All Gone to Look for America

by Peter Millar

  The theology is another thing entirely. I’m looking at a tableau of Jesus appearing somewhere in Central America around the time of the crucifixion when the Japanese bloke comes up to me and taps his head in that universally recognised signal to suggest our hosts may be just the odd sandwich short of a picnic. Superficially I’m tempted to agree though it does occur to me that most religions are founded by people who appear to be perfectly normal humans at first, until they announce they’ve had a revelation or been touched by the divine, including Mohammed, Buddha, and er, em, L. Ron Hubbard…

  Even Jesus Christ himself can be loosely grouped in this category, though he did go one step further by claiming to actually be divine (but there again so did the Roman emperors). Anyhow, in the interests of fairness, I decide to do something the earnest young men in suits calling at my door while I cowered behind the curtains would have been delighted by: I go down into the vast basement bookstore beneath the church headquarters and buy a copy of the Book of Mormon. And just to make sure I get the gist correct without embarking on a lifetime study of texts which, despite being written in the mid-nineteenth century, are in an English more reminiscent of the King James Bible, I pick up the picture book version for children. From their own sources, therefore, I offer the uninitiated a personally potted history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  Back in 1819 a 14-year-old boy called Joseph Smith growing up in Vermont, is out in the forest one day when he has a vision of God and Jesus who tell him all the contemporary Christian sects in the young America are confused. Three years later an angel called Moroni shows him where to dig up a stone box that contains gold plates with secret writing on them. He also guides Joe to two magic stones that will help him translate it.

  The story, which approximates to the Mormon ‘Old Testament’ goes like this: in about 600 BC a Jerusalem family led by a wise man called Lehi (pronounce to rhyme with Yee-Hi) warns that the city will be destroyed because of the people’s wickedness, and prophesies that eventually Jesus Christ will be born to save them. He and his family are driven out and wander in the wilderness guided by a golden compass. Eventually they come to a coast (near the Persian Gulf) where God tells them to build a boat to sail to the Promised Land. One of his sons, Nephi, is keen, but the other, Laman, is not.

  Eventually they build the boat, set off, and with a few mishaps sail across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to the west coast of South America. Lehi dies and passes on the leadership to Nephi, but soon the brothers argue again and split into two tribes: the Nephites and the Lamanites. The former are known as ‘the righteous’ while the latter ‘became a dark-skinned people. God cursed them because of their wickedness.’ (2 Nephi 5:14, 21)

  Over the next few centuries the Nephites and Lamanites fight, there are false prophets and bad kings, a massacre of innocents in a city called Ammonihah and a bruising encounter with a sect called the Zoramites who worship in buildings called ‘synagogues’ and are described as being inordinately fond of gold, believing they alone are God’s chosen people. (Alma 31:12)

  At the time of Christ’s birth, the sky stays light all night and a new star appears. Thirty-three years later, storms and thunder shake the land, several cities are destroyed and it is dark for three days. Immediately afterwards the resurrected Christ appears among the Nephites and picks a dozen apostles, nine of whom he eventually takes with him to heaven, leaving three immortals to teach on earth. For the next couple of centuries there is virtual heaven on earth in the Americas. Then it all goes wrong again, and they start fighting. At this time a young boy called Mormon is appointed by God to be guardian of their sacred writings, which would come to be known as the Book of Mormon. In the Visitors’ Center there’s a waxwork of a Mormon writing it on the golden plates.

  Mormon eventually passes on the plates to his son Moroni, who spends his own final years writing the words of the sacrament prayers and baptism rituals on the plates before burying them on the hill, where they will be discovered by a young lad called Joseph Smith who will become the first prophet of the resurrected true Church of Jesus Christ.

  Mormonism is then the first truly all-American religion. It preaches what a lot of modern Americans believe anyway – that they do indeed inhabit the Promised Land. Literally. Cynics might point out that Jews and dark-skinned people might find a few mid-nineteenth century Anglo-Saxon prejudices mysteriously lurking in these ancient scriptures, but then gays and gentiles in general aren’t exactly loved by the more orthodox Christian Old Testament. Although they recognise the Christian New Testament (except for the gospel of Matthew which Joseph Smith – under angelic guidance – rewrote) they effectively also have their own, called the Doctrine and Covenants which tells the story of Joseph and his followers.

  Like this: Joseph’s new religion didn’t go down well with folks in his Puritan home state of Vermont so he set off for Pennsylvania where he met Oliver Cowdery who was to become his fellow prophet. To confirm this, John the Baptist followed by a trio of saints, Peter, James and John, appeared to both of them granting them the two top levels of the new priesthood – the ‘Aaronic’ and ‘Melchidizek’ – allowing them to baptise new followers and give them absolution from sins. Oliver was not able to read the gold plates and had to make do with writing down what Joseph translated. Jesus told them to show the gold plates to two other people who would go down in Mormon history as the ‘original witnesses’ – just in case anybody might get the idea the gold plates didn’t exist – then sent Moroni to take them back to heaven, as Joseph didn’t need them any more. If you have questions I suggest you invite in the next couple of well-spoken young men with crew cuts who turn up at your front door.

  Over the coming months Oliver and Joseph baptised more followers and ordained some of these ‘Saints’ to the priesthood so they in turn could baptise more. One of the new converts was a young man called Brigham Young. They also developed their own concept of infallibility: ‘Jesus said that only one man could receive revelations for the entire church. That man was Joseph Smith.’ Joseph banned alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco, and ordered his followers to give one tenth of their income to the church. It might be seen as compensation – from one point of view – that he also said they could have more than one wife, following Abraham and David who ‘received many wives and concubines’. This was going to cause trouble.

  Joseph’s chapter and verse reads: ‘If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then he is justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth to him and no one else. And if he have 10 virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.’ The concept of ‘belonging’ obviously is one that would hardly sit well with modern feminism, but then Joseph didn’t really see the law as applying equally to men and women: ‘But if one of either of the 10 virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed.’

  Given the essentially puritan nature of American society in the mid-nineteenth century it is hardly surprising that the Mormons were forced to keep moving west. They founded a new town called Nauvoo (allegedly from the Hebrew for ‘beautiful’) in Illinois. The trouble was that with whole populations flooding westwards across what they considered an ‘empty’ continent, no sooner had a new town been founded than other people flooded in. When a new newspaper criticising Smith was set up in Nauvoo, his followers attacked the building and destroyed its presses. Smith left town only to be arrested ‘on trumped-up charges’ in a nearby town. But while he and his brother Hyrum were imprisoned there, the jail was stormed by a mob and both killed.

  Brigham Young takes over and, getting the message (from the locals if not from heaven), leads the ‘Saints’ on an almost literally biblical exodus to the west, eventuall
y to the beautiful, clean-aired, mountain-ringed valley where he founded Salt Lake City. It is important to see the Mormon odyssey in context. In the 1840s the United States, though growing fast thanks to the Louisiana Purchase, was still essentially a coastal country with a few inland provinces. Texas had seized independence from Mexico in 1836, but did not join the US until 1845, and then seceded to join the Confederacy in 1861. California was far away, its future still uncertain.

  In 1847, when the Saints founded what would become Utah, Young almost certainly imagined he was creating his own Mormon country. He had not anticipated that their trek would be emulated on a mammoth scale, or that the civil war would create the political impetus for a transcontinental railroad. When he realised its inevitability, however, he rapidly espoused the cause. In the magnificent and now sadly disused old Union Pacific station in Salt Lake City there are two hugely significant murals, one at either end. The first depicts the pioneers of 1847 arriving in their virgin wilderness. The second is a scene just 20 years later, in 1867, the arrival of the railroad and Washington’s dominance assured. Salt Lake City’s brief period of isolation was over when it had hardly just begun.

  The Saints had to face the reality that despite the limited autonomy of the states, they would come under federal law. Which meant polygamy was a problem. Next to the church headquarters, hard by the Temple, Brigham Young’s pleasant pastel green wooden house still stands, much as he left it, including the quarters for his veritable harem of wives.

  Within a generation, however, the practice was to come under such pressure that on 6 October 1890, Wilford Woodruff, named church president just a year earlier, announced that ‘inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriage… I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land’.

  Fundamentalist Mormons carefully noted however that far from actually banning polygamous marriage – which had after all been recommended by Jesus Christ himself speaking through the prophet Joseph Smith – Woodruff was merely advising Mormons not to break the law of the country. Once upon a time they had tried to flee the USA and its laws, but the country – riding on the railroad – had caught up with and overtaken them; they were now required to submit to federal law. But as stories from distant parts of Utah still regularly report, there remains a hard core out there who think that federal law matters less than God’s.

  Of course, whether or not we are talking the same ‘god’ here – or even the same ‘Jesus Christ’ for that matter – is a subject of some debate, especially given that Mormons believe both Jesus and ‘Heavenly Father’ possess bodies of flesh and blood. Mormons insist they are Christians; indeed they insist they are the real Christians. For example it did not stop Mitt Romney running for the republican presidential nomination in 2008. At one stage it looked as if it might well have been him rather than John McCain fighting Barack Obama for the presidency. And who knows how that might have turned out? But not all their faith has parallels in the more mainstream branches of the religion. Here for example is the core of Mormon theology as told to me by the two ‘saintly sisters’:

  ‘Life on earth is part of an eternal existence which began long before we were born, when we lived with God as His spirit children. We came to earth to be tested to show whether we would obey God’s commandments. At death our spirits leave our bodies and go to a spirit world where we continue to learn and progress. We retain our individual personalities and our ability to chose. Those who do not hear the Saviour’s teachings on earth will have the opportunity to do so after life.’

  That last sentence, you might have noticed, is signally different to more established Christian teachings about a ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’, for those who fail to heed the message. If so, you have spotted one of the critical elements of the Mormon creed, and, moreover, one that explains their strangest obsession: genealogy. If you have ever tried researching your family tree online, the odds are you’ll have come across FamilySearch.org. This is the digitised entry portal to the Family History Library which has its physical presence next to the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. Extraordinary as it may seem, over the past century and more the Mormons have built up the biggest genealogical research facility in the world.

  And seeing as, after my guided tour and my lightning initiation into the mysteries of Mormonism, it seems a shame not to take the opportunity to track down a few missing members of the Millar clan. Not, I hasten to add, for the same reasons most Mormons do. They do so in order to convert them. Yes, even the dead ones. Those who never had the good fortune to hear the words of Joseph Smith. Mormons believe that it is their duty to give their ancestors the same chance as themselves to enter heaven, even posthumously, by being baptised in their names. ‘I’ve been baptised 12 times,’ Sister Anna told me proudly, blissfully uncaring if her Peruvian Catholic ancestors would have appreciated the gesture (although it was probably an easier option than the ones the conquistadors offered those who turned down Catholicism in the first place).

  It doesn’t have to be ancestors either. Controversially, those whose deceased spirits have been offered a posthumous chance to get to know the Mormons’ ‘Heavenly Father’ are Christopher Columbus, Methodist founder John Wesley, several American presidents, the original signatories of the Declaration of Independence. And Adolf Hitler. Even mass murderers are given a chance to repent. You sort of have to admire the generosity of spirit, if perhaps not the political nous.

  The FHL building is outside the walled confines of the Temple Square and if you have taken the trouble to turn up yourself, use of its remarkable facilities is free. No questions asked. And any questions they can possibly answer will be answered. Also free. With enthusiasm and patience. When I explained that my roots – indeed my family – were Northern Irish, I was given into the care of a bright-eyed red-haired woman called Miranda with green horn-rimmed glasses who immediately directed me to a typed index book of the records they held from the Public Records Office in Dublin, which is where all important Irish documents prior to partition in 1921 were kept. Unfortunately, during the Irish Civil War the archive was blown up and vast numbers of priceless documents destroyed, including many registers of births, deaths and marriages. The tragedy is that we didn’t have a genealogy-obsessed religious group around back then to do what the Saints subsequently did in the early 1950s, which is to send someone to sit in the archives day after day for more than three years, photographing every single remaining page to put it all on microfilm. They’ve done the same job for most of Britain too!

  Despite the gaps in the Irish records, guided by Miranda I spent the next several hours winding reels of microfilm onto the spindles of readers – they are in the process of digitising the archive but that may take at least as long as it did to film it for the last generation’s bulk storage technology. I’m not a family tree buff, but if the lacuna in the Irish records hadn’t blocked my route, I could have spent a week there, poring into the lives of my ancestors. It’s one thing knowing roughly when your great-grandfather was born but staring at his birth and wedding certificates, even on film, is still a strange sensation. I discovered that my grandmother had a middle name she never used and found myself musing on the occupations of Victorian Ulstermen with names like Isaac and Jeremiah. My great-great-grandfather Isaac Callan had been a ‘water bottler’ in Belfast in the 1860s. The only interference – and you could scarcely call it that – was when Miranda asked politely if I planned any baptisms. I smiled and said ‘not just yet’. Mormons believe it’s best to know as much as possible about your ancestor before you take that step. I believe it’s best not to tamper with the religious beliefs of Ulster Presbyterians. Even dead ones.

  By now, as you might be able to imagine after such a dose of religion and family history, I was ready for a drink. Or two. I had been warned this would be a problem. Mormon lawmakers had tightened up since Brigham Young’s day when, although he c
laimed not to drink, he distilled his own Valley Tan whisky which was sold to other settlers. In the late nineteenth century Salt Lake City was famous for its saloons. By the mid-twentieth, post-Prohibition, Utah was one of the most anti-alcohol states in America, even if the restrictions were relatively easy to get round, usually by bars requiring a ‘membership’ which could be bought at the door. When the city hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, the laws were relaxed and today – unless you are a hardened spirit drinker – Utah is almost like anywhere else.

  Almost. Nearly all restaurants serve wine or beer, but only with food. But then, isn’t that why you’re in a restaurant? And if you want, you can get away with a bowl of chips (fries). Beer is easy to come by provided it is less than 3.2 per cent alcohol by weight, which is a funny way to measure alcohol as most of the rest of the world measures it by volume. In fact, 3.2 by weight works out at around four per cent by volume, which while weaker than premium German beers, is substantially stronger than most American lager, and perfectly on par with an average English ale. Or indeed, the product of most American microbreweries. Which may be why, paradoxically, ‘dry’ Utah has more microbreweries per capita than any other American state.

  One of the best happens to be directly opposite my hotel. It’s called Squatters and just to prove that you can live in ‘SLC’, as I discover most locals call it, and have a light-hearted attitude to your Mormon neighbours, they offer up Polygamy Porter. It is, as you may imagine, a heady brew: delightfully dark, with a bittersweet aftertaste!

  On the advice of the barman – motto: always listen to barmen; don’t always take their advice – I head down the road to another establishment which also has its tongue if not exactly poked out at the Mormon establishment at least firmly in its cheek: The Tavernacle. Yes, it’s a bad pun, and yes, they also do music. Their speciality is Duelling Pianos: two blokes sit at baby grands facing each other and each hypes the audience into paying him to play their song. Whenever someone bids the other guy more for a different song, he takes over. It’s fun – for a bit – and clever – it certainly pays the piano players’ wages – but primarily it’s ‘frat boy foul-mouthed’, an improbable reminder that this was indeed once not just a religious ‘capital’ but a yeehaw cowboy town.