heart...” (191). That positive attitude extended to personally counseling students, many of whom remembered him with great kindness and affection.

Still, the authors discuss objectively the problems Brimhall, BYU, and the LDS Church faced when he began to move Brigham Young Academy from a general school teaching high school students along with a teachertraining college to a full-fledged university. Brimhall followed national education trends, read books and went to conventions and other campuses to learn what he might do to raise BYU to the level of other institutions of higher education. He added parenting classes, an innovation at the time and worked with Joseph Kingsbury of the University of Utah to change state law to allow private schools to receive state approval. He brought in scholars like John Dewey to address the faculty and students.

He also hired faculty members with advanced degrees from noted institutions, but those scholars also “brought in the ideas of modern biblical criticism and scientific inquiry that often were in tension, if not at complete odds, with fundamental Latter-day Saint beliefs” (165). As students began to report that they had learned there was no Garden of Eden and Noah’s flood was just a heavy rain in a small area, both Brimhall and LDS authorities became concerned enough to dismiss several of those scholars he had worked so hard to bring in, causing trauma for all involved. Nor do they gloss over his eventual suicide after an extended illness that affected both mind and body.

The net result is an easily readable biography of a life-long student who impacted education not just at BYU but throughout the state and the region.

COLLEEN WHITLEY Salt Lake City