The
movie September Dawn
brings to light a dark day in Mormon history. On September
11, 1857, LDS leaders tricked 120 men, women and children into
surrendering under a white flag of truce. After disarming them,
Mormon militia brutally murdered them under direct orders of
their religious superiors. Those are the facts, and they are
generally not disputed.
Less clear is who gave the command to kill innocent people in the name of the Mormon God. The movie asserts it was Mormon President and Prophet Brigham Young, but conflicting lines of evidence make it difficult if not impossible to establish this with absolute certainty.
Will Bagley, a respected historian of Mormonism and early
American history has written a highly acclaimed book on the
subject titled,
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at
Mountain Meadows. He concludes Young contributed to the
events leading to massacre and was directly involved in
obstructing justice afterwards. A review of Bagley's book
with more details on the events surrounding this tragedy can
be read here.
The evidence of Mormon involvement in the killing is both
sad and sobering. One can hope the broader exposure of these
events serves to temper Mormon finger-pointing at the
foibles and failings of evangelical Christians and
Catholics.
Stones and glass houses aside, an atrocity like the Mountain
Meadows massacre should not be the litmus test to determine
the spiritual authenticity or 'Christianess' of the Mormon
Church. No religious group has a perfect history and every
religious group has adherents who give it a bad name.
Without a doubt sincere, dedicated Mormon people adhere to
moral and family values that are consistent with a Christian
belief system. But the adherents of Mormonism who live
exemplary lives do not make the religion Christian any more
than the Mormons who commit heinous crimes make it
non-Christian.
Rather, whether or not the Mormon religion warrants a
"Christian" label should be determined by the distinctive
beliefs of Mormonism and the life and teachings of its
founder, Joseph Smith, who claimed to be a prophet of God.
Yet, careful study of Mormon history provides ample evidence
Joseph did not get his revelations from God
(many of them failed)
and he invented both the
Book of Mormon and
his
First Vision story. Smith
also added numerous doctrinal innovations, including secret
temple rituals, plural wifery and his teaching that God the
Father and Jesus were part of an eternally progressing
family of Gods. Each one moved the Mormon Church farther
away from core Christian beliefs. Today the Mormon Church
continues to teach
aberrant doctrines
foreign to both the Bible and historic Christianity.
This is why since the beginning of the Mormon movement, the
majority of
Protestants and Catholics have rejected Mormonism as an
authentic expression of Christian belief and continue to do
so to this day. Mountain Meadows Massacre did not negate the
Mormon Church's claim to the "Christian" label, Joseph
Smith's teachings did that many years before.