Mormons in Brithenig/Aelyan North America

Hey.

This is rather lengthy, and is not exactly about conlangs. I did
want to contribute to the thread, though. I've tried to answer
all of the various questions in one post; if I've missed any,
let me know!

On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, John Cowan wrote:

> dirk elzinga wrote:
>
> > Missed this the first time through. I suppose Tepa can be
> > squeezed in there as well, but my framing story for Tepa is
> > firmly rooted in the *here*. From your conversations about
> > *there*, there doesn't seem to be much room for Mormonism, which
> > is an integral part of the history of Tepa documentation.
>
> Not sure why.  The L.D.S. might have remained in Nauvoo (Illinois, IIRC)
> in the North American League, which is more tolerant of unusual religions
> and cultures than the 19th century U.S., but some Mormons at least might
> have settled the Utah Basin.
Part of the problem is the particularly Mormon attitude towards
the American continent. One of the leitmotivs of the Book of
Mormon is that the New World is a Promised Land, reserved for
the faithful and the obedient. The proliferation of wildly
divergent cultures and religions in the Brithenig/Aelya New
World takes a lot of wind out of those culturally isolationist
sails. Certainly in the 19th century isolationism was a
prevailing attitude among Mormons. Now that the LDS Church is a
worldwide organization, these sentiments aren't as pronounced
(but are still there).

On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, And Rosta wrote:

> Wouldn't be much room for Mormonism in Utah, or in the There Universe?
If Mormonism existed There, it may not have moved to the Great
Basin, as John pointed out. Assuming, of course, that there
wasn't any persecution directed against Mormons There. And it
wasn't just polygamy which aroused the ire of the Mormons'
neighbors: they tended to patronize only Mormon businesses,
didn't mingle much, and voted as a bloc (this could be
politically devastating; Nauvoo was the most populous city in
Illinois at the time--1841-44); they also had a "chosen people"
mentality which irritated others. In short, they were seen as
rather "uppity" by their neighbors. Part of the persecution was
intended to take them down a peg or two; the publication of the
doctrine of polygamy iced it for the non-Mormons.

> Racking (or is it _wracking_) my meagre general knowledge, I thought
> Mormonism was born in the Lancashire cotton mills (perhaps not too far
> from the university where I teach), and I don't see why that shouldn't have
> happened There.
The Church was officially founded in Fayette, New York, on 6
April 1830. Joseph Smith, the founder, was an itinerant
farmer/laborer originally from Vermont. During the late 1830s
and 1840s, there was a great deal of missionarying in Canada and
Great Britain (the first foreign language the Church published
in was Welsh!). Preston was the location of the first
proselyting efforts in England itself. Many of the Mormons who
travelled west to the Great Basin were thus of British stock,
either from British America (Canada) or Great Britain itself.
This large British substratum gave rise to particular features
of Utah English which are not shared by other USians.

> > Probably polygamy would have survived without the intolerant pressure of
> > an imperial U.S.
>
> I thought polygamy perseveres into the present day. Does it not?
To which On Fri, 9 Apr 100, John Cowan replied:
>
> That's a sticky issue, and I speak under correction.  Polygamy as a *fact*
> survives, in the sense that there are households containing a single
> man, multiple women, and various offspring.  Neither the secular government
> nor the L.D.S. church recognizes it.  On questioning, members of such
> households generally deny that their relationship amounts to polygamous
> marriage, for obvious prudential reasons.
>
> Polygamy as a Mormon *doctrine* was confined to a certain period for
> which I have no dates handy, but before and after that period it was
> not a doctrine.
>
> It is a secular fact that the U.S. government made it eminently clear that
> Utah could not be admitted as a state unless the church abandoned the
> doctrine of polygamy.  Just afterwards, the then head of the church
> had a divine revelation instructing him to abandon it.  Draw your own
> conclusions.
>
> The Utah Civil Liberties Union (a branch of the American C.L.U.) has
> a project underway to legalize polygamy as a matter of religious
> freedom.  Prospects are unclear.
Polygamy does indeed exist today; I grew up within half a mile
from three different polygamist families--the Barlows, the
Potters, and the Allreds--representing three different strains
of modern "Mormon Fundamentalism". However, it should be
understood that modern polygamy as practiced by the
Fundamentalists is not a continuation of the 19th century
practice, but rather a return to it.

In 1890, Wilford Woodruff, the President of the Church, issued
the Manifesto which proclaimed that plural marriages were not
being performed in any US Territory. Critics point to this
particular wording and maintain that there were plural marriages
being performed in Mexico, where the Church had several
colonies. President Joseph F. Smith later announced (under
pressure from the US Congress) that there were no more plural
marriages being performed anywhere.

[What John says is true: this move is seen as bowing to
political pressure. But it wasn't only in response to Utah's
proposed statehood. Earlier legislation (the Edmunds-Tucker Act,
IIRC) was designed to strip the Church of all of its assets and
effectively outlaw it as an organization, based solely on the
issue of polygamy. Later Supreme Court rulings declared polygmay
to be unconstitutional, and so this political move (the
Manifesto) was also intended to save the Church from financial
and legal ruin.]

In the 1930's, a group of men gathered in a home in the Salt
Lake Valley; they claimed that their fathers had been given
special dispensation from the 3rd President of the Church, John
Taylor (Woodruff was the 4th, and Smith was the 6th), to
continue the practice of plural marriage, no matter what
happened after. It can be pretty conclusively demonstrated that
polygamy was not being practiced at the time, so the claim that
current polygamy is a continuation of the earlier practice is
not true.

It is of no little interest (and of some consternation among
many Mormons) that in neither the Manifesto issued by Woodruff
nor the restatement by President Smith was plural marriage as a
doctrine repudiated or rejected. This is taken by many to mean
that it is still doctrinal. There is much speculation (among
those who indulge themselves) that polygamy will someday be
reinstituted as a practice among Church members, but I'm not
holding my breath.

I should also say that I am not aware of any effort on the part
of the Utah chapter of the ACLU to legalize polygamy. In fact,
the big news lately is that anti-polygamy laws (included in the
Utah constitution at the insistence of the Federal Gov't) need
to be strengthened and more rigorously enforced. An incident a
couple of years ago brought this issue to the forefront again. A
teenage girl was severely beaten by her father for refusing to
enter into a polygamous (and incestuous) relationship with her
uncle. This spurred the creation of a group called Tapestry of
Polygamy which consists of former polygamous wives who have
repeatedly testified of their mistreatment and abuse at the
hands of their husbands. I don't recall what the ACLU's response
(if any) to this whole mess has been, but it would have been
very imprudent for them to have spoken out in favor of polygamy
at the time.

Of course, all of this has nothing to do with Tepa itself, only
with the framing story I have set up for its discovery. Tepa
could very well exist within the Brithenig/Aelya New World (I
harbor suspicions that they were the original Anasazi). I'm not
sure that I'm ready to put it there, though ...

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu