The mantra of most investigative methods is: follow the money. Economics purports to be the science of human decision-making, and sheds powerful explanatory light on many individual and group motivations. A passing mention of communal living in the early days of the Restoration of the Church is given in the PBS special, but the opposition of the Church's neighbors to the Church is more commonly couched in terms of irreconcilable theological differences. To my way of thinking, relegating the socio-economic to the background and foregrounding religious motivations for opposition to the church is entirely cart-before-the-horse.
I grew up in an area of Canada where Hutterite colonies were fairly common. The Hutterites are a branch of Mennonite Protestants similar in religious and social philosophy and practice to the Amish of Eastern Pennsylvania. They dress in plain clothing they sew themselves in 19th Century styles and patterns. They limit their contact with non-believers, and consume only what they've produced themselves inasmuch as they can provide for their own needs. They differ from the Amish in that instead of forming a strong closely knit community from separate family units, they live in communes of 50-150 people (those numbers are my own approximation). Their livestock barns are huge, their living quarters are long barracks, and their funds are held in a common cash stock administered by the elders of the group. They are pacifists, and are faithful, peaceful people, a little strange (and they do speak a sort of Pennsylvania Dutch amongst themselves that seems a little put-offish when in mixed company), but they live so privately that one hardly notices their presence, really.
Their neighbors, however, don't get along with them very well. It's hard to make very much money as a farmer in Western Canada anymore. Do you have any idea what modern tractors and combines cost? Okay, so imagine you've just indebted yourself for 5 times the amount of your home mortgage with barely the hope for repaying the loan before you're way past an age at which you can actually enjoy your retirement. And now, on your way out of the John Deer dealership, you notice a nearly empty Hutterite van pulling away, followed by a caravan of 5 of the same combines you just signed your life away for--all five paid for in cash and slowly winding their way down the field next to yours. Are you a little hurt? Jealous? Understandably! You can't compete with that kind of purchasing power! Now where does your jealousy take you? Are you big enough to contain it? Or do you begin speaking badly of your neighbors? Maybe they DO have some hypocritical practices that you get a sense of satisfaction in publishing. Maybe you embellish a little, and then even add a lie to the story to make them sound worse. Maybe you justify it all in your mind because they believe differently than you on religious matters, and isolate themselves, and therefore deserve whatever you say. Maybe you begin to allow other complaints to fester. I actually knew a farmer who complained to the Rural Municipality authority about his neighbor Hutterites because he happened to live downwind and their stock of pigs stunk so bad they were driving his own property value down. I don't know how legitimate the claim was, but it certainly sounded petty to me. Now imagine they want to expand, and are eyeing up YOUR farmland to take over. Do you feel threatened now? Willing to defend even?
Now the big difference between Hutterites and Mormons during a time they lived in communal economic structures (and let's be careful to note here that these were NOT Marxist or Communist communes at all--they were practiced 30+ years before Karl Marx published Das Kapital for one thing, and for another, the concept of private property was carefully maintained even though surpluses went to the commune--but all that's for another post…) amid the rugged individualism of the American frontier, was that the LDS had no compunction about bearing arms. They were peace-loving, but they also realized that sometimes peace had to come through strength, and would form armed militias as they felt necessary for the defense of their livelihoods, families, and faith. Who among you wouldn't?
Doesn't this principle of following the money provide a much more powerful explanation for the motivations for opposition to, and ultimately violence against the early LDS? Would you really feel threatened by a group JUST because they believed something you found weird? Maybe so, but I doubt it would motivate you to do much more than keep a leery eye on them just in case. What would motivate you to violence has to involve the perception of a threat. It's the fact that they lived together and saw to their own needs, dealing with outsiders only as necessary, buying up land and forming large communities rapidly without purchasing the normal things from the already established businesses, without worrying that their demographics might threaten the political majority--it's these economic and political factors that caused some to feel threatened and stir up others to the point that it was a bloodthirsty armed mob painted in blackface that stormed the prison where Joseph Smith was awaiting trial on trumped up charges. It was these factors, not the religious differences, that were the cause of anger among the neighbors of Mormons.
Of course religious matters always figure in to the explanations of their motivations. I'm not disputing that at all. But it's much more likely that the cited differences were only superficial as motivations to violence, where the root cause was more likely to be the real economic threat.
Of course the matter of polygamy was a cause for great concern. What a terrible feeling a father must have had to hear, for example, that his daughter didn't find those Mormons all so bad, and was even thinking of converting. Wouldn't you feel threatened thinking she might be brainwashed into joining a cult that forced her into sexual slavery. This I understand. It would be a completely misplaced fear, based on rumor and lie, but understandable as a valid feeling of threat. This may be the sole example of a truly religiously based reason for taking up arms against an otherwise pacific group of Christians.
But just as the motivations of extreme Islamists are NOT the peace their religion demands, just as the religion of a Bin Laden is no more than a convenient excuse for propelling the weak-minded to suicide bombings, just as the Taliban were thirsty for an oppressive power, and were not striving for a free and peaceful society as their Qur'an proclaims as its utopian aim, so were the motivations of violence against the early LDS NOT religious at their root, but rather basely economic. PBS should have followed the money, not been so willing to take opposition witnesses at their own word, and rightly placed the religious-based hatred against Mormons as a secondary excuse behind the perception of economic threat.
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